Ask HN: Your tips/hacks for great academic writing - <AUTHOR> This is a little bit of a follow-on from a recent post about hired writers for various educational essays. Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901152
So, does anyone have any tips on how to produce great quality academic writing?
And no, cheating is not an option. <comment><USER2> Writing style is an important aspect of modern academia. This reply will address the topic of academic style and will consider several ways to approach it, while maintaining a focus on the conciseness generally preferred in this medium.

In order to discuss this fully, it is first necessary to define the terms. The word 'Academia' may have a wide range of interpretations and it is important to distinguish in which sense we are discussing it. For this discussion, we shall take it to mean formal study at graduate level or beyond.

As can be seen from the introduction, it is this author's belief that an academic reply should begin with a short preliminary sentence framing the topic in general, followed by a brief discussion of what the essay will contain.

Following this, the discourse should flow from point to point, with joining phrases such as "following this" to link paragraphs. Generally, points should be kept short, building on each other in small increments.

In this way, an academic writer can slowly expose the reader to their argument, without having their submission feel too heavy going.

Notice also that the previous paragraph was essentially filler, merely recapping the previous points, and drawing out a conclusion for the reader. By spelling out the conclusions throughout the text, the reader has to concentrate less, and will take on board the argument more easily.

To conclude, writing academically is a combination of concise points repeated in different ways for effect, statements of the conclusions throughout the essay in order to make the reader comfortable, and several other tactics, not least of which is the repetition of phrases from the title such as "academic writing" to remind the marker that you're answering the question. Finally, you can leave the essay on a slight tangent to 'wrap up', for example: It is this author's wish that this work may have contributed in some small way to the worthy goal of improving academic writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> How to write a good research paper and give a good research talk by Simon Peyton Jones: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm)

From memory:

1\. What's the problem? 2. Why is it an interesting problem? 3. What's my solution? 4. What (great stuff) follows from my solution?

<comment><USER4> there are several more good how-to papers linked from <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/how-to.html>

different disciplines (and sometimes even publications) have different conventions and styles. look at some of the most-cited and best-reviewed papers in your field -- and some of the recent ones you like too, just in case styles have changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To write awesome papers, I used to create a draft, then edit out needless words and find more succinct ways to say things. If I was short on length, I'd repeat my initial brainstorming step and flesh out more content. By pruning and then adding content, you end up with a paper that is denser and stands out next to other filler-filled, font-inflated, 2.2 spaced papers.

</comment><comment><USER6> My suggestions:

\- The opening should always contextualize your work in light of the rest of the field. It also communicates your mastery of the field.

\- Don't use big words when simpler, smaller ones will do.

\- Don't be verbose just to fill space, and don't make your paragraphs too long (a common mistake).

\- Be sure the composition has a well-structured argument/flow.

\- Your style of exposition is important. The reader should arrive at your conclusions a moment before you do... this makes the reader feel smart, which is important if your audience is academic.

\- Your bibliography should be large and should communicate both breadth and depth of research.

</comment><comment><USER7> In addition to the various tips and guides posted here, an important missing ingredient is actually putting in the time and effort on writing. In computer science, at least, I know many people who spend 4-8 months doing research and getting results, and then 1 week writing. This is incredibly foolish, because you're selling yourself short. It takes a lot of time and energy to write (and rewrite) well, and unless you're a top-notch writer, 1 week is not going to be enough.

It's just a matter of setting priorities -- writing should not be an afterthought. You may have done the best research in the world, but if no one can understand it easily from the paper, it won't matter. I try to spend a month writing and editing my papers (often going through 15-20 drafts) to make them as good as possible. It seems like a lot of time, until you realize that if your paper is not well-written, it's not going to be read and understood, and so you've lost 8 months of work, not 1 month.

The same thing applies to preparing presentations for academic conferences. Most talks are terrible, and so it's actually not that hard to make one that stands out. The main thing to remember in talks is that it's just an advertisement to get people to read your paper; it's not a substitute! From this, you can derive many of the rules for giving good talks: provide strong motivation and background, skip very technical stuff, have a polished presentation, keep it simple, don't be boring, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great quality academic writing doesn't always mean a great grade. If you want a great grade (A- and above), know what the professor expects and mold your paper accordingly.

Now, if you want to produce quality writing that pushes your intellectual limits and makes you a better writer, develop a taste for good writing by reading a variety of works, scholarly and non, practice consistently, and edit religiously - by yourself and with others. Hopefully, then, you have a professor or advisor who can appreciate your work even if they disagree with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're like me you probably find yourself Donny loads of reading and only really underestaning it well after a long struggle and lots of rereading and background reading, and _then_ when it comes to putting your knowledge down on page you struggle even more trying to avoid a hodgepodge of facts and details and observations with no real coherence, like although you understand the words now, it's not given your own writing any real advantage. But the funny thing is if somebody asked you a question about the subject you could probably explain it pretty well. How do you get that sort of clarity into written/sassy form?

Write a self-interview. Start with 'So what is X, briefly?' and answer it, then 'Why is X necessary?', then 'What sub-catogories of X are there?' etc etc. Particularly make sure you ask and answer any apparent assumptions, natural follow-up questions, _some_ low-level detail/specifics to 'prove' your not a faker, ask how one thing relates to other things already mentioned if it's not obvious. Playing the role of interviewer really helps you catch all this stuff. And because it's like having a conversation you don't stall, you don't get writers block. And it keeps you honest.

Then go back through the interview and remove/reword the questions and anything that's too converational, and your essay has practically written itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is more of a long term strategy, but I have found it effective.

1\. Make a habit of reading books, often. Fiction or non-fiction, it's all fine. The more you read, the better your "baseline" writing skills will tend to become.

2\. Now read papers in your academic field. Look closely at the way each author uses language. Try to emulate your favorites.

</comment><comment><USER11> Read other academic literature. I read a lot from Harvard and MIT.

</comment><comment><USER12> Enjoy doing it. For me this means trying ConTeXt at the moment and with great pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER13> Every discipline has a unique writing style. To figure it out I'd suggest two things, one obvious and one not so much. First, read some recent academic papers to get an idea of what the writing styles of authors who are publishing today are like. Next, read some historical papers - I've read papers from the 20's, 50's, etc. and there is a huge difference. This will help you understand how the writing style of your discipline has evolved over time. Now you have two references, one to emulate and one to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER14> Empathize with the reader, try to put yourself in their place. If you are proposing an argument, imagine you are a reader and have no idea about it, and try to make yourself understand it in the first reading. Many paper writers write as if the reader already knows their argument and the text is just a reminder, which makes the readers iterate over the text over and over again to understand.

</comment><comment><USER15> I highly recommend '"They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing' by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. It totally reshaped how I looked at structuring academic writing and unlike lots of books about how to write essays goes beyond common sense and the five paragraph essay structure.

</comment><comment><USER16> (I cant remember where I learned this from, might have been one of Guy Kawasaki's essays.)

While writing-

Write "So What/Why" on a post-it note and put the post-it note on your shoulder. Write "For Example" on another post-it note and put it on your other shoulder... Every two or three sentences, look down and glance at your shoulders...

</comment><comment><USER17> You might want to read "Elements of Style - by William Strunk"

Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/dp/020530902X)

</comment><comment><USER18> Read without restraint, understand rhetoric, and have intuitive grasp of proper syntax. Look to modern papers for terms of art. Study speeches, classical and modern, to learn how to craft a cogent argument.

</comment><comment><USER19> You might want to look through [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-science- of-s...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-science-of- scientific-writing)

</comment><comment><USER20> (Sorry if this post will sound cynical, I mean it mostly 'practical'. It is also skewed towards topics that are not 'hard science', for example much of this doesn't apply to proofs, since they're (mostly) either correct or wrong.)

First, you need to define 'great quality'. Will you measure 'quality' by (1) what the reader will get out of it, or (2) what you (the writer) get(s) out of it?

For most academics, the second one is most relevant in the end. But the traditional view is that by fulfilling (1), (2) will automatically follow. You need to examine this hypothesis early in your academic career and see if it holds true in your field or publishing environment. Will you get name, fame and tenure by writing easy to read papers? Early-career, idealistic academics usually assume so, but finding out sooner rather than later (preferably without having to test empirically) if this is true can save you a lot of time.

In my opinion, for us mere mortals there are two ways to write a paper that has great influence and is widely cited. (the third way is to write a great, groundbreaking, genius-quality paper - let's face it, most of us are never going to do that.)

\- Write one that is easy to understand and has broad scope. The topic needs to be 'fundamental' in the sense that it needs to be a precursor or prerequisite for research topics that are in itself (usually) much sexier. This way, your paper will be a good 'filler' citation, i.e. many people will cite your paper in the introduction of their papers because it was easy to understand (they didn't have to spend too much time reading and understanding it) and because the topic is obviously relevant to the rest of their paper. Furthermore, it helps if your paper can be used to support a position that people usually glossed over ('proof by hand waving'). In this way your paper can easily be added as a citation to a paper the night before the submission deadline. (what I mean is, it helps if your paper is not a fundamental part on which other papers can be build, but rather a piece of supporting evidence that makes the citing paper seem well-researched).

\- The second way is to write a paper that looks more profound and seems to solve a difficult problem than it actually does, and then market it heavily so that others get convinced of these qualities by other means like social proof, the eloquence of its defenders, the ubiquitousness of the topic showing up at conferences etc. Now you won't (usually) get away with complete nonsense topics or contents so you'll still need to have somewhat good content, but writing in this category tends to use lots of obscure jargon, passive voice, long sentences etc. The writing style needs to be almost the opposite of the previous type of paper. For this to work out you need good networking and people skills and time and means to go out there and promote your paper. Both of these don't come naturally to many PhD students or fresh PhD's.

(Personally I tend to write, and even post online, in long sentences, use lots of expensive sounding words, phrase things in generalities where concrete terms would've clarified the content and not taken anything away from the point, etc - mostly out of habit. Make of that what you will about the content I usually try to get across ;) )

</comment><comment><USER21> Ever tried free-writing? I've just completed a Masters and would use free- writing as a warm up exercise fairly regularly. Not sure it works for everybody but it seemed to work for me.

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://www.amazon.com/Bugs-Writing-lyn-dupre/dp/0201600196>

Lyn Dupre's book has many useful, common sense tips.

</comment><comment><USER23> From a more practical point of view: use the Zotero Firefox plugin for managing references. <http://www.zotero.org/>

</comment><comment><USER24> Read Strunk and White.</comment>


White House responds to petition to fire Aaron Swartz's prosecutor - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck/#

<comment><AUTHOR> Title sightly inaccurate due to 80 char limit. Hint: not fired.</comment>


Startup Quote: Bob Parsons, Founder, Go Daddy - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/11697249030

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

\- Bob Parsons (@DrBobParsons)

<http://startupquote.com/post/11697249030></comment>


Can staying awake beat depression? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180123-can-staying-awake-beat-depression <comment><USER2> As a "healthy" person, if I'm feeling overwhelmed or (situationally) depressed I find that I almost always feel better in the morning after a long sleep. It may recur as the day wears on, but sleep is extremely helpful. That makes sense if people with depression experience the opposite effect.

What I wonder is if those sleep-deprived individuals are experiencing a semi- manic state. I once had severe insomnia for a period of two weeks, and during that time I slept maybe 0-3 hours per night (typically zero). Early on I experienced manic effects. Toward the end, I felt like I was going completely nuts.

<comment><USER3> As a "not healthy" person, suffering from bouts of depression and heavy demotivation (especially during winter months), missing out on a night of sleep can put me in quite a positive mood.

But it's mostly a rather "hyped up" feeling, so it feels like the opposite extreme of the depressive phase.

When I was younger I'd regularly miss out on a night of sleep for exactly that reason, but as I get older I notice side-effect of this "treatment" of the physical kind. My teeth, which are already damaged by years of nightly gnashing, will start to hurt easily, with a higher chance of gum infections after I missed out on a night of sleep.

That's sadly something not mentioned at all in the BBC article, while my mind feels like it could be awake for days on end, my body doesn't really like that strain, especially as I get older.

<comment><USER4> _> My teeth, which are already damaged by years of nightly gnashing_

My dentist made me a slimfit mouthguard for teeth grinding. It cost $500 but it's the best dental investment I ever made as it prevents further expensive damage to my teeth.

The first few nights I kept dreaming I had a piece of steak in my mouth though.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I've gotten one of those as well for my upper jaw, sleeping way better since I got it.

It was also the dentist who unriddled particular nasty tension headaches I suffer from sometimes. All the nightly gnawing makes my neck muscles sometimes tense up, which leads to pains in the back of the neck radiating up to the back of the head.

Sadly that's not something the mouthguard helps with, so I will probably have to look for a solution to actually end the gnawing itself.

edit: This commenter [0] suggests Magnesium might help with the nightly teeth gnawing. A quick Google search, sure enough, seems to confirm the relation [1], awesome!

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16219942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16219942)

[1] [https://sleeptrack.io/2016/03/10/magnesium-rhodiola- bruxism/](https://sleeptrack.io/2016/03/10/magnesium-rhodiola-bruxism/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the article says, sleep deprivation has been used to treat depression for years. It has been used in inpatient care because it often has immediate short term effects and provides relief before the medication kicks in. The attempt to use chronotherapy as a long term treatment seems to be a new development.

The problem with depression is that it easily becomes "trashbin diagnosis" trough diagnosis of exclusion. Depression symptoms are common with many physical and mental problems. After other options are excluded, what is left is depression diagnosis.

It's possible that there are people suffering from depression where the root cause is malfunctioning circadian system. This research direction might end up with real cure for them. For others suffering from clinical depression chronotherapy might ease the symptoms and help with other treatments.

</comment><comment><USER6> "once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you'll have a 95% chance of relapse."

Unless you plan on spending the rest of your life severely sleep deprived, this doesn't seem like a great solution.

<comment><USER7> There's a danger in tabbing back to the comments page after the third paragraph. A few paragraphs lower, you would have seen this:

>So he and his colleagues turned to the scientific literature for ideas. A handful of American studies had suggested that lithium might prolong the effect of sleep deprivation, so they investigated that. They found that 65% of patients taking lithium showed a sustained response to sleep deprivation when assessed after three months, compared to just 10% of those not taking the drug.

<comment><USER8> too bad lithium is such a hard drug to administer (it's psychoactive at doses very close to harmful doses, so usually there needs to be monitoring of the levels of lithium in the blood)

<comment><USER9> Long term use of lithium may also lead to kidney problems[1][2]. Monitoring of kidney function is also needed over a long time[3].

[1][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25735990/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25735990/)

[2][https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S008525381...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0085253815326089)

[3][https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bipolar- disorder/treatment/#li...](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bipolar- disorder/treatment/#lithium-carbonate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> staying awake for extended periods leads to a manic state. sure, it beats depression, but it's not necessarily a good way to persist either.

indeed, a blurb in the article mentions this, only once...

> Particularly for anyone who has bipolar disorder, there's a risk of it > triggering a switch into mania – although in his experience, the risk is > smaller than that posed by taking antidepressants.

i don't think that's necessarily true only for those with bipolar disorder though, anyone sleep deprived long enough will end up in a manic state. perhaps some are more susceptible to it than others, or others may be more adept at navigating that headspace, than many.

i find some of my most productive hours are late at night, after i've been awake for a while... for one there are less distractions from everyone else, but primarily, it's much easier to get into that "zone" when the brain is tired. or maybe it's just a honing of focus over time, and sleep resets that ability and all the short-term memory that has been built up during the day. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. For me being sleep deprived is the number one way to get depression. Especially if it goes on for a few days.

<comment><USER12> Yep. After being on various prescribed drugs over the years i've settled on one. 25mg of Quetiapine at night when needed to knock myself out. Not being able to get to sleep - when i'm actually tired - and my brain spinning and running loops is not good for me.

<comment><USER13> Out of curiosity (not judging), is your doc okay with that and did they prescribe it that way? I've never heard of quetiapine being prescribed on an as-needed basis.

<comment><USER12> Yeah the prescription is PRN which means as needed i think. As well as helping me sleep it helps a bit taking the edge off some other issues. I've got a good relationship with my doc and he trusts my input. I've got good drug 'insight' apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems like really bad advice on several fronts. For one, sleep deprivation has severe negative side-effects and is implicated in long term decline of overall health. For another, this is a big risk for people with bipolar, many of whom are unaware of that fact and may think they only have depression. Aggressive sleep deprivation can trigger a psychotic break in people who are susceptible, which is a shockingly high percentage of the population, especially along with other factors like stress and certain kinds of (very common) drug use. That's something you generally want to avoid at all costs.

<comment><USER3> > For another, this is a big risk for people with bipolar, many of whom are > unaware of that fact and may think they only have depression.

Imho this is the biggest issue with this whole complex of psychology. I've struggled with mental issues for pretty much my whole life, in my teens, it was considered "clinical depression", a couple of years later it was supposedly something along the lines of ADHS or maybe I'm somewhere on the spectrum, another couple of years later it's either borderline or bipolar, depending what doctor you ask.

It's just a frustrating situation to be in because it feels like the diagnoses wholly depend on what doctor you ask, what mood they are in, how well you vibe with them on a personal level, or what literature they've read recently. In the end, it all feels like "professionals" who are mostly just wild-guessing around and on the basis of said wild-guess start suggesting some pretty drastic medication.

At this point, I've pretty much given up on getting a "solid diagnosis", it all just feels way too arbitrary which is not at all helpful to my self- perception and my trust in medical institutions.

<comment><USER14> Yep. When you start digging into mental health you realize that we're at a very primitive level of understanding of it, in almost every aspect. For one there's this sort of broken model of untainted perfect neurotypicality that is the gold standard and any deviation from that is a disease or a disorder. For another there's a very poor understanding of what different classes of symptoms actually represent in underlying physiology and how they are related. Many times things are described as being "comorbid" when in reality they are just different expressions of the same underlying biology or psychology. Also there's a huge role that culture, education, and so forth play into these things. In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive therapy).

<comment><USER3> > In general I'd say the best tactic is to learn as much as you can yourself > (while remembering to be honest with yourself) and pursue general purpose > coping strategies across the board (for example, mindfulness based cognitive > therapy).

Yup, that's exactly what I've been doing for years now. I've read through quite a bit of stuff ranging from Freud, Jung, B.F. Skinner to Edward de Bono and countless others in addition to lots of Wikipedia surfing and study reading.

A rather common theme among a lot of them: Many of them went into studying psychology as an attempt to diagnose their own issues and often it feels more like reading philosophy rather than actual medical science.

I wonder if we will ever be able to articulate something like a "Grand Unified Theory of the mind"? Considering how much of this is subjective to the individual and atop of that the individual's brain physiology, it seems like an impossible task.

But then I see stuff like talks by Joscha Bach on C3 [0] [1] [2] and it's quite inspirational as it gives me hope that creating strong AI might actually help us understand what's going on under our own hoods a little bit better.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQ0yaEJjok)

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've felt that semi-manic state you're referencing when I haven't been sleeping. Several nights lately I've been in bed awake until 5:00 or so when I doze off (only to get up at 6 for work). In these situations, I've felt great considering my lack of sleep. In the long run, lack of sleep (for me) results in depression.

I'm probably not normal. I take three antidepressants and an anxiolytic.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not depression, but I notice that I have less social anxiety when sleep deprived.

<comment><USER17> I notice this but with inhibition. I find I do different kinds of coding, more creative and less rigid, when I have less inhibition. Good sleep is good for rigid code, bad sleep is good for creative problem solving and inhibition. I tend to be better on the phone on <6 hours of sleep as well. I think getting a full night's sleep leads to my prefrontax cortex functioning properly, which I find makes me rigid and anxious with all the threads I follow and things I predict. Without a good sleep, that is significantly inhibited, making it easier to go with the flow, on a call or writing code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about people who have depression and get insomnia because of it?

<comment><USER19> Maybe this is natural defense mechanism? Body tries to alleviate symptoms of depression by sleep deprivation :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Strange, I've always found that sleep deprivation decreases my ability to handle stress, increasing the effect of depression. Even now that I'm stable, it sends me into a blue funk the next day or the day after.

</comment><comment><USER21> IME, not going to sleep causes depression.

<comment><USER22> This is my experience too (jet lag, staying up way too late, etc), but I would hesitate to call it "depression" out of respect for those who suffer from the real thing.

At least when I'm feeling this way I have the comfort of knowing that I'll feel much better after a good night's sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm what could people do while trying to stay awake? I know how about some light exercise dancing to some music you enjoy or even don't enjoy but rather go out just to learn about it.

Maybe there are other anti-depression techniques out there as well?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/how-a-party-drug-could- becom...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/how-a-party-drug-could-become-the- next-big-antidepression-treatment.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I've often wonder what the world record for a human is. Are their competitions? Like can you be the best at staying awake for > 2 weeks?

<comment><USER25> > Randy Gardner (born August 7, 1949) is the holder of the scientifically > documented record for the longest a human has intentionally gone without > sleep not using stimulants of any kind. In 1964, Gardner, a high school > student in San Diego, California, stayed awake for 264.4 hours (11 days 25 > minutes).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_(record_holder)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_\(record_holder\))

The article mentions longer records but they aren't so well documented.

<comment><USER26> Randy Gardner was on the Hidden Brain podcast last November. It's a good listen with plenty of reasons to always try to get enough sleep.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/11/06/562305141/eleven-days- without...](https://www.npr.org/2017/11/06/562305141/eleven-days-without- sleep-the-haunting-effects-of-a-record-breaking-stunt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, except the effect only lasts past the next good night's sleep for 5% of patients.

And I can't speak for about anyone else, but having experienced moderate depression, I'd rather be depressed than chronically sleep deprived.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not sleeping induces a state of mania - temporary frenzied relation. So if you're depressed, you'll temporarily feel better the next day, but the relapse comes soon after.

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy)

</comment><comment><USER30> it works but not when it becomes routine IMO. pulling 1 or 2 all nighters in a row, gives kind of _a once in a while_ snap-out of it effect. I have no proof other than this worked for me in practice only in the decade and half that I suffered from it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sleep deprivation increases serotonin and dopamine directly. Of course it helps with depression.</comment>


Writing a Filebeat Plugin - patrick-fs https://bionic.fullstory.com/writing-a-filebeat-output-plugin/ <comment> patrick-fs How we built a custom Filebeat plugin to process hundreds of thousands of log lines per second.</comment>


Ask HN: How does someone get their start in IT? - <AUTHOR> I've looked at various job postings for my area of the American midwest, and nearly all of the positions that are above CSR ask for requirements of 2-6 years experience working with server technologies (RHEL and Windows Server), Bachelors/Masters in CS, and salaries sometimes being less than $35k for the position. I've not followed the IT job market for that long so I cannot say whether that is the average pay for the skills in question, but even that seems outrageous. I could be wrong, of course. Some do have much more reasonable requirements, but I don't come across too many of those.
Now I would expect to see people much older applying for these positions. Somewhere in the age range of "Slackware in college". Instead, I see people who are 18-26 being offered - or already have - jobs in these fields[0]. I don't mean customer service, I mean working on actual hardware for companies or developing for front/backend.
How are these people getting these career deals so easily? Am I not looking in the right places? Are these people really just the extraordinary Hacker types?
To ask this a different way, how does one get the god-like experience working with enterprise systems when the bar to entry already requires that you were simply born with these abilities?
I know this may come off as another "how do you get experience for experience without experience", but the point that separates this question for me is that these aren't people already in their 30s. They are sometimes not even old enough to buy alcohol. I'd find it hard to believe that someone who just turned 20 could afford the pricing of Win Server for the experience of using and certification. It could very well be that my perception is warped, but it is safe to say that these people do exist and this does happen.
[0] People living in more tech-oriented areas of the US, such as the coasts. <comment><USER2> You need to read books about careers. Its not only about IT, the following method applies everywhere: From what I've read I can tell that the way employers look for employees is not the same way employees look for work.

The number one venue for employers to get new employees, is through referrals of existing employees. If you've ever applied for a job, and there was a questionnaire asking if you know someone who already works for that company, that's how they give more credit to those.

The jobs that are published and you read are for the hardest to find roles. Most good jobs don't even get published.

Better than study books, study people. I think sometimes programmers have a hard time to understand "how people work" and wrongly assume that "people work the same way as computers work". You'd be fooled. Read history, read about betrayals, read about market inefficiencies, read about international politics, you'll get it.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's simply not true. If you can demonstrate your programming skills, there are many companies willing to hire you as a junior developer.

If you spent your college years doing nothing besides the bare minimum, and have nothing to show, you can't count on good salaries.

It took me literally 15 seconds to find 18 junior jobs in Javascript in one city.

[https://www.monster.com/jobs/search/?q=junior+javascript&whe...](https://www.monster.com/jobs/search/?q=junior+javascript&where=chicago)

You can also walk into any major agency, and they will start looking for jobs for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do stuff on your own, go to meet ups on what you're interested in. RHEL is the same as CentOS, download that and download Vagrant. Install CentOS onto a VM, if you don't know something, google it. Go to tech events and meet people, you could get referred to an opening that way. Work at a small company which usually requires many different skills, slide into doing more IT work there.</comment>


Ubuntu Team Needs a Cat to Replicate Important Bug - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/ubuntu-team-needs-a-cat-to-replicate-important-bug-496205.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> Could a cat on the keyboard might produce things that even fuzzing might not?

My cat loves a warm laptop keyboard. Perhaps that would aid testing?</comment>


Red Herring Award Won, Should I Be Happy? - <AUTHOR> My Startup NepFlights.com has won the 2015 Red Herring Top 100 Asia competition with out going there for presentation. I heard lots about it's scam. Now Should i proudly say i am top 100 asian startup? <comment><USER2> Isn't it called Red Herring for a reason?</comment>


Vudu offices burglarized and customer info stolen - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/vudu-offices-burglarized-and-customer-info-stolen/

<comment><USER2> As someone who's been running a global video CDN for over a decade, I don't understand why any kind of "data" needs to reside at an office, as opposed to a datacenter.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you a founder with a physics background? - <AUTHOR>

(in the founder context) I'm wondering if there are startups doing physics, and if are physicists doing non-physics.<p>Or anything in between... <comment><USER2> I was a physics background doing a non-physics startup. (Not anymore, cofounder took over my share) I think having a physics person as a cofounder or in the initial few hires is a decent idea. The STEM background is there, but with a slightly different outlook on the universe than, say, other STEM fields. For example, you get a little of the classic "Don't say 'reflected acoustic wave.' Say echo!" attitude. (Well, I mean I guess you can get that attitude anywhere, but I see it more often with physics people)</comment>


Stuxnet apparently as effective as a military strike - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/stuxnet-apparently-as-effective-as-a-military-strike.ars

<comment><USER2> I look forward to finding out the truth behind this. I'm sure it will come out eventually, though we might have to wait 25 years. Long bet anyone? I'll put my money on the NSA.</comment>


Ask HN: Would anyone use a JIRA mac, windows or linux client? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone. I'm thinking about writing a native desktop client for jira as a sideproject. Would anyone be interested in that? <comment><USER2> I started writing one for iOS, using a game engine to get some really rich effects, but JIRA changes very quickly and I always found myself in their web interface rather than using what I had written. I am in the Atlassian ecosystem myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly probably not as all client interfaces I've tried end up lagging behind the web or not having all the features. It's a huge undertaking to recreate JIRA in a client.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I wouldn't be. Just adding a voice :) The web interface is good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone would as there's already an app for that ([http://almworks.com/jiraclient/overview.html](http://almworks.com/jiraclient/overview.html)) and it is doing fine :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you know they are doing fine? :) I don't like the UI. Looks a bit clunky. So maybe there is a market...

<comment><USER5> As far as I heard. I'm in Atlassian ecosystem myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paid or free? Would it work for both self-hosted and Atlassian Cloud instances? Both Jira Core & Jira Agile?

<comment><AUTHOR> Free for small teams, paid for larger ones maybe? Both cloud and self-hosted. Both core and agile.

<comment><USER6> Count me in then. @brianjking (twitter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would use a Linux or OS X client. I would appreciate a good CLI as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I ask what are the use cases for a jira cli? And what would make it good?</comment></comment>


Visiting Lord's Bridge: The Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory Near Cambridge - <AUTHOR> https://vla22.dreamwidth.org/2195.html <comment><USER2> _Sheep from the Vet school were used, because it was tricky to get a lawnmower around what with all the poles and wires, and goats would have eaten the telescope too._

<comment><USER3> Isn't this an issue with large scale solar panels still?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It really is an amazing place. The array that detected pulsars now looks not dissimilar to an overgrown vineyard, and the hut where the wires from the antennae were terminated still has plastic caps from the connectors scattered over the floor. The control room for one of the telescopes was left open on it's desk, with last observing entries in it from the date of my birth. Operating manuals and old component catalogues lie scattered around. One hurt was full of random matked exam papers.

It's not open to the public often, but if you get a chance to visit you'll see astronomy history frozen in time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mullard

UCL has a space lab named after Mullards, Cambridge has a radio telescope. Was there one person who set up these gifts, there are few other companies who have gifted money to space science. Wellcome is very generous for medical research.

Mullard were taken over by Philips back in 1927, so were these gifts really from Philips?

I'm keenly aware of this since my Dad worked for Mullards for 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Mullard Observatory on Google Maps:

[https://email@example.com,0.0332374,1234m/da...](https://email@example.com,0.0332374,1234m/data=!3m1!1e3)</comment>


Introduction to jsrsasign (pure JavaScript cryptographic library) - <AUTHOR> https://kjur.github.io/jsrsasign/ <comment><USER2> If there's anything I've learned about security, it's that "personal" (i.e. not the result of collective work of a group of experts that was reviewed thoroughly, openly) implementations of cryptographic algorithms are a big no- no</comment>


Book Review- Googled: The End of the World As We Know It - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/books/review/Baker-t.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> "Google makes money from other people's content"

Google makes money by making other people's content accessible to a wide audience in the most efficient way. In most cases you bypass search engines and go straight to the sites you're interested in because you have an expectation it's worth reading most of the front page and some of the individual stories. If a site cannot manage to capture a loyal audience they have no one to blame but themselves. When the user is seeking out new information with no preferred source of the content they goto search engines because they want the most relevant results. They're not interested in going to 20 or 30 individual sites and searching these little islands of information. The old media is still convinced they can be the gatekeepers of culture and information while Google focuses on giving people what they actually want. It's pretty obvious who's going to win here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm still puzzle by the argument that "Google makes money from other people's content".

Don't these content producers realize that there's probably more than half their traffic coming from Google? Google helps people find their stuff. How is that bad?

<comment><USER4> How so?

Google is making money from people's content. The people making the content might be making some money, too, but Google is making much more. The content producers are all using....Google Adsense, to try and turn Google traffic into money. And Google has relentlessly "smart-priced" its adsense payouts down into oblivion. So Google's scooping up content to power its index, sending people to these sites, where they click on ads that pay Google an advantageous share of the wealth. Sounds like they're making money off people's content.

<comment><USER5> If they're using Adsense, it must be worth it to them. In other words, they believe they are paying a fair price for the value they extract. The ones who believe they can do better try alternative approaches, such as direct contact with advertisers, among others. So why complain? AFAICT, Google does not discriminate in favour of adsense-using websites.

<comment><USER4> I'm not complaining. Just explaining how Google makes money from other people's content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Maybe in the end, even on the Internet, you get what you pay for."

I'm not sure that I want to read the book, but that was an interesting review of it. The last paragraph had me thinking about 'free' in the context of music. We've had free music before - radio. It was a lot more restricted than todays 'free' music, but it was free (beyond the initial hardware purchase). Of course there was a monetization strategy (radio = ads = physical albums sales + other revenue).

The solution for the problems today isn't a return to yesterday. But also, importantly, things of value yesterday aren't always going to be valuable today (and vice versa). Things change.

<comment><USER7> Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) is an excellent example of a way to take something that is free and monetize it in one form or another. VIP accounts and advertising work for the site, and the record labels still can earn money from it so they might be happy.

Someone always pays, though... it simply may not be the end user.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear they also have a great Artists product (artists.grooveshark.com) that provides real-time analytics to artists so they can tour and promote their music more efficiently :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a book review, he didn't talk about the book much. Most of the article seemed like a rehash of Google's history from the author's memory.</comment>


The Start of Munch On Me - <AUTHOR> http://jasonwang.me/entrepreneurship/the-start-of-munch-on-me/

<comment><USER2> As a part of this team, I'm very excited to help launch this site. Check back soon for great deals!</comment>


Tumblr hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

<comment><USER2> If you suspect a site has been compromised, wouldn't a better approach be to submit this as a text article explaining your reasons rather than linking to the affected site? Depending on the nature of the hack, the title could easily have been:

      Was Tumblr hacked in order to do drive-by malware installs? (tumblr.com)

Now everyone who clicks is potentially at risk.

<comment> g-garron Thanks God I click on it while on Linux :)

<comment><USER3> It's a Javascript worm, your OS doesn't matter. (I think)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keeping an eye on this. The post in question looks like this:

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58607934/Screen%20Shot%202012-12-03...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58607934/Screen%20Shot%202012-12-03%20at%2010.31.27%20AM.png)

It has nailed a number of major accounts, including The Verge, USA Today, Reuters and The Daily Dot.

Buzzfeed has tips on how to keep safe: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/hacker-group- exploits-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/hacker-group-exploits- security-hole-in-tumblr)

Update: The GNAA says that the hack was part of an anti-blogging campaign.

> This was just another part of our "anti-blogging" campaign. GNAA's stance on > blogging in general has always been a negative one: in short, blogging is > lowering journalistic standards to the point where the number of friends a > murderer has on Facebook has become news.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/03/tumblr- cybe...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/03/tumblr-cyber-worm- anti-blogging)

<comment><USER5> At the bottom of the spam post it says if you delete the post it will delete your Tumblr account. Since this spreads by people viewing it, it's probably important to point out that deleting the posts will _not_ delete your tumblr account, and you should do it immediately so people viewing your blog don't get infected themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yep. <http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-hacked-2012-12>

tl;dr: if you have a Tumblr account (and an active session), delete your cookies before opening any *.tumblr.com site.

</comment><comment><USER7> The exploit uses a "data-uri script tag" in the video embed field. In other words, it runs some sort of script through the section of the site that's supposed to only allow video embed codes from sites like YouTube and Vimeo. A pretty serious security hole.

<comment><USER8> Mind sharing where you found this info? Did you figure it out yourself?

<comment><USER9> See point #10 from [http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/hacker-group- exploits-...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/hacker-group-exploits- security-hole-in-tumblr)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a Base64-encoded JS URI in the video player URL. Somewhat sneaky. How it ends up redirecting the page to a reblog URL isn't clear. <https://gist.github.com/4196142>

</comment><comment><USER10> Hacking vector was fixed: <https://twitter.com/tumblr>

_Tumblr engineers have resolved the issue of the viral post attack that affected a few thousand Tumblr blogs. Thanks for your patience._

</comment><comment><USER11> Looking at the other comments, this seems like basic CSRF to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nothing particularly interesting seems to have actually happened. Some posts got onto the Dashboard, which was still running. In fact, everything was still working just fine.

Script kiddies found a small crack and went for it.

<comment><USER13> It's not really a script kiddie if it's an original exploit, and is still a vulnerability that has cost businesses money.

<comment><USER12> What is your source for that info?

Also, whether or not it cost the business money has nothing to do with the quality of the break-in.

<comment><USER14> Who cares about the quality or the skill it took? If it's an unskilled attack, it's even worse. If script kiddies can break into your site, your security is alarmingly poor.

The things that matter during an attack: how much damage was caused, what kind of data was compromised, and how much it will cost to get things fixed. The quality of the attack is only a factor when it comes to cost/benefit of fixing the vulnerability.

<comment><USER12> My first comment actually addresses each of your points.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Project Vique – Webtorrent video streaming queue - <AUTHOR> http://andreapaiola.name/vique/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem to work on Chrome for Android. It just counts down to zero then triggers the next video over and over again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try to seed your video: it waits 20 seconds (sorry, I'm tricking you counting 10 to 1 in 20 :D ) and if doesn't load the video... skip!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, what a fun project! :D

</comment><comment><USER3> This might make a good "Show HN".

Is there a story behind its development?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea!

Just a fun weekend project <3

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to increase the number of webtorrent magnet links!</comment></comment></comment>


Making registration simple and social in just a few steps - <AUTHOR> http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/440 <comment><USER2> Let me know if you have any questions about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Paul,

Great project and great UI/UX ! I just have one question can I have this form and only be Facebook Connect only (desactivate the option to log without facebook on the first line) ?

<comment><USER2> Yes! fb_only=true

Check out the technical docs</comment></comment></comment>


Heart rate can show signs of the flu/fever - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cardiogr.am/9b021feb0c98 <comment><AUTHOR> Cardiogram cofounder here. I had a fever back in January and my sleeping heart rate spiked during those nights. It was interesting to see such a big change, so we decided to build a new Sleep BPM feature & annotation tools around it. Hopefully this helps users out there become more aware of how your body responds to the flu or other illnesses like covid-19, and how your heart rate responds to flu-like symptoms. One important note though - these features are not intended for diagnostics! Would love to hear if the feature is helpful - ask me anything!

<comment><USER2> I often use my sleeping heart rate to know when I am becoming ill. I had the flu about a month ago, and saw a spike of 9bpm at the peak of the fever. At least for me, this metric is a really good indicator of health.</comment></comment>


The Looming Danger of Non-Banks - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/prudential-non-banks-future-financial-crises-f21319bf-7104-4109-9f11-a8d369110e0c.html <comment><USER2> Completely glosses over the fact that whatever subsidiary they run their life insurance and annuities out of is going to have to hold a statutory reserve for liabilities like this that would fall under their "assets under management". It also glosses over the fact that they are state regulated by all states they run business out of, not just NJ. I'm sure they issue policies in NY, the NY insurance commissioner typically will oversee their valuation methods for stat reserves to make sure they meet industry standards. I would be _very_ surprised if they took a loss on their life line of business that puts them out of business, statutory reserves are a very conservative valuation method, where you use NAIC prescribed mortality tables, so there's no fudging around the numbers very much.

Long story short, this is really sensationalist back of napkin math from a reporter talking about a very regulated and complicated industry that they seem to know nothing about. No wonder is such garbage.

Edit: Upon further reflection, this doesn't even cover reinsurance that they might have that cover abnormal losses across individual, blocks of business, and across the entire company.

Even in the event they didn't have the capital to pay off their life insurance liabilities due to loss, they would probably liquidate their inforce blocks of business by auctioning them off to other insurance companies to cover their remaining losses.

There's just so much ignorance and sensationalism here, it's hard to comprehend.

<comment><USER3> Felix Salmon unquestionably knows what he's talking about.

<comment><USER4> I'm not going to make a snap judgment based on one article but his last line:

>Prudential could be forced to start liquidating its assets at fire-sale prices, which could set off a chain reaction in the rest of the financial markets and even the economy as a whole.

Makes me question that. He gets through all of his scenario without once mentioning the Orderly Liquidation Authority, which despite the Dodd-Frank rollback is still in the toolbox, and is this is basically exactly what it was made for. So to be blunt, imo best case he's made a critical error of omission, unintentional or otherwise.

And this is not to say it's a sure thing. It's the government. It would be far from perfect, it would be far from clean, but most everyone involved is on the same page in terms of what we don't want happening, which is more than I can say about most things.

Of all the things that the crisis taught us and we have in fact learned from, is that failure of a large financial institution is terrible; an uncontrolled liquidation of a failed financial institution is way worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is about Prudential life insurance being too big to fail, because their assets are worth $3.7 trillion = 20% of US GDP. The article also claims that "unexpected mortality" of 1.1% of its portfolio could bankrupt it. If a lot of people die suddenly, this could cause another economic crisis in the US.

How many deaths? Based on their acquisition of The Hartford $135 billion = 700,000 in force life insurance policies, each policy is worth $192,857. The article claims Prudential could be bankrupted by losses of $42 billion = 217,778 policies.

That's a lot of deaths for peacetime. Flu only kills about 36,000 people in the US each year [1]. Terrorism killed only 3191 people in the US in between 2000 and 2016 [2]. However, it's not a lot in a war. The Vietnam War claimed 1.3-4.2 million lives. [3]

Conclusion? Stop American politicians from trying to start a war. Please work for peace, even if it costs your job (c.f. Project Maven military AI at Google [4])

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Epidemic_and_pandemi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Epidemic_and_pandemic_spread)

[2] [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from- terrorism...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatalities-from- terrorism?country=USA)

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

[4] [https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/14/google-project-maven- emp...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/14/google-project-maven-employee- protest/)

<comment><USER6> Does private life assurance pay out if you are killed war-fighting?

<comment><USER7> Yes they can. It all depends on the policy. For example USAA routinely insures service members and those policies have a rider for dying in combat. And it is only a couple buck for a month on a normal $500k policy. When I retired I took that rider off.

Pretty much any insurance company does the same.

<comment><USER8> I price life insurance for a living. Combat death riders are not common.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to look at my policy, but I don't think it has any exclusion for combat deaths.

<comment><USER6> It almost certainly excludes any claims at all from any war between major powers - even your car insurance probably says that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't buy it.

Life insurance doesn't have a contagion effect like housing.

If a small percent of people can't pay their mortgages at the same time, that causes housing prices to fall. Falling housing prices cause people who recently purchased houses to walk away from their mortgages. Suddenly mountains of money disappears from bank balance sheets and the economy crashes.

Life insurance doesn't have this feedback loop. If a large number of Americans suddenly and unexpectedly die for some reason, it seems like the type of situation the government would step in to resolve anyway.

<comment><USER11> Every insurance company actually has two businesses in one:

\- An insurance business where they hope to underwrite risk intelligently to pay out less than they make in premiums.

\- An investment company where they investment insurance reserves (to keep them safe, but also to gain extra $ beyond what is required for reserves)

The insurance reserves follow state insurance "stat" guidelines and are usually spread across corporate bonds, government bonds, and real estate debt (with a bit in riskier assets.)

A housing crisis very much affects insurance companies. AIG's Securities Lending fiasco of 2008 is a perfect case study of this. [https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/aigs-collapse-the- par...](https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/aigs-collapse-the-part-nobody- likes-to-talk-about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There IS a looming danger from non-banks, but I wasn't expecting insurance to be it.

It's already been regulated, due to there being a fairly obvious risk if left to decide its own reserves: You could just write loads of insurance in a limited liability company and go bankrupt if you had too many claims. So there are rules to stop that happening.

What would be interesting would be something like the shadow banking system. Various vehicles that aren't banks but are major financial players (esp lenders) anyway. It covers a lot of different things.

<comment><USER13> what are the major sources of new debt since the GFC?

<comment><USER14> Corporate bonds (since debt was and still is super cheap as a result of QE) and student debt (most kinds of debt slowed down at least briefly during the GFC; student debt did not).

<comment><USER13> I don't think corporate bonds are in that much trouble. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lGQL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lGQL)

<comment><USER14> Certainly not at present; all the analysis I've seen is simply on the raw quantity of outstanding corporate debt right now. The concern (where it exists) is universally about the ability of businesses to handle their debt load if some other shock suddenly makes it less cheap.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it could be a very quick chain reaction. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I stopped reading as soon as the author compared Prudential's liability size to the US GDP. Just because numbers are similarly large does not make them comparable. Its like comparing Bezo's $147B fortune to the 147B grains of sand on a 100 yard stretch of Rainier beach in Seattle. Not apples to apples.

<comment><USER16> They're both dollars. Not making a good argument here.

<comment><USER17> The number refers to _annual_ GDP which is dollars _per year_. Comparing assets/liabilities to annual GDP makes about as much sense as comparing distance to speed, eg: "The speed of 150 miles per second is tiny compared to the distance of 1000 miles"

I'm not a fan of dismissive & judgmental comments, but the parent HN comment is correct on the technical aspect.

<comment><USER16> It tells you how soon a debt could be paid. The speed of 150mph tells you how quickly you would travel 1000 miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Prudential 's entire market capitalization could be wiped out with $42 billion of unexpected losses_

Is this a meaningful comparison? A company's market cap is simply a measure of how many shares it has outstanding and the price those shares command. In what sense does a loss "wipe it out"?

<comment><USER19> The relevant thing would be shareholder equity (book value; assets minus liabilities) rather than market cap, in that impairment of assets at a financial firm is supposed to hit shareholders before it hits debt or depositors, that being a pretty major responsibility of equity in financial firms.

Book value doesn't necessarily march in lockstep with market value, which (as you point out) is set by actors' marginal propensity to buy the stock.

A more interesting thing to note would have been that financial firms trading at a marked discount to book value are effectively being judged by the market as being in distress. Financial firms can be analyzed as two things: an operating business and also as a big pot of money. The market is saying "Well, that certainly does look like an attractive pot of money, but you'd have to pay me quite a bit to own that operating business (and the attendant risks of it)."

Unexpected losses on a large life insurance portfolio seem very, very unlikely, absent a mass casualty event (in which case they're likely to get at least partially socialized).

<comment><USER20> How exactly does a shareholder notice the 'book value' of a company? Sure, they have a 'claim' on a share of that, but that only really matters if the company defaults, in which case it would surprise me if the actual book value is payed back to shareholders.

Perhaps it's also relevant in partial sales of the company?

<comment><USER19> _How exactly does a shareholder notice the 'book value' of a company?_

Publicly traded companies are obligated to file quarterly reports which prominently list this number; Googling "$NAME book value" will bring it up for any publicly listed company in the US. A particular retail investor may not notice this, but this is approximately "What is the difference between a number and a string?" for professionals.

In the majority of cases, shareholders don't attempt to extract book value. So-called "value" investors preferentially invest in companies which trade at a discount to book value; this tends to correct trading prices towards it, without the nuclear option of cracking open the company to sell off its juicy innards. (Which does happen, very occasionally, generally via private equity buyouts.)

<comment><USER20> Obviously, the book value is public and not arbitrary. However, I don't see the direct reasoning behind a "value investor". By that I mean reasoning that doesn't involve guessing what other shareholders will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Millions of policyholders would start moving their life insurance"

Is that practically feasible though, there's a great cost favorability loss in reinsuring in a new policy years / decades after initiating a policy

<comment><USER11> Good point. To clarify, many people buy Term Life when they are healthy. You lock in long-term savings for 5, 10, or 20yrs. Renewing term life 10yrs or 15yrs in is hard -- you now have high cholesterol, diabetes, risk, etc., so your premiums go up massively. It defeats the point of term life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> An aside, Prudential is the most scummy insurance company ever. I don't know how many times I've reported their lies to my work or the state insurance regulatory body.

</comment><comment><USER23> Bigger picture here is that govt. oversight is creeping back slightly while financial risk taking is expanding to less regulated business.

</comment><comment><USER24> I only skimmed the article. But, yes, I can well imagine insurance being a point of vulnerability.

I used to work at Aflac. I left in part because I began having nightmares that I was on a sinking ship. I was having nightmares that made me feel that if I didn't leave, the company was going to go under and my life was going to go under with it.

Part of that was that I joined at the height of their success. They were adding on to the building to move my department because we really didn't have enough space. They would give out pens and stuff at all kinds of events. They were obviously flush with cash and growing.

Shortly after I joined, the recession hit. After the addition was completed and my department moved, my department shrank in size. They had consolidated a bunch of land to add two buildings. The first one got built. The second was not started while I was there. I think it was put on hold, or possibly canceled. They stopped giving out pens at every freaking thing. I ran out of Aflac pens and had to buy my own.

They cut janitorial service. They did interdepartmental swaps on office supplies to save money. The job listings shrank from pages and pages to a few.

Etc.

Meanwhile, we were continuing to be inundated with positive PR releases. We "flew" up the Fortune 500 list. It's a relative ranking. Our valuation actually shrank. I went to meetings where the outlined how proud they were of successfully mitigating that or it would have been worse. So flying up the charts meant other companies fell like stones faster than us. They didn't really admit that part. Just lots of glowing reports about how awesome the company was.

But, I mean, it was a recession. Things were tough all over and the company was doing better than most other companies.

No, the thing that really convinced me this big company was likely in serious trouble was the Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan in 2011. [1]

A lot of people seem to have no idea, but most of Aflac's revenue is from its Japanese division. When I started working there, it was 75% of their profit. By the time I left, it was 80%, mostly because the American division was doing so poorly.

They fired Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of the duck in their commercials because he made a tasteless joke about it. I felt that was a mistake.

But more importantly they sell accident, sickness and cancer policies. Radiation can make you sick. It can even cause cancer.

It's not clear to me what their exact exposure is due to the ongoing radiation leaks in Japan from that incident. This could be a major health catastrophe for Japan and a major financial debacle for Aflac.

I've read a little about the history of the industry. Hurricane Andrew in Florida was a major crisis for the insurance industry and permanently changed it. We've had multiple serious hurricanes since then.

I don't remember the information about Andrew's effect on the industry well enough to really comment on it here. But I remember it well enough to know that a single major incident can have significant widespread impact.

With climate change, the rise of drug shortages and antibiotic resistant infections etc, there is a lot of unprecedented stuff happening. Insurance is about risk management. If you don't understand the risks involved, you can't lay odds accurately. This causes havoc in this industry.

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)

<comment><USER25> There's no reason to expect a significant increase in Japanese cancer cases due to the Fukushima incident.</comment></comment>


Game Developers Conference and space-time diagrams - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/game-developers-conference-and-space-time-diagrams/

<comment><USER2> I'm really excited about where these headsets are going. My one reservation is whether long term use will lead to strabismus or extra eye strain...</comment>


The 10 Smartest Pot Smokers on the Planet… Cool Enough to Admit It - <AUTHOR> http://valetudocafe.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/the-10-smartest-pot-smokers-on-the-planet%E2%80%A6-cool-enough-to-admit-it/

<comment><USER2> This article is a wholesale copy of one they only display (not link) to the url:

[http://coedmagazine.com/2011/02/02/the-10-smartest-pot- smoke...](http://coedmagazine.com/2011/02/02/the-10-smartest-pot-smokers-on- the-planet-cool-enough-to-admit-it/)

Scumbag, "Valetudocafe" is why old people want to pass SOPA.

Mistone, "marketing at TuneUpMedia", do you have a financial connection to these losers?</comment>


Can you break this code from Boards of Canada? - <AUTHOR> http://cosecha-transmisiones.com

<comment><USER2> Intriguing. I've asked the experts:

[http://www.hou2600.org/hacking/can-you-break-this-code- from-...](http://www.hou2600.org/hacking/can-you-break-this-code-from-boards- of-canada/)

I know nothing about the Boards of Canada (except the soundtracks they did for "Until the Light Takes Us") but that OpenVMS prompt looks quite inviting...</comment>


Show HN: Omive – Find movies based on genre, rating, directors and more - <AUTHOR> http://omive.com/ <comment><USER2> Great job! I've long wanted to work on this problem because I think there's so much more that can be done. You definitely seem headed in the right direction.

1\. I want to follow all my favorite movie-makers and actors and get an email every time they make something new.

2\. I want to go through all the movies they've made that I missed.

3\. I want to discover new great people to follow by finding great movies.

In order of importance, for me.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat, I was always looking for a way to get notifications when a new movie from a certain director or with actors I like is available, get a list with all the movies they were starring in or just get notifications if a movie produced in a certain country is available.

Ironically the solution which works best are the notification settings from Gazelle [0] based private movie trackers.

I blame the lack of sites offering this feature on the very restrictive IMDB API which isn't exactly fun to work with and expensive to get access to if you don't want to work with a dump which doesn't even include the latest data.

[0] [https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle](https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest a way to share the current filter state. For example, if I want to send the list to my friends.

<comment><USER3> I agree, some kind of permalink would be neat so it's possible to bookmark a selection you want to go through later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obviously a good UI and everything. I would suggest adding rating as an PG, R, etc as another filter. Also if there was some way to integrate with netflix and filter out all the movies I have already seen from my watched list. There should be a third party provider that keeps track of watched movies/tv shows and your ratings for them that could provide an api to the likes of netflix and anyone else that wanted it. The problem with sites like this is like 95% of the results fall into the category of I have seen it or I already know about it and don't want to see it. An app that could accurately show me movies I haven't seen or heard of that I would actually want to see would be so incredibly useful.

<comment><USER6> Rating PG, R, etc would be very cool because I watch movies with younger siblings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the data from different sources doesn't always match up properly...for example:

Search for comedies, rated 8 and up, available on Netflix between 80-120 minutes long.

Towards the bottom, you see a link to "Loaded" ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/)), released in 2013. Only IMDB says it's coming out in 2015. And the link to Netflix plays this "Loaded" from 1994: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/)

Overall though nice concept and execution...hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love how the frontend is implemented. It's also quite snappy. I've recently watched a tutorial on neo4j where they used this kind of app as an example. Is it built on top of a graph database?

One odd thing I noticed is how the actors seem to be ordered alphabetically starting with special chars. I'd fill all the tabs that have word values with the most popular/relevant ones as a default/starting point. Search results might also have a count (like Google for example) so users have a clue through how many pages they have to click.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you like hacking on this sort of thing with a much larger dataset (hundreds of thousands of movies / millions of episodes) across dozens of streaming, dvd, vod, ratings, etc sources please reach out -- firstname.lastname@example.com . You can see our current implementation of this on the iPad app under "smart browse". We're starting to work on our next implementation of smart browse soon.

Our problem is also fun because we integrate with MVPDs (like Time Warner Cable) and unify streaming/live/on-demand in one set-top box.

<comment><USER10> Is there a TV/Movie equivalent to [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neat - for my personal tastes, I've found that I only trust IMDB ratings and anything in the near the 7.5 range regardless of vote count - always hunting the missed movies. But can't find something like this:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2)

Searching on a rating of 7-8 and Johnnie To even if I put in 1-3K votes matching the imbd count. Which, btw, someone uploads to youtube every few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Damn, this is an awesome interface. Nice job.

I did have one super minor moment of confusion. I'm on iOS 7 on an iPhone 5. I tapped "genre" then "action," and then my choice appeared at the bottom of my screen in the white triangle. I did not realize there was more content if I scrolled down the page, so I was confused why nothing changed except the appearance of my choice.

So I would recommend finding a way to make it clear scrolling is available if you can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh, I will so use this!

Anyway, some feedback: When loading the page, a wild scrollbar appears (Chrome). A temporary overflow: hidden; on the body would probably solve this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just excellent. Great user interface, simple and efficient.

What is the rating and vote count based on? IMDB? RottenTomatoes?

Maybe an option to sort the list would be useful.

Edit:

The search for key words work a bit unexpected.

Typing a title, for example "Things We Lost in the Fire", returns many seemingly random movies, but not the movie actually named "Things We Lost in the Fire"

Maybe a sort based on the Levenshtein distance could be used to sort the result when seraching on key words?

<comment><USER15> The rating count seems to be based on IMDB (the name of the argument passed to Omive's server is imdb_rating).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> FYI I looked for the top documentaries on Amazon (Rating 9-10). Saw Africa. Clicked the Amazon link. It took me to the wrong Amazon link for a different Africa: [http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg- Wise/dp/B00B99QINY](http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg-Wise/dp/B00B99QINY)

EDIT - Seeing the same issue with other Amazon links.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1](http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fantastic. Really creative UI. I've already found several movies to add to my Amazon/Netflix watch list that I didn't even know existed.

Is there any way to sign up? I'd love to use it for movie wish lists and taste profile that auto-recommends. Otherwise, I may forget about the site (busy, etc etc).

</comment><comment><USER18> This (multi-dimensional filter/search) is what I've been hoping IMDB would do for the last 5 years (and amazed they hadn't). Thank you, this is awesome, and an easy bookmark for a completionist. Although it weirds me out how much of the 7-10 sci-fi list I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks great!

But your "votes" section that I browsed seems to be listed rather oddly.

Items seem to be listed randomly.

They don't seem to be listed by title, date, number of votes, overall score, or anything really.

It would be nice too if you allowed the user to rank each list by whichever column they felt was most important to them.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome! Also - wouldn't it be better if Ratings, Votes were not ranges but had lower bounds? Ex. 7+ rating and 50K+ votes.

I saw that you can choose multiples, but you'd rarely search for a 7-8 rated movie and not want to see a 9-10 in the result set :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Wonderful interface (once I realized that I was supposed to scroll down for the results).

The only parameter I'm missing is what country the film is from. British crime movies are my favorite, and I'd love to be able to filter it down to the UK.

<comment><USER22> This!

The actor drop down, year, directors all confused me. Not sure what you can do there though but looks really nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you're running into problems with new shows/shows that share the same name as movies. For instance Utopia (UK sci-fi/thriller/mystery) or Fargo (TV show).

</comment><comment> ryan-allen This is seriously cool, and fast! Great UI!

Thanks for helping me find new stuff to watch on Netflix :)

EDIT: Feature requests!

* Please let me star movies for later!

* Please make it auto-scroll when you hit the bottom!

It looks like you DIY'ed this up with a bit of jQuery, am I right? Super cool.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks good :)

Feature request: filter by released on dvd/bluray. I'm not a big fan of going to the cinemas, so its good to see what's available to watch from home. Netflix and Amazon streaming aren't everything!

</comment><comment><USER25> The UI is very cool. Very easy to use and quick to search and aesthetically pleasing.

Also thank you for not making me sign-up / sign-in with twitter first. I have already found 4 new sci-fi movies to watch so far :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool. Would love to use something like this to see what service I can use to watch it. Finding a movie is hard enough, it would be nice to have help finding how to watch it at the same time.

<comment><USER27> [http://www.canistream.it/](http://www.canistream.it/) seems to work for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great until it sells out to Amazon like IMDB or Goodreads. The problem isn't the interface. The problem is our relationship with our own data. It's no longer ours.

<comment><USER10> I wonder why a community metadata-base was possible for music ([http://musicbrainz.org/](http://musicbrainz.org/)), but not TV/movies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> this is great! one suggestion would be to update the suggestions under each filter type based on the current search results. for example, say i'm interested in Sean Connery movies. now that i see the results, it'd be nice to further filter the results by rating, director, etc. the directors tab would show all unique directors appearing in the current search result set.

maybe there's a better UX paradigm for this drill-down approach, but i think it would be a great addition.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd love to know how you got the initial data on your servers. Did you just do a massive API scrape of IMDB, Amazon, Netflix etc? How do you keep it up to date?

</comment><comment><USER31> I think the best site for finding movies is this: [https://www.icheckmovies.com/](https://www.icheckmovies.com/)

The lists are very addicting.

<comment><USER32> I was contemplating working on something similar due to my frustration with not remembering which episode I watched last of something, thanks!

[Edit] The website has "keep track of all the movies and TV series you have seen" in the list of features but I wasn't able to add a show and check off episodes as I expected when I read that.

<comment><USER33> If you have an Android phone I'll suggest you to try the app called Series Guide: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelanc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelancer.seriesguide&hl=it) I use it exactly for that purpose. According to the page you can sync the info with [https://trakt.tv/](https://trakt.tv/) (so maybe you're more interested in it than the app) but I found the app really handy, you finish an episode and you flag it on the app, that's it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Nice idea. It'd be great to have a MPAA rating as well to be able to filter out family-friendy movies (e.g. G, PG) and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great job! It would be nice if I could mark the films that I've already watched so that they don't come again.

</comment><comment><USER36> Where are you getting this data from?

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting service, but your UX could be better on big screens (haven't tested on phone/tablet). I click on one of the tabs like Genre or Year and I'm presented with the 1500+ pixels wide hodgepodge of tags. It's very hard to read and puts a lot of mental strain on visitor to scan through that list of tags and find the one of interest.

</comment><comment><USER38> Awesome! I would suggest adding a filter for movies or shows.

</comment><comment><USER39> Imdb already has this, it's called advanced search</comment>


Siri: Apple's trojan horse - <AUTHOR> http://fabiandesimone.com/siri-apple-trojan-horse/ <comment><USER2> If anything I see the opposite happening. Siri will pull users away from search and advertisers and back towards expert guides and personal recommendations.

      Siri, what was that restaurant that John liked?
      Siri, where should I eat with my birthday friends?
      Siri, recommend me a live gig?
      Siri, recommend me a funny movie?

Suddenly we have have all the possibilities of the social graph and Netflix- style recommendations.

Would Apple be bold enough to use Siri to collect & correct this information?

      Sam, did you enjoy the film?
      Yes, Siri, very much
      How many stars out of five would you give it?
      Four.
      Thank you, Sam. I will try to recommend similar films in the future.

It would be fascinating if this happened:

      Would you like to recommend it to your friends?
      Yes, Siri, I would.

I could see a vague possibility of Songbird-style interactions, too.

      Siri, can you notify me when tickets for The National are announced.
      Siri, please let me know when the next Quiz Night is going to be.

I doubt Apple will ever do this, but you never know:

      Siri, please inform me of upcoming special offers at HealthSpa

<comment><USER3> I'm more worried about the follow use case:

      Siri, did you enjoy the film?
      Yes, Sam, very much
      How many stars out of five would you give it?
      Four.
      Thank you, Siri. Would you like to go to dinner?
      No thank you.  Would you like to play a game?

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what I want. :)

I was just remarking the other day about how much I am hoping Siri comes with a Joshua voice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In fairness to the author, I don't think this was intended as an "Apple is evil" post, though using the term "trojan horse" makes for great linkbait.

I don't see that this is that far-fetched. Considering how many other mobile phones have adopted features that debuted on the iPhone, it isn't much of a stretch to imagine a startup designed to allow you opt in to location-based discounts that are cued in part by your voice memos or location check-ins. Apple might not be the one to do it, but it is definitely a tempting revenue stream... if the database knows that 250 people who have "wife's shoes" on their reminder list are currently within walking/driving distance of the local mall, why not? Google already reads your email to serve up ads.

This kind of thing is why I don't have have a facebook page, a gmail account, or a smarter phone than a Blackberry. I love technology and software, always want to have the latest and greatest, but my data has to stay mine, and I can remember who to buy shoes for well enough on my own. But I also realize that makes me a minority and an oddity. Most people don't care if their phone knows everything about them, and they would probably be happy to have it remind them to buy flowers for 25% off on the way back from the bar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. It was never intended as an "Apple is evil" post.

I realized after posting the article that using Trojan Horse could come of as negative.

<comment><USER6> Ah yes, it's always "I realized after posting..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR This article is all about a theoretical future where Apple turns evil and starts making deals with ad networks to pollute your Siri experience.

Pure FUD.

<comment><USER8> The interesting thing is that you think this behaviour is evil. From Apple's (or Google's, for that matter) POV, they're streamlining your life and removing some of the pain of shopping by suggesting stores and products that you might like, deals you can benefit from when you're shopping for something specific, and the like. In the case of Google, their ability to target ads to your interests allows them to provide free applications like Search, Maps, GMail, etc. For Apple, although giving customers price relief would be highly out of character, new revenue streams open new possibilities for future devices and services to take the annoyance out of life.

By using these services, we are implicitly (or explicitly) agreeing to hand over our personal information. It might make us uncomfortable that Apple knows our wife's shoe size and favorite brands, but if we happen to be out to lunch next to a shoe store that's having a 40% off sale and our phone lets us know, is it really that bad?

I'm not saying I'm entirely comfortable with the proposition, but I can see why it might end up coming about. It won't be because Apple/Google?Facebook are Evil; it will be because consumers respond to it. For enough people, it will be a worthwhile trade off to forego some privacy in exchange for a useful service.

<comment><USER9> >> but if we happen to be out to lunch next to a shoe store that's having a 40% off sale and our phone lets us know, is it really that bad?

For me, yes, because it interrupts what I'm doing and breaks my focus. If I really need shoes, then show me the best deal on shoes when I've expressed intent and I'm not otherwise occupied. Otherwise, I don't want to hear about it. That's why Google's ads are great, and I hate the rest - it's a high bar, and most companies just don't care about you enough to hold back from imposing their ads at times when it doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Post-return-of-Jobs Apple (and really Apple throughout its history, though more cleanly and clearly recently) has, for all its success and all its innovation, been very very traditional at its core: It sells hard goods to public consumers in exchange for cash. I don't think Apple has any interest in flipping that incredibly successful equation and selling its consumers to advertisers.

iAd is an obvious-feeling exception to this, of course. That said, iAd has clearly never been a focus, it's always felt like an "I guess we should," and maybe a poster child for WebKit in the commercial/ad space, but not as a significant means to an end for the company. How often is iAd discussed by Apple or anyone else, especially compared to everything else they do.

They also sell content in their online stores, but that is also a false lead, because it differs from Google and social network styles of digital monetization. They're still selling CONTENT to CONSUMERS there, and they're only doing it because they want Apple hardware to be the thing people buy to consume their media.

When selling iCloud, they have repeatedly pointed out that its an advertising free service. "Who wants ads in their email?" was the sentiment expressed at its announcement.

Apple suddenly shifting gears, turning their precisely built, paid for and profitable consumer goods into trojan horses for bundled adware seems nearly entirely unlikely.

Letting users INSTALL that sort of thing wouldn't be a surprise -- "Siri, play 'Super Troopers' on Netflix" -- but that's, again, the user using a paid for service or product on the device, not the user being sold to an advertiser.

<comment><USER11> Agree, but Apple has also always appealed to artists/lovers of the arts, and post-return-of-Jobs Apple translated that into the iPod and iTunes/iTunes Store, the latter of which is filled with things like reviews and ads of sorts, or at least digital movie posters and album covers. So I wouldn't be surprised if Siri/Apple found some non-annoying way to turn you on to new movies/music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A compelling theory, but it would be totally unlike Apple to pull something like this.

Why would Apple pollute the sublime, simple experience of using Siri with advertisements? It would be uncharacteristic - it's not like a company like Apple needs to do anything like this when they generate revenue through so many other streams.

</comment><comment><USER13> Surely people should be writing (they already briefly were before Siri was known) about Google's attempt at this, including email and os on. Google is far more likely to grab from every source it has, including email, in the background. I'd expect Siri to only read emails you refer to (Siri, what was that restaurant from the email this morning?). FUD with Google isn't as far off as it sometimes seems (yes, agreeing with fud is stupid, but still).

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't buy it. Having siri respond to a create reminder command with a bunch of computer-read text about what you could buy nearby would be so obnoxious and disruptive that it would undermine the user experience. Who would want to use that?

Also, it's not clear to me why they would need to create a crap user experience for some ad revenue when they get such high margins on their devices. They don't seem to be having trouble making money.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, it's just too ugly. Steve Jobs would never let that happen. Oh wait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is just a bunch of made-up bullshit. I don't see why Apple is to blame for this author's active imagination.

</comment><comment><USER17> Imagine the horror if Apple partnered with Facebook, and allowed them access to Siri.

Complete world domination.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just have to re-quote the best (IMO) comment below that article here (it's not mine):

\----

Blake _October 12, 2011 at 6:14 pm_

Next thing you know, you find yourself spending more time with Siri. She understands you. She can practically predict what you're going to do. While Siri does nag you, she only does so in ways that you request. What started out as a few commands here and there turn into long conversations over candlelight. Soon, you find yourself avoiding your wife to be able to spend more time with Siri. After all, Siri doesn't ask for much and is always eager to listen to whatever you have to say.

Unfortunately you didn't have the foresight to see that Siri is a harsh mistress. Soon, the iPhone 5 will be released and with it will come a better version. Siri 2.0 will start wooing you with her helpful ways and ask you to leave the old Siri behind. But by then it will have been too late. Siri knows the intimate details of your every life. She's been listening into all your conversations, reading all your emails. And she never forgets.

</comment><comment><USER19> Improving devices and technologies are taking certain things out of our hands and heads. More and more by the hour actually...

facebook is there to remind us on birthdays for example. now... it might sound stupid, but i don't care about those reminders and i am not that friend of yours who says happy birthday when seeing the alert. i usually log in at night, so if i forgot someones birthday, i let it slip.

i am pretty sure this sounds more than crazy, but i just ignore the part of technologies where they would change my personality...

i just hope the freed up space by advancing technologies will be put to better use, so instead of keeping your wife's birthday or your 34th anniversary in your mind, you'll invent a more efficient way to burn fuel, or thinking smaller, a better combination of spices for your bbq.

</comment><comment><USER20> Something I noticed this week: if you use the Apple Store app and are within a few hundred metres of an actual Apple Store, the app pops up a window with upcoming One2One sessions and genius bar openings.

<comment><USER21> You can also check-in for your appointments via the app. It's really very convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not sure if apple will go for the advertising bit, but I really really like the example you gave with your wife. That would be a life saver. I also love that sign off line - BB sucks :)

</comment><comment><USER23> The feature of reminding you to do X when you are near Y is part of the Reminders app, not Siri. Siri only has the logic to take a verbal request and add a reminder to that app.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think you guys are using your imaginations a bit too much. From every Siri video I've seen, it just seems like a typical text-to-speech recognition and doesn't work nearly as good as advertised. Just look how many times it flops in this demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mNcnj2l6RE>. The guy even admits that "Siri doesn't always work as expected, hence the beta tag".

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple's business model has apparently based on selling premium products at a premium price, not giving away some products and selling in add-ons.

<comment><USER26> I agree.

Apple protects the user experience. I can respect that and I trust them more than most companies. I'll admit, they even will push their own services and block out other offerings. However, they don't just sell out in cheap, forceful ways.

I'm not worried... yet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Imaginative, yes. Possible, yes. Likely, who knows. But Siri could be the first step towards real AI, and this guy painted the picture pretty clearly. Bravo

</comment><comment><USER28> The important question nobody is asking about Siri is actually "Will Siri make my iPad 3 porn experience weird?"

</comment><comment><USER29> Apple - a future where you'll pay to be the product

</comment><comment><USER30> That sounds totally unlike Apple. Last time I checked, Apple made its billions by selling products and software, not ads.

They do have iAds, but they specifically designed those to be as unobtrusive as possible, and developers have to _decide_ if they want to use them in their apps.

<comment><USER2> I wonder whether Apple lost interest in iAds a little when they realised the potential of Siri to replace search: suddenly they had a better way to disrupt Google.

<comment><USER31> Or maybe Apple doesn't know anything about the ad business and has executed poorly. No need to over think it.

<comment><USER30> Or maybe they don't need to: [http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising- business/inside-the-rev...](http://www.bnet.com/blog/advertising- business/inside-the-revenue-model-for-iad-why-apple-doesnt-want-to-win-the- mobile-ad-race/6876)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is the worst prediction ever.</comment>


Ask HN: Which email marketing software should I use? - <AUTHOR> I run a mobile app company and I've decided to start collecting emails for cross promotion of my apps. I've used mailchimp in the past, and I have no issues with it, but I will likely be passing their free tier soon so I thought I should do some more research. I perfectly happy with suggestions that say, put your credit card into mailchimp and be done with it, if that's my best option
Generally speaking, I would hope/expect to have a bigger list that I send to 1-2 times a month at most. (as opposed to a smaller list that I emailed a couple times a week or something)
Price is likely the main factor, but ease of use is also key. I don't want to spend a ton of time coding my own X for this. Just get in, type out email, hit send. Autoresponders would be a bonus as well.
What would you use at X list size where X = :
25k? 500k? 5 mil?
Thanks so much. <comment><USER2> Mailchimp and Constant Contact are comparable. Delivra is awful, but more lax on the legitimacy of your email addresses. I've never handled a list higher than 25k though. You'll likely pay more for something in the millions.</comment>


Bit Shift Variations in C-Minor – Chiptune Music in 214 Bytes of C (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://txti.es/bitshiftvariationsincminor <comment><AUTHOR> This code was written by Robert S K Miles and is featured in the computerphile video "Code Golf & the Bitshift Variations":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqZgoNRERY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqZgoNRERY8)</comment>


Ask HN: Log file monitoring tool - <AUTHOR>

We're looking for a SaaS product that monitors log files on a server and sends an alert if it sees a line containing an error. We'd give it access to the log files on our server and it would periodically check the files we specify.<p>I remember seeing a bunch being mentioned on HN before but I can't remember the name! Would appreciate any help. <comment><USER2> Ratchet.io works well for this. <http://ratchet.io/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out <http://papertrailapp.com>. Awesome service!

</comment><comment><USER4> Not SaaS, but why not simply use logcheck (<http://logcheck.org/>) ? It's free software, and seems to be doing what you want (check log files against a whitelist of entries, send an email with all lines that don't match)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried a bunch and went with logentries because their categorization and graphing fit my specific need. Good product overall but not very polished.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found two, DataDog and Loggly. Anyone have any experience with them?</comment>