Show HN: I Wrote CSS and JavaScript Style Guides - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bevacqua/css

<comment><USER2> First thing I noticed, because it's first on the list, was namespaces. Very good to use ddl-this-list as you suggest an dthis is what I do, but it breaks in Angular when using, iirc, ng-show & hide and ng-if. I had to use camelCase in those instances because angular was (excuse the accent) all like: "errur! wha't up with that iwas totally expecting a :". So no dashes for you.

The examples under Languages -> bad;

1\. isn't style, it's a typo, as you know Foo (letter 'oh') isn't valid hex.

2\. I disagree, I have used a framework where I had a block of 25 selectors I was setting a single style on, so no I don't want that to take up 27 lines.

3\. I don't see the problem, because you should use the hex value? Meh.

"Use a single space after the colon" \- please let the visual studio team in on this one, please.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I escape Gmail and Outlook.com? - <AUTHOR> I've spent the last 15 years or so dodging between Microsoft and Google's email solutions. I've tried escaping them to smaller providers including old fashioned pop3/smtp, but I feel like I've been strong-armed back into using them. The smaller companies tend to have numerous problems with delivery to providers such as Yahoo and MSFT Office 365. It's almost like there's a conspiracy between the larger providers to automatically accept email but for the small guys, they don't get a look in.<p>I want to move away because I entirely distrust them. <comment><USER2> I've always had a good experience with fastmail.com, and I know it gets a lot of love here on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Replying again. I've moved to fastmail and it's awesome. Thank you!

<comment><USER2> Awesome, glad you like it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would like to move away, but the issue I'm running into is the amount of services/sites/etc I've signed up with using my gmail account. I guess the best option would be to have both (gmail and X, where X is fastmail or something similar) for a few years and slowly migrate over, I don't know.

I don't like the fact that if a single email account of mine was compromised that it would essentially compromise everything else. Email accounts can hold a lot of power over someone's online life.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are some of the problems I have. I've spent a while now separating everything. It's easy to hit that "log in with google button" but every click just locks you in further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://mailinabox.email](https://mailinabox.email)

I generally recommend against administering your own email server, but this may be a good idea for you.

I use this for one of my own domains. I have it hosted on a Digital Ocean droplet.

They take a lot of the complexity out of the picture. This is one of the easiest ways to host your own email, that I've seen up to this point.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's a decent list of mail providers (with the exception of proton mail, because that's a walled garden): [https://www.privacytools.io/#email](https://www.privacytools.io/#email)

Personally, I've been using mailbox.org for ~3 years without any issues like you describe.

</comment><comment><USER6> ProtonMail is also a good alternative. It's secure and hosted in Switzerland.

I'd suggest that you start using a new email for identity with online banking, utilities and other essential services.

Better still, buy a domain and use that for the identity address so that you can move the hosting around as you see fit.

<comment><USER5> Having your own domain is definitely the way to go, for the exact reason you mention. You're free to change mail providers without having to change your mail address, which is nice for you and for your contacts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> how about going full nerd and taking things into your own hands ? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392096)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. It is a valid one so not sure why you got downvoted.

I actually did this for a number of years in the late 1990s to about 2004 and currently am "fix it monkey" for our SES / DKIM / SPF / SMTP config and I don't really want to take that job home with me :)

<comment><USER8> Do you really need to fix that stuff often? I run my own mailserver, and it seemed very "set it and forget it", but maybe it's more complex at large orgs.

<comment><USER9> If you are in a "good neighborhood" from a network point of view and don't bulk send, it is not that bad.

Cheap hosts are a bad idea. I hosted mail on a local colo's site and had zero issues. When I ran a large enterprise system, we had issues all of the time but even then resolution wasn't terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am using Berlin based posteo [1] since a few years, very happy.

[1]: [https://posteo.de/en](https://posteo.de/en)

</comment><comment><USER11> I still use Yahoo, but Excite and Juno are still around for email. Or you can look into paid solutions.</comment>


The Persistence of Sects - <AUTHOR> http://www.workersect.org/2x205p.html

<comment><USER2> If you are looking for a definition of sect, as I was, to figure out what the paper is about, it's a few paragraphs down:

 _"...first, that each of them exists in a state of tension with the wider society; second, that each imposes tests of merit on would-be members; third, that each exercises stern discipline, regulating the declared beliefs and the life habits of members and prescribing and operating sanctions for those who deviate, including the possibility of expulsion; and fourth, that each demands sustained and total commitment from its members, and the subordination, and perhaps even the exclusion of all other interests."_

<comment><USER3> This is sort of a counterpoint to #3, but an important litmus for a cult is that it is very difficult to leave voluntarily.

Certainly in the case of the JWs, an individual exiting the cult has to contend not only with the fear and uncertainty preceding their decision to quit, but with subsequently being completely ostracised by family members who are still members. All of this acts as powerful psychological coercion to remain even when one no longer believes in the cult's message, and makes escapees enormously vulnerable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, I get:

        The requested URL was rejected. If you think this is an error, please contact the webmaster.

        Your support ID is: 13078553747997112974

Anyone know what could cause this? I have been getting this from one other web site (the web comic www.sinfest.net) when accessing it from home, but not from work.

<comment><USER5> Do you run a Tor relay? If your IP address is listed as being such, you'll see that message on lots of web sites. Apple's support site (although not their store, interestingly) and phdcomics.com are other places I've run into it. If you have a static IP address on your home router, don't _ever_ start a Tor relay at home, or you'll poison it, evidently, forever. :-(

<comment><USER4> I have run a Tor relay in the past, yes. Although I have been getting this error only recently. And indeed phdcomics.com gives the same error. Interestingly, I get support.apple.com in Russian!?

<comment><USER4> It was a Tor relay, not an exit node, so I'm still curious why it would have to be blacklisted. And I guess I cannot rule out completely that either my home computer or - more likely - someone I granted access to my wifi has been part of a botnet.

<comment><USER5> I'm positive that no machine in my home network has ever been part of a botnet; the only explanation that stands up to scrutiny is the Tor relay that was running for a few days as a NAT forwarded service through my router's static IP address.

I wish the faceless entity behind this widespread blacklist service could be identified so I could ask them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _In recent decades_ […]

When was this written?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bryan R. Wilson, "The Persistence of Sects", Diskus, Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Vol 1, No. 2, 1993</comment></comment>


Major exploit found on reddit - <AUTHOR> http://neomeme.net/2007/05/26/reddit-hacked/ <comment><USER2> As I've mentioned on reddit, almost everything this fellow wrote is false.

news.YC isn't based on reddit

Any text that comes from users and gets redisplayed is checked.

The actual bug was that we allowed javascript: links to be generated by markdown, which we use in the comments to allow formatting. This allowed users to make links in the comment section that could run javascript when clicked.

<comment><USER3> "almost everything" is a bit of an overstatement, I think.

I did incorrectly assume that news.YC was based on reddit- I've since corrected that.

"This allowed users to make links in the comment section that could run javascript that could steal your cookie and your login details" would be more accurate. The issue has(very speedily) been resolved since, but there is no need to make light of a textbook XSS exploit.

<comment><USER2> \-- "almost everything" is a bit of an overstatement, I think.

Well the rest of the Internet disagrees with you.

\--would be more accurate.

Yet you continue to claim reddit doesn't "validate input in any text boxes on the site."

\--creator of reddit found the same exact exploit months ago

No. The exploit on YC news was an XSS exploit in link submissions that allowed me to run javascript on any YC user's client.

\--textbook XSS exploit.

Hardly. There was no hidden JS, which is the defining characteristic of an XSS exploit. Certainly we shouldn't allow JS links, but making the claims you have are nothing more than a bogus stretch for attention.

Congrats on receiving it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clearly exploits are something that shouldn't happen and often happens. What I'd like to ask is how the process of a startup and the process of achieving security should be integrated?

I see a conflict between the entrepreneurial extreme concentration on what the users want and the need to follow good security practices consistently during all life stages of the product.

Of course, all entrepreneurs should already live in the relativity of risk, effort and reward. In that sense, I hope that startups understand to avoid some of the insane security risks that some enterprises seem to have. Likewise, Reddit has provided full HTML features with zero effort this far. Perhaps this exploit wasn't that bad to them or the users?

Reading some good books on security philosophy might help, especially if you don't have the time to follow and learn from Schneier's Crypto-Gram Newsletters and the various security announcement lists. More security with less effort is one more reason to run Linux or even OpenBSD. And, validate all inputs in your software. I wonder if there's a security checklist for startups.

<comment><USER5> Well.. it's not so hard to avoid this kind of bugs. In web applications the basic rules are the following:

\- Use something able to auto-escape SQL queries, unlike things done at hand like with PHP mysql_escape_string()

\- Check user input _a lot_ for sanity. Write utility functions to access get/post vars able to make sure data type and range are ok, like, getintparam("foo") or if you aspect a value between 1 and 10 getintparam("foo",1,10). Similar functions with strings where you can specify the valid set of chars are also helpful.

\- Remember to output html entities not only when you are outputting text, but also in html tag attributes like foo="bar". "bar" requires to be converted in HTML entities of course.

\- Create a solid authentication scheme, for example write in the user table a 256bit authentication random number got from /dev/urandom, and set it as user cookie.

\- When there are load problems use HMACs to "sign" important data and store it in user's cookies. It's possible to check for integrity of the data without to access the DB at all. Fast & Safe.

\- Remember that if a user is logged in, an external site can have code like img src="[http://yoursite/op.cgi?delete=all"](http://yoursite/op.cgi?delete=all) To avoid this attack make sure to:

1) use HMAC-ed IDs for importante objects. "ff83729A2" instead of "41". Require that IDs of objects target of operations or other auth tokes the external site can't guess are required in order to perform operations.

2) for very important operations the system may require the user to type the password.

\- Make sure you are not using algorithms with some worst case time complexity that can be triggered from outside. It will be very easy to turn this into a DOS.

And... of course: wirte simple code that's simple to check for corner cases. Computers aren't currently able to audit code, so you need to optimize for humans even for security.

<comment><USER6> "Remember that if a user is logged in, an external site can have code like img src="[http://yoursite/op.cgi?delete=all""](http://yoursite/op.cgi?delete=all)

You shouldn't be using GET for anything that has side effects.

<comment><USER4> You probably know this, but the same is applicable to "cross-site request forgeries" in general, they just aren't as trivial to exploit as img src. If they can perform a GET they can perhaps use javascript to import confidential information into a loaded page and scrape that.

POST requests aren't safe from tricks by third-party sites either, as is mentioned here for example: <http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross- Site_Request_Forgery>

(Open Web Application Security Project looks interesting otherwise too.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SynbioIDE - <AUTHOR> https://synbioide.com <comment><USER2> There are no publications, why would anyone trust (eg waste months and months of followup experiments) on your predictions?

Anyone can spit out a DNA sequence, almost no one can guarantee you that it will work (express in your host, perform the reaction you want, etc).

There have been many attempts at this problem before (20n, genome compiler, BNICE, etc). What makes yours different?

<comment><AUTHOR> You seem to know what you're talking about. Would love to share our vision with you. Any way I can reach out to you?</comment></comment>


More New Yorkers Opt for Life in the Bike Lane - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/nyregion/new-yorkers-bike-lanes-commuting.html <comment><USER2> Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives (quoted in the article) deserves a ton of credit for the changes in NYC over the last decade, including getting the city to roll out CitiBike and expanding bike lates. But Bloomberg hiring Janette Sadik-Khan is what really turned the city around.</comment>


Laws to Save Journalism (or The Most Unintentionally Funny Thing I've Read All Day) - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503000.html

<comment><USER2> This is like watching dinosaurs attempting to do physics.

Everytime they hear Google mention the idea of 'opt out if you don't like it', they start crying 'Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet'. So they want google to crawl their pages, and then pay them something on top for indexing them.

That's like asking the police to protect your neighborhood and then charging them a monthly fee on top for the policing.

It's this ridiculous sense of entitlement that's the most sickening out of all this.

<comment><USER3> > they start crying 'Publishers should not have to choose between protecting > their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the > Internet'.

And they don't have to choose. Google search results don't include very much of the content so a user has to click on the link to go to their site to see said content. They're free to do whatever they want to do to protect content on their site. They're free to do whatever they want to do to monetize said content.

When pushed, their complaints seem to be:

(1) when they implement protections, users go elsewhere

(2) They can't get enough ad revenue from their pages.

(3) Other folks "steal" their content and google will find said stolen content and help users find it. (In many cases, said other "copies" are completely legit. The sneer quotes are because they object when someone else reports the same news.)

(4) Google makes money online and we're not, and since we're providing content and Google is just telling folks how to find it, Google is clearly cheating somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like a bad joke!... To summarise, their proposal to "save the news industry" is to:

\- make it illegal for search engines to index sites without asking for explicit permission from each and every site

\- make it illegal for people to report on "hot news" that has been broken by one specific outlet first without paying that first outlet

\- remove monopoly caps on news organisations, allowing them to become even bigger than news corp (as if that wasn't big enough already)

\- give some tax breaks to the news industry and pay people to post ads in newspapers instead of craigslist

...

What world do the authors of this article live in? I sure hope it's not mine.

<comment><USER5> The authors of that article live in a world where companies like the RIAA who sue their customers are considered heroes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not a journalist, but I am in the industry (developer for metro daily).

This is one of the more clueless and wrong headed set of ideas I've seen. I'd be preaching to the choir explaining why I believe that here. So, instead I'll make some important points that often seem to be forgotton.

Talking heads are not the newspaper industry. I don't believe the papers I'm involved with would agree with any of these ideas.

The AP is not the newspaper industry. Many papers despise what the AP is doing and are considering dumping them. (fear of that is causing the AP to freak out and do stupid shit)

National Big Name newspapers are not the newspaper industry. They get the attention cause they're big and have household names. But by far most papers, most circulation and most readership are small metro and community papers.

Newspapers are not the newspaper industry. There is a wide range of owners, ideas, and plans amongst newspapers. Some of the ideas are good some are bad. Some papers will shutdown, some will thrive, some will no longer be newspaper companies.

<comment><USER7> Good points all around. I've found developers at newspaper orgs often have better solutions to the problems in the industry then the 'media veterans' themselves.

Which paper do you work for? Would love to get in touch (alex at newscred dot com).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was going to be a funny column about questionable laws intended to "save journalism".

 _Journalism does not need a bailout, but it does need a sort of "recovery act" to bring the legal landscape in line with today's publishing technologies._

These guys have learned their lesson well: When asking for a bailout, don't call it a bailout.

But to be fair, they didn't ask for any _direct_ financial subsidies.

<comment><USER9> I would far prefer direct subsidies to what this article implies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You may think it's funny, and to a certain extent, I do to and for the same reasons. But, the kind of thinking exhibited by the writer is also dangerous in tharlt his writings could actually influence people in the wrong way. There have been plenty of stupid laws passed before, here and in other places.

</comment><comment><USER11> "... the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement."

Must... restrain... cluebat.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope everyone here knows about the Overton Window (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window>).

Viewed in that light this article isn't dumb, and the authors aren't stupid. They are re-framing the debate in terms of copyright law reform, public good and public policy rather than technical merit and economics.

Notice how the comments here are about how dumb their ideas are? That's what they want - for their ideas to be accepted as part of a valid debate.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have a better proposal on how to save journalism, I'd love to hear it.

I like the idea of helping news organizations convert into nonprofits much better than Eric Schmidt's suggestion that they abandon the journalism "product" and find a new one.

<comment><USER14> Nationalize a few newspapers. A couple billion dollars a year would finance an incredible number of investigative journalists, and it would be far better for democracy than what we currently have -- dumbed down news designed to maximize viewership and ad sales.

<comment><USER15> How exactly is state-controlled media good for democracy?

<comment><USER16> State-funded _doesn't_ mean state-run. On it's face, I agree that government being remotely associated with media is a bad thing. The fact of the matter is, though, that the quality of reporting that comes out of publicly-funded news organizations generally exceeds that of their private counterparts.

BBC news is one example (corporate alternatives? Telegraph/Daily mail). In the US, the _only_ good national source of news on television is the News Hour on PBS. Frontline, as dramatic as it is, is much more palatable and thorough than its corporate investigative-journalist counterparts. Similarly, Public radio stands alone as a good source of news and commentary.

Many European countries have followed the model of the BBC, with very good results. Holland (where I'm living) has an interesting model where public broadcasting organizations make tv/radio programs, and those organizations are allocated money and airtime by the government based on their membership/viewer numbers.

Just because there are conflict-of-interest problems with public (government) money funding the press doesn't mean that there aren't equally serious conflict-of-interest problems between private (commercial) money doing the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> if you didn't notice, the authors are NOT journalists:

"Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown are partners in the Washington office of Baker Hostetler. They specialize in media and First Amendment law."

obviously if congress were to pass these idiotic laws, this wouldn't translate to any more business for their law firm. noooooooo sir it wouldn't. they're just trying to defend journalism!

</comment><comment><USER18> Surprise surprise, the authors are lawyers

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't editorialize the title, TomOfTTB.

<comment><AUTHOR> People do it all the time. There's no rule against it. More to the point when someone (in this case me) submits an article what they are doing is sharing something they found interesting with the rest of the community.

In that sense I don't see how it's unreasonable to give my take on the article in the title.

<comment><USER19> Two wrongs don't make a right. The guidelines, although not rules, ask you not to do it. If the article is interesting, it'll get upvotes.

Your take might be different than mine, and more importantly, than the article author. If you thing the USA Senate (including a presidential candidate who snatched the popular vote), journalism's fate, new laws, and people with more power than we both deciding how we should digest information is "funny"... well... you're alienated.

Don't editorialize the title, it's just not cool. If you want to expand why you think it's funny, write a blog post or write a comment. I am sure we've never heard how the MSM doesn't "get" the internet, how their business models should change, how the hyper-local journalism is the future, etc... include a Bill O'Reilly video and I am sure you can also get Digg's frontpage.

And I am sorry for my agressive behaviour. It's 7am and I drank a few beers. Just don't editorialize the title, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> I quote from the guidelines...

"You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it. "

So you're just wrong on this. (For the record I did write a blog post on my blog but I wanted to share the link and didn't feel my post's expansion of the issue was as relevant as the initial article)

As far as it being funny I'm sorry but it is. Saying Google should be guilty of copyright infringement for crawling a website is ridiculous. If someone said it on Saturday Night Live it would get a huge laugh. Because it's comical

(For the record I'm not deaf to the MSM's issues and again posted my full thoughts on the issue here: [http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Searching-For-A- Solution-to...](http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Searching-For-A-Solution-to- The-Journalism-Squeeze.aspx))

<comment><USER19> Hey, I just want to apologize. While I still think your title is wrong (er... it is a gratuitous editorial spin), when I woke up this morning I regretted writing in that tone while drunk. Not something that I would do face-to-face, I assure you... my bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Search Ads - <AUTHOR> https://searchads.apple.com <comment><USER2> From their ad copy they say 65% of all downloads come from app store search. If this is true, this is bad news for FB. A huge chunk of FB revenue comes from mobile app install ads bc that was the only method large app developers had to send users to their apps. I previously worked at a gaming firm that spent $5M/month on these types of ads.

If App Store search is effective, this will swing ad budgets away. FB still has all the demographic and audience info, but arguably none of that is important bc all you want to do in those types of ads is attract users who spent. Apple is at the top of the chain, they can do this better than FB bc they have reliable transaction data and FB has to rely on properly instrumented SDKs, then use machine learning to figure out who "might" be a spender, then have the marketing person optimize those ads. Wouldn't you rather just say, target anyone who has previously made a purchase in a game and be done with it?

Another note. I once created a niche utility app that I eventually had to takedown because as an indie dev it was difficult to rise above the ranks, even if the apps above mine were super shitty. I'm going to resurrect that app tonight bc for the first time this might be an effective form of user acquisition. FB ads were terrible bc it is not intent-based and Adwords were terrible because people don't search Google for apps then pull out their phones to download apps (or search in Safari then switch to App Store).

<comment><USER3> I only use the search when I know what app I'm looking for. Wouldn't that would drive up the numbers artificially -- as I had the intention of downloading the app before I began searching.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't think so, not if they're saying a percentage of all downloads come from search, as opposed to a percentage of all searches lead to a download.

<comment><USER5> But searching is the only way (sane) people find anything on the App Store. When was the last time you browsed the store until you found the cool new app you just read about?

Whenever I use the App store, I'm on a mission. But it's also a mission to get free stuff, so maybe I'm not even part of the equation.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Whenever I download an app it's because I read or heard about it somewhere else. Open the app store, head to search, type name, tap install.

I don't think I've casually browsed around the app store since I got my first iPhone (first smartphone), around 2009 or 10.

<comment><USER7> Me too. But I am skeptical of free stuff and almost always look for a paid version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is bad for everyone except Apples revenue and already rich app-makers.

First off, it's bad for the end user since app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising. It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Most likely, the indie made app you love will be harder to find since other apps will be shown instead.

This sucks and is a totally greedy move from one of the largest corporations in the world.

<comment><USER9> > It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with > big businesses.

Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller address these obvious concerns in this candid post-WWDC talk:

[http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158](http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158)

<comment><USER8> Can you TLDR it for us?

<comment><USER9> Not a TLDR but from the transcript [1] under "On App Store search ads":

 _...how do you do it in a way that gives advantages to small and indie developers, because it 's easy to imagine a system that didn't do that.

First of all, there's no minimum bid. So we don't set a bar, if you have a very small amount of money, you can just do what you can with a small amount of money.

The fact that we're going to work really hard to try to make relevance the top priority, over bid, for why something gets shown. That the users are the ultimate deciders of what gets shown, based on their clicks, they're a big input to what is relevant to the search result.

The fact that we're going to work hard to try to police and improve the whole metadata system if we find, as it easily could be abused to hurt [small] developers.

The fact that — and this has been a hotly-debated thing — the fact that you can do conquesting. You can use someone else's brand in your ad words that you want to use. As we thought about it, that is more likely to benefit the small developer than the big developer. Because the big developer isn't going to pick on a lot of small developer terms, but a small developer can try to latch on to a big developer's name. If I want to search for Angry Birds and your game, you can. Right? And so we think that that can help them.

The fact that there's no exclusivity. So a large developer cannot say, "And I want to be the top bid, and I'm going to spend everything I can to buy out this term." There will be no exclusivity, there's going to be a rotation there, and as that rotation appears, the relevance will help drive it further.

We're trying everything we can, and I think one of the best things is, right now, once we're in beta throughout the summer, the downloads the users get from the ads are real downloads to benefit the developer, but we're not charging [for ads] during the beta time. So there's a chance for everybody to get in and try it out, help us learn from it, and drive real downloads and real business without any marketing spend._

[1] [http://www.imore.com/our-full-transcript-talk-show- wwdc-2016...](http://www.imore.com/our-full-transcript-talk-show- wwdc-2016-phil-schiller-and-craig-federighi)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For many many years, the number one reason people told me why they used apple products was privacy and that with apple I'm not a product. It's how they could justify paying the high premium for apple products.

It would be very interesting if they get into the advertising business. Harvesting data about my usage it and using that data to charge more for ads that are well targeted.

It would mean that in addition to apple selling a product at a premium, the users would also become a product.

Combine this with things like the disappearing head phone jack, and apple is becoming actively hostile towards its users.

<comment><USER11> This isn't general advertising. It's only on the App Store and is based on the keywords you enter into a search in the store. They rolled this out because it's basically impossible for an unknown developer to get noticed anymore on there. Apple haters will use any new product to criticize the company, but this seems fairly benign and fills a need among developers.

<comment><USER12> Ahh yes, more fees for developers.

> it's basically impossible for an unknown developer to get noticed

They could improve the search algorithm to solve this. Perhaps redesign the app store UI to better accommodate new apps. Or they could stagnate for years and then solve the problem by charging developers more.

I'm not a hater though.

<comment><USER11> _> Ahh yes, more fees for developers._

Developers (including myself) are already paying these fees to Google, Facebook and Bing in the form of app install ads. We'll likely get more more bang for the buck directly on the App Store though, so IMO it's a win for developers.

<comment><USER13> Your media mix will likely shift, but you'll still be paying Facebook, Google etc. as well. Btw take a look at Twitter if you aren't already. I've had good results there.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I will. I had always heard that Twitter sucked for most stuff...glad to hear someone is having a good experience.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely. Feel free to reach out if you want any in depth advice. (Email is in my profile.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is...insane. The whole point of the App Store is to help in discovery and I already pay a 30% cut for my app. And now they want to charge me for promoting my app in their store. This should just be a built-in part of the App Store story for the customers. This is why Apple customers pay a premium. Instead Apple sees an opportunity here to make even more money off me / the app authors?

Hats off to Apple. First, they charge developers to even develop for their platform (though this has become free off late). They only allow developing on their Macs. Then they take 30% cut of apps and also in-app purchases. And now they want more money to promote stuff in their store. I don't know what to say. I am sure this will be a raging success as well :/

<comment><USER15> > _The whole point of the App Store is to help in discovery and I already pay > a 30% cut for my app._

Actually, the point of the app store was distribution. That's what the 30% cut was for IIRC. And that's how they sold it, by comparing it to the 50% and more cut that older, traditional channels took at the time of introduction. I don't think they ever even thought about discovery, which would explain why the app store has become such a mess in the first place!

> _And now they want to charge me for promoting my app in their store. This > should just be a built-in part of the App Store story for the customers. > This is why Apple customers pay a premium. Instead Apple sees an opportunity > here to make even more money off me / the app authors?_

I don't think making money is the main consideration for Apple here. Advertising _can_ also play a useful role as a market mechanism (keyword: "price discovery"). For example, if you spend money to promote your app, you signal confidence in its value proposition. Also, you might be more selective in your targeting. Etc. So the money itself is almost incidental, what we really want here is the information aggregation and surfacing function of a competitive market, the most efficient matching of offers (app makers) and bidders (app users) across an extremely heterogeneous collection of agents.

But it needs to be set up correctly (this is what all the mechanism design literature is all about). Hopefully it is, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

<comment><USER16> What distributor of software ever charged 50%? Retailers of CD-ROM games (when they were a thing) and video games do not charge that kind of markup.

You are crazy if you think this is a way for Apple to do anything other than capture some of the existing market of app ads, which has been incredibly lucrative for Facebook. They have so many ways to get more information about how useful an app is likely to be for you that they don't use, they don't need another signal.

<comment><USER15> > _Retailers of CD-ROM games (when they were a thing) and video games do not > charge that kind of markup._

Maybe not anymore but the app store was launched in 2008. If you look at the percentage a writer or a band makes from a physical book resp. studio album, 50% actually looks very optimistic. Don't forget, there were multiple layers involved, including shipping, wholesalers, retailers, etc. and everybody wanted a cut. There's a reason desktop software to this day has a much higher price anchor than mobile!

<comment><USER16> 2008? I started making retail software in 1995 and believe me in those days stores often only took 10 - 20% of the retail price for CD-ROMs because they drove buyers into the store.

My point was that "distributors" or retailers never took 50% as the original post suggested.

If you believe that the reason desktop software has a higher anchor price point than mobile is the multiple layers, please explain why the price point on the Steam store is so much higher than the app store.

<comment><USER17> But did retail press your disks and prepare your packaging? Did they provide analytics?

Your Steam analogy is flawed due to selection bias - Steam is about games, and games are more similar to movies than apps. People want entertaining content (and a good amount) for that initial price.

Does Steam allow for freemium? What about ad-driven games?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "App Transaction Data.

This includes historical information about your transactions in the App Store, including apps you have downloaded and in-app purchases you've made."

Yuck.

[https://searchads.apple.com/privacy](https://searchads.apple.com/privacy)

<comment><USER19> Apple already has this information, so this is only putting it to use. Plus, they continue below:

> Advertisers have the ability to select user segments based on this > information when setting up their campaigns to guide the delivery of their > ads. However, no user segment can be smaller than 5,000 people. No > individual user data may be exported from Search Ads, ensuring that only > aggregate campaign delivery information is available and no individual user > data is ever exposed to advertisers.

So individual developers don't have access to this information.

<comment><USER20> So, pretty much exactly the same as Google Search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find it strange they prefer Ads as part of the solution to discovery problem. Apple App Store Search SUCKS. And I have no idea why. It is not that they cant do search ( Spotlight in Mac ), but they cant do search at scale.

It is also to get some of the Ads revenue from Google and mainly facebook, where Apps install is a huge deal.

<comment><USER22> This was actually the original idea of pay-per-click search ads. GoTo.com was founded on the idea that paid listings would be of higher quality and relevancy, because websites that pay more are likely better sites.

The idea has some merit: you can't spam the search engine with completely irrelevant ads, because users will click them and thus charge the advertiser, but they'll quickly leave the site because it isn't relevant to their search.

Modern pay-per-click (PPC) does yield management and ranks ads based on the click-through-rate (CTR) multiplied by the PPC. So if you create irrelevant ads that no one ever clicks on, they'll stop being shown in favor of more relevant ads with a higher CTR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wouldn't be too keen to pay for a feature that works only half the time. Fix your sh*t before trying to sell it.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=app+store+apple+blank+screen](https://www.google.com/search?q=app+store+apple+blank+screen) (Notice how the results spawn from 2012 to today)

</comment><comment><USER24> This time Apple has gone too far. This is a move of greed and shows complete disrespect for developers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple has terrible App search, so this is an opportunity for Google to provide a better app search/discovery system so that Apple doesn't get away with charging for ads to fix their terrible search and discovery.

</comment><comment><USER26> If 65% of downloads come from search, why don't they surface their curated collections (e.g. "best photo apps") when you search for "best photo app"?

</comment><comment><USER27> Damn. I was disappointed but not surprised to see search ads appear in the play store but now in the app store too ?

App discovery feels utterly broken

<comment><USER28> Why does app discover seem broken? Don't people just search for the problem they have and find solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This will be interesting. I have a feeling that once Apple get a taste of sweet search ad revenue, they won't be able to let Google own overall search without a fight. I know Apple have been rumoured to be working on a search engine for a long time, but Siri aside, it never seemed to reach fruition. I think this could give them some renewed focus on that, though.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is interesting. On one hand it discontinued the iAd product and allowed Developers to go to third party Ad networks. On the other hand it provides a better experience for the user by serving ads when the intent of the user is clear and generating revenue off of it.

I think if Apple prices correctly it has the potential to reduce in-app ads considerably at the same time increasing revenue for Apple because most ads in apps are to download other apps and if relevant apps are served up via Search Ads it could be a better business model than iAds.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a huge opportunity for Apple's own ad network, iAd, to really take off. Now that they have the advertisers who are willing to spend money and the information on iOS users who actually spend money in the App Store, this makes iAd much more valuable. Apple loves to control their ecosystem so having their own ad network implemented in majority of ad-revenue-based iOS apps would work out quite well.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, except the part where iAd was put out to pasture: [https://developer.apple.com/iad/](https://developer.apple.com/iad/)

"The iAd App Network will no longer be available starting July 1, 2016"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone else getting an error when saving credit card information?

<comment><USER33> This should instantly stand out to you as being a bad idea.

<comment><USER34> Why?

It's a credit card, you're not liable for fraudulent charges and you're saving it with the largest company in the world (market cap).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> May the best apps win. Amen.

</comment><comment><USER36> RIP Steve.</comment>


Ask HN: Did TextDrive disappear for you too? - <AUTHOR>

Last week (3/21) I discovered that all of my sites hosted on TextDrive were no longer reachable:

  ಠ_ಠ ping rabasa.com
  PING rabasa.com (22.214.171.124): 56 data bytes
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
  Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
  ^C
  --- rabasa.com ping statistics ---
  7 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
 Here is a brief history of my inability to connect with anyone at TextDrive about this.

  3/21 - An email is sent to email@example.com
  3/22 - Another email is sent to email@example.com
  3/22 - A tweet is sent to @txd
  3/25 - A support ticket was filed at https://w.textdrive.com
 I've checked my Spam folder, so I know I'm not missing any correspondence from TextDrive. It seems like they've simply disappeared. Has this happened to anyone else? <comment><USER2> Pretty sure they sent something out where you would have had to take action months and months ago... There is a giant notice on the front page of the new textdrive.com re this now btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed they did:

12/29 - They sent an ACTION REQUIRED email to update my DNS to point my domains to 22.214.171.124

1/8 - More emails to update my domains to 126.96.36.199

1/21 - An email telling me that once "migration is complete" I'll be informed of my new IP address

Since that last email on 1/21? NOTHING.

<comment><USER2> Sorry to hear that. Sounds like it's their bad. When I got the email I moved the one site I had left there (my fathers ceramics site) over to weebly.</comment></comment></comment>


Python moves to GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/core-workflow/2016-January/000345.html <comment><USER4> GitHub's reign over public open source programming is a bit terrifying. But, it's been mostly benevolent so far, but I do find it troubling to trust a private company to keep dev's in mind, and not profit.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure why it's a problem though. If they decide to go down that path, it's not that hard to move off. They don't have the lock-in that would scare me like having terabytes of data in an oracle database.

<comment><USER6> The problem is with people's mindset that everything has to be on github. Large projects that dare to use self-hosted more fitting infrastructure like Phabricator tend to be punished socially.

<comment><USER7> What does "punished socially" even mean?

Unable to attract as many contributors? The cold reality is that most open source projects aren't really TRYING to attract contributors. Small-time hobbyists often don't want to play with others in their personal project sandboxes, and big-time projects with high profile usually put up high barriers to contribution.

Unable to attract as many end-users, or as much public mindshare? Now this makes more sense. Many of the high-profile moves to GitHub are really about P.R., and signaling friendless to the developer community (e.g. Microsoft's recent image re-branding efforts). Not having a GitHub presence DOES make you less visible and more isolated from developers today.

Either way, I would argue that GitHub is really just a sort of Facebook or Twitter-like presence for software organizations. A way to draw attention, publicity, or mindshare from the public... but often merely a hosting mirror, and not even the primary toolset through which the software is actually developed.

This being the case, who cares if GitHub is dominant? Or SourceForge ten years ago, or whatever the next popular thing might be ten years from now? In most cases, it's effectively about as consequential as having to shift your focus from MySpace to Facebook when the audience moves.

<comment><USER8> This is _incredibly_ shortsighted, but the rebuttal is simple:

> This being the case, who cares if GitHub is dominant? Or SourceForge, or > whatever the next popular thing might be.

For one, _I do_ , and for two - why was sourceforge changing their business model to shady predation a problem? It was not because they were a website on the Internet - there are millions of URLs of clickjackers or other malware you could visit and harm your computer with, but you rarely see them.

The problem was that a ton of open source software had _mindshare_ on sourceforge, that remains a problem _to this day_ , and it took years to move _most_ projects away from that hostile environment. Plenty of very useful free software remains hosted on sourceforge, and there are plenty of _reasons_ \- developer inertia, community loss from switching, legacy systems in place that aren't portable, lack of interest in learning new tools, and many more - <USER2> the _reasons_ matter less than the result - that we have thousands of projects staying on a website known to infect people with malware.

Most of that software remains as portable as anything on gitub - often even moreso, because sourceforge offered many fewer developement ecosystem features than github now does - but has no switched for _whatever_ reason. We can go after the individual projects and heckle them until we can get them off sourceforge, but that is a ton of effort and mental energy we could have better used making good software.

Which is fundamentally why the decision between github and _any_ open source alternative is so important. This is not a question of benevolence, or even time - Github, Inc is a private company hosting a proprietary website that has 11 million accounts and 29 million source repositories today. _Any_ action they take can destroy either trust in the platform (why exactly do you trust a proprietary web service, again?) or its usability for whatever purpose you depend on it for, and since it is proprietary there is no recourse. You just have to repeat the sourceforge hell and somehow move off of it as a hosting platform - except you might have drunk the koolaid, and now have your issues, releases, build service, wiki, and website all bound to the github platform. If moving just the source control, release hosting, and a forum from Sourceforge was bad, trying to get away from Github would be much, much worse.

But all these migrating projects should _know better_. They were already betrayed once by proprietary software they depended on, but are taking familiarity and mindshare over the security to never have that happen again. At least with gitlab, when Gitlab Inc jumps the shark, you - or _anyone else_ could spin up the lifeboat to easily and seamlessly save your community with. And that collateral alone means Gitlab Inc. is _much_ less likely to betray you for profit.

It is not a question of if. Unless Github open sources itself, and that is impossibly unlikely considering how huge their code base must be now and how many football fields of lawyers they would need to prune their internal code, a proprietary software project _must_ eventually act against your interests because you are not in control of it, no matter the intention of the creator.

If you are going to have to bite the transition bullet, you might as well only have to do it once. Considering the parity between github and gitlab, I have never met anyone who would literally refuse to contribute to a project because its not on github, you just miss casual eyes that are more common there because the platform has captured more userbase.

But that userbase control is so dangerous, and we should all care enough to try to correct for it when we can, if it doesn't negatively impact us much. And honestly, a project like Python would have been perfect for it - <USER3> won't see a dearth of developer interest just because they are using the second most popular source control web service out there.

<comment><USER9> > a proprietary software project must eventually act against your interests > because you are not in control of it

Being open source doesn't mean that won't happen. A lot of open source projects have acted against their users' best interests. A good example is Firefox with the whole "Pocket integration" controversy. Another example is Wikipedia, with its editorial policies that drove away editors. You _can_ fork Firefox, and you can host your own Wikipedia mirror with exactly the same software setup, and in fact a lot of people have done so, but mantaining your own fork/mirror of a project on this scale is a lot of work. Unless you have unlimited free time (you don't) open source doesn't inherently remedy the issue that other people will do things that you do not agree with, and that may cause problems to you.

Platform choice is ultimately an economical decision. Github has significant incentives not to "go rogue", i.e. they don't want to shoot themselves in the foot. They currently provide very significant value to the community, and are in a very comfortable position, but that could change really fast if they take the Source forge route.

While the more code that gets open sourced the merrier, I personally don't believe open sourcing Github would, at this point, bring a lot into the table, especially since gitlab is so fully featured already. Their secret sauce isn't really the software, but the service they provide.

<comment><USER10> > open source doesn't inherently remedy the issue that other people will do > things that you do not agree with, and that may cause problems to you.

It's not a remedy. It's just a lifeline. Some of us do take Icecat or Iceweasel. With proprietary software, you have no recourse at all. Wouldn't you prefer some safety net to none at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is pretty significant; so far the only git presence of Python was a "semi-official readonly mirror" on github: [https://github.com/python/cpython](https://github.com/python/cpython)

now does this mean that Python will completely switch away from Mercurial? this was one of the _major_ projects still using hg

what does this mean for mercurial's global adoption vs git?

also, i don't understand why the free software aspect of gitlab wasn't an important argument in the decision... that seems like a key element of the difference between the two platforms.

<comment><USER10> Yes. It means Python is no longer using Mercurial. We knew this was a done deal a several weeks ago.

Mozilla, Octave, and Hedgewars are a few remaining projects that still use hg. For them, I will continue to improve, promote, and use Mercurial.

Their reasoning for using Github have nothing to do with the technical merits of git or hg or with the freedom of the software or platform. They want more contributions and they figure using the popular platform is the way to obtain them.

<comment><USER12> SDL also uses mercurial I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there ever was a company that became 'too big to fail' it is github. A major security breach at github would have earth shaking consequences and if they ever went out of business it would take a long time before the rift was healed.

<comment><USER14> I think that the fail of Amazon and their AWS would have far worse consequences. Half of the internet would stop working (the half that's not using Google's and Microsoft's services, anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Everyone is moving to GitHub these days. Why doesn't Gitlab.com get more love? Isn't their whole stack open source?

<comment><USER16> I have three personal reasons for preferring Github to Gitlab. I'm not going to talk about the community edition of Gitlab, since Github Enterprise is a separate topic and frankly I think most individual developers couldn't be bothered to download, run, and maintain their own Gitlab instance (as evidenced by the fact that Github.com is so damn popular).

1\. Gitlab themselves admit that Gitlab.com is bad[1]. Making a cloud-based software development platform is hard, and Github has some of the best engineers working on scaling the service. Gitlab doesn't have nearly as many resources.

2\. The community is thin[2]. Almost all of the largest projects on Gitlab.com are Gitlab. Gitlab CE is maintained by only a handful of people. Go through the list of top contributors on Gitlab.com and you'll find that they have almost zero "personal projects" hosted there. If the developers of the service don't even use it, why should I?

3\. The UX of Gitlab is honestly quite poor. At best, it's a clone of Github's UI. At worst, it has way too much scrolling thanks to inconveniently placed whitespace, poor performance, a confusing information architecture, and oodles of low-contrast text. I personally find getting around Gitlab to be tiring and confusing. Here's an easy example: from the Contributors tab of a project [3], how can I see more about a contributor? You just can't. There's lots of little papercuts like this scattered across Gitlab. Not to say Github is without papercuts, but it certainly has far fewer.

[1] [https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab- com/) [2] [https://gitlab.com/explore](https://gitlab.com/explore) [3] [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/graphs/master](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master)

<comment><USER17> > At best, it's a clone of Github's UI.

What I don't understand right now is why they aren't trying to copy GitHub as much as possible ... when it makes sense of course. I've been studying both GitHub and GitLab's design in detail, because I want to incorporate my technology into their branches and commits page, and I've found the user experience between both quite striking.

When I get some time this week, I would like to submit an issue with GitLab to let them know in more detail what I think they can do better, but here is just a synopsis:

\- I still can't put my finger on it, but there is something off about the font.

\- Avatars with 50% border radius is a bad design choice in my opinion. The problem with creating circular avatars is they hide too much of the image and they create a focal point towards the center of the image. If your avatar doesn't have a natural center focus, it will look bad and create unnecessary eye strain, since your mind will naturally try to fill in cropped areas. Keep it simple and use a simple border radius of 8 or less.

\- Avatars on the commits page are too small. I'm not sure if this design decision was the result of the Gitorious acquisition, but Gitorious had this problem as well. Using small avatars has its place, but not on the commits page since this page is designed to help you better understand who did what quickly.

\- How the commit message is revealed in the commits page is too jarring. If you click on the ellipses at

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/commits/master](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/commits/master)

and

[https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master)

you'll better understand. The problem with GitLab's implementation is the strong focal point is the avatar and when you click on the ellipsis, your eyes will get dragged down with it when the message is revealed. Just copy GitHub and use a bigger avatar and have the commits message reveal below the strong focal point (avatar)

\- The calendar icon on the commits page is visually too strong and should be removed.

\- The clipboard and other elements on the commits rows creates an unnatural balance/flow. If you look at GitHub's commits page, the clipboard, commit sha and browse tree icon are equally balanced in size and weight, which creates a natural horizontal flow. You can sweep from left to right and it won't create any unnecessary jarring effect.

This is just some of the things that I've thought about when I was looking at the commits page and I really don't understand why they aren't copying GitHub's UI in a lot of places. The amount of money that GitHub is investing in their UI vs GitLab's is quite significant, and it should be obvious that GitHub is way more capable of producing a better user experience, so why not copy it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like the vote was not "unanimous" [https://mail.python.org/pipermail/core- workflow/2016-January...](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/core- workflow/2016-January/000346.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> If I were them I'd move issue tracking to GH too _in addition_ to the current tracker. Having GH issues that are familiar to developers lowers the barrier for feature requests and bug reports which is a huge deal for a language.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not scared of Github. If they take bad decisions for the community, we will tell them. But I have to agree that the worst is the lack of competitors.

</comment><comment><USER21> (3). Guido prefers Github ~deal with it~

Seriously, I like the idea. It will give visibility for who contribute and might bring some new contributors.

</comment><comment><USER22> GitHub is popular. More people will come in contact with the development of Python by Python being on GitHub. That's a significant benefit to any open source project; one that I believe outweighs the concerns of a private company valuing business over developer ideals.

</comment><comment><USER23> On the other side, Ruby refuse to move to Github, but are actively trying and hoping to attract more contributors.

</comment><comment><USER24> So is github the Google of code?</comment>


Do scientists really need a PhD? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7285/full/464007a.html <comment><USER2> I'm planning to get a PhD in a science, so this is a question I've asked myself a lot.

From a theoretical standpoint, a PhD is obviously not a magical "get good at science" button: there are plenty of other ways to gain competence. An example is Rick Stevens at Argonne National Labs, [1], who I'm pretty sure doesn't have a PhD (my friend worked for him once, and his bio doesn't mention it, but I don't know him personally). People like that show that a PhD is obviously not necessary to do first-class work.

On the other hand, if you want to be a principal investigator on a grant of any decent size, almost no one will believe you have that competence without a PhD. Part of this is the ridiculously rigid US scientific job market: all the arbitrary structure of a resume, even less of the rationale. You can't get a postdoc, almost trivially, without a doctorate. Even if someone wanted to give you a job as a postdoc, the university wouldn't like it, and why choose the guy without the PhD when you have other talented people who also have those three letters? And it's really hard to get a faculty position without a postdoc, so there you go.

So if I could go about becoming a principal investigator or having a nice faculty position without getting a PhD, I'd seriously consider it. But practically speaking, that's not a real possibility yet. Hopefully someday it will be.

[1] <http://www.anl.gov/Administration/Bios/stevens.html>

<comment><USER3> I'm also planning to get a PhD in CS starting next year. But I think this question is irrelevant, in the sense that it is not the right one. Because of course the answer is formally "no", one can be a very good scientists without having a PhD. But do society needs people getting PhDs and people training them and the whole university system. Yes, definitely yes. And a PhD, even if not formally needed to be a good scientists, is an effective way to become a scientists since it's basically learning to be one with others who already are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disclosure: first-year CS Ph.D. student.

I would say, no, a scientist doesn't really need a "Ph.D.", but does need the training that a Ph.D. involves. To me, this question is very different from the question of whether someone who wants to be an industry software engineer needs a bachelor's degree (a popular HN topic). The difference is that in a science Ph.D. program, you are _doing science_ the entire time you are there. Sure, you take a few classes as well, but these are only to reinforce concepts you'll need in your research; the entire reason you're there is to learn to do scientific research by actually doing scientific research. You are doing at school what you'll be doing in your career; you're just getting paid less for it because you're "in training".

I don't see any reason why one couldn't get a similar education by doing scientific research in an industry which does not result in a formal "Ph.D." degree, rather than an academic setting that does result in a Ph.D., it just doesn't seem like it's been tried up until (apparently) now. Personally (all other things being equal) I'd rather do a Ph.D. program in an academic setting because an industry setting would likely be constrained to research areas that are beneficial to the company.

</comment><comment><USER5> All scientists start out without a PhD. Then, they do some research. At some point, they either have published enough novel papers or have done a single piece of novel work that advances the art and warrants granting of a PhD.

If these students truly are primary authors on major papers in serious peer- reviewed journals, I predict that this lab will end up with some sort of joint academic agreement with a local university so that the ceremonial stapling of bio papers and minting of PhDs can be done.

The rest of graduate school (classes, a master's thesis, etc.) is just scaffolding to acclimate you to doing research. If you can skip all of that and jump right in, nicely done!

But, of those 500 kids mentioned in the Nature article, I predict many do not do top-quality published research. I would even bet their success rate (measured as "people who graduate from just running experiments other people designed") will be lower than that of a traditional PhD-granting institution, were I a betting man. The scaffolding is expensive, but is there for a reason beyond just tradition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a PhD in physics though I became an entrepreneur. My loose definition of science is that you observe, predict, experiment, and honestly report your results.

Five-year-olds can do that.

I have found exploring and studying nature one of the more rewarding and pleasurable parts of my life. I've done it as a member of academic institutions, but I also do it just walking in the park.

Three things I wouldn't confuse:

a) membership or funding in an academic institution

b) recognition from peers

c) practicing science

I consider them orthogonal. I consider a) a job, b) a nice perk, and c) an enjoyable pasttime or hobby. Great when they overlap but unnecessary.

<comment><USER7> >My loose definition of science is that you observe, predict, experiment, and honestly report your results.

I would add one more thing: you become aware of others' efforts to do the same and build off of their work rather than "re-invent the wheel". (That doesn't mean you take it uncritically, just that you know what has been tried.)

That part is, AFAICT, what PhD programs most intensely focus on, i.e., make sure you understand the existing work well enough that you can build on it rather than just independently re-discover results in the field.

That part is also (usually) beyond the reach of five-year-olds.

Note: you can certainly still meet this requirement without an official PhD program, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A PhD is a credential, as is a BS, an MS, or a CCIE.

As long as employers demand a credential for hiring, that credential will be necessary. In the US, few companies are willing to take on the burden of training scientific researchers. Further, much of the pure research in this country is done at Universities, and virtually all US universities require a PhD for tenure track faculty. So a PhD is a necessary credential to do scientific research in the US.

The linked article states that Asian companies are willing to invest in training smart university graduates to do research. That means the PhD credential is not required. The required credential is instead a "University Degree".

Now, if the question is whether the PhD system is the best way to create scientists, that's entirely different. There's no reason to believe the University PhD system necessarily produces better scientists than a corporate lab would. University professors are not necessarily good teachers, and University labs are not necessarily well equipped.

It's very similar to the "BS or higher in Computer Science or Engineering" credential on help wanted ads in the US. Does that BS or higher really make you a better programmer than someone who learned on his/her own? Of course not. But it's a credential, so you get it.

Disclaimer: I _do_ have a PhD

</comment><comment><USER9> One thing to note:

There are a lot of differences between PhDs in different fields of research. Especially in biomed research, PhD students often seem to do extremely specialized research. Therefore, what they learn during their PhD may be much less generalizable than e.g. what CS PhD students learn. I guess it depends on the definition of a PhD whether it is necessary for a certain job or not.

Interesting comments here: [http://scientopia.org/blogs/science- professor/2011/03/22/rat...](http://scientopia.org/blogs/science- professor/2011/03/22/rat-race/)

<comment><USER10> I'm still an undergrad and therefore naïve, but I had always thought PhDs were much more about proving they can perform research than "what they learn"

<comment><USER9> Maybe we should distinguish between the doctorate you get awarded for you PhD thesis (the proof that you can perform research) and the stuff you do during your PhD studies (what you learn). Depending on you advisor(s), your topic, your own knowledge and motivation, and many other factors, you may be able to conduct great research or mediocre research. Depending on how narrowly you focus, you may acquire more focused knowledge or more broad knowledge during your research. In fields like biomed research, you work on a very confined topic within a large team. You may only need to care about your specific experiment. Everything else is nothing you should (or need to) care about. Compare this to a typical CS PhD student at a German university (e.g. me). You more or less define the topic you want to work on by yourself, are required to teach courses, supervise students, occasionally work on a commercial project, and have to learn all that stuff which is necessary for your research, e.g. user studies, statistics, machine learning, electronics, etc.

Having a PhD does not necessarily mean that you know how to perform proper research. I know of a good number of PhDs that have little knowledge of core scientific principles like correct attribution. In my opinion, what you learn on your journey to a PhD is much more important (in most cases) than the topic of your PhD thesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Frankly, the PhD is not a path to a permanent job as a scientist unless your parents were scientists.

What it is is a program to get cheap labor that has the energy and low health insurance costs of youth. At some point you get thrown away and they get somebody new. The reason why P.I.'s are aging is that there are very few permanent jobs for scientists.

Perhaps these people in China are a bit more honest than the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER12> I doubt the scientists need PhDs, but a lot of research groups need cheap sla^wgrade students and the PhD process provides that. Now if more of the research funding actually was used for paying scientists that system wouldn't be needed, but it is how it is.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes and no. Yes if you're talking about having a chance of working in the US at the level lots of PhDs do (faculty at a university, principal investigator of a grant-funded project, etc.). No if you're just asking if you need a PhD to think and work independently at the level of a PhD in a given field. It's my understanding that Freeman Dyson does not have a PhD, for example. He's also a bad example, because he's Freeman Dyson, and most people are not.

Outliers are often bad examples. I think it's still a good idea to go to finish college, although dropping out worked for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER14> From what I gather, the point of a phd is to train researchers so they can become independent researchers i.e set their own 'big question' and understand methodologies to solve it. This article states that the research direction in China is coming from external parties (I suppose commercial interests).

So all thats happening really is that companies are finding ever cheaper sources of skilled labour to solve their current problems. Academic researcher ideally shouldn't be linked to a companies motivations... or at least not all of it.

<comment><USER15> Yes - any large research project like the one described needs hordes of gobots to do the labour and testing. This is not the same as having hordes of people who identify both important hypotheses, and the means by which they will be tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No, but it helps. There are some very bright researchers who don't have one (Simon Peyton-Jones being one, for example), but they do help in forming people as scientists. Of course, working after getting your BSc. as a researcher on a specific area for many years is, in most aspects the same as doing a doctorate, so except for the lack of diploma, there probably shouldn't be a big difference.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's been my experience that most of these Chinese biotech companies are factories. One guy makes all the money and the rest do all the work. This is not at all like the computer technology model in the US.

<comment><USER15> Bioinformatics, and chemistry/material science areas seem to me to require way more semi-skilled labour in general than computer technology (even though I could still really do with a basic DBA or two and a low-level html-cranker).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess the question is. Do you need a PhD to create scientific break-troughs or practice science.

Cause that seems to be the only metrics worth considering when answering that question.

I would guess the answer is no.

<comment><USER19> No need to guess -- the answer to that question is "no".

Universities started awarding PhD degrees at the (end of) the 19th century. If PhDs were a necessity for scientific breakthroughs, then there couldn't have been any scientific breakthroughs before the 19th century, a contradiction.

QED.

edit: but I got myself one just in case, anyway :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion 662 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183828>

</comment><comment><USER21> You don't need a PhD to be a scientist, but you almost certainly need a PhD to be funded to do science.

(there are of course exceptions, but this is very much the general rule)

<comment><USER22> As well you need one to be accepted as a legitimate peer in science communities where everyone else has one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> phd is dumb but skeptical china will be informative as a proving ground for this idea,

do people think # of chinese nobel prize winners will increase in years to come? realize nobel prize is a western world creation but this makes like seem no...[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_coun...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country)

</comment><comment><USER24> Does Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey need a BS in Computer Science? No, apparently not.

The purpose of science related PhDs has always seemed to be a means to an end that wasn't financially available anywhere else. Academically, there are a lot of pursuits that you simply can not pursue outside of that setting. The science PhD is ultimately the direction you want your career to take, but you know it can't realistically take that path without some luck. And of course, the safety of academia is intoxicating on all levels. Why dive head first into research that requires funding and years of preparation when you can basically do the same thing at school without any repercussions? The PhD is a safety net for abstract thought that has little to do with the real world.

It may seem like a crazy comparison, but the sort of struggles scientists go through with their research is not entirely unlike what an artists goes through. No one really wants to acknowledge your absurd existence, and there's not really anyone to talk to when you do get on the outside. So no, success, be it financially or scientifically does not require higher education. But socially and emotionally, you can't underestimate the importance of things like a PhD.

<comment><USER25> Are they scientists? No.

<comment><USER24> Is computer science not a science? Someone should alert all the major colleges of your discovery.

<comment><USER3> Computer science is a science. Engineering and programming are not. This is _not at all_ a value judgement, just a fact. Studying/creating/improving logic and type systems is doing science, creating Facebook is not.

The wording "computer science" is too much overloaded. In French we have even less luck with the word "informatique": everything from studying category theory to using Microsoft Word is called doing "informatique"… :-/

<comment><USER24> So, building a bridge does not require science. And building the algorithms for google also does not require science.

Its as though we need a new word for these non-science related sciences.

EDIT: I thought of it! Vanity Science.

<comment><USER21> Bridge building is accepted as engineering. Engineering is not science.

Brunel could probably not have formulated the Theory of Relativity. Einstein could probably not have "built" the Great Western Railway.

The application of science is not science.

<comment><USER24> So scientists create science, but non-scientists apply science? If a scientist were to ever apply science, perhaps like those working at CERN, they would ultimately become non-scientists? Wait, engineers _built_ CERN applying science, but scientists _use_ CERN ... using science.

I think the only difference is that some scientists test science, and some scientists apply science. Is a doctor a scientist or an engineer? He's both testing and applying. Semantics are sometimes pretty stupid (or usually always), and honestly that's the only reason I'm pursuing this silly argument.

<comment><USER21> Go and do some research into the difference between science and engineering. Then go and do some research into the difference between theoretical and experimental science.

Just because you use science, doesn't mean you are a scientist. The application of science CAN be science, but often isn't.

Pointless trolling is always pointless.

<comment><USER24> I'm not trolling, I just think the semantics involved in this discussion are stupid.

Scientist: A person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.

Seems rather open ended.

<comment><USER21> By your definition everyone is a scientist.

What has Mark Zuckerberg done that can be called science.

You should also cite your references - The Free Dictionary isn't particularly credible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A PR guy calls out the flacks and the hacks - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/01/a-publicist-calls-out-the-flacks-and-the-hacks/

<comment><USER2> I learned PR so I'd never have people with this attitude representing my products to the press. It is a great case for working with someone dedicated and in-house as soon as you can afford it, or making it a portion of your community manager or CEO's job description.</comment>