According to Snopes, Fake News Is Not the Problem - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/according-to-snopes-fake-news-is-not-the-problem-4ca4852b1ff0#.juukjg5v3 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967630)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a misleading title (both on Backchannel and here). I have no idea why the author chose to use it (other than as clickbait) when it misrepresents the content of the actual article. The article points out how much verifiably false information there is on the internet and how quickly it can spread. Clearly this is _not_ good. The article itself and Snopes' editor, the primary source for of quotes in the article, both agree with that. And the actual quote from Snopes' editor is that _social media_ isn't the problem. She does not say that fake news isn't the problem.

What we should say is that all aspects mentioned in the article are problematic: the decline in the media, the rampant levels of fake news on the internet and the way social media can so quickly and pervasively spread patently false information. None of them are necessarily _the_ problem alone, but they are each serious problems and all the moreso when in tandem as they are today.

<comment><USER4> Except... the election was super close. There wasn't really a clear trend of much of anything when it comes to making people vote one way or tother.

The rise of the combination of third Party vote - Gary Johnson and Jill Stein + other was over 4% [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016) \- and less overall votes says that, far from people seeing their own side, people didn't like ANY side.

The question should really be "What made Blacks and Latinos turn out in lower numbers, and what made so many people vote Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or other, especially in swing states?" That doesn't seem to be the question anyone wants to look at, and I reckon that's the real story here: how invested in the two party system, and their own survival, the media is.

<comment><USER5> > less overall votes

Those also came about due to stricter limits on how to id oneself for voting, and ... well, either retarded or hostile (your choice) voting office setups that forced people to wait far longer than reasonable to be able to vote.

Both of these very effectively keep particularly economically weaker voters out of the game.

Completely my personal opinion: Until the US moves voting onto a weekend and makes it a multi-day affair, and makes affordable unified country-wide id available and usable, the US democracy doesn't deserve the label.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has probably been said before, but I feel the decline of quality reporting and rise of clickbait is largely due to the SV business model of "make everything free and support it via advertising". The only thing that matters in this model is engagement, therefore reporters and publishers optimize for engagement only, and clickbait is the natural consequence.

I am not quite sure why we can't operate like the rest of the world and charge for services - as a user, I would always rather pay than have my data sold to advertisers.

<comment><USER7> " as a user, I would always rather pay than have my data sold to advertisers."

Most people would say this. But then when it comes time to get out their credit card and buy a subscription - they don't actually follow through.

Only entities with a highly educated and conscientious readership can get away with firewalls: FT, WSJ, NYT - and not much else.

Arguably, some news outfits were designed as profit making entities, and 'news' was just a vehicle to that profit. CNN is a relatively latecomer in the news world, and because they were formed primarily as a cable news channel ... they went about their business very differently that more classical print houses.

One thing we don't talk about enough: 'information consumption habits'.

People checked out the news every day to keep up. Now - they can read FB/Instagram and keep up with things that are possibly more important to them in their lives. So - the new social opportunity is literally grabbing 'waking hours' from regular news sites. Bloggers - good or bad - can report on events in some cases somewhat reliably - and so there are other outlets.

If you live in Toronto, you used to buy the 'Toronto Star' or 'Globe and Mail'. Now you can read NYT, Guardian, Washington Post - so there's a degree of consolidation as well.

Sadly, it's a mess and I hope someone can figure it out :)

<comment><USER8> > _Most people would say this. But then when it comes time to get out their > credit card and buy a subscription - they don 't actually follow through. > Only entities with a highly educated and conscientious readership can get > away with firewalls: FT, WSJ, NYT - and not much else._

So maybe the problem is not bad news reporting, but the scarcity of highly educated and/or conscientious readership?

That is, maybe we should fix the education and the citizenry -- else people won't make much out of well written news anyway, if not for anything else, because they wont be able to evaluate them...

<comment><USER9> Sagan's warning in "The Demon-Haunted World"[1]:

        I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time --
        when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all
        the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome
        technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing
        the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the
        ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority;
        when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our
        critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good
        and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition
        and darkness...

Until the public has a "baloney detection kit"[2] (and uses it regularly), trying to convince them to follow "The Truth" instead of the latest scam or wishful thinking is a waste of time.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon- Haunted_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World)

[2] [https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney- detection-k...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection- kit-carl-sagan/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > the public has lost faith in the media broadly — therefore no media outlet > is considered credible any longer.

Mass media has mostly lost their grip on manufacturing consent.

It was effectively used in the past for that. The Democrats have relied on it too heavily. That was the old school strategy - those who control the media, control the outcome. In this case it backfired on them.

The more money, manipulation and control they poured into it, the more insiders they had, the less trustworthy they became. Instead of stopping and re-evaluating, they doubled down on lies, which made them even less credible.

One thing they missed is that to be effective, they had to keep up appearances of some nominal impartiality.

In a way they are one of the primary reason this election was lost. They manufactured Kool-Aid, which is fine, that's their job, but then instead of giving it to the Trump supporters, they gave it to Hillary supporters. They were showing all blue maps with a Hillary landslide. There was no other choice, of course, after endorsing her openly for months, they'd never show an all red map. Even if somehow they had one projected. (They didn't. USC / LA Times poll predicted a win for Trump, and it is an interesting reason why, but that for another discussion...)

The idea perhaps was to discourage undecided/Trump voters by showing that candidate has 1% chance of winning, so why bother voting. In the end it had the exact opposite effect. They showed a Hillary landslide and so Hillary supporters stayed home. Why bother putting your shoes on or staying in line if it is landslide anyway.

So then last week everyone started talking about "Fake News" almost overnight. All was good, nobody likes lizard people, everyone thinks that's crazy. But then it quickly turned into a label that gets thrown at "news I don't agree with". Just a few days ago, a story about an oil field and Texas and it seems they got the estimates wrong or the model for the cost was off and it immediately got slapped with the label of "Fake News".

In a certain way it is not surprising. Throwing labels around is basically the new way of conducting discourse. One can blame Twitter for it (I am sure there is some study already on how Twitter affects discussion and exchange of ideas). You can say so much in a 140 characters so what you do is throw a label at the end "Fake News" / "Soros" / "Sexism" and you're done, point proven.

<comment><USER11> Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done ([http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/n...](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/national-polls/)) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously? Look at all of them. Up until the final week when it seemed like many republicans decided they could stomach Trump and changed from undecided to Trump, Hilary was indeed an 80% favorite on 538. Sure, some of the other models on other websites had Hilary with a higher percentage chance, but isn't that the whole idea behind data journalism that you build a model and feed data to it? 538 had a good podcast on this topic: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model- talk-debriefs-the-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/model-talk- debriefs-the-2016-results/)

And besides, having a poor model is not at all fake news. Fake news is completely making things up.

<comment><USER12> > Wait, are you seriously suggesting that all of the polls that were done > ([http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- > forecast/n...](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- > forecast/n...)) were manufactured by leftist media? Seriously?

In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, some hedge funds did private polls, rather than relying on the publicly disseminated ones (which of course predicted a Remain victory). Those same hedge funds bet on Brexit and made a lot of money. What does this tell you about the quality of the public polls?

Fact is, polls can be used as a tool to bludgeon a minority opposition, by sowing disunity amongst the opposition, and by demoralizing them through the strong suggestion that victory is impossible (NYT: 15% chance Trump victory).

We have evidence that the Clinton campaign aggressively pressured a multitude of actors into bending the rules. (See Wasserstein-Schulz and Donna Brazile scandals.) We have strong evidence of quasi-universal, vehement opposition to Trump in the mainstream media, and therefore of the willingness of those actors to succumb to such pressures.

In addition, if you understand how stratified sampling works, you can convince yourself that it is not so difficult to skew the results in one direction while still maintaining plausible deniability.

So why do you think the proposition that polls were systematically biased is so unserious?

> Fake news is completely making things up.

Sure, but the professor who typed up the widely-shared hit-list of "fake" news sites included Breitbart and Drudge Report, which are manifestly not fake news sites.

<comment><USER11> > So why do you think the proposition that polls were systematically biased is > so unserious?

Two reasons. One, and the most obvious one is that the polls _weren 't_ very far off. They had the average amount of polling error that there has been (according to what 538 said on their podcast). The polls indicated a 3-4 point national lead, and she ended up with a ~1 point national lead. The second is that polling agencies have their reputations and there hasn't been any indication from wikileaks that there was any tampering or attempted tampering.

<comment><USER12> I think we're pretty close to agreeing. I would agree, for example, to the statement that it is "unlikely" that the polls were systematically biased, for the reasons you've given. If I wanted to, I could of course pick holes in your reasons, but I think to first order you're probably right. However, please recall that the parent comment adopted an almost mocking tone (Seriously? Seriously?), and that's what I wanted to push back against.

So: would you agree that the proposition of systematically biased is _unlikely_ , while also agreeing that serious people could harbour doubts about the impartiality of said polls?

It would seem to me to be in the interest of everyone (ironically, especially liberals, although it seems they haven't quite gotten the point yet) to seriously investigate these allegations in light of the revelations of Wikileaks, revelations which the mainstream media worked so hard to cover up and discredit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The failing in the end is that the west refuse to talk class.

We are very very happy to talk gender or race, but not class. Class is very much forbidden.

<comment><USER14> "forbidden" might be a bit strong; Pro Publica has had a variety of articles on this over time. A recent retrospective one: [https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the- forgotten-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten- class)

Or, was there some other aspect of class you feel is broadly unaddressed?

<comment><USER13> The typical mantra form the big parties in the west is a mix of "we are all middle class" and "education fixes everything".

Thus when industry workers etc see their livelihood go out the window because of pressures from a globalizes market, and more center-left politicians seems willfully blind to the issue, said workers end up voting right wing. Because although the message is at its core racist, the talking points alt least touch of the problem of jobs etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A parallel false equivalence: snopes sometimes makes mistakes therefore it's as bad as breitbart.

And the idea that misinformation has no impact is the equivalent of saying advertisement has no impact. Or propaganda.

What is happening is an attempt to cast doubt on the genuine information sources critical to a well informed electorate. The same way doubt has been successfully cast on climate change and natural selection. The word 'Lugenpresse' was used to do this in a previous generation.

That anyone genuinely believes the implication of this, that the entire free press of all democracies world wide is conspiring against the American people while Putin's press and tabloid websites are their sole champion, could not possibly be more absurd.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article makes it seem like a lot of these stories are just the result of reporters being too busy. That may be, but that leaves out other reasons such as the revolving door allowing partisan operators to run newsrooms, outright collusion with candidates, etc. Here's a more "haha, only serious" take:

[http://freebeacon.com/culture/news-thats-fit- fake/](http://freebeacon.com/culture/news-thats-fit-fake/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this is as good a time as any to reflect on the news industry and their business model. I think the word 'news' itself is becoming somewhat nebulous and this is important as it relates to the value that news organizations can extract from a paying readership.

Traditionally information was power and the ability to influence large numbers people was valuable and this unique power was what made the news industry important and also made it prone to abuse and control.

The free press is supposed to play a critical role in a democracy but as a business it can't perform that function and is reduced to currying favours, pushing agendas and journalists trying to be part of an inner circle so it can't play the role we think it plays or should play. Best case they are just vehicles for advertisements but worst case they are colluding to manipulate the public.

Journalists don't go out randomly on the road to get news, various government departments, public organizations and businesses reach out and brief reporters. 'News' comes to them. Their power has tradionally come from having exclusive access to eyeballs which could fund having more reporters and thus 'more news' but that has become irrelevant with the internet.

I don't think people are willing anymore to pay for briefings from various public departments and private businesses with some opinion thrown in. If it comes free, they may choose to consume it for amusement but as a business model or a pillar of democracy it seem the 'press' has challenges and 'news' itself is going to need defining to give it value. And as citizens we need to find new modes of accountability for democracy because the press can't deliver it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of & compares decently against a post on how people deal with the media in China: [https://medium.com/@xuhulk/watching-the-election-from-the- po...](https://medium.com/@xuhulk/watching-the-election-from-the-post-truth- future-97a0d66bdcfe)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sometimes Snopes gets it wrong too. Read this article by Kevin Folta: [http://kfolta.blogspot.is/2016/11/snopes-claims-about- glypho...](http://kfolta.blogspot.is/2016/11/snopes-claims-about-glyphosate- in-food.html)

<comment><USER20> ... though they've thankfully already corrected it:

[http://www.snopes.com/monsanto-suppressing-evidence-of- cance...](http://www.snopes.com/monsanto-suppressing-evidence-of-cancerous- herbicide-in-food/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The gist of the article is not that fake news is not the problem, but that people have lost faith in _all_ media, including mainstream media.

> The problem, Binkowski believes, is that the public has lost faith in the > media broadly — therefore no media outlet is considered credible any longer.

So basically, now, people give about as much credence to an established media article as to a social media article - which is a good thing in my opinion, given that established media are no longer vetting their sources as they should, are hypocritical about their opinions, and are instead giving in to the biases that they hold in their own echo chambers. Social media simply provides an alternative, equally biased opinion from the opposite end.

<comment><USER22> >> So basically, now, people give about as much credence to an established media article as to a social media article

"established media articles" are as good as FB hoaxes. Sad but true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would probably be a pretty useful tool to be able to find which sites have published a specific story or fact even if false just to see which news sites are reporting it.

</comment><comment><USER24> if you'll forgive a bit of cynicism, it turns out, in hindsight, that the correct maxim should be: "information wants to be false" ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm not going to comment on the same story twice. I shit, I just did.

</comment><comment><USER26> Snopes always had a heavy liberal bias.

<comment><USER27> Truth always had a heavy liberal bias.

<comment><USER7> Which is false, and why Trump won, even though he's rough-shod, crude, and otherwise not suited to being president.

Most of MSM has a soft-left bias and a lot of it is hard left - and not in the classical 'socialist' manner (i.e. representing working class) - they're now fully onto race and identity issues, and enforcing PC culture.

There was an article in the Guardian today - written by a woman, lambasting how rude and crude and disgusting the male habit of 'stag parties' (UK bachelor parties) are. The comments section (and this is a fairly left wing site) lambasted the author, because were the roles reversed, she'd be chastised, she's never been to a stag, and the female version of stags are equally as bad. But in the Guardian, they need an article every day to hate on white men. Even their readers called them out.

Every day there is an article in the Huffington Post or the Guardian or MSNBC that could very well be in the Onion. They are easily just as bad as anything alt-right. But in the article - only the 'alt right' was mentioned as being of poor quality. Again - this is obvious bias.

Fox News - at least the news items (not the commentary, which is bad) is actually looking reasonable these days, which is shocking to me.

Watch the local news only for 10 days. You'll feel something is 'too normal'. It's relaxing. It's just the news - that's it. Then - when you turn back to cable news - you'll realize how full of spin and ideology it is.

The only reason I watch CNN is to try to grasp what kind of spin they are applying, and why. CNN is soft about it (Fox and MSNBC are blatant), and probably the trickiest, but it's there if you look for it.

<comment><USER28> Local news is pretty terrible for being an informed citizen. For example, people who watch it regularly dramatically overestimate the prevalence of crime in their local communities. This alone probably causes immense human suffering through our injustice system and jails

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When you alter you contradict your own fact checking to include partisan interpretations and equivocation to bolster an agenda, you lose credibility.

Snopes is no longer a wholly credible source for fact checking when they don't stick to facts as stated BY SNOPES. Now I have to suspect every analysis on editorializing. Snopes provides their own custom narrative on judgement re: [http://www.snopes.com/hillary-..](http://www.snopes.com/hillary-..). [snopes.com] - she did laugh, she did plea bargain him out, etc. Don't say false when it's true, but you are trying to meet your own overall conclusion. It really soured me. Yes, the story is basically false, but the fact checking there is factually incorrect by their own measure. Her behavior isn't all that strange among defense attorneys (backpedal apologizing), so whatever.

That being said, the idea of "fake news" is tricky subject when real news can be spun so hard. Facts get blurred when put together in unexpected ways to form a new headline which is almost always to meet some agenda. On the other hand, a news story always starts with a perceived context, so which is more correct? The more factually correct or the more coherent/recent narrative?

<comment><USER30> Your link [http://www.snopes.com/hillary-.](http://www.snopes.com/hillary-.). 404s, FYI.

<comment><USER29> Dunno what happened.

[http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist- lau...](http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed- about-it/)</comment></comment></comment>


big or small, market leader or niche player? - <AUTHOR> http://thingamy.typepad.com/sigs_blog/2006/08/big_or_small_ma.html <comment><AUTHOR> What do you all think?

(Especially about: "...it all hinges on the perception that the ultimate control and efficiency requires resources to be employed or owned. Skip that self-imposed limit...")</comment>


Light Table: 24 Hours to Get Another $7000 in the Kickstarter for Python Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table?ref=history

<comment><USER2> I kind of shocked at how much money he's getting upfront to develop something people haven't even tried yet. I guess a killer demo is a killer demo.

<comment><USER3> "Geeks of the world unite" :-). What's wrong with betting $50 that someone with a little talent can accomplish something big. I'm hoping John Carmack will do a Kickstarter rocket project. SpaceX needs a little more competition.

<comment><USER4> My guess is that John Carmack could kickstart rocket projects with his own checkbook better than we've seen financing from kickstarter.

Rocket projects are _very_ expensive!!

<comment><USER3> Here's one Kickstarter rocket engine project that got funded.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hermesspace/hermes- space...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hermesspace/hermes-spacecraft)

Why not crowd fund a team that builds a Lunar X-Prize entry?

<http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/>

And open source the design, of course.

More down to earth, crowd funding is doing some interesting stuff like helping to get this 3D printer built.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/b9creations/b9creator-a-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/b9creations/b9creator- a-high-resolution-3d-printer?ref=home_spotlight)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a fellow Visual Studio alum, I am sorely disappointed that Chris elected not to include SCREAMING CAPITALIZED MENUS or a superhero mask logo, and is instead focusing on pushing the state of the art in programming tools.

</comment><comment><USER6> All this story is somewhat confusing. In fact, I was pondering about jumping in... Until I found the bit about Python support, what made me grab my wallet. But then, the model here is quite tricky. If not enough people pledge, then I won't get what I want. Then, external funding comes. But somehow it's still crucial that I throw in my couple bucks, just because otherwise the project may not be what I wanted. But if I finally pledge, what do I get in return? Again, it's somewhat confusing. I'm buying a license. But the thing maybe will get open sourced. What is a license to an open source software? What are my incentives to pay for it? Equally, what are the incentives of unknown other people to pay for it? If I can't establish that, I have no idea what are the chances of me getting what I wanted in the first place... Thanks, I'll pass, despite all the enthusiasm I had at an impulse. I just won't put $0.01 into anything that is not clear.

<comment><USER7> I agree. This goes against one of the key principles of Kickstarter: if a project you are funding doesn't get funded you get your money back. It is a difficult problem though. On one hand you don't want to fund half a project but on the other if they wildly exceed their funding goal it would be nice of them to spend the extra money on new features.

<comment><USER8> Kickstarter should implement feature/subproject goals to fix these problems. To illustrate:

Say the main project needs $200k to get funded. This becomes the main target goal. If this is reached, the core is funded and those backers pay up.

Then you have the feature/subproject goals. These are separate counters for those who will only back a project if the feature/subproject will be implemented. So say you need $50k on top of the core goal to support Mac OSX and another $50k to support Linux. Supporters for Mac OSX & Linux support can choose to fund the platform they want directly. That way if the main project hits 200k but Mac OSX and Linux each get $25k each (which in the current setup would probably mean only support for one of them, whichever is listed first), then those separate $25k pots are just dropped as if the project were not funded. That way supporters aren't forced to pay up and get nothing of value in return.

In the case that the core support spills over, say it hits $225k, then the project owner can choose which extra feature to pick up and they will get that donation money (if they pick Mac OSX, they get those donations but the Linux supporters don't have to pay up, and vice-versa).

<comment><USER9> I think very few kickstarter projects (which are primarily works of art) have any utility for this. It seems like quite the feature creep for what really just looks like a project using the model poorly (though effectively).

<comment><USER8> Then how about restricting it to being a feature for design and technology projects? Per their own guidelines and vision, they have very few requirements for these types of projects. Additionally, these "we will support X" type extra goals are seen in a lot of technology projects (software and video games primarily for the "support X operating system" goals) and actually make sense to list as "bonus" goals. So for these types of projects, I think the model isn't being used poorly. Instead, the model is insufficient to properly fund these types of projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chris has YC funding now, so surely he doesn't need another 7k from the Internet to make sure Python support is in.

<comment><USER11> I would argue that Kickstarter funding is basically equivalent to a sale, and dissimilar to angel or venture funding. For one, you don't give up equity for Kickstarter funding.

In general, regardless of how much funding one might have, one would also like to have the maximum dollar value of sales possible. Kickstarter facilitates this both by enabling sales-like revenue in the first place, and by enabling price discrimination. I'd need to learn more about the Kickstarter funding mechanism to understand whether the sales analogy is totally appropriate or just partially so, but it seems to me to be the far better analogy when compared to venture funding.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, and I threw him some dosh because I think that even if it fails horribly this is the kind of tool evolution we need to look in to.

All I'm saying is that it's not like he's going to run out of money to build in Python support.

<comment><USER11> My apologies, I _completely_ misread the title of the post and therefore misunderstood your comment as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is silly. I'm not against funding projects through Kickstarter, but "If we hit $300k, Python will be the third language to be supported out of the gate." sounds almost like an ultimatum. What if they don't hit $300k? Will Ruby be the third language then?

<comment><USER13> Given how close they are, I imagine they'll do Python anyway. It's more a "if we get an extra $100k, then we'll spend your money on hiring developers to have Python support alongside the languages we promised to focus on first".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Those considering this might want to look at larch.

<https://sites.google.com/site/larchenv/new-start-page>

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks like they just crossed $300k around 7:10pm PDT

<comment><USER16> hooray!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This whole discussion is getting out of hand. Light Table is on Kickstarter, because an awful lot of people screamed for it being funded, when they saw the first prototype of this thing.

Now it is on there and all I see everytime it get's up here is people complaining, saying they won't fund because of xyz or don't think it will succeed without blurb. Even better: Some get destructive and say how much better Eclipse or the likes are.

Please stop this shit, don't fund, don't use, don't complain and please don't raise such shitstorms on every single Light Table discussion. Can we probably focus a little on being constructive about projects like this?

</comment><comment><USER18> Another way of framing this is that we don't know what the actual cost of a license will be, and you can get one for $15. Comparatively, Sublime Text 2 is $60 and Textmate is €45.

Even though they say it'll be open source, that doesn't exclude the possibility of a commercial license that could be far more expensive.

Maybe this is a bad argument to make. But if it interests you, $15 isn't a massive expense if you think you'll get a lot out of it.

<comment><USER19> Darn, and here I thought open source projects were supposed to be free. I think the pay what you want model would be appropriate - and I think that may be what Granger hinted at, not sure.

<comment><USER20> _Darn, and here I thought open source projects were supposed to be free._

Well, there's two core parts to open source and free software and neither have much to do with not having to pay for it (though that often is the case). First, there's the availability of source code and second is _free as in freedom, not as in beer_. But we don't yet know what license this will be released under, so we don't know what rights or restrictions may apply. Presumably, by the sounds of the text about Light Table being open source, it will be a standard Free and Open source license (GPL seems most likely to me) and he also says that the paid license will probably apply to prebuilt packaged releases, so if you don't mind building everything yourself, you may well get it for free after all.

 _I think the pay what you want model would be appropriate_

I agree, for Free & Open Source Software, pay what you want seems like a very suitable model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a $15 bet for a product that should at the very least get other people thinking about the potential that exists in the commercial sense for IDEs. Not only that, there's a peer group watching that is very active, very vocal, and will increase the chances something is actually produced.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not against money in any way whatsoever, but, really, you don't do this kind of stuff for cash. You just don't. It should have been done already and the money should be flowing in without kickstarter to YC or other means. You build it, and if it's any good the money will swamp you...

<comment><USER23> Are you opposed to Kickstarter in general? If not, what makes this project different?

<comment><USER22> I am not opposed to anything. Kickstarter included. Kickstarter is inherently against the system and all the classical financial theory as it is known. If you invest in something (even a minuscule amount) you should expect a fraction of the return (small or big). Investors should be rewarded for making the right choice (and punished for making the wrong choice). The only reward for investment is return. This is not about money either - it can be time, effort, or attention.

Kickstarter does not provide enough difference between bad and good choices. You get a t-shirt or nothing. It's an option that nobody would buy in an open market.

This is not necessarily bad. Or good. It's ok. But it is not a market that is in any way fair with respect to capital. And capital does not mean Big Money! Capital means ordinary Joe giving away cash they saved for worse days based on the emotional appeal of something, instead of any rational assessment of its worth.

<comment><USER24> You're completely correct. Where I have trouble with the model is that Kickstarter does not do enough to correct the spread of misinformation concerning the precise character of your "pledge." It's not a donation and it's not an investment; both of those terms beget some serious legal issues. Instead, it's a _purchase of goods_ , namely, the "rewards." So why even refer to these purchased goods as "rewards"? To me, a reward is something extra you get for some unrelated action. For example, you wouldn't refer to groceries as a "reward" for the money you gave to the cashier...

Moreover, there's a secondary issue with the confusion of market norms and social norms. Ostensibly, this project spawned from a passion for programming. Now, however, that passion is unclear, because it seems to be about money, given the quasi-ultimatum for python support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't realized they had changed tiers to include a license in the $15 backing - backed!

</comment><comment><USER26> It's an exciting project and I'd try it if there was Python support (I'm a vim user myself), but the FAQ answer to the open source question really put me off.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious, if they don't hit the 300k needed, will they go back on their word and support python anyway?

<comment><USER28> It does seem a little silly that they're requiring so much more money for a language that obviously has such significant support.

Also, I'm not sure how it would work for people who donated solely in hopes that Python would be supported. Since they've long passed their _actual_ kickstarter funding amount, does that leave ~$100k worth of donors that won't get what they tried to buy, but can't get their money refunded?

They'll probably get the money and we'll never know, but I would be interested to find out how they're planning to handle these issues.

<comment><USER13> Chris programs Clojure, and Light Table's demos have (so far) been about Clojure. It's not a ransom: it's "if we get another $100k, we will spend that money on hiring developers to work explicitly on _this_ feature". It's a notice informing pledgers (is that a word?) about where any extra funding will go.

<comment><USER20> His latest demo actually supported Python, so I think Python support is a given at this stage, regardless of how much money he gets on kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like it, but I'm thinking an open-source clone is going to pop up mighty soon.

<comment><USER30> The author has promised that the core will be open source at launch:

"...the core of Light Table be open sourced once it is launched."

What 'core' means, I have no idea.

They admit that this is an experiment of how business and open source can mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd better like "If we get to $7000 we are doing this a Desktop App", rather than a crap web app.

<comment> Tuna-Fish It's not a web app. They just use webkit as a presentation layer. As do quite a bit of apps these days.</comment></comment>


Follow Up To The Viral Video Post: Dan Wants Another Word - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/24/follow-up-to-the-viral-video-post-dan-wants-another-word/ <comment><USER2> TechCrunch feels spammy now.

Is it clear Tc haven't got payment from that company in exchange for their post?

<comment><AUTHOR> TC has always been spammy. Their editorial is dictated by 'cover who we know, cover who we've invested in' type mentality. Not to mention, MA gives soooo much publicity to PPP and yet he says he despises them. LOL!

Anyway, I'e been reading GigaOM these days.. a lot more balanced view.

<comment><USER3> I haven't noticed them paying undue attention to startups they've invested in. And all reporters cover who they know, in the sense that they put more emphasis on info that comes from trusted sources. In fact TC is probably more open to stories that come in over the transom than the average reporter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, how bad are the TC editor's talking bad of the always good marketers who are only trying to improve the consumers life!</comment>


Amazon CloudWatch: automatic EC2 scaling - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/ <comment><AUTHOR> I feel sorry for all those people selling scaling services on Amazon's platform. I wonder what kind of value-add is next in line, though.</comment>


The Android Developers Union - <AUTHOR> http://www.andevuni.org/

<comment><USER2> I generally don't have a problem with developers having conversations with companies running platforms they're building on, but come on. The sense of entitlement is sickening.

Could android do things better? Sure. But to act as if Google has a responsibility to the developers is a little bit far fetched, IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I think all of these corporations do have a responsibility to create reasonable conditions for developers - but I agree, these demands are quite unrealistic.

Are there any other marketplaces which already grant what's being asked for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate upon which demands are unrealistic?

There are other marketplaces with better conditions - however, these do not come installed with any devices, rendering them fairly useless in terms of profitability.

<comment><USER3> I think some of these demands might make operating a competitive market difficult for Google - particularly open-sourcing their market's code and implementation (Algorithmic Transparency).

Perhaps Google should be encouraged to create a marketplace which provides a better user experience for customers?

In terms of other marketplaces - I strongly believe that the creation of alternatives will lead to major gains for Android as a platform.

If conditions are made more favourable for developers (e.g. lower commission) due to competition, and a choice of marketplaces are provided to customers (with better UX) .. _all_ markets (including Apple's) will eventually need to come into line.

I think it's good you're making your voice heard though.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify - the demand is not the market be open sourced (I too think that is unreasonable at this point) - simply that the bug tracking be done in public.

I don't know if you're an Android user/dev, but the market is AWFUL, and I receive numerous emails PER DAY from customers who have been unable to download because of technical fault in the client or server.

I agree with all of your other comments! A better UX for the customers is a better experience for us developers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just a waste of time, ughh. If you don't like the market - don't use it. There are other markets, or you could create your own.

The sense of entitlement is astounding. They don't force you to use the market, give you tools and everything for free. It's unbelievable. Yes, the markets not perfect, but imho stuff like this is worse and just creates meaningless controversy and wastes everyones time.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it does any harm - people need an opportunity to voice their opinion and to be heard. But I think in this case, some of the demands are pretty unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about letting people from more countries sell applications on the Market?

I know a couple of folks -- long time Mac users and developers who did not want to develop for iOS on moral grounds -- who built some breathtakingly beautiful apps for Android. Simple apps. Prototypes, meant to test the Androidian waters. Beautiful nonetheless. They are currently thinking of moving to iOS because Indian developers can't sell apps on the Market.

I also know people who make spacecargoloads of money selling iOS apps from India. An organization I visited last week wants to build a few iOS applications. They already have a developer license. They considered Android ... for about 30 seconds. They quickly scraped all their Android plans the moment I told them they couldn't sell applications from India.

I see that as a loss for Google.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't believe I still can't purchase apps in the Android app store.. I only use ad-supported apps or free ones.

I would _love_ to spend money on android apps.

But, I live in Iceland. Welcome to 2011.

</comment><comment><USER7> Never let another company step in between you and your customers. American manufacturers learned this and now software development has moved in the same direction. Oh well. There are still plenty of opportunities. We laugh at the demanding tone of this "union," now but I suspect there will be a time when we wish something like this took off.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh come on guys! I thought HN is better then saying 'If you don't like it then don't use it'. Do you really think that this has any value? I don't want to be harsh but since when is this constructive criticism?

If you don't like this post please say WHY you don't like it and give some feedback HOW it would be better.

And now some Feedback to this website. I think it's fair to mention that Developers have to pay 30% of their earnings and getting nearly nothing for it. I mean I'm thanking Google that they are hosting the Android Market but taking 30% for just hosting something isn't fair anyway. They should lower the rate or give some more support to developers.

I really welcome criticism to any platform cause you can grow with it BUT without it you don't know what you are doing wrong, right?

To be honest I'm mostly an iOS developer but I developed already a Android App and successfully put into the Android Market for free.

<comment><USER9> > And now some Feedback to this website. I think it's fair to mention that > Developers have to pay 30% of their earnings and getting nearly nothing for > it.

They avoid having to pay credit card processing fees, which on a cheap app probably eat most of the 30%. They don't have to write their own payment handling code. They don't have to write and host their own download servers. They don't need to worry about things like re-authenticating downloads for users upgrading to a new device. They get their apps listed on the Market and thus have their app be discoverable in the place where most Android users will look for apps. They get access to the other Market infrastructure like in-app purchases and the licensing server.

You think that's not providing any value? Then it seems pretty reasonable to suggest that you switch to the alternative that you think provides better value. After all, Android does allow for alternative app stores and for side loading of apps.

> I mean I'm thanking Google that they are hosting the Android Market but > taking 30% for just hosting something isn't fair anyway.

That's a strange definition of "fair" you have there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This guy should be banned from the Market simply so Google doesn't have to waste oxygen looking at his support requests.

Anyone who takes the time to put together a list of hard-hitting business requests like 'algorithmic transparency' is going to ever, ever, _ever_ have a hit consumer application. The linked list isn't about making more money, it's about ideological purity.

<comment><USER11> OP is responsible for top 5 level apps in several paid categories.

More importantly, one of the grievances is that Google doesn't look at support requests. Like, at all.

<comment><USER12> This is not exactly new behavior for them; it's just a new platform. Gmail and Apps users have dealt with this for years.

Customer service and support continues to be the single biggest thing that Google gets wrong. And I say this as an unabashed Google fanboy in most other respects, at least compared to my immediate colleagues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The current Market provides only very vague guidelines about what is and > isn't acceptable content on the market. Many developers have had their > applications removed without warning, without notice and without > explanation. These rejections have come with no method of appeal.

> We demand that Google strictly codify the rules of the Market, and that any > removals must be accompanied with a complete explanation and reference to > the specific rules violated, and with a formal method for appeal.

Hmm, where have I heard this before?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see much of a problem with the Market. Sure it could be better, but it could be a lot worse. I'd rather have them continue to spend developers' time and energy making Android competitive so we have a market to sell our apps, instead of catering to our every need.

</comment><comment><USER15> "our demands are not met, cease Android development in favor of other more open platforms,"

To other more open, like .... iOS, Windows mobile?? And, please don't say Symbian and Maemo..

<comment><USER5> iOS is more open than Android from where I stand. I live in India. A few months ago, I couldn't purchase Android applications. As of now, I can purchase applications but not sell them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting to me how many of the folks here on Hacker News disparage the developer and back the big corporation. Yay, solidarity!

<comment><USER7> I was thinking the same thing but knew how bad the karma police would punish me for saying it.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I guess it's not perceived as adding anything to the conversation by pointing out that people are acting against their own self interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd just be happy if the market numbers updated more frequently than every couple days. My ad impression stats update in realtime. Why can't my downloads and error stats do the same?

<comment><USER18> Even updating at the same time every day would be nice; then I could add the developer's console to the list of links I read every morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like a bad idea:

The site frames the google-developers as a conflict between enemies, like unions usually do. Neither Apple or Google are getting unreasonable profits from their 30%share as they reinvest more than 90% of this money in infrastructure, as Apple had clarified a lot of times.

If you make a great app, your users win,you win, and Google wins too. I bet they are too much wins for the site creator prejudices and believes. He has the mentality that for someone to win someone has to lose, the "survival" or "fight" mentality.

If you sell a software application over traditional channels like retail expect getting less than 10%, as every intermediary layer doubles the price, e.g that was what the game "Commandos behind the enemy lines" got when Pyro studios gave us a talk. Steam, Amazon, Apple, O'Reilly or Google are very good opportunities for direct sales today.

I'm not going to talk about the entitlement tone because other people had done already, but the "demands" I see are not the main problems Android has today, for example I don't see "Adding support for more countries in the world, like Apple does". He is focused on getting more share of the cake instead of making a bigger one, IMHO this is a bad strategy.

</comment><comment><USER20> A union has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with collective bargaining. When parties negotiate as a group, they can get a better deal. The drawback is that you must dilute your own interests with those of everyone else. But when all members have roughly the same interests, it's worthwhile.

All this site has to say is that the new curated app platforms are creating a huge power imbalance, and the way to even the field is to unionize. All the ideology just muddies the water and leads to endless bickering.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's missing from this post is the better Android Market app and ecosystem he designed and developed.. The only limiting factor is his willingness to educate himself.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are there any online petitions that have actually worked?

<comment><USER3> I think the biggest effect is often being able to start (or add weight to) a conversation within a wider community (eg. specialist or mainstream media). In that respect, I think petitions can be an effective part of a marketing campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > We demand that Google renegotiate this rate, either to a much lower > percentage (preferably, no percentage) or give us some value for our money > in terms of Market curation and support.

So either lower the price or add multi week review process followed by arbitrary denials?

</comment><comment><USER24> regarding the first point about 32% take, below is my cut'n'paste from the same issue on the Apple platform. At least on Android you can sideload. Summary: "If you want to do business, you have to pay for services. Deal with it".

If you think otherwise, well, there's a market full of screaming developers with little business experience, and this is the 'home of startups' - there's a startup idea to capitalise on.

\---- I don't like Apple's business practises and never have, but this 70/30 split furore is hilarious to someone who has worked in retail and supply before. It is entirely normal for a retailer (apple) to take this kind of split in the retail price and the supplier/wholesaler to take 70%. In the retail industry I worked in, the retailer took a 35-40% portion.

This split is yawningly normal in retail. What's not normal is the huge numbers of "one-person" wholesalers... who have very little in the way of business experience and see that split as a "tax" rather than payment for a service.

<comment><USER3> But to play devil's advocate; it's not the same as retail - Apple don't buy stock and sell it on.

Apple (and Google) provide a space to sell Apps. They operate more like a department store which rents space to individual concessions.

I don't think a department store would necessarily take 30% of all sales made within it.

<comment><USER25> The average markup for a department store is 50% to 80%. Meaning that they take 33% to 44% of sales.

<comment><USER3> Maybe when the store is owned by one company, but is this true for a concession operating within a department store?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regarding item #4: Increased Payment Options

When the official Android market went live, you can now buy apps over the browser, then even download to your phone...so this is a bit out of date.

<comment><USER27> He may be referring to more payment options - like PayPal. I get emails all the time from people asking if they can pay with PayPal.

EDIT: And until you've sold apps in the Android Market, you don't know the pain that is the infamous RED "Payment Declined" message in Google Checkout.

<comment><USER26> I probably know the pain. I've been putting food on my table since 2009 solely from Android app development. And not for contracts either, just me vs. the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's ironic that when I click to expand some of the demands, Chrome 11.x consistently crashes and shows the "Aw Snap!" message. It's almost like they intended to hide the truth from me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why 32% and not 30%? Is there an extra fee I'm not seeing? I have one paid app in the Market (9 sales so far!), and I'm pretty sure I got exactly 70% of the sales.

</comment><comment><USER29> What is market curation exactly?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a union for iPhone developers too?

<comment><USER30> Pretty much every one of those points are applicable to Apple. However, I don't think it's a problem as long as most iOS developers are making a lot more money on iOS than Android.

Not like anything's going to come of this lame petition anyway. If you're not making money as an Android dev, stop developing on Android. Online petitions are great for making people feel like they've actually done something, without actually making them put in any more effort than a button click.

<comment><USER3> " _Pretty much every one of those points are applicable to Apple. However, I don't think it's a problem as long as most iOS developers are making a lot more money on iOS than Android._ "

Even so, there's not a cat in hell's chance than Apple would ever submit to 'union' pressure. I don't think Google can realistically be expected behave differently.

<comment><USER31> When the original iPhone came out, the only way to deliver apps was via the web. Developers wanted an iPhone SDK, and that's exactly what they got in subsequent versions, which led to the App Store's success.

When Apple came out with the "no non-Objective-C" clause aka section 3.3.1 lots of people demanded that it be changed. Apple eventually relented too.

So... Apple _does_ respond to feedback.

<comment><USER30> The clause was _not_ simply "no non-Objective-C". It allowed for C/C++/Obj-C development as long as Xcode was the tool used to produce the binary.

If they had banned C and C++, a _lot_ of games would have had to disappear, considering how many games use external libraries. Not to mention a lot of non-game apps, like those that use the SQLite package (raw, not via Core Data).

<comment><USER32> A lot of games would have been banned either way e.g. use of Lua scripting or any 3rd party framework for cross-platform dev.

<comment><USER30> Right, but that was because of a kind of prohibition on embedded scripting runtimes in general, and has nothing to do with C or C++ specifically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So don't use the Market?

<comment><USER3> Android developers actually have a choice (unlike iPhone developers) - multiple markets exist. Competition between markets could plausibly create better conditions for developers.

EDIT: eg. Verizon's Android Market (V CAST) and Amazon's upcoming marketplace.

<comment><USER34> I feel like this would be theoretically better for middleman publishers but much worse for non-technical end users. I have to change a setting then download an app and set up an Amazon account just so I can download another app? Too confusing.

Also, the Amazon store has, as I recall, the interesting caveat of the prices all being set by Amazon in the first place. You don't even get to decide what your app is worth, which a lot of developers wouldn't care for I suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where is the request for allowing worldwide developers to sell apps ?</comment>


Show HN: I made a simple job scheduling tool - <AUTHOR> https://hookless.co <comment><USER2> > Hookless calls your back at the precise time you want

you*

also, i imagine a lot of billing will be fractional cents. do you count up to the nearest penny?

<comment><AUTHOR> No we round the sum. So as long as your runs each month are lower than 10000 you pay nothing.</comment></comment>


Capitalism, Socialism or a hybrid? - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/part-1-capitalism-socialism-or-a-hybrid-e690229540b4 <comment><USER2> Why not declare our life requirements and let a computer decide on these constraints?

</comment><comment><USER3> Balance the competing tyrannies

\- individual / majority

\- class

\- age

\- ability

\- and many more

The messy reality of balancing interests tends not to fit to any impossibly idealistic -ism, but somewhere in the middle between the unworkable utopian extreme goal-posts of libertarian-anarchism and communism. Call it democratic socialism or socialism, what works seems to be a hybrid of many ideals.

Find out more: Economic Updates by Richard Wolff on YT</comment>


Knuth and Plass line-breaking Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://defoe.sourceforge.net/folio/knuth-plass.html

<comment><USER2> I made a little Knuth/Plass experiment using canvas and opentype.js here: [http://kevinmahoney.co.uk/document- experiment/](http://kevinmahoney.co.uk/document-experiment/)

I find pagination much easier to read than scrolling.

<comment><USER3> Very nice. Have you compared your approach to simply enabling css-hyphens in eg: Firefox? The chrome team apparently doesn't believe in hyphenation, but for me just having a sane column width, normal _left_ justified text -- and enabling hyphenation does wonders for the readability.

<comment><USER2> Hyphenation is nice, but the Knuth/Plass line breaking really helps too, even with left justified text. The 'first fit' algorithms browsers tend to use can leave some ugly and confusing artefacts.

<comment><USER3> > even with left justified text

Just to clarify: Do you mean just breaking on whole words, with no hyphenation looks better with Knuth/Plass than typical browser line breaking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat related, VPRI discovered that the could get away with rather simple algorithms for typesetting, if letters were allowed to "place themselves" relative to other letters. I first saw it in the 2011 STEPS report, I believe:

[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf) (Look for the "Text Objects" headline)

And I think this essay is a write-up that focuses more on just that part (the STEPS report is on the entire system):

[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2010001_pobjects.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2010001_pobjects.pdf)

I haven't really experimented with neither TeX/Knuth or the approach from STEPS -- but while java isn't all that well suited to object oriented programming (As in: allocating a full object for each letter) -- it might be worth taking a look at. If nothing else, RAM is still getting cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone aware of any line-breaking algorithm which penalises for rivers or typesetting algorithm which adjusts spacing to compensate for it.

I'm interested that rivers are such a concern of manual typesetting but I have never heard mention of it in typesetting algorithms.

<comment><USER5> It is a very difficult problem to solve see [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4507/avoiding- rivers-...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4507/avoiding-rivers-in- successive-lines-of-type). With TeX most of the time you will not see any rivers.

<comment><USER6> I understand that it is hard to integrate into TeX. I don't see how the general problem is hard to solve. Detecting rivers is not hard (maybe hard to do optimally) and adding a penalty accordingly is all the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm needs to avoid rivers.

<comment><USER7> Knuth-Plass is fundamentally a dynamic programming algorithm that depends on being able to say "If in the future I determine that there is a line break at point X, I know for certain that the way I should have broken the paragraph up until X is B", where B depends only on information before X.

If you're trying to avoid rivers, then based on information after point X you might find that your sequence of breaks B wasn't actually the best after all, because it ended up interacting badly with later spaces and producing rivers. So you can no longer prove that you've achieved a global optimum of the penalty function.

Of course you may be willing to take this hit and settle for non-optimum line- breaking (and you still might do better than an algorithm that doesn't take rivers into account at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tangent: For those interested in the story... [http://genius.com/The-brothers- grimm-the-frog-king-or-iron-h...](http://genius.com/The-brothers-grimm-the- frog-king-or-iron-henry-annotated/)

</comment><comment><USER9> For a page on typesetting algorithms, by someone writing a typesetting system, this web page is typesetting garbage. It's not possible to increase the font size and have it wrap to the current window width. I'm stuck with microscopic, unreadable text.

<comment><USER10> This page is using default font size (as in not overriden via styles). To me it looks the same size as on HN. Also zoom function works in Chrome and font size is increased when zooming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we somehow get this for MS Word and replace its justify algorithm?

<comment><USER3> I rarely use MS Words, but it might help to simply turn on hyphenation? Eg: [http://wordribbon.tips.net/T006825_Hyphenating_Your_Document...](http://wordribbon.tips.net/T006825_Hyphenating_Your_Document.html)

That said, pretty layout and MS Word isn't really something I expect to ever see...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> uBlockOrigin blocks this. Possibly a better host exists. Just sayin'.</comment>


Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor - <AUTHOR> http://praguemonitor.com/2018/10/26/pirate-zden%C4%9Bk-h%C5%99ib-be-prague-mayor <comment><USER3> Any Czech person around to chim in and shed some light on the implications?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - <USER2> Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are _literally_ falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have to be soon redone and zero construction of much needed infrastructure, the public transport is way worse than it was, taxi mafia is still the same, they caused a huge housing bubble... And on top of that Krnacova calls Prague people who don't like it "whiners", repeatedly and on purpose - she even recently confirmed that it's exactly what she wanted to say.

The major implication for the whole country is that at least Prague citizens are absolutely fed up with ANO - that is important because they dominated the whole country politics for the last 2 periods. Today there are 2 other major parties - ODS (Občansko-demokratická strana, Civic Democracy Party) and the Pirate party. These are the three winners of the recent parliament vote - parliament politics affect local politics a lot in the Czech Republic. If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. There are basically no other options - the remaining "major" (bigger than others but has almost no influence) party in the country is a racist one. Other previously major parties such as ČSSD (social democracy), KDU-ČSL (the Roman-Catholics) and KSČM (literal communists) have fallen down significantly over last 2 periods, most probably because of their cooperation with ANO.

Pirates have a good track record as far as local politics go, but it's a relatively new party and they only participated in smaller cities/villages so far (on top of their recent entry to parliament). This person is completely unknown. Let's see.

<comment> saiya-jin Basically the problem of whole east europe (although we like to call ourselves central europe) - too much crap left over communist rule and twisted mentality (ie everybody for themselves, screw the rest). Extremely rich individuals openly influencing politics, laughing at the cameras and enjoying being in spotlight.

Prague is a beautiful city to visit, be it for a weekend or a week. But living there long term sucks - most of the Prague apart from historical centre is properly fugly, as soviet-style architecture is still all over the place, cramped high rise residential areas with high criminality, little nature around (major mountains are > 500km away, sea even further), Czech love to constantly complain and moan about almost everything (it really gets to you after some time). Gap between rich (ie IT workers, managers) and rest of population is big and widening, people constantly hate politics but vote an a-hole after a-hole for last 20 years. So rich often discuss how to shield themselves financially from the rest of country, politics and economy as much as possible - not an indication of paradise. Half of the country is xenophobic and/or racist (although ie Roma question is a complex one).

I've worked there for couple of years, to be successful in IT was trivial due to constant lack of senior people, from what I heard its even worse now due to massive off/near shoring of multinationals. When looking back, moving away was one of the best decisions of my life and major step up in quality of life.

Of course there are positive aspects, just like everywhere. Professionals (I can judge IT) are smart and work hard, beer is the best there is (for me) and as mentioned its a great starting point for career. There are people who consider it the best place for them. Interestingly, none I know in this category lived abroad for longer to properly compare.

<comment><USER5> > Czech love to constantly complain and moan about almost everything

Funny, so do all ex-Yugoslavs, and I understand Russians do too. Could be some kind of Slav thing. Or communist :-)

<comment><USER6> Trust me, when it comes to complaining about trivial things, you can't beat the Dutch. They live in this incredibly well run country but still complain about everything all the time. It's crazy. Oh, wait...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who are the partners in his coalition ? Left ? Moderate or radicals ? Greens ? Others ?

<comment><USER4> Basically anyone because the point here is to get ANO out of the government.

No radicals though. They're moderate left, but they cooperate with parties on the right as well. Greens in the Czech Republic are radical communists.

<comment><USER8> Greens in Czech Republic are no radical communists, only radical fascists call them this way.

<comment><USER9> [https://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/na-namesti-republiky-se- ko...](https://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/na-namesti-republiky-se-kona- demonstrace-proti-kapitalismu/1551807)

Uhuh.

<comment><USER10> At least they _have_ a proper left.... We could use a lot more of this in the US.

<comment><USER11> Greens do not hold any political function AFAIK (edit: they still have a few senators). In the past few elections they usually gained only around 3 % of votes.

Our 'proper' left parties that have some power are those old-school leftist parties that are pro-Russian. The irony is that they are usually quite fond of Trump.

<comment><USER10> Discourse is a political function.

And I sincerely wish our Green Party had ever gotten 3%.

I'm not sure what you consider left but I'd hazard a guess we disagree based on your comment.

<comment><USER11> You do not consider Communist party to be left?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is life in Prague for English-only speakers who want to relocate for a few months?

The city itself is so beautiful.

<comment><USER4> There is a huge expat community, almost everyone speaks English and IT jobs are open to everyone and will help you with visa and sometimes even relocation. I worked in a company with hundreds of foreigners, they all like it here.

<comment><USER13> Prague is a beautiful city and they were generally friendly to me and didn't mind speaking English. Some don't and sign language helped when I traveled. But they knew I was a tourist (I was a brown Indian guy who is not exactly the type there ;)). One thing I found surprising for being an European city is how hard it is to find any kind of food past 9 PM. Maybe I picked a neighborhood like that to stay? Also, stores didn't bother following any sort of schedule :). Overall,I'd love to live in Prague and experience more of what the city has to offer. And the train ride from Germany to Prague is so awesome!

<comment><USER14> Try finding a restaurant in the Netherlands past 9PM. Past 0100 it gets nigh impossible until the next morning 8-9am (6am if you only want a banana or cookie from a train station).

I take it it's different in India?

<comment><USER15> Really? This is a gross generalization, but in any large US city there are places open 24/7 for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER17> Good luck Zdeněk !

</comment><comment><USER18> We will see if they will attack him as it happened in Rome with a similar new major from outside (5 stelle). There was a huge disinfo campaign to discredit her.

Not only ANO is worried, also all the established parties have all incentives to throw dirt at him to keep the pirates out of more important political roles.

This is very exciting news.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I am afraid it will be constant backstabbing by his coalition partners.</comment></comment>


How to Setup two Finger Scroll on Ubuntu touch pad - <AUTHOR> http://mixeduperic.com/linux/ubuntu-1004-how-to-setup-two-finger-scroll-on-laptop-touch-pad.html Simple How to article on setting up two finger scroll on your laptop running Ubuntu.<p>http://mixeduperic.com/linux/ubuntu-1004-how-to-setup-two-finger-scroll-on-laptop-touch-pad.html <comment><USER2> I was just looking for how to do this.

I've got two finger scroll working on a few year old sony and, as far as I can recall, switching it on required clicking a radio button in the "Mouse" preferences.

In my new Samsung netbook that option is greyed out, only allowing touchpad side-scroll. Yet this works.

The samsung/linux enthusiast site where I got the PPA for all the other idiosyncratic bits seemed to suggest that this was somehow faked, rather than true two finger scrolling and that it wouldn't be worth the bother. Seems okay so far.</comment>


How to Get Paid for Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-to-get-paid-for-open-source-6e13bb238a7f <comment><USER2> Spamming at least one private telegram channel for upvotes without contributing anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> very interesting approach to dual license based on use!

</comment><comment><USER4> this is cool - i like the mission driven angle</comment>


Top Five Singularity Concerns  - <AUTHOR> http://www.33rdsquare.com/2012/01/top-five-singularity-concerns.html

<comment><USER2> These aren't a list of concerns that most AGI researchers would put forth: they are the concerns of a fanboy base, who tend to think of the singularity as some kind of really, really swank PS3.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is very interesting to me how the 'singularity culture' talks about the singularity as if it is a given for our future. This seems very un-scientific, as they are betting on something to happen, without proper evidence or even solid ideas on what will happen. Just that it will, and it's going to be great!

<comment><USER4> The singularity seems, to me, to be based on a few simple ideas:

1) There is nothing supernatural about thought.

2) Investigation will lead us to understand it well enough to emulate it.

3) Once we can do this we will be be able to do it better than people.

4) Once this happens it will be able to improve itself better than we can.

5) Once this happens, we have no idea what will happen next.

2/3 are arguable, but don't seem unreasonable to me. The rest seem obviously true.

<comment><USER3> These ideas seem reasonable to me, however when I talk about 'singularity culture' I refer to those who think that the singularity will be the end of the human race, will 'save the world', will be a new species of humans on this planet, will be the rise of machines who enslave us, is the realization of 2012 and so on. These ideas are going around non-technical circles and they _believe_ them.

<comment><USER4> Oh yes, the people that have ideas about what will happen afterwards, or who believe that it will save us all seem very odd to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Maps Incognito Is Launching for Google Maps Android Users - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/maps/thread/18141335 <comment><AUTHOR> "When you turn on Incognito mode, your activity in Maps—like the places you search or get directions to—won't be saved to your Google Account."

I was wondering how sensitive my physical trail on Maps is when compared to my web trail on Chrome. Turns out my online presence is way more sensitive than my physical presence in a location.</comment>


Ever left a company because of tech stack direction? - <AUTHOR> I recently joined a company that, during the interview process, was reassessing their tech stack and planning to shift in a different direction, both front and backend. I was hired to help with that.
During the interview process, we talked about future state architecture and it sounded like they wanted to move into exciting directions.
Alas, months into the job, they've decided to move toward more legacy frameworks and less-exciting languages for business reasons (hirability, establishes technologies, etc). I understand the decision but feel like it won't help forward me career like I thought it would have prior to joining.
Has anybody else experienced this and did you end up staying with the company or move on? <comment><USER2> No. If a candidate gave that as their main reason for changing jobs I would take it as a bad sign.

Companies hire people to solve business problems and add value, not so they can use their preferred languages or tools. Your "stack" counts for a lot less than what you've accomplished. A professional programmer resume lists accomplishments in terms of problems solved and value added, not tech "skills" in terms of languages and frameworks.

Learning a business domain, solving real problems, working with a team, and understanding trade-offs count for more for your career growth.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, the tech stack is the last thing I consider about a job--within reason. I wouldn't consider a job where the decision was to, say, move towards Flash, or something. But even that would be as much about the other things I care about as Flash specifically.

The most important parts of a job are the team you're working with and direct management you have and the kinds of problems you get to solve.

If those things are all good, the specific stack doesn't matter. You'll grow and develop as a technologist, and hopefully in a sustainable way. As long as the choice is defensible, I wouldn't care about it at all. If it's completely idiotic (like Flash would be today), then that says a lot about the quality of management and team you'll be working with.

On the face of it, it may not be a big deal. But one thing to be wary of is a bait and switch. If you were specifically hired to do something that was a big part of your decision to take the job, and then all of that goes away, that's a bit of a flag, regardless of how acceptable a legacy decision might be on its own.

I would try and figure out that piece of the puzzle: did the hiring manager manipulate you to get you to take the job? OR was this a decision that was still largely in progress and you're coming to grips with some slightly wishful thinking?

One of those is a legitimate problem. The other is possibly some excitement and enthusiasm that was a little misplaced.</comment>


Brwanjeya – Mills Games Online - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.PixelGroup.brwanjeya <comment><AUTHOR> If you love board games like mills, you'll adore our board game of the week Brwanjeya. We reviewed this ultra-fun game few days ago, and we are still playing it. It is a well executed Mills game and Nine Men's Morris game can be played in single, 2 player and multiplayer online. You can easily play it on your local network and via internet.</comment>


Fujitsu harvests low-potassium lettuce grown in semiconductor plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/13/national/science-health/fujitsu-harvests-low-potassium-lettuce-grown-plant-clean-room <comment><USER2> I find it more interesting that they are growing this lettuce in a completely artificial environment at scale. One step toward a closed loop habitat but at a potentially larger scale than simple aquaponics installations. I'm still waiting for a 'high rise' farm, basically a multi-story hydroponics installation which can produce more food per surface acre than an existing farm can. If you can master the pollination cycle and control pests through environmental controls you have the basis for a sort of 'super-organic' type of farm.

<comment><USER3> Growing more food per acre in an indoor hydroponic farm is a reality today. The problem is your romaine from that hydro farm down the road is $3.99, and from the traditional farm shipped across the country is $1.99. Lights are a big part of the equation. Most plants need 10+ hours of sunlight a day, so even if you put the plants on a rotisserie you still have to supplement with artificial light ($$$). The amount of water and land you save is immense, however, the water and land cost of putting a farm in an urban area counters that.

Pollination is easy - bees. Even basement/garage growers will use bees to pollinate. That said, you don't need bees in this example as you never want lettuce (or any leafy green) to flower. You can control the flowering with reduced temp and different light temperatures, too. In tomato/pepper/fruiting plants, you'll need manual pollination or a beehive in your hydro-warehouse.

Re: super-organic - Most hydroponic growing is not organic. By nature of adding nutrients (fertilizer, salts, ph adjustments) that replace what is found in soil means hydroponics is traditionally not organic. There are organic hydroponics going on (I am not aware of a large-scale one) and they are NOT clean nor bug free, given the nature of making organic nutrients (they smell like shit, really, as most are compost or something-rotting-based).

<comment><USER2> Do you have any links/references for a large scale hydroponics operation? This was the last significant piece I read ([http://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/dirt- free-farming-will-hydro...](http://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/dirt-free-farming- will-hydroponics-finally-take-off/)) which was from last June that talked primarily about the costs.

There are externalities that are increasing the cost of 'land' farming, among them water availability, GMO concerns, pest control, and land/labor costs. At some point robot harvested, hydroponically grown, vegetables will cap the cost of producing food that way. And if the 'old fashioned' way will become more expensive than that.

The key difference in cost between the two is, as you point out, the cost of energy. Using 'free' solar power versus using grow lights, changes the equation fairly dramatically. But one of the possible futures is that humans will master the ability to harvest more abundant energy. In so doing, I believe humans will have changed the economics of hydroponics dramatically, and things like pest control and labor cost advantages will swing over to the hydroponics side.

<comment><USER4> These guys are large scale and down your way: [http://www.viridisaquaponics.com/](http://www.viridisaquaponics.com/)

They have 8 acres of greenhouse in Watsonville, and a producing some really impressive quantities of greens: more than 10 times per acre per year over conventional. They are aquaponic, which means they are growing both vegetables and fish (mostly sturgeon in their case). I have a friend with lots of traditional ag experience who visited them recently, and he seemed close to proclaiming they were the path to the future. I'll join you if you wrangle a tour.

<comment><USER2> Nice! I've 'reached out' to them, to use the vernacular, to see if they are open to informal tours. I'd love to see the control systems they use in a place like that. And understand where their current challenges are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps farmers could follow in the footsteps of semiconductor design companies and go fabless if this trend establishes itself...

</comment><comment><USER6> What a great way to extend the usefulness of an obsolete foundry!

I'm guessing that they're using hydroponics and carefully regulating the mineral supply to achieve the desired potassium levels.

</comment><comment><USER7> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7749595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7749595)

They grow that stuff for people with kidney problems, they have to follow a diet that is low in potassium.

<comment><USER8> Indeed we do - though my advice from the renal dieticians didn't mention lettuce - will have to ask at my next checkup.

Ironically when I aske about the lo-salt versions of things like soy sauce she commented no the crap they put in to replace salt is worse :-)

<comment><USER9> I've been seeing nephrologists (some of the best in the country) for almost a decade, and none of them has ever been remotely useful in planning out a diet. Neither have the nutritionists they've sent me to. They all know lots about _nutrition_ , but they don't know anything about _food_. They also get really cagey/evasive when you try to ask for quantifiable guidelines -- like "tell me how many milligrams of potassium to stay under per day".

And don't get me started on hospital food. (Short version: my "renal diet" at Cedars Sinai was just half-portions of the regular diet -- including half a banana, and a 4-oz container of orange juice. No joke.)

Watching serving sizes is the trick, because "suggested" serving sizes are usually totally unrealistic. People will tell you to avoid spinach like the plague because they're used to thinking of it as a crapton of leaves boiled down to a few spoonfuls. But they might make you so paranoid that you avoid a sandwich that has three leaves of fresh spinach on it, despite the fact that there's more potassium in the bread! And conversely, they might not mention potatoes, because the suggested serving size is so small, but you'll get a ton of potassium if you eat a giant plate of french fries (potato skins even more so).

Some things nobody told me:

1) A baked potato has twice as much potassium as a banana.

2) So does an avocado.

3) Some fancy grains, like quinoa, are reasonably high in potassium.

4) Foods claiming to be "a good source of potassium" aren't always the most potassium-rich; that's just marketing, and tells you more about the calories per unit potassium than it does about the potassium per serving.

5) The USDA nutritional database is one of the most useful things our government has ever done: [http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list](http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This pushes home the idea that to have food you essentially need energy. If electricity were abundant enough it could even make sense to grow vegetables close to people in cities, perhaps in the same buildings.

<comment><USER11> It's almost all energy... food, electricity, clean water, a lot of recycling options, even hydrocarbons could be synthesized from atmospheric carbon if you have cheap enough energy. The only exception is atoms, and even for many of those, if energy was cheap enough, we can just go get some more of the desirable atoms, like the rare earths, from space. Civilization is ultimately all about the energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does the potassium get reduced by being grown in a clean room?

<comment><USER7> Its in the article, but somewhat hidden:

"No pesticide is used and because the lettuce is produced in a clean room, it stays fresh for about two weeks when stored at 10 degrees Celsius or lower."

They don't need to use pesticides because of the clean room, which in turn makes for lower potassium content in the lettuce.

<comment><USER13> > it stays fresh for about two weeks

That's hardly special. I've stored lettuce that I bought commercially for 4 weeks and it was fine. So that's 4 weeks plus however long it took to get to me. (I bought too much by mistake.)

<comment><USER14> Was that at 10°C or higher?

<comment><USER13> No, it was lower. In a fridge.

<comment><USER14> Then it sounds like better preservation would be expected. The article says it lasts two weeks at 10°C. I have no idea how exceptional that is as I've never knowingly stored lettuce at 10°C, but it probably doesn't last as long as lettuce as refrigerator temperatures.

<comment><USER15> Http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33540/does-a-head-of-lettuce- really-need-to-be-refrigerated gives a table showing that leaf lettuce at 10 degrees C evaporates only about 30% faster than leaf lettuce at 5 degrees C. That difference isn't that large.

It also gives head lettuce at best two weeks at five degrees centigrade. So, two weeks at 10 degrees seems a good result.

On the other hand, the article says _about_ two weeks; they might mean 'ten days plus', and 'freshness' may be highly subjective (I bet there is a standard for measuring lettuce freshness)

<comment><USER3> Humidity is a huge component of lettuce lifespan. You can't just plop lettuce into your fridge near 0c as it is quite dry (hence why fridges have crispers that maintain higher humidity for veggies, and are selectable to low humidity for fruits).

Frankly, if you're not using a head of lettuce in 2 weeks something is wrong with your eating and/or buying decision making :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recall there were a couple fabs built in Colorado that are not on Wikipedia's page of currently operating fabs. Who wants to grow... lettuce?

</comment><comment><USER17> I read through the article a couple times - anybody figure out why they are growing lettuce in a clean room?

<comment><USER18> _No pesticide is used and because the lettuce is produced in a clean room, it stays fresh for about two weeks when stored at 10 degrees Celsius or lower._

<comment><USER17> More detail here: [http://global.ofweek.com/news/Japan-s-chip-fabs-turn-to- grow...](http://global.ofweek.com/news/Japan-s-chip-fabs-turn-to-growing- lettuce-12257)

 _Fujitsu Semiconductor and Toshiba Corp have both started to grow greens and believe the tightly-controlled conditions produce superior plants that can be tuned in terms of trace elements and therefore for taste or for specialized diets to meet health-care needs._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those unaware, Yen has no subdivisions, so think of ¥1 as 1¢ or 1p, and ¥100 as $1/€1/£1.

<comment><USER20> $1 maybe, but not £1. ¥100 is worth £0.58 - quite a big difference.

<comment><USER21> I think the GP just meant that ¥450-500 isn't as much as it might sound like</comment></comment></comment>


Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: 1918 Flu - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 <comment><USER2> This is ridiculous. Any economic effect of the 1918 flu is overpowered by the end of WWI.

And the 1918 flu was followed by one of the most prosperous periods in history: the roaring 20s.

The response to the 1918 flu was also not very centralized. Different states and cities did different things, a strategy which is today being deplored by the media and certain segments of the population. Since the response is significantly more centralized today (entire states being shutdown, which has not happened before), I'm not sure you can draw the same conclusions. It's one thing to have one shutdown city in a country full of working cities. It's quite another thing to have them all shut down at the same time, as well as the entire world.

<comment><USER3> That's why the results are in relative terms. A city or state that is slow to react will do worst than a faster or more effective one _in relative terms_.

About shutting down everything, yes. If absolutely no one works, then who drives the trucks. But that's not what is happening today either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The very title of this paper suggests a deeply flawed conclusion. A sample size of one pandemic, from 100 years ago even, is used to generalize a conclusion that "Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not". Sure, there were multiple cities with varying levels of interventions, but you can only conclude that in the 1918 economy for that specific pandemic, the health interventions were good for the economy at that point in time.

I also agree with the other commenter that it may be better to see some research prior to December 2019.

<comment><USER5> Are you implying that we can't draw conclusions from limited data sets? Surely there must be some value in looking at the last event, even if it was 100 years ago...

<comment><USER2> You have to think about confounding factors when considering only one event. The effects of the 1918 flu are completely overshadowed by the end of WWI. Thus you can't really draw many conclusions.

<comment><USER6> You can't control for that effect?

<comment><USER7> There's no control group for a single event.

<comment><USER8> They are comparing different cities that both went through WWI ending, so I think it would require a reason to believe WWI would affect different cities differently to be a threat to validity. Certainly one could imagine there might be such reasons and it is worth discussing them, but presumably that would require looking at the specific cities in the paper which I presume no one here (including me) has done.

<comment><USER2> But it's not quite fair to compare two different cities in an economy where only some cities are shut down. If New York shuts down but can still purchase goods from LA, then that's a remarkably different situation than the entire country being shut down, which is essentially what is going on now.

You cannot study the cities in isolation. They are not self-sufficient economies. It's possible that one city was able to isolate because it depended on the other cities to be working to receive its goods and to jump-start its economy after the isolation. These effects cannot be ignored, and are substantially different than today, when it's not just that most states are shut down but also that most countries are shut down (well the ones of economic significance, anyway).

<comment><USER6> But if the effect of WWI across different cities is random, and not correlated with the explanatory variables, then the study can still work despite WWI affecting the target variable. It'll just be part of the error term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any papers coming to a similar conclusion that were released prior to December 2019? Just in case there's some bias from the current moment. Not saying there's necessarily any evidence of such in this one, but it'd be interesting to compare, at least.

<comment><USER10> Well, we are currently running a global experiment to find out whether it is better for the economy to be negligent or have a robust public heath response during a pandemic. We'll know soon.

<comment><USER11> Different economies have different amount of money to loose. You can't compare apples to oranges.

In China, which has way more to loose from the real economy going down, nobody is running to sell their business now. A factory during a crisis, is still a factory.

Now look how many people have cashed out in USA already, despite US economy being much more virtual, and service based, and supposedly more resilient.

We are much more likely see whose economy is more resilient, and not whose immediate response was better.

Panic factor? Chinese are by far more freaked out now than most Americans. Even now, Americans trust their government more than Chinese to CPC.

Illiquid assets factor? No, you can sell a factory in China way faster than you can sell a typical dotcom in America.

It's really just Chinese still looking up to seek more fortunes more than American business people do, and America being way more vulnurable to panic buy/sells.

And it's only the last point above, where an immediate response matters: In a society more susceptible to mass panic among the business elites, you can reduce the impact by increasing their confidence by showing competent early response.

<comment><USER12> It's not clear to me why a 'service-based' economy should be expected to weather a pandemic better than a 'factory-based' economy. In the plants I've worked in, you could clock in, do your work, then go home without ever talking to anybody. The work was not particularly incompatible with social/physical distancing. On the other hand, face-to-face human interaction is central to much of the 'service-economy.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An ounce of prevention...

</comment><comment><USER14> when did the spanish flu become the 1918 flu? was it in the past few days?

<comment><USER15> 1918 Flu is a more accurate name and you seem to not have had any trouble with the meaning, so what's the problem?

<comment><USER4> The problem is that it was being referred to as the Spanish Flu up until some people in the media took offense to Trump's coining of the phrase "Chinese Flu", so Spanish Flu needs to go if we're not wanting to look like hypocrites.

<comment><USER16> I don't see how striving for consistency by avoiding nation-shaming labels is a "problem". Trying to not be hypocritical is generally viewed as a good thing.

<comment><USER12> Revising terminology seems to run contrary to a strive for consistency.

<comment><USER16> Tell that to World War I

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And now the academy desperately tries to save face, as the COVID-19 pandemic starts to wind down, and the consequences of all the panic _caused by the academy_ start to play out. This year will be remembered as the end of modern academia.

<comment><USER18> Is it winding down? Most of the US seems to be at early days of exponential growth still. Only a handful of countries seem to have things under control and even those places still have restrictions in place.

How are you concluding things are winding down?

<comment><USER17> It's my own prediction. Check back in a year, by which time SARS-CoV-2 will be just another endemic strain of coronavirus.

<comment><USER19> What is your prediction based on? I really hope we're not still in this in a year. I work in soho in NYC and still have to go and handle stuff at the shop and the city is crazy right now.

<comment><USER17> "This" is looking more and more like a virus which is extremely contagious but about as deadly as a bad cold. The author of the Imperial College study which led to shutdowns in the UK and US recently revised his estimates and is now saying that the R0 value (a measure of contagiousness) is higher than previously thought, "just over three" is the latest. This would mean that _lots_ of people have already been infected, and it's not nearly as deadly as everyone thinks.

The flip side is that we'd have a very hard time eradicating it, and if humans can't acquire permanent immunity it will be around basically forever, like most other cold viruses.

<comment><USER18> But even if we assume it's no more deadly than a bad flu, doesn't it being novel and hence no immunity at all in the population, give it a much higher impact than the flu?

I mean regardless of the actual CFR and R0 value, we can take a look at Wuhan, Spain, Italy and now increasingly likely NY to see the impact. I'm not an expert but I don't think a bad seasonal flu overwhelms the local hospitals. And this is with extraordinary measures being taken to boost hospital capacity already.

<comment><USER17> > I don't think a bad seasonal flu overwhelms the local hospitals.

Happens all the time, most recently during the 2017-2018 season in parts of the US: [https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu- patie...](https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/)

Also keep in mind that COVID-19 would be quite a bit more contagious than the flu (so it would spread more rapidly) if this theory is correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>