We're Rewarding the Question Askers - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/11/13/were-rewarding-the-question-askers/ <comment><USER2> This is a waste. Few people upvote questions because they are well-written; by and large it is that they had the same question and you asked it before they had to do so themselves. This heavily biases upvotes on extremely novice questions from 8 years ago (before they were all asked), and gives new question askers a bad example of what a good question is ("I just did the same thing this person did, and they got 200 upvotes, and my question was closed in 2 minutes!").

Question askers get the reward of having their question answered. I think votes on questions should be done away with entirely. Questions that should be exemplified can have some other metric (stars for "this is well written and generalizes easily for other users"), and low-quality questions should be flagged or closed, which at least gives some sort of reason. Downvotes aren't useful to askers because they have no idea what they're doing wrong when they receive them.

<comment><USER3> Keeping the participation friction as low as possible ensures the maximum number participate, which ensures questions have maximum visibility. Changing the simple vote up/down process with something requiring to specify a reason can reduce the number views a question gets.

Also nothing is stopping a downvoter from leaving a comment explaining why the question needs improvement, other than lack of reputation (you need a minimum reputation for your downvotes to be visible anyway). People who care to explain their downvotes can already use the existing process. Since comments can be upvoted (but not downvoted), there is already an incentive in place for that as well.

<comment><USER4> Many people mention they avoid commenting on downvoted questions for fear of the wrath of the asker. People seem to feel differently about close voting, perhaps since they are collected and presented as a group.

I don't really get the point of the vigilance toward bad but not intentionally spam questions. The question # has been used, derank it and call it a day until someone sees a reason to revive it.or the asker ASKS for help improving their question.

<comment><USER5> The specific change I would like to see is to really raise the bar on what is considered a duplicate.

I think a rule could be "if someone with a decent track record (for some definition of decent, maybe 100 points? 1000?) felt the need to ask it, it's not a duplicate." The bar could be raised in other ways as well, but this one I think would reward people who have done the work to be a positive part of the community.

We all have varying degrees of ability to generalize the principle of one answer to another. The other part of this is that you get better at asking questions through practice, which is hard to get early on. At this point, most problems I can't answer are good questions or too specific, but it took a while and I don't want SO to be the place where only those with 5-10 years in can get help.

<comment><USER4> It seems to me like someone with few points is least likely to understand a solution to a duplicate of their problem.. I don't really see the harm in linking it and still letting people answer or comment on the proxied solution.

SE spends half the time saying an overlapping diversity makes it easy to find a question and answer that fits and the other half eliminating that diversity (and bringing non-adept people to dead ends in their searches that land on SO.)

<comment><USER5> My proposal is intentionally moderate. If I had my way, I'd go further, but this is something I've thought about and think it may be palatable to those at SO who want to preserve the strictness and maintain respect for those who contribute. You still have to put in a lot of work to figure out how things work, but if you do the work you get credibility.

I see it as a way to meet in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When one considers that the median experience of asking a question on stackoverflow is "immediately closed as a duplicate of a vaguely similar question from six years ago", this seems like a pretty superfluous change.

A far more meaningful way to reward askers would be to simply change how dupes are handled. Instead of _closing_ questions with a link to a related _question_ , give users a mechanism to _answer_ questions with a link to a related _answer_. Then if the link really does solve the problem the asker can accept that answer, and if not the original question can stay open.

I get why SO chose their current aggressive stance on dupes, but it's probably time to try something else.

<comment><USER7> > I get why SO chose their current aggressive stance on dupes, but it's > probably time to try something else.

Work is under way here and elsewhere: [https://forum.codidact.org/](https://forum.codidact.org/)

Based on my past actions I guess I would be happy to donate a few dollars to anyone who makes a better q/a site and makes me aware of it.

By better I mean:

\- important current database (allowed with current licensing)

\- rewrites the meta game to make helping (answering) more valuable than administering (deleting).

\- raises bar to asking questions (stack overflow seems to always be crying over all the stupid questions they get yet the thought of raising the bar for asking questions never seen to get any traction)

\- have a karma tax or something on questions and contributors: just because someone was the most valuable contributor or something was the best question two years ago doesn't mean they still are.

\- don't split into many subsites for every topic, if people want to ask it and other people want to answer it and it isn't illegal or scary or anything, bust leave it alone. Karma tax will take care of it in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I predict that this will have zero effect on anything. The people who care strongly about accumulating SO e-points are the ones answering the questions, not the ones asking them.

<comment><USER9> SO has always been hostile to questioners by design. It's a natural consequence of requiring "high-quality" questions.

Since most questions will not be "high-quality" (for any reasonable definition of "high-quality"), most new participants' experience will be of asking a question and being told "that's a bad question" either explicitly (downvotes) or implicitly (editing their question to "improve" it).

It gets worse as time goes on because of the "no duplicates" policy; the more questions that are in the system, the harder it is to come up with a question that isn't marked (correctly or incorrectly) as a dupe.

Banning all politeness words (hello/goodbye/please/thank you/you're welcome) from questions/answers because they're "noise" is just the cherry on top that makes people who aren't already immersed in SO culture think that everybody there is rude/mean, no matter how many times they put "be nice" in the CoC.

Not saying these are _bad_ policies per se - SO has a stated goal of being a "curated resource of high quality questions and answers", and they need to separate the wheat from the chaff somehow, but the policies _will_ be perceived as hostile by most new users.

Giving the questioners an extra +5 fake internet points will not fix any of that.

<comment><USER10> > It gets worse as time goes on because of the "no duplicates" policy; the > more questions that are in the system, the harder it is to come up with a > question that isn't marked (correctly or incorrectly) as a dupe.

I'm curious why they don't have a no duplicate answers policy.

<comment><USER11> I can't speak to their reasoning, but I value having multiple similar answers.

They often differ slightly in their assumptions or implementation, which can help in grokking the core concept of the answer and not getting distracted by implementation details, especially for languages and domains I'm not very familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> seph-reed I've tried saying it on Meta, but that place is not great for discussion:

Newbies should help newbies.

There are lots of ways to incentivize this, but the basic gist is that users who are just growing out of the newbie phase are in the best position to be indoctrinating new arrivals. They'll have the most patience and understanding, and it's an easy job that shouldn't be done by super experienced users.

Most of this could easily be isolated to a newbie pre-stage too. Basically, a tutorial area in which new users work together to make their questions better so they can move on to the non-tutorial experience.

Personally, I'd filter these posts out by default, but on days where I was feeling nice I might go in and help out.

Worst case scenario: it takes some extra work from a newbie to get their first bits of rep.

</comment><comment> james-skemp As meta visibility on SO is hit-or-miss, the thread on meta is at [https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/391250/upvotes- on-q...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/391250/upvotes-on-questions- will-now-be-worth-the-same-as-upvotes-on-answers)

</comment><comment><USER12> It might be better to allow the market to decide how the reward mechanism should work.

People who see a question as relevant and interesting to them, would add points or monetary incentives. Thereby increasing the speed and quality of the answers.

This mechanism has already been tested out and actually works only with crypto currency due to low transaction costs.

Better explained 2 mins video: [https://youtu.be/lcsgx_5c7D0](https://youtu.be/lcsgx_5c7D0)

Here is an example: What makes you nostalgic? Answer with #Obyte Know-it-all and earn up to 410,172,272 Bytes : [https://t.co/EaVFrscFC7](https://t.co/EaVFrscFC7) (enough Bytes to make > 700,000 transactions whenever you want in the future thanks to obytes' tiny predictable fees)

</comment><comment><USER13> The biggest problem is downvoting.

Downvoting is toxic.

A better change would have been to make any downvote COST 10 points. Or at least 1 point or 2.

<comment><USER14> I would urge you, or anyone who thinks that downvoting is toxic for this matter, to volunteer in moderating questions written by new users for a day or two.

Once you see a constant flood of "I made app, here my 1000 lines of code (screenshot), I get error, where bug?" that the moderators have to defend the site against - you might just change your opinion about the value of downvotes.

<comment><USER13> I'm not saying there should not be a mechanism for regulating that sort of stuff.

BUT on StackOverflow it is entirely normal, even expected, that you post a well thought out and reasoned question and its instantly downvoted because, well, who knows why? Drive-by downvoting is simply negative.

A different mechanism could be used for the sorts of issues you identify.

<comment><USER15> Can you point to an example of a "well thought out and reasoned question" on SO that's at a negative score?

In my experience, that just doesn't happen. Most questions sit at a score of 0, and those which do receive votes are almost always upvoted. (The data supports this[1].) Questions rarely end up with a negative score, and when they do it's usually because there are obvious problems with their formatting or content. (Usually low effort, off topic, or an obvious duplicate.)

[1]: [https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1096887/q...](https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1096887/question- score-frequency-whole-site#resultSets)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rewarding the question askers... like Monica Cellio, who asked a clarifying question about the not-yet-implemented pronoun policy, and you canned her for it? That sort of reward?

<comment><USER17> Why do you think she's telling the truth? Have you talked to any mods who think stackoverflow made the right choice, but way too late?

I have. They say her behavior from start to finish was incredibly rude and explicit in stating her plans to ignore the policy.

<comment><USER18> If they say that, in that way, then they are being misleading.

Months ago, well before the current Stack Exchange pronoun policy was a thing, she said (yes, explicitly) that she wasn't willing to use singular "they" because it feels so wrong and confusing to her. This wasn't a "plan to ignore the policy" because at that time there was no policy.

(It also doesn't appear to have been motivated by sexism, transphobia, etc., although people who say such things sometimes are; she is explicitly willing to use neopronouns -- "xe" and the like -- for people who find that "he" and "she" don't fit them.)

Then, much more recently, the upcoming change to the Code of Conduct was announced in the moderators' chatroom. M.C. asked some questions about that, _very definitely did not state any plan to ignore the policy_ , and promptly got de-moderator-ated.

It's possible that she isn't telling the truth about what has happened in private, away from the view of other moderators. Maybe she sent an email to SE management saying "I'm not going to abide by this; fire me if you dare" or something. But as far as externally-visible things are concerned, her account of things matches up better with reality than SE's statements do.

There are, indeed, moderators who think M.C. should have been canned long ago, but my impression is that there's something close to unanimity that SE should not have canned her _the way they did_ , and that the majority of those with any opinion on the matter think that they shouldn't have canned her _at all_.

(Source: am a moderator on a Stack Exchange site, have read all the relevant transcripts from said chatroom. Note that discussions there are confidential, so the above is about as specific as I am prepared to be about who said what.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Quora did this and the outcome was awesome, click bait type questions.

And a ton of them.

Net value loss.

<comment><USER20> But I bet their traffic increased. I see quora often in searches.

I might be pessimists but I think they knew exactly what they were doing and are happy with results.

And I am guessing new SO leadership wants the same.

<comment><USER19> I am sure they are quite happy. Users? Not so much.

Getting at great contributions is now much harder. I use Quora much less now.

Churn 'n burn for traffic dollars is a strategy.

Suppose it opens a door somewhere too. Do that enough, and there is clearly room for a less noise filled source.

IMHO, the difference here is Quora has a plausible, casual user case that makes sense. The people who helped to build Quora content won't give two shits and will move on, but Quora itself may do just fine. Meh.

Degrading the value to current users of SO to attract more in general, leads where for SO?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm still going to complain and not use the service. (I wrote the article a while ago: [https://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2012/09/stackoverflow-i...](https://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2012/09/stackoverflow- is-a-difficult-community-to-participate-in/) ) [Which was after the first recalc]

It took them 7 years to change their minds on it. Sigh.

\---

Side rant: This whole piss people off/break things and expect people to stick around is a dumb idea. Company does stupid things, I'm going to find an alternative company and not return.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's awesome and its a step in the right direction.

And I notice a lot of female employees or managers being mentioned which might be a coincidence but it also might be deliberate and somehow be related to the idea that females might have more empathy? Which could just be my own prejudice and not true but I dunno.

But anyway, if they are going for nicer/more empathetic employees and policies, that's great, but its not going to stop all of the (mostly male) super-critical narcissistic arrogant shaming-happy vote-whores who are eagerly waiting to get in another passive-aggressive veiled hint that I am an idiot while they downvote my question.

Not planning to ask another question on Stack Overflow anytime soon, thanks though.

<comment><USER23> How do you know who downvotes you? Isn't it anonymous?

<comment><USER22> Oh right. I meant to say anonymous (mostly male) super-critical narcissistic arrogant shaming-happy vote-whores.

But also, less than 10% of Stack Overflow users are women.

<comment><USER23> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> wow, what a great way to completely avoid the massive controversy they've been trying to sweep under the rug for a couple months now.

</comment><comment><USER25> This makes me feel like it's a beginning of the end.

It is beyond me why they would want to award spammers for creating more spam.

</comment><comment><USER26> It is funny that we have the "techies" (programmers, engineers, etc) designing and managing these social media platforms when the techies are stereotyped as awkward and antisocial.

Who decided that software developers should have the final say over how people interact? I feel like there's probably a field or two of experts on that that should be being consulted.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting.

I've never asked or answered a question on SO (I wouldn't dare!) because I can plainly see the horrorshow that is likely to come with doing that by reading other questions. Over time, I've come to simply ignoring SO for the most part.

I think I may check in from time to time to see if the place actually improves.</comment>


Tantrums as Status Symbols (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/08/tantrums_as_sta.html <comment><USER3> It's not just tantrums. It's a huge variety of status-reinforcing behaviours which symbolically or actually make the lower-status person uncomfortable in favour of the higher-status person.

Even something like having an entrepreneur stand and present in front of a group of seated money men. They sit in judgement of him, they are comfy and he stands, they relax and he works and struggles to please them.

Or, when bosses make weird symbolic work demands that don't actually make sense. Sometimes there's the idea that they're just looking out for the product and are wrong about something, but there's also often an element of 'I sense some disturbance in the status hierarchy so I'm going to make you do this task we both know is useless just because I say so to remind you that I can'.

Or 'I'm going to be unreasonable to demonstrate that I can'.

Or 'I'm not going to give this question the think-time it really needs; to demonstrate my superior value I'll save myself five minutes while costing you two days to remind everyone that I'm above you'.

A lot of this is subconscious. The people with the power don't always do it intentionally, thinking "I'm going to signal status today." It's just what feels good and intuitive to them, so they execute these status-signalling behaviours without conscious intent.

<comment><USER4> Which is why people like myself who are honest and oblivious to social signals upset so many managers/etc. We'll honestly and fervently correct your misconceptions without so much as an eye blink. This confers its own sort of status with the rest of the rank-and-file, but doesn't win you any favors come review time. It does make the manager look like an idiot for trying to force you to do something obviously stupid though, which is its own sort of bonus.

<comment><USER5> Commendable and worth remembering the next time it happens to you. But do remember... Sadly this can backfire. Repeatedly doing this can get you fired, suspended, grounded, or suffering whatever other punitive action the "superior" is capable of metering out.

<comment><USER6> What if it is unintended e.g. autism spectrum?

<comment><USER7> Then you are probably under special protection by law. For your the pointy- haired boss it means he has to use more subtle methods, e.g. a performance review, to get you out of the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's important to note that the CEO _can_ throw a tantrum, while the mailboy cannot. Throwing tantrums isn't a way to build status; it's a sort of 'luxury' one can get away with if one is already in a clear position of power in a social setting.

Ever see the show _Entourage_? Ari Gold can throw tantrums, and he does. (Constantly.) His underlings don't have that privilege. If one of them ever tried to throw an Ari-style tantrum, he'd be out on the street in five minutes flat. [Full disclosure: I worked at a talent agency a long time ago, and what was depicted on _Entourage_ was accurate enough to have passed as a documentary.]

<comment><USER9> That's an important point. To be clear, the article also reaches this conclusion:

> _Of course, like a swagger, the signal is not so much the tantum itself as > the fact that someone can get away with it._

It also links to a paper[1] about NBA players that deals with this phenomenon. Here's the abstract:

> _Casual empiricism suggests that celebrities engage in more anti-social and > other socially unapproved behavior than non-celebrities. I consider a number > of reasons for this stylized fact, including one new theory, in which > workers who are less substitutable in production are enabled to engage in > greater levels of misbehavior because their employers cannot substitute away > from them. Looking empirically at a particular class of celebrities - <USER2> > basketball players - I find that misbehavior on the court is due to several > factors, including prominently this substitutability effect, though income > effects and youthful immaturity also may be important._

[1]: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=609946](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=609946)

<comment><USER10> > including one new theory

I don't think so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I've read the title, the first image that popped into my head wasn't of an athlete or some CEO. It was the video of that Yale student screaming and swearing at a professor at the top of her voice. Viewing that kind of behavior as a status symbol explains a lot of things I've observed in the past couple of years.

<comment><USER12> Thats very astute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally I see throwing a tantrum is something a kid does. If an adult does it, it just seems immature. I've seen executives throw tantrums at their underlings and of course get away with it. However in doing so I'm pretty sure they do lose the respect of a lot of people, at least they lose mine. It may be a cultural thing though.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure it's a cultural thing, although the word "tantrum" has many meanings, and we might be thinking of different ones.

From what I've seen of the US, being able to get someone angry is a sign of superior status in New York and the Northeast; getting angry is a sign of low status in the Midwest, although being able to get someone angry isn't a sign of high status; while in the South, well, it's a good thing dueling is illegal.

I suspect that this may go back to smooth mercantile Lowlands English versus tempestuous Celts, but I certainly can't prove as much; and most of the Southern aristocracy comes from the West Country, not the Scottish border.

<comment><USER15> Steven Pinker agrees with you:

[http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/pinker-takes-crack-at- exp...](http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/pinker-takes-crack-at-explaining- red-v.html)

But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don't explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a "culture of honor." Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. ... Admittedly, it's hard to believe that today's Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors. But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy.

<comment><USER14> All right! I'm beyond delighted to read this -- to know that there are other fans of Pinker, Fischer, and Nisbett out there! Have you read _Bound Away_ yet? (It's the companion volume Fischer promised at the end of _Albion's Seed_; it doesn't deal with slavery alone, but with Virginia in general.)

Expressed this lucidly, I almost feel that the exception is those without a culture of honor, not those with one -- that the North and not the South is the odd one. After all, while it's hard to drive off land, it's perfectly possible to burn buildings and loot crops... unless the farmers can band together into militias more powerful than the invading army, which the North certainly does.

My anecdotal experience as a Southerner living in the North was that everyone cared about conformity and hierarchy (including seeing where you were in the hierarchy), and was hostile to the South's combination of a hot temper and a live-and-let-live outlook. But you don't want hot heads or amiability in a territorial militia, and you do want a lot of concern with hierarchy; otherwise your militia will be uncontrollable.

You wouldn't happen to be in the Seattle area, would you? I'd love to get together, and to have the chance to talk about these sorts of things in person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are ways to deal with that. "Yeah, whatever" can help. Pull out your phone and take a video. Divert your attention, and the attention of others, to something other than the person having the tantrum. This can be useful in negotiations.

<comment><USER17> Another one is saying, "When you are ready to calm down and act like an adult, we can discuss this."

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure being patronizing or sarcastic is particularly productive for situations where the person you are speaking to is of a higher status than you. This strikes me as something one wishes one could say, but doesn't dare.

<comment><USER17> _This strikes me as something one wishes one could say, but doesn 't dare._

I've said it. When someone acts like a child, it's not patronizing to call them out: it's treating them with respect.

<comment><USER19> > When someone acts like a child, it's not patronizing to call them out: it's > treating them with respect

While this is actually correct, someone wise enough to intuitively grasp this probably isn't going to be throwing a tantrum in the first place.

<comment><USER17> Sometimes all you need to do is point it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The tantrum isn't the status symbol. Not getting fired for the tantrum is the status symbol.

<comment><USER21> From the article:

> Of course, like a swagger, the signal is not so much the tantum itself as > the fact that someone can get away with it.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, oversight and too late to delete. Lost that line in the footer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> b-orges As a professional in the culinary world this is certainly true of many chefs.

<comment><USER14> Abnormally hot tempers seem to go back a bit in cuisine; Orwell's _Down and Out in Paris and London_ has some memorable examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's for medium high status of those who need to make sure they "have it". A bit like the "I'm CEO bitch" on Zuckerberg's name card: Really high statuses persons have no name cards, and they have no need to ever loose their temper. If something is not to their liking, they will denote it with an even lower tone in their voice. Very competent people around them are listening and will remedy.

Or is this a cultural thing and in US people with real power still loose their temper (and face) like in the movies? I can't believe it... Will Mr Page shout like a kid because G+ did not meet expectations? I hope not...

<comment><USER23> You are correct, those at the top won't throw a tantrum with those at the bottom, the rank and file. But they will throw a tantrum with their immediate underlings.

A CEO will tantrum and get away with it with the upper management. The CEO's interaction with middle management and the workers will be much more even and charming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> He's right that people higher up do these things more because they can get away with it, but I'm not sure that makes it a signal. These people are in an environment that allows them to do it, so they do. People who won't get away with it would tend to think better of it, before losing their job or some other reasonably dire consequence.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is what "fuck you" money / influence is.

<comment><USER26> Fuck you money is about not having to tolerate the tantrums.

<comment><USER27> If we are talking about N. "fuck you money" Taleb, then he does not throw tantrums, but he resorts to pretty obnoxious behavior on a regular basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article looks a little short. Needs another paragraph. Here's my suggestion - Feel free to taser such people.

<comment><USER6> Upvoted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> While Bosses and Execs through tantrums are another class altogether - I can suggest a way or two to put a Team Lead/Architect in place when they throw a tantrum (NOTE: this only works if you actually know your shit and are correct):

\- Shout back and stare down. Match such a person eye-to-eye. But don't take the heat personally. Simply play-back the game.

\- Never-ever (NEVER EVER!!) let anybody (ANYBODY!!) shape your career.

\- Rebuff the Lead/Architect: Tell him/her that this immature behavior will not be tolerated and if this continues, you will take your own direction and won't require his/her services as your lead.

However, sometimes a __hole Lead /Architect are too powerful/influential and can actually impact your career. In such cases, don't waste time and apply elsewhere.

<comment><USER30> "Never-ever (NEVER EVER!!) let anybody (ANYBODY!!) shape your career."

Um... How does one do that exactly? I think you mean: Never-ever form a concept of how much other people actually do shape your career. Which is obviously stupid advice. Not that I don't find obsequiousness as annoying as you apparently do.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a very personal story generalised to advice. Perhap it should be never ever let that asshole Tim shape your career. For example.</comment></comment></comment>


Stripe CEO urge US business to condemn atrocities committed by CCP on its people - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1277783532182671361 <comment><AUTHOR> Paul Graham, of Y Combinator, commented on Patrick Collison's tweet:

"It is not without cost for the head of a global business to take this kind of stand, which is why you see so few doing it."

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1277853802096398338](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1277853802096398338)

<comment><USER3> Xi, Hitler, Stalin. Same monsters, just different names.

This is what evil looks like:

China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population, report says

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-53220713](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53220713)

If you don't know what an IUD is, or what the side-effects are, I suggest you read about it.

<comment><USER4> > For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority > entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on > college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth > control restrictions. Under China's now-abandoned 'one child' policy, the > authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization > and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — > three if they came from the countryside.

This is what evil looks like?

<comment><USER5> > Under China's now-abandoned 'one child' policy, the authorities had long > encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han > Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from > the countryside. > This is what evil looks like?

Yes, that is horrible

<comment><USER4> It is horrible, you're right.

The parent comment implied it was evil to mistreat minorities - <USER2> true. But in the article that was linked it mentions that they were treated better than the majority, and were now reduced to the same (horrible) treatment of the majority.

This is an altogether different crime due to mistakes in policy that lead to overpopulation. Would the Nazi Germans ever have let Jewish people have fewer restrictions and easier access to government positions? No. The comparison as presented here is untenable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This guy is the primary source of the article

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

<comment><USER6> The edit history for this article, and your recent comment history, are quite fascinating.

<comment><AUTHOR> He clearly has an agenda.

<comment><USER4> I just don't want to live in a divisive and post-fact world. It is both sad and scary that this is "fascinating" and "clearly an agenda".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jobs predicts iAds will steal 48% of mobile advertising market - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/07/iad-apple-steve-jobs/

<comment><USER2> > claims that 48% of spending on mobile advertising in the United States

So, to clarify, that's 48% by dollars not number of ads served. And it's US only.

<comment><USER3> 48% implies an accuracy of plus or minus 1%. I don't care how fancy the spreadsheet that gave them that prediction was, that number appears to have been sourced from someone's posterior. There's no way they can predict it with that accuracy.

I'd believe that it's a target, or a goal, but that still doesn't sound right. Why wouldn't they aim for 50% or 51%? Why can they _almost_ , but not quite, capture a majority? An attempt to manage expectations?

<comment><USER4> I don't see why 48% would imply an accuracy of less than ±1%. When people make predictions or forecasts, they typically don't include error margins when talking to the public. For example, the US 2010 deficit forecast is $1.17 trillion. I have no idea where one could find the margin of error for that forecast.

<comment><USER3> There are two significant figures in "48%" so one assumes that it means ±1% unless some other accuracy level is supplied.

Maybe it's overly pedantic of me to suppose that they even know what significant figures are, but even so, I can't find any reasonable way for them to arrive at a statistic like that doesn't involve making up numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I understand the delivery part of this technology and the appeal to app developers, but what does the ad creation side look like? I mean is someone (at Apple?) hand-coding html/css/js for each of these ads? Or will there be an authoring tool analogous to the Flash dev environment?

<comment><USER6> As far as I've understood, Apple has said that they will handcraft the very first ads. I assume that they will introduce tools/APIs to do ads later, but if I memory serves me correctly, they haven't confirmed this.

I can see that they do it this way for two reasons: first, typical Apple priorization: no time to do everything with limited resources so they first do tools for themselves and then polish them for others. Second, by doing polished ads themselves, they create an example of ad-culture they want.

Interesting aspect of iAds is that they require a much more work than e.g. Google Adwords. This means that an ad agency ecosystem will evolve around these ads. My guess is that agencies that specialize on these ads will have to take a big role in selling these ads to advertisers. Which might be exactly what Apple wants.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Yeah I mean even the average interactive ad where a couple screens of text slide in and then some links appear requires a bunch of back and forth and refinement in my experience, so there'd definitely be a market for competent creators of these ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple's ads are quite costly – they will probably never serve the most ads or get the most eyeballs but they will probably have high revenue.

<comment><USER8> Kind of like everything else they do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not just revise the developer agreement to squeeze out AdSense/AdMob? They kinda did already (with the 3rd party analytics), but I'm sure there's more they could do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Note that these appear to be premium, highly visual, highly interactive ads - the territory previously served by Flash. Now they stand to profit nicely from a native ad ecosystem. Could this have been in the works all along? Does this partly explain the Flash strategy?

</comment><comment><USER11> How does he get to half of the U.S. market while just being on one carrier. Unless he is planning on allowing the phone on Verizon I'm not sure how that math works. Maybe he is..

<comment><USER12> The idea, it seems, is to get half of the spending, by providing more value per view, as well as mandating both a minimum level of quality of advertisements (I recall hearing that Apple's design team was doing the ads for the first batch of companies on iAd) and implicitly supporting them by allowing them on the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is the state of the tech world when the CEO of the highest valued tech company today, talks about advertising at a developer conference ?

<comment><USER14> Considering that another very large tech company owes its valuation to an ad driven business model, I'd say its not a huge surprise to anybody.

<comment><USER13> Does the other 'very large tech company' do this at their developer conferences ?

<http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/schedule.html>

Have a look at the program guide and let me know ...

<comment><USER15> Yes, mobile ads were discussed during the Android keynote.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you manage environment variables for applications in teams? - <AUTHOR> How do you manage passwords for applications in your team(s)? <comment><USER2> Kubernetes secrets and shared secure notes in LastPass.</comment>


Show HN: Puzzlings – Collaborative Jigsaw Puzzle - <AUTHOR> https://puzzlings.hatchlings.com/collaborate/hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I'm the founder of Hatchlings and this is a preview of a new realtime feature of our game, Puzzlings, that we're releasing soon.

We made a (loosely; this was surprisingly hard to theme) Hacker-themed puzzle for you guys to try out. I thought it would be fun for us to do together!

Not sure how long it will take to complete or how well it will scale. Probably depends on whether HN skews towards collaborative or destructive ;)

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback! I'd be happy to respond.

One known issue: when zoomed out in Firefox, things don't quite align correctly. We're working on it but in the meantime please either zoom to 100% or try a Webkit-based browser.

<comment><USER2> Picture was great.

Took 3h with 4-6 people online. I think 8 was the maximum.

With the last 10 pieces I suspected some were missing (hidden under the image or somebody moved it way out of scope), but they took only 2 minutes. I suspect some logic made them appear.

A sound or other effect if a piece fits another would be nice. It's so hard so see sometimes.</comment></comment>


Is it worthwhile printing Books in China and importing to USA? - <AUTHOR> I know that the import duty of books in US is 0% but just wanted to check if anyone has had any experience printing technical books (300 pages, 8.5x11) in China and then sell them using Amazon fulfillment? would the saving be substantial? <comment><USER2> It may be worth the efforts, but back in 2010, it (kind of) wasn't because of the existence of "international copy" rule. As a community college student, selling top books for top programs for top 100 Universities in USA; I sold over 100 books a day without knowing that law existed but found out about it when paypal blocked my payment of over $8k (last batch or two) for more than 6 months. From the great experience of helping top students to buy books for less (in many cases less than chegg.com) than to get stuck with your money.

If I were you now, I would definitely hire a legal freelancer (spend $50-$100) just to confirm to double check and then start. There are tons of re- publishers in China, just a google search away.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am reminded of this story, but the book is full color and oversized so it may not apply to your case: [http://kk.org/cooltools/self-publishing-cool- tools/](http://kk.org/cooltools/self-publishing-cool-tools/) In his case, shipping from China was a small fraction of the printing cost so China made sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of the kickstarter books I get end up being printed in China.</comment>


What programming languages do mathematicians use? - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/11084/what-programming-languages-do-mathematicians-use

<comment><USER2> Statisticians commonly use SPlus or R. Applied mathematicians use some flavor of Fortran, in part because of numerical libraries available in that language. Matlab is also in heavy currency in many disciplines.

Much of the time, a scientist is driven to a language not by any particular language feature, but by what code/tools are already available in that language that they can build upon for their own research.

<comment><USER3> Many epidemiologists seem to prefer Stata. I don't know why. It's like some SQL shell out of the early 80's.

I think that languages that didn't support "conventional" operator precedence lost out because that went against the expectations of science/tech types. (Smalltalk & Lisp in particular)

<comment><USER4> _Many epidemiologists seem to prefer Stata._

That seems to be a west coast thing. East coast epidemiologists that I know use some mix of S or SPSS or SAS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What cars do pilots drive?

What foods do vintners eat?

These are silly questions -- in all three cases, the answer is "if they're smart, whatever is best for their circumstances". I know mathematicians who have used Fortran, Pascal, C, C++, Java, BASIC, Assembly, Lisp, Maple, Matlab, Magma, Mathmatica, and Maxima; and that's not counting the people who do deliberately weird things (like computing Mersenne primes in Postscript).

<comment><USER6> _What cars do pilots drive? What foods do vintners eat?_

I'd say it's more like asking "What cars do park rangers drive?" or "What foods do wrestlers eat?" because we're talking about groups of people with quite specific requirements. The question, while overly broad, isn't silly, because there's a lot of people who have no idea and have never heard of things like Maple, Magma. Heck, now I coem to think of it I've never heard of Maxima, so your answer taught me something new. And if you learn something new from the answer, it's probably not a silly question!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The practising mathematicians I know don't program. I'm not sure if there are any ways in which programming can help with things like Functional Analysis or Geometric Topology. Not even sure about low-dimensional topology.

I'll ask Tim Gowers next time I see him.

The ex-mathematicians I know who now use mathematics to do things in the real- world use a full range, including all those mentioned elsewhere.

For my PhD I used Fortran, BCPL, zed (not the one you might think - it was essentially "ed"), and Phoenix scripting.

For my day job I use Python/Sage/NumPy, C, C++, ARM assembler, bash, BASIC and OpenOffice Calc. Infrequently and irregularly I use Lua and Scheme. On the other hand, I'm not really doing math anymore. I no longer prove theorems.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 I find it very interesting that almost every single mathoverflow user (based on this page alone) uses their full name as their username on the site.

Compare that with stackoverflow and HN in which we use nicknames, made up names, etc.

Just interesting to see how different communities choose to handle something like this.

<comment><USER8> It's a MO policy: <http://mathoverflow.net/faq>

_"We also encourage you to use your real name as your username. In your own enlightened self-interest, realise that participating in blogs, Math Overflow, the arXiv, and mathematical publishing are all forms of advertising for your "brand", even if that's not your principal purpose (and hopefully it's not). Since job applications require you to write your real name, you might as well use it everywhere else, too."_

The bright side is that if a Fields medalist answers your question, you know it ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Coq is the only real _Mathematics_ language I've ever played with.

Everything else just feels like it's ultimately _Arithmetic_ , even when doing Symbolic Algebra natively in Haskell or Lisp or Mathematica.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quantitative analysts used to use Smalltalk quite a bit. There's still a bit of that. Ruby's taking up some of that territory now. C++ was there too, and is still going strong.

</comment><comment><USER10> Depends on the branch. In quantitative finance: C++, R, F#, Q, OCaml, MATLAB, Python (NumPy and SciPy)

<comment><USER11> I second this. I have a quantitative finance background. I use C, C++, C#, MATLAB, and Python. MATLAB and Python are primarily for prototyping ideas. C and C++ are primarily used when I'm working with Linux. C# is exclusively used when I am working with Windows.

<comment><USER12> What kind of stuff do you use C# for? I can only imagine using it for interoperability and GUI code.

<comment><USER11> Right now, I am writing a trading system using Trading Technologies' API. In my MSFE program we use XTrader to do a lot of our simulated trading. I thought it would be interesting challenge to create a black box to bone up on my C# skills.

EDIT: As for the GUI comment, I am actually trying to stay away from a bloated GUI as speed is key in this business.

Also, when we, as a program, went to Chicago during late October, so many people said that C# was becoming an important language to know if you plan on doing quant work. Up until that point, I had been focused primarily on C and C++. I thought it would be wise to do some work with C# if people at quant shops were telling me this is something I need to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very often Matlab. Very often badly. And for a programmer who has to watch, it is to weep.

</comment><comment><USER14> The one I know uses Mathematica.

<comment><USER3> I know a bona-fide ex-NASA rocket scientist who uses Matlab. He finds that it's much more productive than C, which he used to use heavily. His NASA job basically involved numerical methods for integration to track the trajectory of the Space Shuttle.

<comment><USER14> I like MatLab, but for me (biologist) it's a very intricate language to learn, and AFAIK not easy to use in multiple platforms where you don't have the framework installed. And "expensive" too (as Mathematica).

<comment><USER3> But as a rocket scientist, he says there is a lot of software ready-made for him to use, which even included graphics/animation, analysis of realtime data feeds, and limited finite-element analysis of the rocket's structure. Also, his boss had a good software budget at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> LaTeX</comment>


SSL Certificate for mozilla.com issued without validation - <AUTHOR> http://www.sslshopper.com/article-ssl-certificate-for-mozilla.com-issued-without-validation.html

<comment><AUTHOR> HTTPS is more secure than HTTP... but when it's possible to get bogus SSL certificates like this, it's apparently not very much more secure.

<comment><USER2> Not exactly.

HTTPS does two things:

1: verifies who the other party is and prevents MITM attacks.

2: encrypts the connection and prevents snooping

#2 still works fine, and for many people it's the only thing they care about since MITM attacks are quite rare, and if you typed the domain name yourself you don't need the verification either.

<comment><USER3> You can't securely exchange keys to do #2 without having #1.

Not sure why you think active attacks are more rare than any other attack against TLS/SSL sessions. Any time you are in a position to perform a passive attack (snooping) you could also perform an active attack (MITM). The only difference is which point-and-click attack tool you download.

<comment><USER2> Not true - otherwise self signed certificates would be pointless. #1 and #2 are independent.

And you can snoop WiFi, but you can't do MITM. (Not easily anyway, you'd need a radio jammer and other gear.)

<comment><USER3> Of course I can perform a MITM attack on a wireless network. You might try thinking about the communication layers above PHY. Almost any of them will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Agreed the certificate provider mentioned is a fraud, but so is Veritas, who issued a certificate identifying some random person as microsoft.com a few years ago.

Governments need to regulate, and audit, certificate providers, and financially punish them for failing audits.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now that Firefox has explicit support for key continuity management, I think I'll just dump my root CA store and go with that. Global PKI is just not such a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> godaddy made me use a number generated from the server (rsa), but guess that doesn't mean I own the domain just the server

</comment><comment><USER6> Go Daddy has been doing this for years. They don't care about the authentication portion of SSL -- just the encryption part.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a sim/tycoon JavaScript game? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I have no game development experience, but lately I've been having this urge to try it out as a way to challenge my Javascript skills. I'm wondering how I would create an extremely simplified version of these kind of games using HTML5 & Javascript:
http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com
http://dhmholley.co.uk/civclicker.html
http://hyperhippo.ca/games/adventure-capitalist/
They have a minimal UI and seem to rely on clicking to cause an upgrade, and using timers and loops to grow or update the available resources. Would someone be willing to break down the logic of how to accomplish these, or maybe point me to a tutorial that is specific to this type of game? <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a basic plunker I threw together. It has no loops or timers so it's all click based... but is this on the right track? [http://plnkr.co/edit/7kEhr0fYIMNbL40Uedwn?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/7kEhr0fYIMNbL40Uedwn?p=preview)</comment>


MIT's Saturday hoax incident - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5051617

<comment><USER2> A more official looking source for the same information:

[http://techblogs.mit.edu/news/2013/02/letter-from-israel- rui...](http://techblogs.mit.edu/news/2013/02/letter-from-israel-ruiz-mit- executive-vp-and-treasurer-about-saturdays-hoax-incident/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds a lot like swatting, a favorite of anonymous.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting>

<comment><USER4> I've never ever heard of Anonymous swatting so please feel free to post a link??

<comment><USER5> > Posted October 9, 2009

> Are you an enemy of Anonymous? If so, you'd better be sure to keep your home > address closely guarded, lest you be targeted for a "swatting."

[http://anonymouslegions.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/anonymous-s...](http://anonymouslegions.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/anonymous- swatting-their-enemies/)

<comment><USER6> Lots of other people have also taken to this tactic. SWAT teams have been sent to an ADA's personal residences by someone forging a call from within the house, as just one example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > At 8:52 AM, a campus-wide alert was sent.

It took over an hour after the report of an armed gunman on campus for the community to be notified? Even though it sounds like they were doing a great job physically clearing buildings with armed security, a lockdown procedure seems like a no-brainer. At ~7:30 most people are still in their dorms and it would be easy to keep them there.

<comment><USER8> It was a Saturday, so I'd expect there weren't many people in campus buildings anyway.

<comment><USER9> > _It was a Saturday, so I'd expect there weren't many people in campus > buildings anyway._

That's not the same MIT I remember.

<comment><USER10> Well, it'll be at a minimum at least. Grad students probably won't quite be in yet, and for undergrads nothing is going to be due Saturday, so I wouldn't expect too many people pulling all-nighters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is just terrible.

Couldn't have been someone affiliated with the institute; MIT hacks are creative and witty.

<comment><USER12> MIT hacks are not supposed to be damaging in any way, at least according to lore.

Source: _If At All Possible, Involve a Cow_ ([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/407327.If_at_All_Possible...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/407327.If_at_All_Possible_Involve_a_Cow))

<comment><USER13> If someone thought this was a fun idea to begin with, I could easily see that same person seeing this as non-damaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It's not a game" - no, but for the people calling in hoaxes, it can very well be. The administration can't choose to stop responding. But the cost of committing such a hoax is effectively zero - what's to stop the hoaxer from calling in each day?

How do other police handle high volumes of hoax calls that aren't traceable (i.e., aren't 911)?

<comment><USER15> Abusing the TTY relay intended for the deaf is pretty much only as traceable as an IP address, even if calling 911.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The attacks on MIT are really unintelligent. MIT has some of the most brilliant students and future/current tech leaders, who may have a large impact on how information policy will be shaped. These attacks have only served to alienate MIT students from the cause.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain to me how is it possible that Sprint Relay is still running completely free without any form of authentication?

<comment><USER18> Relays are a necessity for letting the deaf engage with phone services. Authentication would inevitably deny some deserving deaf people access to those services, so it's not really an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I started reading and saw "A big gun" and "armor" and thought it was going to turn into a normal MIT prank, with a guy wearing a metal suit of armor and carrying a cardboard cannon.

Was displeased to learn it was an actual hoax and not a ha-ha-laugh prank.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain why this hoax call isn't traceable to the original caller in anyway?

<comment><USER21> The world phone system has virtual no security or legitimate traceability. It is one gigantic cluster-f*.

<comment><USER22> So if I call the White House right now and made threats, there wouldn't be black helicopters showing up outside? I find that hard to believe.

<comment><USER21> If you made a call from your AT&T home phone, sure. However there are countless anonymous proxies that you can chain, and countless VOIP providers (many free). Making anonymous, practically untraceable calls is not a difficult thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DoorDash Is on an Acquisition Tear! - <AUTHOR> I'll preamble this by saying that I worked as an early team member at a startup in the on-demand food delivery space. Our team was able to grow the company from its infancy to $1.5B+ in annual GMV, so I'm both close to the space, and passionate about it.
With this in mind, here's my outlook on the acquisitions that DoorDash has been making as of late (ie- Lvl5, Caviar, and Scotty Labs).
Many people have speculation about why these acquisitions were made – some think it's a growth / market play (Caviar), other's think that it's a product dev / integration play (Lvl5).
I think both are right; it's inevitable that DD wants to set up their infrastructure and become as defensible as possible by developing a deeper product before they IPO
But, I truly think the main reason DD has made these acquisitions is a talent play. I think that they have found some really solid people who are smart, and whom they can integrate into their team. So, the quickest way to grow their own team is through acquisition.
This is a subjective opinion, and I could be way off, but I'm interested to hear what others think! <comment><USER2> This is the same DoorDash that is continuing to steal the tips of the Dashers?

Pass.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended tools for creating apps that render to both native and web? - <AUTHOR>

Are any of you familiar with any nice tools which enable creating apps that render to both native + web views?
Can you give me the scoop on what is going on in this space?
I recently saw facebook's "react native".
The whole html-inlined-into-your-javascript thing really put me off initially.
Is anyone really using this for their commercial production applications?
Are there other similar competing solutions or technologies worth considering as alternatives?
Thanks! Waka <comment><USER2> ReactNative does not render to web views. It uses web development constructs like CSS, Flexbox, and JavaScript, but the output is the native view hierarchy. Facebook is using it (in Paper, at least)

FaceBook thinks you should use ReactNative for mobile and React for the web -- they call it learn-once-write-anywhere -- the UI code is not portable and that is not a goal of the project.

The only things I know about where you can run in a browser and in a native app are HTML-based and use app-wrapped web-views on mobile. I would look at jQueryMobile and Ionic if you want to go this route. You wrap either in Cordova/PhoneGap.

</comment><comment><USER3> One such option that I am aware of is kivy[1], though I have not used it. It is a python based application framework library. I am not sure if it is fully mature but I have read good things about it on reddit.

[1] [http://kivy.org/#home](http://kivy.org/#home)</comment>


London's startup scene is getting more sophisticated - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21694594-gone-are-days-when-barely-qualified-hopefuls-could-pitch-away-londons-startup-scene?force=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/londonsstartupsceneisgettingmore <comment><USER2> This article is a fluff piece on EF. EF is not a very large part of London's startup scene. In a couple of years of various startup heavy tech meetups in London, I've yet to meet anyone who's gone through EF. Which is not to dismiss them, I'm sure they're good, but with a title like that you'd expect them to have actually explored what's going on in London rather than just marketing an individual incubator.

<comment><USER3> Why any serious founder would show their face at a tech meetup is beyond me. What an utter waste of time for early-stage startups.

<comment><USER4> Why would anyone go outside and meet people, have a drink or two and talk about common interests? That's also beyond me.

<comment><USER5> As always, there's a happy balance. It is probably bad to be a social recluse, unless you are in crunch mode and not looking for hiring anytime soon, but at the same time it's probably bad to be out for events every night and spending too much time socializing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definite PR article for EF. I live in Shoreditch, have my own startup, go to a lot of events and have barely heard of them. The events I've got more out of include:

[http://3-beards.com/dontpitchmebro](http://3-beards.com/dontpitchmebro) \- Interesting pitches, usually very high quality. The group that run it do a lot of cool startup events.

[http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/](http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/) \- Geeky fun, though has been getting increasingly commercial

Lately the best meetup has been "lean coffee" ([http://leancoffee.org/](http://leancoffee.org/)) , the quality of people and feedback I have got from that meeting has been superb. I suggest starting one in your area.

Overall I am negative on accelerators. Perhaps I am bias as I have enough savings/income from an existing small business that I don't need my living expenses paid for what I think may be giving away too much of your business. Though I look forward to reading other peoples experiences.

<comment><USER7> >Overall I am negative on accelerators. Perhaps I am bias as I have enough savings/income from an existing small business that I don't need my living expenses paid for what I think may be giving away too much of your business. Though I look forward to reading other peoples experiences.

If having cash lying around from a previous business/startup attempt was a pre requisite to starting a startup are you not creating a sort of catch 22 scenario for the whole ecosystem? The current accelerator model seems very completely sensible given the level uncertainty involved in startups and has plenty of successful examples including YCombinator.

Have you specific reason to not like accelerators?

<comment><USER8> I personally agree with Ryan. The whole accelerator ecosystem is designed for the final benefit of VCs. It is like some clever fox built a pen, where the hen are competing to get more fat for the feast of the fox. If you managed to get enough for your own good, why the heck you need to work harder and trouble people just to enrich one more VC?

<comment><USER9> I don't agree with this (EF#3 Cohort Member). I was pretty sceptical of accelerators before joining EF, and remain sceptical of VCs, but I found EF really useful for things that I just would not have seen coming (someone else has mentioned "unknown unknowns" which sums it up fairly well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> EF turned me - a Computer Science graduate with a vague interest in startups - into the founder of an angel-backed startup.

The pace of learning during the six pace programme is rapid, but that's not what I see as most important. I'm most grateful for them giving me the opportunity to start my own thing straight out of university.

Without EF, I would have been forced to get a graduate job at a tech company in order to pay the bills. Building a startup in London would have been orders of magnitude harder. I know people who are trying to build products in their spare time, and it's tough.

Thanks to EF, I'm now running a five-person company with nearly 10,000 users.

Oh, and I met my co-founder on the programme. Not bad.

<comment><USER11> Come on man, you can't just drop that and then not share what you're building.

<comment><USER12> [https://joinencore.com/jamesmcaulay](https://joinencore.com/jamesmcaulay)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > for women are generally outnumbered on Britain's science-degree courses, > especially among PhD

That's really not true. Physics undergraduate in most universities is perhaps 1:10 male:female. Postgraduate (PhD) is pretty much half/half in my experience. My department is physics/space/climate and we have more girls than boys now I think.

Perhaps the scene is worse in computer science, but I've been to a few machine vision conferences and women are pretty well represented.

EDIT: That said, engineering undergraduate was atrocious at my university. I had some friends doing civil/mechanical and it was maybe 1:20. Comp sci was pretty good though, as was maths. Biology and chemistry (and biochemistry) always seem to attract girls too.

<comment><USER14> > That's really not true. Physics undergraduate in most universities is > perhaps 1:10 male:female.

It was talking about science-degree courses, not Physics specifically. You seem quite sure it's not true, do you have any sources?

<comment><USER13> I interpreted the statement as as slightly more hyperbolic than it actually is. What they say is true, across the board, but it's not as bad as it sounds. The problem is that 'especially' implies that the ratio gets worse as you get higher in academia and I think that's nonsense.

My undergraduate degree was physics, but we spent time in other classes run by the maths and engineering departments.

The stats for UCL are here: [https://www.ucl.ac.uk/srs/statistics/tables/g/1415](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/srs/statistics/tables/g/1415)

It's difficult to get more granular data. The graduate figures there are for masters and PhD combined. My department is space and climate and we certainly don't have 99 PhD students!

I can't find stats for my undergraduate intake (Warwick '08), so you'll have to take my word for it. Things may have improved a lot since then. My girlfriend says that her physics course (St Andrews) was fairly even.

Oxford is an interesting edge case because they seem to control for gender quite well. They accepted more girls than boys for undergrad in 2013 (over all sciences) at least.

[https://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/statisticalinformation/#d.en.62...](https://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/statisticalinformation/#d.en.6207)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just went through EF - while the cost of living in London is awful, the EF stipend more than covers it. I wouldn't have even considered moving back to the UK (much less to London) had EF not been able to assure me that they could deliver on the mentoring, connections, and financial support that they advertise.

In 3 months I learnt a lot about a variety of industries as we very rapidly iterated through teams and ideas, and I'm now developing instrumentation and software that will be launched into space later this year.

It certainly beats the opportunities I've had in finance and academia over the past few years!

</comment><comment><USER16> Any independent opinions of EF? They are great things about them in most media, though most articles have a PR flavor to them.

<comment><USER12> As someone who went through the process, I'm glad I did. They do a great job of building up a good atmosphere among the group, and just working with such a high concentration of smart, engaged and interesting people is a great experience.

That said, as a model for building startups, I remain skeptical. Given such a short time period, there's a lot of pressure to grab quick wins and sell an idea before writing any code. That takes a certain kind of customer, and a certain kind of idea. Nothing wrong with it as such, but it's pretty narrow and it's easy to reel off interesting companies which wouldn't fit well in that model. Stripe probably would, but less so Google, Uber, EF itself etc, especially not anything with an unclear trajectory or that will grow its own market. There's a strong feeling among my group that the most successful members have been the ones who most wanted to start a company for its own sake, without particularly caring how, and there's plenty of people who started out wanting to solve some problem in biotech or education only to end up data mining online shoppers. There are exceptions to this, like OpenCosmos, but they usually started EF pre-formed.

(As an aside, they haven't quite resolved the tension between making EF seem valuable and the fact that people who see EF as a gatekeeper have the wrong mindset. Those who think about it too hard might also realise that they are disincentivised from taking EF's funding at the end of the program.)

Speaking of PR flavour, I think improving communication about what the process is actually like (perhaps as opposed to what they would like it to be like) would be a key improvement. Their marketing about being obsessed with problems and deeply technical doesn't tell the above story. Their definition of "deep tech", which basically means "not a CRUD app", probably seems sane to your average web designer or VC, but if you spend your days in the guts of an OS or compiler you might be disappointed. Ok, so if your programming itch is scratched by chucking data into scikit-learn and selling it as an API, you're going to have a great time – and you can slap the "AI" label on your company as a bonus.

Lest that sound too negative, again, I did enjoy the process and they seem to be doing well so far. My impression is that all the cohorts have had a different feel, and they're still iterating on the process. Right now they have something pretty good, and they might just be able to make it great.

<comment><USER15> Largely agree there - given that EF itself is iterating and changing quite rapidly, it should be interesting to see how it evolves now that it seems to be entering hockey-stick stage. The deep tech didn't really materialise too much IMO, but as a former physicist I guess I have fairly extreme expectations regarding what constitutes "depth" in technology.

I'm quite impressed with Accelerated Dynamics and ThirdEye, I'll be following them closely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My lawyer lives in London. He's from silicon valley and has helped hundreds of startups, including some of the biggest.

His observation about London is that the cost of living is simply so high, that it is impossible to have a real startup culture here.

<comment><USER3> You can live on £1000 per month. Of course it's not as much fun as spending more money (especially since the people you see on the street seem lavish in their spending). It's very easy to get accustomed to an expensive lifestyle.

In SF, is it possible to rent a single room 15 minutes walk from where all the tech companies are located for $800 / month? Because in London you can.

<comment><USER14> Pretty hard to live off £1k a month in London. Rent is going to be ~50% of that minimum, then you have council tax + bills. Doesn't leave much at all for transport/food and whatever else might come up.

<comment><USER18> £1k is a bit less than the recommended monthly cost for students in London of around £1.1-1.2k, depending who you ask. That presumably assumes sharing a flat/house with others, but also probably assumes living relatively close to the university.

The "London Living Wage" works out to about £1200 per month, after tax. There are people earning less than this in London.

If the startup doesn't _need_ to be in London they could cut costs significantly by being further out of London in the suburbs, or in a satellite town, and taking the train in when necessary. But this can put off potential employees. Maybe it could work at the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's equal opportunity and equal outcome, they propose to tackle the problem with equal outcome. With more women taking degrees in the UK one must ask why they are less seen in STEM based subjects and not try to artificially level the playing field.

My personal opinion is that the issue is a social one, where we are still awaking from a period where women must do certain jobs and men must do others. You don't see many women as bin collectors although they are more than qualified for the job. I think the best place to tackle this stigma is in Primary and Secondary Schools. The results will take a few years to filter up all the way from Primary to University.

Meanwhile, start-ups should be judged equally based on their quality and not discriminated by who is attempting it. There is a ridiculous notion that we can artificially change the end result and somehow that won't lead to issues.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why sophisticated? It simply says bar is higher and woman participants are as few as in the past.

</comment><comment><USER21> EF is a relatively new Accelerator (< 4 years I think) which essentially means that their early incubated startups will only now be showing their real potential. IMO their future seems both solid and exciting : 3 out of top 5 up- and-coming AI startups in London have been created through EF cohorts - #1 being Google's DeepMind.

via [http://uk.businessinsider.com/10-british-ai-companies-to- loo...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/10-british-ai-companies-to-look-out-for- in-2016-2015-12)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder whether The Economist knows about the MiniBar meetup in London.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't see an electric vehicle manufacturer in London.

<comment><USER23> It would be _insane_ to start an EV company in London. Rent and rates are cripplingly high and you could get considerable tax incentives for setting up elsewhere in the UK.

Nissan have recently opened a massive battery factory in Sunderland to complement their existing car factory. Jaguar Land Rover have announced electric models for 2017 which would be manufactured in their Birmingham, Halewood or Solihull factories. Magtec in Sheffield and Zytek in Staffordshire design and manufacture electric drivetrain systems for a number of companies.

London =/= Britain.

<comment><USER8> Right you are! When Britain produced strategic Handley Page bombers, they made it at Bricket Wood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The guys</comment>


TechCrunch is ... TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://epicfumble.com/post/techcrunch-is-techcrunch

<comment><USER2> All of their writers have a really formulaic schtick: Paul Carr is the contrarian who knows better than everyone else, MG is the Apple fan, and MA is the guy who really knows what's going on and pretends to be some sort of moral authority over the tech scene. Also, MA is a total hypocrite he ridicules Facebook for trying to trademark 'face' and 'book' but then get's outraged over another person using the word 'crunch'. Poe's law should be mentioned.

I think TC's overall quality has gone down dramatically in the last year or so. I still like the coverage of start-ups because their aren't many other alternatively, but they are ripe for a competitor/disruption.

I also though MG's attack on that single-mom/AT&T rep was disgusting and unnecessary. She says a few things to him on Twitter he doesn't like (akin to throwing a pebble at a tank/castle) and MG basically humiliates her in front of the world and gets her fired for disagreeing with him (like a tactical strike on a defenseless village). It was just... beyond low.</comment>


The Problem of Scale and the Case for Cybernetic Communism [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.its.caltech.edu/~matilde/ScaleAnarchy.pdf <comment><USER2> One thing I've been thinking about recently is what would happen if government was automated. We now have better automation and computational capabilities so creating a government with programmed agents instead of politicians is a legitimate possibility.

Turns out Soviet mathematicians had similar ideas

> Economic reform became a pressing need in the mid '50s, after Stalin's rule > had left the country in shambles, the chain of supply and the agricultural > sector nearing collapse and a serious risk of another major famine looming. > Amidst a very rapid expansion of the techno-scientific sector, from the > early successes of the Soviet space program to the first large developments > of computer systems and automation, several competing proposals for economic > reforms were presented that promoted the idea of a "computational solution" > to the severe mismanagements of the planned economy.

> The original plan of the cybernetics approach was to implement a > decentralized computational system, capable of processing feedbacks in real > time and handle the simulation of complex dynamics. In terms of providing a > scalable computational model, they mostly focused on Kantorovich's linear > programming, which seemed the most promising mathematical tool at the time. > As we mentioned, the scalability of Kantorovich's valuations is subtle, and > we will discuss a possible more modern approach to scalability in the next > section of this paper. However, the most important aspect of this proposal > was the main idea of a cybernetic computational network and its role at > implementing a decentralized autonomous computational mechanism for a > communist economic system that would not require any centralized planning.

<comment><USER3> I believe that giving final say to computers is the only way to ensure survival of humans on large timescales (tens to hundreds of thousands of years).

Since we've built up large storage of nuclear weapons, the clock is ticking. Even if the chance of one crazy guy coming to power in one of the governments that can nuke the planet is 0.01% per year, after a few thousand years it will approach dangerous levels...

And I'm not just talking about nukes, but about other potentially mankind ending threats like superviruses, hauling large asteroids onto earth, etc. The more technology we discover, the more methods to end each other's existence. Also, as technological progress continues, so does the spread of these technologies over the world. Smaller and smaller groups get access to them and with the larger number of groups, the likelihood that one of them wants to end all life on earth increases.

Preventing us from inventing these things would require halting and reversing progress in most scientific domains, a pretty sad idea. You can't have nuclear reactors without the danger that someone uses the knowledge of the people who built it to build nukes (I know the two are not the same but so often you hear countries claiming their nuclear program is civilian while in reality it isn't). You can't build rockets without the danger that they might be converted into ICBMs. You can't do advanced biology without understanding infection well enough to know which changes might make an infectious agent more easy to spread, more deadly, etc. You can't do asteroid mining without giving the mining company the power to misdirect the asteroid from an assigned target area to inhabited areas.

So one should rather manage the existence of these technologies instead. No organization ran by humans can reduce the chance of one of these fermi filters from going off well enough to stop them being a threat over extremely long time scales. Only computers can achieve that. I imagine building a computer that is tasked to prevent humans from intentionally destroying large subpopulations of their own. One would have to give it absolute power so that it can ensure this, but one should instruct it to otherwise let humans figure out their governance on their own.

Structures where humans are involved are simply too fragile over the long term.

<comment><USER2> I don't share the same viewpoint nor do I fear technological advancement. We need more powerful technology as widely spread as possible to empower people to achieve their goals. Only way to fight tyranny is to make sure every individual is capable of resisting whatever control others might want to impose upon them. By empowering each individual with technology we give them the best chance of doing so.

We don't solve the problem of nukes by limiting who has access to them. We solve the problem of nukes by moving beyond them and making them obsolete, e.g.

> A defensive shield, commonly referred to as simply a shield and sometimes as > a Holtzman shield, was a protective energy field that could surround the > person who wore it. [0]

We can start by making bullets obsolete and then slowly move up to nukes.

\--

[0]: [https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [1] [https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=Cybernetics](https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=Cybernetics)

</comment><comment><USER4> So I read this until the parts with the formulas, could have used some of the 2-dimensional visualisations she wrote of.

Am I making a category error(as in not even wrong!) when i miss mentions of

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation) ?

Furthermore: Just because some countries have absurd health-scare systems, doesn't mean it has to be so. That is _one_ single aspect, many other countries with 'markets' have implented in better, less scary ways.

Also: Instead of electing smooth talkers, horror clowns and other sociopaths one could opt for a mandatory lottery akin to jury duty/lay assessors/judges, thereby denying them planned paths to power, and simply less wasted energy because lack of campaining. IMO it couldn't be worse than it is now.

Anyways, this is all way above the realities of real life(TM), human nature, and the disruption/distributed denial of service by advertisment, disinfo and outright fraud our minds are.

I'll tick this off with [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(I_Can't_Get_No)_Satisfaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\(I_Can't_Get_No\)_Satisfaction)</comment>


Ask HN: What reference manager tool are you using? - <AUTHOR> Both Mendeley and Zotero have a few lacking features for me (lack of decent iPad apps for both, lack of a metadata lookup function for Zotero), so wondering if there are better alternatives that HN users could recommend. For a non-free option, ReadCube Papers is a possibility, but I've yet to try it. <comment><USER2> JaBref. I don't know whether it works on iPad, but it does the job for me, has many custom export filters and it's dead easy to write your own export (I do it for yearly reporting in arcane format). Icing on the cake: the storage format is just a *.bib file that can be shared, versioned using git, ...</comment>


We Are All Spartacus Now - <AUTHOR> http://bigjournalism.com/mwalsh/2010/01/06/welcome-to-the-fight-we-are-all-spartacus-now/

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

But the auto-scrolling Twitter display is incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER3> OT but yeah, I hate those things, and I hate having to put something over them to un-distract myself.</comment></comment>


Scalable proactive customer communication that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> http://intercomapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey guys, If you're interested in the background of the product, read about here: <http://contrast.ie/blog/product-launch-intercom/>

We'd be interested to hear any thoughts.

<comment><USER3> Looks interesting Des.

How are the users' social media details accessed? Do they opt-in and supply Twitter/LinkedIn/FB credentials themselves or are they acquired by other means?

<comment><USER4> We're using a third-party service to find the social data from their e-mail address.

<comment><USER5> Seems quite useful. Though I was wondering;

How do you measure the "relation" one has with a user? I.e. going from red to green on the meter - what are the factors?

Does your service also provide, built-in, the ability for our users to give us feedback directly at our own site?

Lastly, if you can, would you mind sharing with us the name of the 3rd party service you're referring to (to find social data from email addresses)?

Anyways, something like this might very well be what we've been looking for. Or rather, we're looking for a method/service/platform to enable us to effectivly communicate with our customers (not necesserily in terms of "effective medium").

<comment><USER6> Hi jsean, David from Intercom here.

I can't talk about the "relation" metric as I'm not as familiar with this part of the product as I am with others, but hopefully I can help you with some of your other questions.

Currently with the widget the user can read new messages from you, write new messages to you, and reply to either type of message.

Right now the behaviour is that, if a user doesn't have any unread messages, clicking on the inbox link brings them to a new message form. There's also a "New" button in the inbox (seen here: <http://intercomapp.com/images/marketing/shots/5.jpg> ) that brings them to the same form.

If you have an Exceptional account (getexceptional.com) you can see the widget in action.

We're using Qwerly at the moment for social data.

If you have any further questions, let me know here or fire us a tweet @intercomapp.

David

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks really good. I can actually see myself using this when the time is right. Lovely looking interface.

I don't like the name very much though - "Intercom". It's neither descriptive nor sounds very aesthetic, and I'm sure it's not going to be exactly straightforward competing on Google for that keyword.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is possible to get an invite? We would like to try it. This is exactly what we are doing by ourself when supporting our customers by combining Rapportive, Twitter, Google Spreadsheets, and magic.

</comment><comment><USER9> woa, is that <http://documentcloud.github.com/visualsearch/> in those screenshots? if so, wow for fast adoption.</comment>


JQuery hack to inline HN comments below your post (like Disqus) - <AUTHOR> http://will.m.aier.us/ycomments/

<comment><USER2> This looks interesting, but it could really use a screen shot to better explain what it is going to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea -- I just pushed a fix.

[https://github.com/wcmaier/ycomments/commit/19410662ad38b802...](https://github.com/wcmaier/ycomments/commit/19410662ad38b802d66fc0d11b4be2d581dea3cf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FIRST POST.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to Hacker News. I see this is your first comment since you've registered four hours ago.

I advise you to read over the guidelines (<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>) and the FAQ (<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>). Also, take a read over the Unoffical HN FAQ (<http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ>) and <http://resourcey.com/site_details/2/news.ycombinator.com/>

Just to warn you, comments like "FIRST POST." while enthusiastic, in general will be downvoted since they don't contribute anything of value to the discussion. I'm sure you can contribute something more thoughtful than "FIRST POST."</comment></comment>


Snowden's Constitution vs Obama's Constitution - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130703/00121023700/snowdens-constitution-vs-obamas-constitution.shtml

<comment><USER2> The OP is (mostly) a sober analysis of the constitutional issues raised by automatic mass surveillance. Whether one agrees or disagrees, it's (relatively) high-quality content that an informed author put some serious effort into. As far as Snowden articles go it is surely in the upper percentiles of HN-appropriateness. How about we follow its lead here and focus on the content [1]?

The author's main point is that the Supreme Court has interpreted the word "reasonable" in the Fourth Amendment ("unreasonable searches and seizures") to mean "what ordinary citizens find reasonable". In other words, the meaning of the constitution here is supposed to fluctuate with public opinion. That's interesting, and something I've never heard before. Is this a standard view? Or has the author improvised it?

[1] Does not count: lurid speculation about what the government would like to do to Snowden; blatant trolls that degrade the discussion intentionally.

<comment><USER3> I think one probably wants to be careful about phrases like "supposed to fluctuate", because it's a stretch to say that the framers wrote the 4th Amendment expecting technology and social mores to continually redefine the meaning of the 4th Amendment over time. It's often more profitable to examine what precise concern animated the language and then project that concern across time.

Another way to look at the "reasonableness" requirement is that it's a deliberate constitutional punt to the judiciary; the word "reasonable" begs for judicial interpretation.

But no, I don't think the author of this post invented that interpretation of the 4th Amendment, and I think that interpretation leads to a sensible place in these circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> don't forget pres signing statements:

[http://www.coherentbabble.com/listBHOall.htm](http://www.coherentbabble.com/listBHOall.htm)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_statement#Signing_state...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_statement#Signing_statements_in_the_Obama_Administration)

<comment><USER3> Presidential signing statements don't have the force of law. They're predictive of how an administration will use the discretion granted to it by the law and the Constitution, and sometimes (for instance in Bush 2's case) predictive of ways in which the administration will exceed its authority, but the reality is that the Executive can't "fill in the blanks" on laws unless the Legislature authorizes that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Think about the massive diplomatic fallout the US government risked yesterday with getting all those countries to deny airspace to the President of Bolivia until his jet ran out of fuel and they could stop-and-frisk his sovereignty.

They want Snowden bad, like terrifyingly bad. He will never see the light of day if they get their hands on him. His trial will have even less coverage than Mannings's (zero) and he'll be held naked in an isolated concrete cell somewhere and force fed ensure to "teach all the other analysts a lesson" \- you obey or you will become a walking corpse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that what they really want is to send a message to some other potential leaker in the future to "think twice before you leak".

I think we should be careful with speculating about horrifying consequences of leaking illegal activities of the government to the press - we don't want to help them spread fear (assuming we want to know the truth). Who knows... maybe Snowden's act will really help expose and stop unconstitutional activities of US government and Snowden will overcome the bleak reality that he is living right now and live the rest of his life celebrated as a hero.

<comment><USER6> I think anyone in the position to leak things truly damaging now already knows sufficient fear.

Spreading the word about their inhuman practices against those who would attempt to do the right thing now serves the other goal: illustrating to people why leaking is more important than ever.

Remember, there are still hundreds of NSA sysadmins going to work every day, post-Snowden, processing this data collected on innocent people (Americans included). It's not like they didn't know before that leaking stuff would be the end of their life as they know it. We need to show them that it's the end of everyone's life as they know it if they don't; that is, to get them to question the validity of their mission in the first place.

It's about showing them the true character of just what they're protecting with their silence.

<comment><USER7> Hundreds sysadmins?

I think tens of thousands, if not more. Thats whats worrying and horrifying about all this for me at least. There is a whole organization, a structure, a culture of people whos job is illegal and immoral activities, they know and they still continue doing it as Snowden said many of them are authoritarians - perhaps even feeling pleasure from having that power.

NSA is a big employer, and it took what 5-6 years for one leaker?

<comment><USER8> Surely the NSA has a pretty thorough screening process that you have to go through before you're allowed to work there.

Also, when you think of the consequences of leaking ( basically giving up your life in the USA) I'd guess most people would think twice about it and go with the pragmatic option, the same way that most of the population is ok with the NSA's actions as long they protect us from the terrorists.

<comment><USER7> You are right, and it is demoralizing for any future leaker.

Something can be done about the whole mess, its not all lost, but not unless a majority is on board, and it doesnt seem to be, majority seems to be fine with it and seem to be fine with living in fear or threats of fear.

Its like, if a few officers or groups of soldiers in Whermacht or SS begin to question and disobey their orders to run the Einsatz-gruppe or concetratipn camps... some few tried, they got killed or their lives destroyed.

What we can learn from Snowden is that he is one of the few heroes among us, and that we are already too deep in the shit to do anything about it, as is obvious to the lengths the USA would go just to catch him, a sysadmin who showed a few powerpoints to a a few journalists.

Its DDR all over again.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you get your news? - <AUTHOR> So, after the election, the biggest feeling that I have is I'm living in a bubble. I feel out of touch with 50% of Americans. I think, regardless of what side you're on, that rings true for most of us. The realization of how much bias there is in the reporting world (and in my social media bubbles) has been pretty humbling for me, and it makes me feel like I can't really trust the places I get my news from.
I'm trying to take steps to improve how I get my news. Here's my reading habit right now: Every morning I scan through HN, Reddit and my Facebook feeds. Once a week I read the Economist and the New York Times. And I have a great work environment that shares insightful articles through our chat tool, so I get most of my good stuff from there.
But, on my own, I rarely find well thought-out articles that analyze political issues. I just read headlines and blog style articles.
So, for those of you who feel like you have a good, unbiased grasp on current events and politics... how do you get your news? <comment><USER2> When I actively pursued 'being informed' I read the dead tree version of _The Economist_ cover to cover every week. It's a significant commitment of time and a non-trivial commitment of money but the payoff was worth it so long as I had that sort of goal.

Good luck.</comment>