Help the environment by not buying a new iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://jlelse.blog/links/2019/09/iphone-environment/ <comment><USER2> This post makes an unfounded statement that fair phone is more env friendly because it is repairable. This might be true, and the opposite may be true: maybe fairphone is less env friendly because it breaks more often and requires a lot of spare parts. Maybe they produce more toxic waste during production of fairphone.

<comment> wait-a-minute To be fair the post also says, correctly, that what's better for the environment is also using the phone that you already have. IE keeping it longer.

<comment><USER3> But we should take into account there's a market for used iPhones. When I last upgraded, I gave my old phone to someone who needed it and prevented them from buying another brand. If (theoretically) iPhones are better for the environment than competitors, that's a net win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Fairphone doesn't even come close to the iPhone 11, or even the iPhone X. No OLED screen. No advanced cameras.

And the Fairphone has a tacky logo on the front of the device that screams, "I'm cheap!"

And I say this as a person that would otherwise prefer the Fairphone. I think it's cool that it's repairable, but without offering something competitive with the iPhone 11 Pro, I just don't have any incentive to give up my iPhone 6S. I had the battery replaced a few months ago for $50, and it'll work just fine for me for years to come.

<comment><USER5> The basic premise of the article is "help the environment". If that is no incentive to you, so be it.</comment></comment>


How many users block Google analytics? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/google-analytics <comment><USER2> One of the corollaries to this is that if you are basing your decisions on analytics, you are probably under-representing people who block them, who often tend to be a non-representative subset of your users. I have seen multiple projects do things like stop supporting features that their analytics "showed nobody was using" but failed to realize that a significant portion of their (often technical and very vocal) userbase _did_ in fact use the feature.

Oh, and by the way, responding to these kinds of issues with "if you wanted your voice to be heard, you should have turned on analytics" is inexcusable.

<comment><USER3> When I turned off my Windows 10 Telemetry, I expressed a clear choice that I'd rather not give my data, and it's fine for my voice to not be heard. I just really don't care about Windows 10 that much. On the other hand, I turned on all the telemetry for OctoPi, Steam, and a bunch of other softwares I care about. I want my voice to be heard for those cases.

Just curious, what's so inexcusable about that?

<comment><USER4> How I use a software is not an indication of how I _want_ to use a software. It's what I'm doing with the options the software has given. If I'm really lucky, I'll be like everyone else, and an inefficiency in the software will be spotted and fixed so the software will be slightly easier to use. In practice, I'm just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won't explain on its own; and even if other users would want to do these things, I'm one of very few actually doing them. So... I don't really want to trade potentially a lot of personal information just for... I don't know... to make it easier for developers to develop for the lowest common denominator rather than me?

<comment><USER5> It really sounds like you've never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh.

> In practice, I'm just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry > won't explain on its own

This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things product managers are most interested in knowing about because they either want to properly implement that functionality, or they already have it and they want to know if they're doing a bad job of getting their customers to adopt it.

It's incredibly unlikely that you're such an ultimate power user that what you want out of the product is so unique that you're inventing your own usage patterns that others aren't also following.

I completely agree that you should have the right to not share your information with anybody you choose. But if you choose not to share any information about your use case with the company that makes the product, then you don't have much right to complain about it not doing what you want it to.

<comment><USER6> Analytics driven development is like flying a plane on instruments only with all the windows covered up. I mean, sure, you'll get there, but compared to flying normally you are missing out on so much.

Watching individual user sessions from session recordings provides more depth, but you are still missing out on great swathes of information.

Analytics and session recordings don't give anything near as much concrete data as taking the time to engage with your users. You then use analytics to confirm behaviour.

<comment><USER7> > sure, you'll get there

Hum... On real life you would quickly discover how vulnerable all of your instruments are sensitive to both random and bad-intended interference.

You can apply the same phrase as a metaphor for software.

<comment><USER8> > Hum... On real life you would quickly discover how vulnerable all of your > instruments are sensitive to both random and bad-intended interference.

Well no, commercial pilots have to be rated IFR. Flying via instruments only is completely normal and part of the training. Visual is perhaps easier for many people, but you lose the use of visual navigation in all kinds of circumstances, like at night, over the ocean, or in a storm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I run a non-tech eCommerce site in North America that does $6-8m a year and I tested two 90 day periods year over year and found 12.4% of transactions didn't show up in Google Analytics. I haven't segmented them by geo yet but about 75% of my sales are in North America. There was only a 0.1% difference year over year.

<comment><USER10> This is very similar to my experience. I recently measured the difference on my site as 10%-15% (also a non-tech site, though sadly not at $8m a year yet!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This test compares:

1\. Number of visitors as recorded in Google Analytics

2\. Number of loads of a 1x1 pixel served on a different domain

They see higher numbers for (2) than (1), and attribute the difference to users blocking Google Analytics.

I don't see them describing how they excluded bot traffic, however, and for my sites the _majority_ of hits I get are from bots. Only some bots run JS, so I suspect their numbers for blocking users are thoroughly diluted by these bots.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

<comment><USER12> It's not just two numbers of total hits the article is comparing.

The author extracted the browser information from the server logs (presumably from the User-Agent header i guess?). If they were able to do this, i'd assume they also filtered out bots from the tally :)

<comment><USER13> I'd expect serious bots to masquerade as whatever the latest chrome user agent is.

<comment><USER12> Then you would expect for Chrome to show a higher number of GA blocking "users". But that's not the case: the article mentions that the percentage of users blocking GA on Chrome is on par with Safari.

And I don't know what you mean by "serious". The most common crawlers (Google, Baidu, Yandex, etc) identify themselves as bots on the User-Agent very clearly. Personally, those are the ones that I'd call the most "serious". And also the ones which I've seen generating the most on servers.

<comment><USER14> The net is full of unidentified bots scraping content or looking for vulnerabilities (contact forms , wordpress logins, etc). On many occasions I had traffic issues and had to check logs and these were very hard to block, because they ignore the robots file, don't advertise themselves in the User Agent and use a large pool of IPs.

<comment><USER15> I don't know why this comment is downvoted, it mirrors my experience. I'm responsible for a few domestic high traffic websites and have done some analysis from log files to find suspicious traffic, i.e. user agents saying they are chrome but not loading images or css files, having many page views (i.e. 50 where our average user has 2) etc. It wasn't foolproof but the false- positives where < 10% in my random checks. These bots made up ~10-15% of page views.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I run a geek-tech blog in Hebrew. I used analytics for a while in the past, but the numbers were completely off. There were posts with almost more comments than visitors based on the analytics.

Took me a while to realize that most of my readers block analytics since they're super privacy-saavy. I shut the tool down, it's useless for some crowds.

Nowadays I also doubt if it's ethical for any crowd.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's interesting to me about the number of people who block Google analytics, is the number of people working with those analytics in product management, marketing or SEO, that are apparently unaware of anyone being able to block Google Analytics.

<comment><USER18> Everyone I know who works in digital marketing (a lot of people) use ad block on their personal devices.

<comment><USER19> I often wonder whether Page and Brin install an ad blocker.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't be surprised if it was mandated by company policy at google and Facebook.

Any company that does machine images for employees should ship them with adblockers preinstalled. There are zero downsides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why I have analytics on the JavaScript side and server side. I can calculate those who block my analytics and at the same time capture a lot of the relevant information

<comment><USER2> Subverting the desires of people who would like privacy is not a good look.

<comment><USER21> I mean, on the one hand I can see that view point —

On the other hand, that's a fairly entitled viewpoint.

Users are using infrastructure I finance, to do things on the website(s) I created. If you want privacy from the services youre using, create or host your own.

I keep the data secure and don't give it to 3rd parties. That information is used to fix bugs, improve / build services, etc.

I'm not "subverting" privacy, users are coming to my house and playing with my things, so to speak.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, at some point we're going to have to address that (internet) communication is a two way street.

Until then, your HTML is interpreted by my browser, any resources are going over my network (and _only_ my network if they're 3rd party) and the JavaScript is running on my machine . So I'll be having them obey my rules.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure I understand your point. It's you who requests those resources, nobody pushes that data towards you. Are we debating adblockers? Because that is a different topic than server side log analysis and I agree that we should be picky about what we process (but it's a thin line, you are using resources from the owner of that service though).

<comment><USER24> _It's you who requests those resources,_

That does not matter, at least in the EU where citizens are protected by the GDPR. Article 6 of the GDPR:

 _Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:

(a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;_

<comment><USER25> You are changing directions with your comment.

"his or her personal data"

Analytics is not personal. No one shares their names or social security number. And I strongly agree with people above mentioning The Visitor is the requester. We provide services, they use it, we want to understand what we are doing by checking analytics. Nothing immoral about this.

<comment><USER24> You don't get to redefine 'personal data' ;). The GDPR is clear about that:

* 'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;*

In the legal opinions that the EU provides with the GDPR, random tokens that are associated with a person are PD. An IP address is also considered personal data:

[https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/refo...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data- protection/reform/what-personal-data_en#examples-of-personal-data)

 _Nothing immoral about this._

What is ethical is a personal opinion, but collecting personal data (following the definition above) is simply not legal without consent in the EU.

<comment><USER26> IP addresses might not even get associated with analytics events - just used for basic counting of different users before aggregation? At that point you have no right to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We do ~1.1m sessions per month according to GA, comparing to our Clofudflare visitor data real number is ~35% higher. I think CF is going to be as accurate as possible and both say the filter bots out.

</comment><comment><USER28> I recently got tired of Google Analytics (for a number of reasons) and switched to Fathom Analytics.

Now, Ghostery says I have "zero trackers" on my personal site.

Fathom doesn't collect personal info about my visitors. They just show me my aggregate metrics (popular pages, top referrers) which is all I need anyway.

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately it's just a matter of time. I have no doubt they will get added to uBlock pretty soon. Most people don't make a difference between tracking anonymously for data aggregation and tracking individual users. Many are paranoid and think that any type of tracking is bad.

<comment><USER30> It's because it only takes one flip of a switch to go from collecting aggregate data to collecting heavily personalised data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > I was expecting Firefox to be the largest, but it was a bit surprising to me > that Safari and Chrome were approximately equal

Don't forget about all those smartasses spoofing their user agent just to make your life even harder.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/random_user_a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/random_user_agent/)

<comment><USER32> other smartasses runs sites that block firefox with "unsupported browser" message while the site's working perfectly fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Note that the 0% for Android is because Google banned ad blockers on the Play Store.

<comment><USER25> I am certain many jailbroken androids are out there using adblockers. Firefox also has plugins internally blocking ads.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock- plus/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-plus/)

<comment><USER34> You are doing HN readers a disservice by recommending ABP! It is mafia software.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17639624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17639624)

[https://medium.com/@trybravery/please-stop-using-adblock- but...](https://medium.com/@trybravery/please-stop-using-adblock-but-not-why- you-think-13280e76c8e7)

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mobilegeeks.de%2Fadblock- plus-undercover-einblicke-in-ein-mafioeses-werbenetzwerk%2F)

Recommend uBlock Origin instead. "Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought." [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > There was also one BSD user in the sample, who blocked google analytics.

There's always one

<comment><USER36> That one needs to up their anti-fingerprint game. Showing up as BSD narrows your identity group _very_ significantly, and I would wager is enough to identify you uniquely in many cases when correlated with all other information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Turned it off via PiHole, so my ChromeOS laptops and Androids are covered at home, still trying to get Wireguard set up on the PiHole to allow remote VPN, while suffering double-NAT/CGNat through my AT&T hotpsot as home connection. Turns out it's not a slam-dunk!

</comment><comment><USER38> FWIW the numbers for my blog are broadly similar, with a larger sample taken when I had a blog post on HN, with about 2x higher unique user numbers from Cloudflare analytics (server side) than Google Analytics.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there a free server-side analytics service that's not a pain to set up? I'm using Netlify, but enabling analytics is 9$/site/month, so I tell myself that GA is just fine.

<comment><USER40> I like GoAccess: [https://goaccess.io/](https://goaccess.io/)

<comment><USER41> Side note: looking at the 'live demo' ([https://rt.goaccess.io/](https://rt.goaccess.io/)) I see a very large number of people using MSIE (9%) vs Edge (1%).

I wonder if this is actual data?

<comment><USER42> Probably is. There was a very long period of time where I used to use Internet Explorer 11 religiously (though obviously Firefox when that was installed), since both Edge and Chrome were the only other options. I only stopped when the lack of ES6 support started causing me major problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not only advanced users. At least as of 2019 we for example have pihole installed LAN wide at home and Lockdown on all portable devices. Also recommend or installed on devices of anyone I know, technical or not and of course my number one recommendation to anyone is to install Firefox and avoid chrome.

</comment><comment><USER44> Does this take into account bots and other non-human stuff GA might block? Server logs and GA are measuring different things.

<comment><USER45> I don't think there is an effective way to distinguish bots from real users when a UA is faking what it is. IP filtering or other measures can help, but you ultimately rely on the UA strong from the UA.

<comment><USER44> That's true for the server logs but GA has access to much more information to make a decision like that. My point is that comparing server logs to GA results is invalid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I refuse to implement client-side analytics; for one thing, it is a waste of bandwidth, and for the other thing, it is not how software should be designed, and for the other other thing, it is unethical.

I do log some stuff sent to the server, as well as some stuff about the response (such as the HTTP status code, data size, timing, etc), although I do not sell this data to anyone else, and this logged data is reduced further if the client sends a "DNT:1" header.

But decisions about how to make something would normally be based on actual comments by the users, rather than analytics, I should think.

</comment><comment><USER47> How many users who block GA are also going to not be honest about the OS or browser they claim to be? I suspect that number is going to be a much higher percentage than of those who don't block GA...

 _I 'd imagine most users who block GA/ads on desktop would also want to on mobile, but can't just because it's so difficult to set up an adblocker on mobile._

A HOSTS file or blocking DNS server will easily do that, my whole network in fact has GA and a bunch of other crap blocked this way. On the other hand, setting up a MITM proxy/VPN is much much harder on mobile. However I am surprised at the 0% for Android and 17% for iOS blocking GA --- I was expecting it to be the opposite, with the former being historically much less of a walled-garden than the latter.

On the other hand, perhaps everyone who blocks GA and uses Android is in the aforementioned situation of not saying that they're using Android --- they may be reporting a Linux or some other user-agent.

<comment><USER48> IOS is super easy to block ads. There is an api for Safari so apps can use it. I like to use [https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr.html](https://giorgiocalderolla.com/wipr.html)

<comment><USER2> Note that this only works in Safari and in certain contexts inside of apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I find it quite surprising how many companies don't invest enough in having a certain maturity in terms of web analytics, despite they heavily invested in CRM, machine learning and other fields. Ad-blockers are still not considered a fact in data gathering nor in QA or, in the best case, just a minor singularity. Despite different sources agree on a +30% of usage, at least in Europe, they're still ignored. Still many business decisions are based on solutions like GA. If decisions were to be taken on any other source, let's say polls, marketing studies, etc., after being warned of a 30% of uncertainty, people would be very reluctant to choose A over B. This is not the case for web analytics, it seems. Now technology has evolved and any medium size company should harvest their own data (yes, stop giving away some of your most valuable data to third parties, please!).

</comment><comment><USER50> would it be naive to say that sites can get around the blockers by proxying their analytics through their own domain? Isn't the lazy way of sending everything directly to ga from the client the cause here -- and any thoughtful site owner should be able to circumvent this if they truly care to?

<comment><USER36> ssshhhhh. Don't give people ideas

<comment><USER51> That's actually (as far as I understood) something ublock origin seems to address in one of their most recent updates. See 1.25.0 release description:

> From now on uBO will CNAME-uncloak network requests.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases)

<comment><USER52> That only blocks CNAME-based domains, not proxying. proxying is pretty hard to block unless the request is using paths that obviously go to analytics/trackers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I have started some weeks ago this project: [https://github.com/iris- analytics](https://github.com/iris-analytics) It's a small JS that gathers data and sends it to a Go backend to then be stored in ClickHouse. Although there's lots to do, we use it in production successfully. Remember ClickHouse was born precisely for web analytics where a single instance can handle hundreds of millions of inserts per day with no effort. I did this because stats say adblocker penetration in Europe is beyond 30% and this would give us real time insights with no sampling and ad-hoc queries.

If you want to help me out, you are very welcome!!!

<comment><USER53> Perhaps you should post it on "Show HN".

<comment><USER49> Thanks for the suggestion. As soon as I document it better I certainly will. This was more of a call for help :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I actually noticed this when testing what kind of users Facebook ads brought to my site. The numbers from Google Analytics didn't seem to match the number of clicks reported by Facebook.

As a side note, those users were useless anyway as all of them were bots: [https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/4smisl/facebook_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/4smisl/facebook_ads_100_fake_clicks/)

</comment><comment><USER55> I run a web-based tool for devs and about 40% of customers aren't showing up in Google Analytics.

</comment><comment><USER56> Expect at least 5% of traffics are bots if you have a large amount of traffics.

</comment><comment><USER57> Is it really that hard to self host analysis service natively from the web server?

Why would you handover the data to third party when you don't have to?

</comment><comment><USER58> How many "users" of google analytics are worth it anyway?

<comment><USER25> Good luck explaining not having google analytics to your client when a 3rd party company begs you to add them so they can track their marketing campaigns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> everybody should :D

</comment><comment><USER60> 2017

</comment><comment><USER61> Why are we talking about a blog post from 2017?

<comment><USER2> I think this is a brusquely-worded request to put (2017) in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Narrator: not enough...

</comment><comment> awinter-py everyone who understands how google is tracking them across the web hates it

</comment><comment><USER29> It's from 2017 but even more valid today. GA is blocked by most ad blockers thus no company can rely confidently on it anymore. uBlock blocks also a few other tools like MixPanel that helps companies understand their users behavior and how they use their product.

I can't believe how ignorant people that say "use server logs" are. They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business, yet they want better and cheaper products - even free if possible.

How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By surveys? I think many assume the entire analytics required for a business is just reading a few GET requests from the server logs and categorizing them by user agent.

<comment><USER63> > They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business

As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer. It acts against me, wastes my time, etc. Marketing should be about presenting your product in the best light possible, _and stop there_. You shouldn't be allowed to track or waste other people's time to promote your product - being in business is not a right after all.

> How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By > surveys?

Yes exactly - companies were in business just fine for over a century and they didn't have analytics, why should it suddenly be required?

<comment><USER29> I really hope one day you start your own online business and see how it's actually run.

It's one thing you imagine a business should be run in an utopian world where people respond to surveys and know exactly what they need to solve their issues (Henry Ford said it perfectly "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses") and another thing how it works in real world.

> Yes exactly - companies were in business just fine for over a century and > they didn't have analytics, why should it suddenly be required?

This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

> As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer.

I think you meant "advertising"... if yes, in some cases you're right.

<comment><USER63> > This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

If that is ignorant then I guess most companies founded in the 20th century (without analytics, stalking and targeted advertising) must not be real then? In fact I'd argue most of the money that funds the cancer that is modern advertising, marketing, etc was made _before_ such things were actually invented.

> I think you meant "advertising"

I kind of agree, and this is why I clarified _my_ definition of marketing. For me, marketing is about putting your product in the best light possible on your website (or physical space if you're into retail), so that people who stumble upon your product (randomly or by searching for it) will be encouraged to buy it.

The modern definition of marketing however seems to be stalking (aka analytics), spam (newsletters, push notifications), creepy targeted advertising (often relying on the previous items) and so on, essentially forcing your product onto people who haven't asked anything. I consider this modern marketing to be cancer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open-sourcing Riskquant, a library for quantifying risk - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/open-sourcing-riskquant-a-library-for-quantifying-risk-6720cc1e4968 <comment><USER2> If you like the idea of this library you'll probably like the book "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas Hubbard ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20933591-how-to- measure-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20933591-how-to-measure- anything)). It's all about how to get sensible confidence intervals for things that are often considered unmeasurable such as the value of IT security. The book mostly uses Excel to do this modelling, but it looks like riskquant would be an excellent alternative on that approach, that for the more technically minded practitioner.

<comment><USER3> I have that book. Basically I'm the last in a giveaway chain and can't honestly recommend it enough that someone should lug it home. Next time I move it's going on the trash.

It's really not very good, even for executives who shouldn't care for technicalities. The best thing are the calibration exercises. But my advice is, skip this one.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate?

I'm half-way through it. I know most of the general stuff already but my knowledge is from lots of sources I mostly forgot. This books seems to be a good collection for this topic. At least, I don't know any substitute.

<comment><USER3> It overstates its claims. An admittedly unfair "take" would be that it encourages people to pin made-up numbers and take solace in having quantified the qualitative.

For example: it tells you to do Monte Carlo simulations with made-up probability distributions, but silently lets the issue of the joint distribution -- how the made-up random variables correlate. But so much risk is driven not by marginals (say, I know the physical parameters for my chair and have a certain confidence that it won't crumble like carboard) but by correlations, even apparently distant ones (there's fracking or whatever going on and destabilizing the upper layers of the Earth, increasing the chances of earthquakes).

An even broader critique is the McNamara fallacy:

> "The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as > far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily > measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial > and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured > easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say > that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide."

\----

There's this book I like called "Guesstimations in the back of a napkin" or something -- it's a book of exercises in Fermi-type estimation. It encourages you to consider the whole, to think bottom-up, top-down and core-out. It preserves a keen sense of the qualitative complexity of problems even as it encourages you to, well, make wild guesses.

<comment><USER5> _There 's this book I like called "Guesstimations in the back of a napkin" or something_

This? [https://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds- Problems...](https://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds-Problems- Cocktail/dp/0691129495)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can quantify in normal domains e.g. probability of seeing a human over 2.05m tall. You CAN'T quantify tail risk in unbounded (for practical purposes) domains, period. This is just ridiculous: "For this example, there's about a 2% chance losses would exceed $60 million in a year." If you see you can lose everything, you are not quantifying, you are simply not going that way. If you don't know if you can protect yourself from losing everything, you are not going that way. If you can afford losing some limited amount you just write down the loss from the very start. That is that simple.

Netflix is just going straight to hell with such prediction approaches. And, mind that, this is not a prediction, this is a fragility statement.

<comment><USER7> Oh yes you can. The insurance and reinsurance actuaries, and regulators, have done this for a very long time.

<comment><USER6> Insurance and reinsurance just clip the tail contractually, they never take "infinity multiplied by some small percent" risk! They don't go underground when their client does.

<comment><USER8> > they never take "infinity multiplied by some small percent" risk

At what point does the tail represent "all humanity dead"? No one needs a contract for the humanly unrecoverable.

<comment><USER6> We are talking about business death

<comment><USER8> then the tail ends even before then, but that doesn't mean insurance companies don't pay out billions in case of an economic crash.

<comment><USER9> They are typically exempt in case of natural disasters, war, force majeur, nuclear effects, and a well-thought-out plethora of tail risk events.

<comment><USER6> Yes, to be exempt from tails is basically the definition of their business.

<comment><USER8> Whose business? Those that don't cede such risk to larger entities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not clear why the losses should follow lognormal distribution rather than some less pleasant to work with distribution like Cauchy.

Also not clear why loss frequency is assumed to be independent from loss magnitude.

Instead of "percent chance that the loss will exceed X" (VaR), expected shortfall would be more useful.

<comment><USER11> The distribution comes from PERT 3-point estimates.

LEF and LEM are built of lower factors that roll up, which to my mind at least seem independent.

I'm not sure what you meant by expected shortfall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nassim Nicholas Taleb is enraged by this!

<comment><USER13> Why would he be?

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

<comment><USER14> >Why would he be?

Read Black Swan, by NNT. His thesis is that the most significant impacts on an individual and/or a collective are the function of outliers or "Black Swans". In a Malcolm Gladwell kind of way, he uses a bunch of anecdata to prove his thesis. It's a pretty good book I suppose, but it was also before the all the faux-philosophy Malcolm Gladwell type books became a thing.

>I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

What exactly do you mean by that? In all sincerity, I think you misused an idiom or at least didn't make a clear connection as to why you chose that one.

<comment><USER15> > In a Malcolm Gladwell kind of way, he uses a bunch of anecdata to prove his > thesis.

In my opinion this is perhaps the best 1 line description of his work in general. I think there are some interesting ideas which are worth discussing, but sometimes his attitude and use of "anecdata" tires me out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish there were detailed scenarios of how they were using it.

</comment><comment><USER17> It doesnt seem to have an input for correlation between the loss scenarios? That would affect expected loss a lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> Link to the GitHub repo: [https://github.com/Netflix- Skunkworks/riskquant](https://github.com/Netflix-Skunkworks/riskquant)

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like applying insurance modeling to security. Is this a new way of looking at risk or a reinvention?

<comment><USER20> This is part of an attempt to make information security risk modelling more quantitative that has been going on for a few years. There's very little in the way of data to really back most of this up, but actually putting numbers to things is significant progress IMO.

<comment><USER19> Agree it seems like a better way to inform decisions and manage risk. Is it backed by any sort of real understanding of litigation, settlement, statutory experience? I often hear reputational risk cited by security teams at public companies... it usually follows some sort of indecision or appeal to a higher level of management or beuqacratic tool.

<comment><USER20> Not really. But it's significant progress compared to sticking charts like this into reports [https://www.shipownersclub.com/media/2017/02/Risk- matrix-1-7...](https://www.shipownersclub.com/media/2017/02/Risk- matrix-1-768x386.png)

I think it's also worth saying that when people say reputational risk they're generally not thinking about litigation, they're thinking about consumer perception, which it's not crazy to believe would have large impacts for large companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I chatted with Markus de Shon, one of the creators of riskquant, a few days ago. I would also check out Ryan McGeehan's writings on this at scrty.io.

I'd be happy to discuss this topic with anyone; my email address is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER21> I see an interesting library, risk quantification (relates to what I work with).

I click the link.

Sniff/Accountwall stops me. I hit ctrl+w before I even thought of doing it (yes for muscle memory!)

For people who went through the trouble to see the content, is the library worth it?

These days, anything behind paywall/sniffwall/must-be-authenticated-to-read- this-wall warrants a ctr + w from me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Focus on the stress tests and worst case scenarios, Netflix.

<comment><USER23> I suppose this is the impetus. I think that this gives them a way to prioritize which issues to fix in a better than the arbitrary hunch way. We assign "weights" all the time to issues either based on expected "time to complete" or on the severity of not fixing this. However, someone's severe is another's meh. This could give a score in a systematic way and help alleviate the guesswork.

<comment><USER22> Risk is managed differently in places that have experienced actual loss. No need to try to educate me about weighted decision making.

<comment><USER23> I was not trying to "educate" you, not that I see anything wrong being educated. I was brainstorming with you, hence the "I think" and "I suppose". I exposed my thoughts in writing.

Your reply could have quoted my reply, with a comment that said "maybe, but [insert counter argument, or poke holes in my statement's logic]".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel "riskquant" is a little vague for a project name. It's like there are a million internal libraries called "riskLib" \- "risk" is a very general concept!

</comment><comment><USER24> Requires registration to read.

Tab closed.

<comment><USER25> If the authors are reading, I think you mistakenly marked this as a paywalled article. I can't believe this was done deliberately from someone on the Netflix side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can someone explain to me why Netflix puts their posts behind a paywall?

<comment><USER27> It looks as if they just registered for medium.com and slapped their domain on it.</comment></comment>


Should Blackmail Be Legal? - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ajykDPoioWophNRkA/highlights-from-the-blackmail-debate-robin-hanson-vs-zvi <comment><USER2> > Robin Hanson: My claim was not so much that blackmail is good but that no > one had offered concrete, clear, consequentialist arguments for why > blackmail should be banned, especially relative to allowing NDAs in terms of > who makes the offer.

It's about power imbalance. In the case of blackmail, it's extortion. Someone forces you to pay money and threatens you with unpleasant consequences.

With an NDA, not the person signing the NDA has more power, the other party has. Yes, they pay you, but they can sue you if you leak the secret.

Which, thinking about it, also likely happens if a blackmailer leaks their secret when you don't pay up... So I think the assymetry is not as big as they say. Also a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.

<comment><USER3> There may be an asymmetry, but there's also a matter of choice and control.

You can (at least presumably) control whether you will break a contract (NDA or otherwise) in the future. You cannot control something that has happened in the past, and thus you have much less choice over your actions if you're blackmailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Robin misses the point that blackmail harms people as it is an ongoing threat. How would you write a contract that says what you are being blackmailed for without the lawyers involved that wrote the contract also blackmailing you? How do you prevent someone from leaking something anonymously and reneging on the contract to blackmail you repeatedly for the same thing? I feel the con side was really weak and didn't dive into the actual implementation problems at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> this reminds me of the letterman case. The guy got nailed for blackmail, he would have been so much better off just selling the info to a tabloid.</comment>


Show HN: WebRPC – Cross-platform RPC over HTTP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gk-brown/WebRPC <comment><AUTHOR> Some additional information and examples:

A Quick Introduction to WebRPC

[https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/introducing- webrpc/](https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/introducing-webrpc/)

A Practical Example Using MarkupKit and WebRPC

[https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/a-practical- example...](https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/a-practical-example- using-markupkit-and-webrpc/)

A Practical Example Using WebRPC and Android

[https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/a-practical- example...](https://gkbrown.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/a-practical-example- using-webrpc-and-android/)</comment>


Ask HN: Failed Startup, unreasonable clients, where do I go from here? - <AUTHOR> I put it all on the line on a startup that had good traction, but very low revenue per user, and ended up selling it for a pittance when I couldn't meet obligations. In the end I was dead broke.
I know many would say I didn't manage my finances properly, but at the start I was fresh out of college with no marketable skills and at the end I was a competent developer. Importantly I was so frugal I lived under the poverty level the entire time.
I went into consulting, and worked for a client that despite promises always managed to maneuver into only paying subsistence wages.
I got more jobs, but only from more unreasonable clients, and I made the rookie mistake of charging a flat rate for projects. The scope always expands with these clients.
I got smarter and changed the structure of my business after watching this video called F*ck you Pay Me: http://vimeo.com/22053820
It has been working, the response I get from clients is much better, but I still have not been able to break into the $100+ hour market.
I thought I had found the job that would allow me to break out from this cycle of desperation around rent due dates, pay off the debt I accrued with my startup etc... And start running a serious and professional consultancy.
I did a phone interview, and they were excited and I went in to speak to four people, and at that meeting they said they were ready to go and that we could get started right away.
And then nothing. No response to email. Nothing. I feel sort of crushed by the flakiness. I know I am only one good client away from all of this changing, but it feels right now like it's never going to happen.
I was wondering if other developers have had similar experiences. I'm competent at what I do, it gets better, right? <comment><USER2> Maybe you could go into a little more detail about how your previous clients managed to weasel out of paying.

Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you scoped those projects and how you handled contracts and payment terms.

It would definitely help if you told us how you sourced those clients. Did you network your way into them, or get them off outsourcing sites?

How big were the clients?

You're not one good client away from all your problems changing; you're several business model changes away from having a sustainable business that will generate fewer abusive relationships, and, over the long term, the luxury of being picky about your clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Maybe you could go into a little more detail about how your previous clients > managed to weasel out of paying.

Expanding scope and holding final payment hostage.

> Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you scoped those > projects and how you handled contracts and payment terms.

List of requirements, with 50% before and 50% when done. This was my #1 mistake and I have stopped this.

> It would definitely help if you told us how you sourced those clients. Did > you network your way into them, or get them off outsourcing sites?

Networking.

> How big were the clients?

Larger side of small business scale.

> You're not one good client away from all your problems changing; you're > several business model changes away from having a sustainable business that > will generate fewer abusive relationships, and, over the long term, the > luxury of being picky about your clients.

One month at $100+ an hour would take care of all debts, allow me to purchase needed medicine and provide enough runway to only accept quality clients. That is what I meant by that.

<comment><USER2> First suggestion: any client that plays games with payment is a client you can't afford to keep. It's a bit of a judgement call; maybe they saw their scope extension as reasonable and in the spirit of the original engagement.

Second suggestion: split your contracts up; your first contract is your "Master", and your second a "Statement of Work" (SOW). Both require execution by both sides before you proceed. Don't work without an explicit SOW again. The SOW should list in bullets the whole scope of the project and the acceptance criteria, and list the payment schedule.

You need to be able to tell you client "OK, but to do that we'll need to put in place a new SOW" when they try to extend scope.

We don't ask for up-front payment at all, and I'm not wild about it (if you really need it, you have crappy clients, and should fix that instead of coming up with ways to mitigate crappy clients). But since you do:

Next suggestion: by the time a client has paid you 50% for a project, you now hold all the cards. They can't afford to have you walk away with an incomplete deliverable and write off the cost of the engagement. So next time this happens, just say "no" to scope extensions (politely!) and see what happens.

You might be surprised at how much more effective you are at negotiating if you go into these things knowing you have the leverage and not them.

<comment><USER3> What is typically contained in the master contract? Things such as payment terms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was in the exact same boat.

I've charged project fees and ended up making under $10/hour. I've also undercharged ($30/hour), have agreed to work weekends on some contracts, and have collected payments that are MONTHS late or never even arrive.

It got better. All of the above problems happened because I let it happen (charged too low, not use contracts, always saying yes for fear of losing money).

Here's what I did: play the ladder game by increasing your rate slowly after every client/contract, try daily/weekly rates, avoid clients with red flags, use referrals. Read Brennan Dunn's "Double Your Freelancing Rate" and "The Wealthy Freelancer".

For me, it wasn't an overnight switch to a new client that made it better. It was a lot of slow changes that built up momentum.</comment>


Pictures from the Eastern Bloc in the 80s - <AUTHOR> http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works?cat=all <comment><USER2> University in '80s Warsaw - a math professor realizes he would make more money if he worked in the docks, so he quits his job and goes working in docks. And truly his first paycheck is double that of a university professor.

Party wants to increase education of working class so they offer 10% bonus to those who would visit evening school. So the professor sign up for it.

Very first day, the first class is math. But the subject is so simple that professor becomes bored and starts reading book under the desk. Teacher notices that and call him up to calculate area of circle on the blackboard.

Professor is taken by surprise and suddenly cannot remember the formula, so in his head he transfers circle to polar coordinates and uses integral to get the formula and starts writing on the blackboard: -πr²

Then he scratches his head and start thinking where the minus came from when suddenly from the back row someone shouts: flip the interval of integration, colleague.

<comment><USER3> I've already heard this as "engineer in Russia quits to do non-intellectually stimulating job, finds a bunch of engineering 'comrades' already there"

your version is a ton more verbose though

<comment><USER4> That actually reads like a sort of meta-joke, on the central planner's obsession with efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn, those pictures really show my childhood (I'm born 1978 in Silesia which then already was part of Poland).

I was on a used car marked like that with my dad, my parents had the same car as those people with the pigs in the car, my grandma had the same cupboard as the boys rearing chicks, I lived in one of the panel house like in the picture of the Moscow suburb, my aunt was a egg saleswoman, my dad worked in a coalmine, the church was present constantly in all parts of our lives, my mum worked at one of those car factories, etc. ...

<comment><USER6> Oh, my! The panel houses where you could hear everything, the omnipresent elevator engine sound, neighbors fighting or making love or basically anything else, sounds of life, anonymized by concrete ... Sometimes, I ponder renting a flat in such a house for a week just to listen and dream of my childhood.

<comment><USER7> Several years ago I rented an apartment in which you could hear people through the walls, and the cherry-on-the-top was a neighbor from below who early on weekend mornings played wartime songs on a bayan.

I'm _not_ an early bird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems the pictures are mostly from Poland. For more perspective, here is a large collection of old pictures from Bulgaria:

[http://www.lostbulgaria.com/index.php?cat=9](http://www.lostbulgaria.com/index.php?cat=9) (You can see the translated descriptions with the language combobox on the top)

</comment><comment><USER9> Love the gritty aesthetic of old photographs like this. Actually prefer it to modern, razor-sharp photography. Or maybe analogue just fits the image we have of the past better?

I wonder what kind of equipment was used for these photos.

<comment><USER10> "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."

― Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

<comment><USER11> >CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video

What

<comment><USER12> Not exactly the same but there are devices used when restoring arcade games that simulate the scan lines of the original CRTs on a modern display, e.g. [https://paradisearcadeshop.com/en/home/electrical/video- conv...](https://paradisearcadeshop.com/en/home/electrical/video-converters- and-tools/scan-line-generators/1253_mini-slg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the photos is from my hometown - Sibiu, Romania: [http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works/sibiu-1978](http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works/sibiu-1978). I'm sure I recognise the area, it's in the historical center.([https://email@example.com,24.150571,3a,75y,11....](https://email@example.com,24.150571,3a,75y,11.52h,83.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1setu61uzikP4EWV8MAI6_0g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)). Surprisingly well preserved.

</comment><comment><USER14> A bit different, Poland in the 80s [https://imgur.com/gallery/960KNrY](https://imgur.com/gallery/960KNrY)

<comment><USER15> People relying so much on horses in the 1980s is a pretty surreal thing to see.

Was anyone here alive in Poland in the 80s (doesn't seem like such a long shot)? Would love to hear your experiences with transportation.

<comment><USER16> The first time I was in Romania, in 2013, we drove on a provincial road and there were people in BMWs driving 100km/h taking over horse carriages going 10km/h. It was "pretty surreal" to me (I'm Dutch) and it also seemed extremely dangerous.

<comment><USER17> Ah well you can get the same experience in Amish country today in the U.S. Midwest. I pass a horse and buggy every couple of weeks at least; rider on a horse less frequently but still occasionally. It's best to drive slower. Most people in cars are idiots though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For anybody who is interested here is the bio of Chris Niedenthal. He is one of the most respected photojournalists covering the Eastern Bloc in the 1970 to 90's. [https://culture.pl/en/artist/chris- niedenthal](https://culture.pl/en/artist/chris-niedenthal)

</comment><comment><USER19> Most pictures are from Poland which was relatively better off than USSR at the time. My childhood memories from USSR are way grimmer than these pictures.

<comment><USER20> Any idea why this was? Was it just a more manageable population size? I believe the then Czechoslovakia and Hungary were similar in terms of being "better off" no?

<comment><USER21> There was more economical freedom in Eastern European countries compared to those incorporated in Soviet empire. At least small private initiative was somewhat tolerated. Also, in countries like Poland communists weren't able to completely suppress religious attachments of populace. They had to accept the existence of alternative, competing moral, and cultural values, and it had the general effect of less-controlled cultural, and private space. Very unlike the strict USSR model where everything had to be in line with central-planned norms.

<comment><USER22> Well, technically USSR didn't succeeded in suppressing religious attachment either. But they tried much much harder, creating more resentment and wasting a fuckton of resources.

For example... What do people love drink on Christmas eve? Poppyseed milk! Guess why schools had mandatory dentist exams the next day...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somehow, they seem far more "real" than the actual photos I have taken or seen from my relatives in the last decade. And no, it's not just the gritty analog fell, it's the content.

Edit: Although, the lack of digital artifacts definitely helps. Digital smoothing or digital noise is something I can still see on a lot of photos from last-generation cameras. Maybe we should stop throwing so much procesing on top of "raw" images.

Edit 2: It feels like these photos have a very distinct color palette. But do they, really? Honestly, I spend so much time looking at digital images, it's becoming hard to judge what's "realistic" anymore, especially when you can't look at the scene in real life.

<comment><USER5> It might also not be the editing but just the content and framing, etc. It's quite obvious that the person who took those photos were a professional (street) photographer(s). If you're not one, it would be expected that your pictures would not match that quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was surprised to see the pic - "TV antennas directed towards the West, Neustrelitz 1984, East Germany."

Was that forbidden? It's seem like that would have been influence the government would have tried to filter out no? Or was it forbidden but just not enforced?

<comment><USER24> Watching Western German television was not officially forbidden and in the 80s most people did it. It was, however, frowned upon and seen as suspect by the authorities. Imagine having to justify yourself in a discussion with the Stasi for consuming the enemies' propaganda.

<comment><USER25> I think that there is a lot of confusion between what was actually forbidden and what was merely making people more suspect of getting recruited by enemy intelligence and the like. And that this confusion wasn't at all exclusive to outsiders looking back, but was present, or even dominant, within Stasi itself.

"Make a list of people to check in the emergency of a CIA counterrevolutionary project" can quickly turn into "Make a list of people to crack down on for lack of ideological commitment", particularly in an organization in the spy game, where need-to-know must be the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great pictures, thank you for sharing. Loved the C64 pic and the guy walking his pig home.

</comment><comment><USER27> Prague in 80s [https://www.hankermag.com/prague-in-1980s-ed- sijmons/](https://www.hankermag.com/prague-in-1980s-ed-sijmons/)

</comment><comment><USER28> To some, these might infuse some level of specific nostalgia[0], which is in many respects picking up steam in these regions in the last few years.

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

<comment><USER29> I was born in Russia in the late 80's, but I guess it's a similar feeling of an entire generation's childhood, lost. (I imagine this phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that so many families basically had all the same stuff.) Can't wait to read more of Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time, which covers this topic in interviews with people who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Moscow suburbs" pretty much sums it up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Something I noticed: nobody seems to have acne

</comment><comment><USER32> Bloody hell, there were food stamps in 1980?! What did I miss?

<comment><USER33> In the early nineties. The implosion of the USSR caused hyperinflation and disrupted the supply chain. Luckily it went back on track quite quickly, at least on the European side.

<comment><USER34> It did not disrupt the supply chain, it was already non-existent. At no time in USSR's history were there full shelves anywhere except for Beryozkas (stores for party members.) It was a political system without any credit of legitimacy and political credibility.

The state system of Bloc countries was completely unredeemable.

<comment><USER35> That is not true. In Bulgaria there were generally full shelves in the grocery stores during socialism. There were some hard to get things like coca kola that caused lines but otherwise all basic foodstuffs were easy to get and quite affordable.

However I have heard from other people that grew up in socialist countries that Bulgaria had it easier than most in that respect.

In the transition to capitalism things got quite worse. Then there were empty shelves there was rationing, prices went up drastically, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why do the "Pilgrim Girls" have bloody knees?

<comment><USER37> There's certain Catholic pilgrimages where you're supposed to complete a journey on your knees, usually to commemorate someone's martyrdom. The 'Sancta Scala' in Rome is the most famous example but I can think off a bunch in different countries.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> perfect. Just got a monthly pass at

[https://sovietmoviesonline.com](https://sovietmoviesonline.com)

for the holidays.

</comment><comment><USER39> sorry, 490 euros? what?

</comment><comment><USER40> Strange, I send the same link 1 day before. 3 points...

</comment><comment><USER41> I like this collection. They complement the more recent series like Simon Roberts' Motherland (mid Aughts). Also some have an echo of Chris Killip's In Flagrante's aesthetic.

Wonder if any of it might get published by Steidl, as a collection.

</comment><comment><USER42> Aside from the clothing, it looks like the Eastern Bloc now.

<comment><USER43> No, actually, it doesn't. Warsaw, for example, makes many western cities look dirty, old and outdated. Compare the Warsaw metro to the Parisian one sometime.

<comment><USER44> Except Warsaw metro has 1.5 line, 32 stations, compared to Paris 16 lines and 300 stations</comment></comment></comment>


Kuwait Bans the Use of Digital SLR Cameras in Public - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MzAwMTg4ODg1

<comment><USER2> Would anyone like to attempt explaining the reasoning behind it? Is it a religious concern?</comment>


Americans to Inherit $764B This Year, Mostly Tax-Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-28/americans-will-inherit-764-billion-this-year-mostly-tax-free <comment><USER2> So that's something like $2250 per capita? Even if only 2% of the population inherit something in a given year, that's an average of $100k. Given inequality, it's a fair guess that the median is more like $50k.

Should a $50k or $100k inheritance be taxed? Probably a bit.

But this feels a little blown out of proportion.</comment>


Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-20130327 <comment><USER2> A rational person would stop stealing after the 2nd strike. It's wise to remove harmful and irrational people from society.

Justice would demand that we expand the law to include white-collar crimes.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure that 3 white collar crimes should be punishable by life sentence. Why not amend the law to only cover violent crime? For stealing of socks, maybe just have sentencing guidelines that take into account how many socks the offender had stolen before.

<comment><USER4> One very good change to this policy was mentioned in the article,

 _"Despite the passage in late 2012 of a new state ballot initiative that prevents California from ever again giving out life sentences to anyone whose "third strike" is not a serious crime"_

This refers to California Proposition 36. It was passed with 70% approval. It also allows for resentencing, but I do not know under what conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's not "unlucky". He was punished for a crime. He thought to himself, I'll just go and take what I want, and fuck everyone else. We don't want people like that in society. Good riddance.

It's not a serious crime? You're right. That's worse! He's so sociopathic that he'll break the law even when it's not even worth it to him! He'll take your property, even when he could pay for it.

<comment><USER6> I agree, punishments should be inversely proportional to the crime.</comment></comment>


BitErrant: SHA1 collision for backdooring binaries on BitTorrent - <AUTHOR> https://biterrant.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised how nobody is talking about this</comment>


Mystery Object Removed from Man's Arm After 51 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-object-removed-from-mans-arm-after-51-years/

<comment><USER2> "It turned out to be the turn signal from a 1963 Thunderbird that had been embedded in his arm ever since a car accident more than half a century ago."</comment>


Influence a cool fitness app - <AUTHOR> http://12labs.com/freemovieticket.html

<comment><USER2> I assume it provides calories burnt is there way it can predict how soon user will loose the extra fat given the exercise schedule ? is there a way to create list of user's Facebook friend who are using this App and provide how they are performing ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds promising! Is the app going to be available for other platforms such as Android, BB and Samsung's Bada ? If yes, then how soon ?

</comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare with the a number of fitness apps in the app store?

<comment><AUTHOR> FitFrnd is designed to be an easy, non-intimidating fitness app for casual exercisers. It helps you set a small goal and work towards it, and uses the power of social encouragement to help you stay motivated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I barter the movie ticket with a specific fitness tip?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. We are learning interesting tips and tricks as we talk to people.

Try this: take a 20 min walk around the office block after lunch and use a GPS tracker (eg FitFrnd) to see how far you went. Try it for a week and see if it doesn't make you feel better afterwards.</comment></comment>


Tied elections - <AUTHOR> http://gottwurfelt.com/2014/12/06/tied-elections/

<comment><USER2> I customize wordpress themes</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage/store your ideas? (I'm building a tool) - <AUTHOR>

Interested to see how you manage ideas.
I have almost finished building a website to track ideas, I know I will be using it myself.
The key feature of my site is that you enter in ratings of the ideas, and your user settings for priorities in different categories, and then all ideas you enter received a weighted total score and can be sorted by #points.
The url: ideatool.herokuapp.com
Questions:
How would you improve it?
Suggestions on a name/url?
Would you use it?
Are there any premium features you could think of that would be worth paying for? <comment><USER2> _How I store my ideas now:_ item in tasklist with project name, and a folder for it in my Dropbox with all related ideas, thoughts and material for the project.

As to your webapp, _How would you improve it?_ Better landing page with some info and/or pictures of what it actually does. When you create a new idea I think the private checkbox should be checked default (personal preference perhaps). Would be nice to be able to create a bullet list in the 'Notes' section. Also, when viewing an idea, the notes section strip away line breaks. This, and bullet list, would make it easier to get an overview over thoughts.

edit: also, when you have created a new idea, I would like a button at the bottom that takes me back to my ideas.

edit2: don't know if it's a bug, but it's nagging me to confirm my email adress, when I have not received an email. Maybe add a way to resend confirmation?

 _Suggestions on a name/url?_ Nope, sorry.

 _Would you use it?_ Seems kinda useful, I'll try it for a while to see if it's easy enough to keep updated.

 _Are there any premium features you could think of that would be worth paying for?_ I would pay for a mobile app (Android)

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> How I store my ideas now: Evernote, 'nuff said. However notes are organized in Evernote seems to be the perfect way for me to organize my ideas. I can just create a separate note or notebook to collect all the related ideas in one place, and I can write down my ideas in the most organic form possible.

Also, some critiques on the app's features based on what's written above:

1\. People probably don't want to use an app for organizing ideas that actually SHARES those ideas with other people.

2\. When I have an idea that's still a little abstract, I think the idea pointing system is kind of useless because obviously I'll have to spend more time thinking about it, but I still have to write it down. I'm just saying, it doesn't always have to be put out in the open for feedback right away.

3\. Idea validation is, from my experience, better off done via conversation with the people you trust the most. So either I'm saying that automating that process is less useful, OR you can make the app a bit more social by allowing only a user's most trusted friends to evaluate the idea. That way you don't scare away people from your app because of number 1.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used your app and it seems like a nice idea. After accumulating a lot of ideas myself, I often have to go through all of them after while to reevaluate why I chose not to pursue them at that time.

For me a 1-10 scale is not how I like to answer the questions in your app. I prefer a simple passionate/not-passionate & expensive/inexpensive type answer instead.

Also a way to tag an idea would be helpful for sorting later.

I use wunderkit/wunderlist to track my ideas because it has a native desktop and mobile application. I'm not sure if I would be willing to use a web application to track my ideas.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be great if I didn't have to sign up first before trying the app out. Like being able to add ideas (perhaps you could use localstorage) but only having to log in to actually save it. Also I'm curious as to what your association with the amazon affiliate program has to do with this?

<comment><USER6> I was curious about the amazon affiliate thing as well. Once I read that, I left the site, assuming it was just some sort of scam to funnel people to an amazon affiliate page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use a private wiki that I use for storing lots of my personal information. I make a new page per idea and link to it from a bigger page. a good friend of mine keeps a giant google document of ideas and uses text to tag ideas.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Google Documents (Presentation) or SlideRocket. SR is very nice for sketching block diagrams. I tend to think more in terms of pictures than words.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just started using Trello for this purpose, I love it: <http://www.trello.com></comment>


CLPython - an implementation of Python in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://common-lisp.net/project/clpython/

<comment><USER2> Why wasn't it called Cylon?

<comment><USER3> Cool! Let us call it that. People underestimate the importance of a catchy name.

Steve Yegge : How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps <http://blip.tv/file/319044/> [video]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess if you can't bring pythonistas to lisp, you can go out and meet them. Certainly, this is a great example how to prove to the uninformed that lisp is relevant in the modern world.

<comment><USER5> While this is a neat project, what does Python gain by being hosted in the Common Lisp interpreter? Is there an extensive library as is available for languages hosted in the JVM or the Microsoft CLR?

<comment><USER6> For one thing I'd be interested to see if Python runs any faster when it's hosted in Common Lisp, since it will presumably reap the benefits of a native compiler that produces machine-code instead of byte-code.

<comment><USER7> This is essentially what the PyPy (Python-in-Python) effort is betting on, except that by building the system in restricted Python, they're also hoping the system can also optimize itself to higher levels of performance. It will be interesting to see how the results of Python-on-Python compare to Python- on-Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Argh, would love to try this out, but it apparently it doesn't compile on SBCL or CMUCL yet. Still, definitely won't get properly useful until more or less the whole standard library is supported.

This will be really cool if it carries on a gets to completion.

<comment><USER9> Why?

<comment><USER8> Why what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Upvoted just for the neat and brutally honest 'completeness' sidebar.</comment>