Why I Traded My TV for a Turntable - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nathanaelsilverman.com/2017/08/05/no-tv/ <comment><USER2> Truly evergreen content: [http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly- mentioni...](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioning- he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I guess if you've built your life around TV this would seem amazing. But if you only watch at friends or a few series a year... and waste far more time online- HN and blogs, it seems like talking about your latest diet. Mobile seems like a much harder habit to kick, and even that you can do by going on vacation. Of course all this assumes you have the money, time, and attention to spare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I kind of feel the opposite. I'm a music nerd and enjoy listening to records, but I never watch movies or TV. This is the most difficult barrier I have with interacting with people at social events, because people talk about television instead of music. If anyone brings up a popular reference, I likely don't understand it and immediately have to drop out of the conversation. The best way to fix this is to watch _just enough_ of popular TV (skip through movies in 15 minutes just to get the idea, watch the pilot episode of TV shows) while alone to make sure I know at least enough to keep up with friends. It's much easier for other people because they actually enjoy it.

<comment><USER5> Just talk about other things lol. Watching TV just so you can understand pop culture references sounds pretty depressing.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately when meeting new people, you don't always have control of the conversation's direction. Once I know someone, they'll know I don't like talking about it, but having conversations with people I already know is the easy part of life.

<comment><USER6> Why not just go to local gigs to socialise? I've been going to gigs in Melbourne for 11 months now and its how I've met all of my friends here. At first I felt out of place that I didn't listen to Misfits growing up like many people here did but you will find there is always a band you can talk to someone about.

A few years ago I took your approach with music, I'd listen to every new major label hip-hop/rap album on the day of release and guess what? No one I knew could talk about any of the albums in the detail I knew because they listen to whats on the radio or in the club - not saying that its a bad thing, but I think you are over-rating how much people care about "pop culture"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Day 6—What if this becomes an alienating experience because the rest of the > world has changed? What if I make time for social connections that can't > happen, because there's nobody left to connect to?

I was afraid of this race-to-the-bottom scenario on campus at my university (and probably any university across America).

People would bring their cell phones into the dining halls and the student center. This isn't a problem if a few people do it, but it almost seems contagious to me. _When people disconnect themselves from the public, while they are in public, it destroys the whole purpose of being in public._ They become absorbed in their phones, which eliminates any possibility of meeting a new friend or starting a conversation. That in turn causes other people, who would have done those social things, to turn to their phones so they may go to the only place they may now communicate: social media.

It all seems so silly: hundreds of students in a student center or other public space, all heads down focused on their phones. Then what was the point of having a student center in the first place? I feel bad for people who struggle with forming new relationships, as the public space is decreasingly helping those people meet others.

My university president even mentioned in a "fireside chat" video that a great challenge our campus faced was a student engagement problem. I wonder why? Not like the university did anything toward that effort... in fact, they installed even more televisions in all the dining halls across campus.

I'll shamelessly admit, though many would disagree with me, that I hope one day in the near future public store owners, campus owners, etc. all ban screens (phones and TVs) in public spaces. It's fine to use them in your home, but I believe it's destroying the social fabric when everyone is always glued to a screen, even in public.

\---

Also relevant: when I was young my mom was concerned that I was addicted to the computer. She wasn't wrong.

But at least my addiction is limited to the private realm. It would be impractical to lug around a desktop computer everywhere I went to extract every precious minute of entertainment possible. The stereotype of the guy playing World of WarCraft in his mom's basement is at least limited to that basement.

Today we have the equivalent of those guys and girls playing WoW in their mom's basement, but it's not in the basement... it's _everywhere_.

<comment><USER8> I'm in restaurants and I notice kids just old enough to hold a phone spending the entire meal staring at it. Theres no way thats remotely healthy for brain development.

<comment><USER9> Before phones and tablets were a thing, kids would usually be drawing or colouring something.

I think there is something different with mobile devices though, I've seen kids using iPads before and they barely manage a couple of minutes in one app or game before they switch out to another. I really how this sort of behaviour is going to manifest when they grow up, are we heading for a generation with zero patience and attention span? I see it even in adults these days.

One thing I got really good at as a kid was being patient. When waiting for an appointment, I'll usually sit there and wait without staring at a screen. It's nice to have a few minutes to just do nothing.

<comment><USER6> Humans attention span is now less than goldfish, give this a look: [http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans- goldfish/](http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/)

<comment><USER10> _Canadian_ humans have an average less than goldfish.

Whew. That was a close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool story, but I don't really love the recent surge I've seen on here of people submitting their own blog posts. (And, as it were, literally every single one of this dude's submissions are posts from his blog.) This shouldn't be another vector for self-promotion, this should be a forum in which the most insightful and/or conversation-generating content is organically sourced and ranked.

My opinion, of course.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure, I feel like that's always been pretty common on HN and I also don't see the problem. HN is not very anti-commercial in nature, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> tldr: TV is bad because it is a time-suck and there are much better uses of my time like switching to an archaic, time-wasting (my opinion) method of playing music with a method that involves having to (quoting him about the difficulty of records): "[remove] the dust it [the record] easily collects, as well as cleaning the stylus [...] Records have 2 sides, each containing a little over 20 minutes worth of music, so you have to flip them. Some albums take up 2 or even 3 records."

Yeah, the above is a little snotty, and if TV was becoming a problem for him and removing it was the only way he could keep himself from wasting too much time on it, fine. But linking that process to taking up vinyl (for unexplained reasons) is a strange turn at the end of the post.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the turntable link seemed forced. I went back up to the end of the article after finishing to see if I missed a paragraph or something.

For me, TV is fine. I've been enjoying GoT episodes on Sunday night for the last few weeks. I don't consider an enjoyable show a time-sink, unless you binge-watch for days on end (that's a rarity for me).

As others have said, my cell phone and a variety of interesting websites {cough, cough ... HN ..cough} take-up MUCH more of my time. I'm definitely considering a break from my smart phone, the habits I've developed seem unhealthy. That being said, I would never use my phone at a urinal!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's perfectly possible to do these things without throwing away your TV, you just need to have self control.

<comment><USER15> There was an article a while back about a study someone did around willpower and self control. If I recall, their finding was not that the people who are better at delaying their gratification just have iron willpower and grind it out. Instead, they are smart enough to do things like remove themselves from temptation in order to make it take less willpower to accomplish their goals.

If the author if this article felt getting rid of their TV made it easier for them to live the life they want to live, I don't understand at all why so many people in this thread feel the need to criticize that.

Imagine an obese people wrote some blog post about throwing out all the cookies in their cabinet so they wouldn't be as tempted to eat them. We'd applaud that. Likewise, an alcoholic quitting their job bartending to get to a better environment.

But when it comes to media addiction, well... maybe it hits a little too close to home for many of us? Easier to criticize someone who tries to do better than to take an uncomfortable look in the mirror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My dopamine hit: I read HN instead of checking Reddit, FB, Twitter, etc. I am addicted to HN.

<comment><USER17> Same here. My HN addiction got really worse, so I started to block HN at day and use Reddit instead. Somehow it's less addictive for me and some subs are super funny. Still a time sink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I gave up my TV in January.

I don't miss the black mirror when it's turned off.

I don't miss making special space in my house for another screen.

I don't miss Netflix.

It has forced me to be more conscious about what I want to watch, and where and how.

<comment><USER19> But where and how? If you don't have one at all, when you make a more deliberate decision to, how do you?

I'm all for demoting the object in terms of rooms, but if you rid your house of it completely I'm not sure what you mean by deciding what, where, and how to watch television?

<comment><USER20> Not the person you were asking, however we (two adults, no kids) haven't had a TV per se since 2006. The 'no receiver' thing is less of a distinction now than it used to be, despite 'Internet TV' taking a while to land in AU, but it used to be the best way to describe our arrangement.

We still _watch_ TV shows and Movies, periodically, but on a short-throw projector.

This takes up less room by day, of course, and because we have a convenient wall or blind to use as the screen it also doesn't lend to a 'circle of chairs around the TV' visual that I expect some people do not like. And, of course, if doing a genuine time-fill there's laptop, desktop, or tablet to catch up on something - though the comparatively low-quality experience seems to mean this happens less frequently.

Because it takes some small amount of effort to set up, and bulb life is a gentle back-of-mind consideration, we tend to watch TV in the evenings, and _intentionally_.

A perhaps subtle distinction, but I know enough people who've grown up with the TV on all the time, and who now find that so normal that they've inflicted the same thing on their own children. Visiting the homes of people with an always-on TV puts me in the same mood as having to listen to talk-back radio, anything with adverts, 'news' video+audio at train stations, and so on - viz. foul.

As an aside, decent projectors are around AUD $1k - less than a TV with a smaller display (albeit a better objective quality). For people who don't have an always-on approach to TV, it's a good option in terms of cost, experience and gentle encouragement of being more thoughtful with what / when you watch.

<comment><USER19> Oh, wow, I'd not realised we were discussing an 'always on' level of prior usage.

Personally, both in childhood and living alone now, my consumption has always been deliberate.

I do dislike the 'circle of chairs around a TV' aesthetic you describe, at least in a main reception room, which is why I suggested 'demoting' the set as a favourable solution for some. I suppose, though I haven't thought of it before, that's inspired from growing up with a 'home cinema', (although we also had a television in the sitting room, most of our deliberate viewing 'in numbers' would be there, on the projector) and visiting my grandparents, whose only television was in a den separate to their sitting room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Follow up: How I Cured the Arm Pain Caused By Patting Myself On The Back For Not Owning a TV

</comment><comment><USER22> I wanted to get a projector for a similar reason, it allows for more active viewing since the whole home has to be darkened rather than having it be easily accessible or in the background.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good grief. Please do not take so much pride in what you consume or refrain from consuming.

<comment><USER24> there's nothing wrong with taking pride in how you spend your time.

<comment><USER25> There is when you feel a need to gloat about it on your blog.

<comment><USER26> Nah.

I miss the old blogs.

People writing about stuff. Writing an answer to some really dumb idea on a other blog.

The man writing about making eating a snake and digging a trench in the back yard.

<comment><USER2> Old blogs? People still write that stuff. My current favorite is Syonyk's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> LOL. I don't throw this around much, but what a hipster:

"Replacing it with a turntable went even further. Do you have any idea how complicated it is to play music on those things? I didn't. Playing a record usually involves removing the dust it easily collects, as well as cleaning the stylus (the part that comes in contact with the record). Records have 2 sides, each containing a little over 20 minutes worth of music, so you have to flip them. Some albums take up 2 or even 3 records.

I'm pretty sure I'll never become addicted to that process. But its length is what's great about it. The time it takes to setup prompts me to pause and enjoy the experience. Now ask yourself, when's the last time you took a breath and enjoyed the music?"

Come on man, who are you trying to appease? It's not yourself.

<comment><USER27> Process is important. If we don't invest in an activity, it becomes worthless to us. This is well understood. Thus, ceremony and ritual in so many cultures. Making tea, greeting a guest and offering them a drink, taking a casserole to the church picnic.

Modern music is a click away. And dismissing it for the next track is another click away. Folks have confused the activity (listening) with the instant- gratification/enjoyment of the music. Both are important. Else the music just becomes so much cotton-candy sugar to our senses. Instead of an experience.

<comment><USER10> Don't get me wrong, I completely agree. It just came out of left field for the author and was stated in such a way that it was an attempt to become someone, instead of harbor a general interest in old analog and physical music curation ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > There's a new thing happening at my workplace where men use their phones > while at the urinal.

I wonder if it will ever become socially unacceptable to hand your phone to someone else, to show a photo or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER29> This isn't Nate Silver is it?

<comment><USER30> No.</comment></comment>


Beware Rich People Who Say They Want to Change the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-philanthropy-fake-change.html <comment><AUTHOR> > _Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, "The best thing to do now, if you want to > change the world, is to start a company."_

This anecdote, in a list of others related to rich people who think they're changing the world, is misplaced. Marc isn't just talking to rich people — he's saying that starting a company is a powerful way to potentially change the world.

Is that not true? Perhaps his view is skewed by survivor bias. But what would we have him say? "If you want to change the world, go be a politician"?

> _It's that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools > for all._

Does he not realize that charter schools are open to all (though sometimes lotteried)? And that it's much more practical to do the former than the latter?

This essay (and the book it's promoting) seem well-timed to ride a wave of populist discontent. But I don't personally find it very convincing. It seems like the author just wants to complain that some rich people and companies protect their self-interest, and therefore all of the good they might do is tainted. This strikes me as naive (yes, people protect their self-interest, and always have) and impractical. As the saying goes: don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough.

There are people out there trying to accomplish the perfect. Don't demonize the people who are trying to make incremental changes.

<comment><USER2> One note: charter schools are almost never open to all.

They're not open to those with learning disabilities. Or those with physical disabilities. Or emotional problems at home.

Which means they take a school's worth of finding out of the pool but leave the most expensive students behind.

<comment><USER3> Setting the rest of the discussion aside, I think there is an argument for specializing care. People with learning disabilities would benefit from attention from experts, people with at-home problems would benefit from school-based childcare (for them, school lunches and afterschool programs would be disproportionately helpful), and while people with physical disabilities need the same good teachers they benefit from specialized access mechanisms as well (for example there are schools for the blind, where knowledge about blindness is concentrated in the staff to an extent not present elsewhere.) Children with physical disabilities have no need for dyslexia experts, children with lots of support at home have no need for elaborate all-day childcare, and so on.

So, there are clear efficiency and quality gains to be had if the system is specialized. Physical disabilities are one of the most stand-out cases, where you can invest in special access mechanisms and make special testing conditions _normal_ if you concentrate enough people with the same needs in one place. See: Schools for the deaf, schools for the blind.

<comment><USER4> > So, there are clear efficiency and quality gains to be had if the system is > specialized.

I'd agree that "specialization" is a good thing when it means that educators have the training needed to most effectively deal with other-than-typical circumstances. But it may be less of a good thing when it means segregating those students into their own classes or their own schools, which I think is what GP is saying effectively happens with charter schools. Setting aside the cost argument, giving students a chance to interact with and befriend those with different backgrounds, circumstances, and abilities benefits the students and society, though it may not be reflected in standardized test scores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Beside a paragraph about how cutthroat business practices had earned the > heirs of the Walton family at least $150 billion in wealth, Mr. Tovar wrote: > "Possible addition: Largest corporate foundation in America. Gives more than > $1 billion in cash and in kind donations each year."

After accounting for interest on that stolen wealth, that's a damn small return.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also beware journalists with same mission?

</comment><comment><USER7> _Promise hope and change but deliver it slowly or not at all._

Not to pick on any one partisan side, but isn't that what Obama promised before nearly passing TPP/TTIP which would've sold-out America's autonomy and rule of law to a higher ruling international body also run by corporations? By sheer chance, buffoon 45 killed it.. and then he saved a few hundred jobs while losing tens of thousands more with poorly-designed tariffs.

<comment><USER8> Treaties have to be ratified by the US Congress, and I doubt relinquishing sovereignty was ever in the cards (no matter who is president).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make > education and health affordable would bring real change.

Yeah those are not self-evidently desirable

</comment><comment><USER10> I would rather a rich person use their own money to change the world than the government seize wealth to change the world.

<comment><USER11> And this is why we can't have nice things. People trust those who've amassed huge quantities of money for themselves and want to do more of that, instead of a body of the people specifically selected to improve the lives of everyone. Maybe the wrong people are doing it now, you can change that. America has lost so much faith in its government; it's sad.

<comment><USER10> The worst that can happen to the rich person is they go broke. The worst that can happen with the government is they turn the country into Venezuela, or devolve into mass killings like Mao's China and the Soviet Union.

The sad thing about today's society is that all the lessons of last century are being forgotten.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the worst that can happen to a rich person is they go broke, that doesn't mean they can't harm others along the way with little to no oversight. Union Carbide [1], Coca Cola killing union organizers [2], Nestle's use of child slaves [3] and of course, that time the Chiquita banana company started a 30 year long civil war in Guatemala [4] - then their CEO walked out of his 40th floor window in New York which almost seems worse than going broke ;) These are just recent.

Speaking of lessons we haven't learned, there's the British and Dutch East India Companies, deputized by their governments to run their own territories - and the slave trade. [5] And boy did the VOC do it well, returning a 20% annual dividend for over 200 years, the single most valuable company in the history of the world ($7T in todays money). And that's just some flagship examples.

Both are people or groups of people; companies don't have checks and balances - good government does.

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

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr.colombia)

[3] [https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2018/02/13/Nestle-...](https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2018/02/13/Nestle- sued-again-over-child-labor-in-cocoa-supply-chain)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état)

[5] [http://theconversation.com/taboo-the-east-india-company- and-...](http://theconversation.com/taboo-the-east-india-company-and-the-true- horrors-of-empire-73616)

<comment><USER12> All of those examples pale in comparison to the atrocities by socialist governments, brought by, I assume, the best intentions.

OP point stands IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. So Carter and Gates are selfish pigs?

</comment><comment><USER14> I live in Venezuela and I would say definitely beware of populist rhetoric and communists trying to change the world.

I don't have a country anymore because people believed in that.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, but this is a false dichotomy. Google "happiest countries in the world" \- the leaders are all countries with high taxes, universal healthcare, universal education and a strong social safety net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > President Trump is what we get when we trust the rich to fix what they are > complicit in breaking.

I am really tired of "We got trump because of X" , when is it speculation/theorisation going to stop :\\.

<comment><USER17> We got Trump because he won under the rules by which we choose presidents. If you aren't happy with him, put up a better competitor next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about politicians and gurus?

<comment><USER19> They never seem to get very far without other people's money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some of what's here is agreeable.

Virtue signalling is very popular among the rich now. I suppose they might be trying to appease the jealous lower classes.

The same holds true for Hollywood. Every heart bleeds for any altruistic cause. Sadly, the place is rife with hypocrites from Weinstein to Damon, preying on sexual victims and raising conspicuous consumerism to previously unseen levels.

I'm glad to see this article. I hope we see more like it.</comment>


New DRM Changes Text of eBooks to Catch Pirates - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/new-drm-changes-text-of-ebooks-to-catch-pirates-130616/ <comment><USER3> Meh.

Buy three ebooks from different accounts, render them to pain text, diff them and take out the differences.

Why three? The assumption is 2 books would have the correct value and 1 book would have the copyrighted value.

Though I don't see this as DRM. I've done this before on a much smaller scale to track things as they enter the wild. It's just security through obscurity, the digital equivalent of a tracking collar without any of the benefits, like guaranteed uniqueness.

It's also crazy overkill. Here's a much simpler way to do it: At the end of every period randomly decide to add an extra space. Hardly noticeable. Spread (again random) between 1024 and 2048 of these over the entire document. Count them up... now you have a pretty decent identifier without having to do any sort of special logic to the words themselves. To the average person it's not noticeable, it doesn't require messing with the original document, and it can be made unique enough to be a digital fingerprint. Of course this house of cards falls apart when you know the secret.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention... would-be pirates could just use a non-traceable method of payment when acquiring these eBooks.

This seems to be a lot of effort for really no good.

<comment><USER5> > would-be pirates could just use a non-traceable method of payment when > acquiring these eBooks.

what? since when do digital 'pirates' pay for ebooks?

<comment><USER6> The very first element of the chain of distribution still has to acquire the original somehow.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. A lot of leakers in the scene actually go to quite some lengths (financially and otherwise) to be the first one to release something. It's a whole another world of its own where cred matters a lot, and people will really do go through a lot to make their name known.

<comment><USER7> Scene culture is fascinating.

<comment><USER6> There used to be a selfmade low budget series called The Scene which showed the internal workings of release groups:

[http://www.welcometothescene.com/faq.html](http://www.welcometothescene.com/faq.html)

I watched 2 episodes or so before it became too boring watching people chat on AIM, but I learned quite a bit about the internals (in how far these are true, I do not know - the makers say it's fictional but the stories are authentic)

<comment><USER7> This is really dated, an a really good way.

<comment><USER6> glad you like it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have worked with e-book authors in creating systems to mitigate piracy of their books.

Even if you know who gave out the book that the pirates were able to get, it doesn't make them automatically guilty. In one case, the brother of a customer was the culprit... the author was actually surprised because from the looks of the evidence, it was someone who he trusted that "leaked" the book.

Sure, the person could have lied and blamed his brother, but the author trusted him enough to believe the story and accepted the apology from the brother.

Anything involving DRM starts to make things get hairy. I can understand the want of the authors to protect their contents that they worked hard on producing. But I also understand how the real customers don't like DRM. In the end, DRM was ditched and a subscription model was created. Both the author and the users were happy with that resolution.

<comment><USER9> Exactly this.

Just because a copy of an ebook I purchased is now floating around the internet, does not, a pirate, make me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can see some benefits of this but I think the idea of a script automatically going through and making changes is quite horrible. In one example they removed a new paragraph break. That's an unacceptable modification to me.

I think that the best way to do something like this (if you want to do it at all) would be if the original author chose 30 small acceptable changes themselves. The presence of these changes (of lack thereof) would then allow a 30 bit ID number to be embedded in the document allowing each copy to be identified separately. They could also have a built in checksum to allow the original ID to be recovered even if some of the changes were found. By increasing this to 100 possible changes (50 active changes in each copy on average) then you could have a very large amount of error correction data and the original ID could still be recovered when a large number were found and changed (this would prevent pirates buying 2/3 copies to find the changes as 2 copies would only highlight half the changes on average if there is an equal chance of the change and original showing).

Ultimately I do not think this will work however. A pirate can use a pre-paid credit card to buy the e-book. In this way they cannot be tracked. So I honestly don't think this is worth the effort.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's not DRM. If anything, that's a textual version of "digital watermarking" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking)

It's old news - it's been done to find internal document leakers for years - <USER2> believe even in typewriter days.

Thing is, it only works on a very small scale, when the people under surveillance are unaware, and are unwilling to collaborate. When these assumptions don't hold, it is trivial to generate a version which has all the information yet does not correspond to any original watermarking (or worse, replicates some watermark that is not part of the set used to generate the version)

<comment><USER12> > It's old news - it's been done to find internal document leakers for years - > I believe even in typewriter days.

I knew it was an old technique but I had not thought about it being that old.

If you have any idea of where you heard this I would be interesting in knowing.

<comment><USER13> I first read about it in an old Tom Clancy novel.

A short bit of googling led me to this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap)

So the technique was well known by 1987, which certainly qualifies as typewriter days. Apparently it was used in fiction as early as 1972.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This DRM actually changes the content by rewriting the text, not unlike Microsoft Word's grammer checker/corrector tool. I would be very surprised if publishers and authors would go for this. Clumsily changed sentences could ruin a good book.

I have always assumed that publishers embed an ID somewhere in the Mobi or EPub files (they are just HTML, you could insert all sorts of things that would never be displayed) since it is trivial to remove the DRM from them.

<comment><USER15> The willingness of content creators to deliberately distribute an inferior product just to catch pirates never ceases to amaze me.

<comment><USER16> 'Inferior' up until now didn't describe the content, but the rest of the experience. This would change the content itself, which I would expect most authors to be very protective of.

<comment><USER15> Not entirely true. It's been done in movies for a few years now, to track down leaks from theaters:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti- Piracy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy)

Of course, movies and books are probably opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to artistic integrity.

<comment><USER7> They claimed that they were imperceptible, bullshit. I see about 3 or 4 every time I see a movie in theaters. I see it, I notice it, and the fact that they were willing to disrupt their own content bugs me enough that I am unable to enjoy the rest.

As far as artistic integrity goes, it makes sense that the immense cost of a film being covered by the studio gives them quite a bit of say in the filmmaking process, for good or ill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What if someone steals a copy of my file, then uploads it to TPB? Now do I get sued for millions?

Am I presumed guilty, since it's clear there's "evidence" to show that I was the source of the now widely spread copy? Do I now have to prove to a judge that I actually didn't upload that file to TPB?

Guilty until proven innocent?

<comment><USER18> A new form of evidence doesn't necessarily mean the end of the "reasonable doubt" standard (at least in the US, I don't know how other countries phrase things).

<comment><USER19> Copyright in most cases and most places is still a civil matter, so the standard in many places would be more like "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond reasonable doubt".

In other words, if your personally marked copy of a work was found floating around on the Internet and you got sued for copyright infringement, you'd probably have to convince the court that it was more likely that someone had stolen the work from you and redistributed it than that you had redistributed it in some other way yourself.

This isn't a completely safe position even then, because if someone has suffered substantial damages as a result of the work being distributed (and copyright law is _infamous_ for inflated claims of damage caused by infringement) and you have potentially already admitted to being negligent in protecting your copy of the work then you might just find yourself jumping from the frying pan to the fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had hoped from the headline that they would be doing something subtle, like replacing some capital "A"s with Greek "Alpha"s, or replacing a single- character "ü" with separate "u" and "combining umlaut". But visible changes that mess with, not just the text formatting, but the actual words of the text, are unacceptable.

<comment><USER21> Invisible changes are trivial for a pirate to undo (once they know what is going on). With visible changes, the pirate would have a significantly more difficult time to erase the watermark. My guess would be that, with only a single copy, he would have to destroy the contents of the books a huge amount to hide himself, where as the publisher would only need to destroy a very little amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have to say I started to have more faith in ebooks when I realized how easy it is to strip DRM from Kindle purchases. I've made more purchases since then and feel better about doing so. I like the convenience of ebooks, the way they make my bookshelves look antiquated, but I always had in my mind the "1984" scenario where they take away your purchases. So I strip the DRM of all my purchases and keep a local copy, even though I only ever read them with the Kindle app. When they take away my ability to do that, I'll stop purchasing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I speak German and had a look at the example document [1], and it's hard to tell how big the changes are - this document shows the original and the changed version and asks how annoying the changes are, from a scale of 1 to 6, presumably to know how much their algorithm can change before the rights- holders complain.

Often, the words are replaced by synonyms ("nicht denkbar", not thinkable gets replaced by "undenkbar", unthinkable) or switches the ordering of words ("zwischen Blei Gold und Silber", between lead, gold an silver becomes "zwischen Gold, Silber und Blei", between gold, silver and lead), just the connection of words is changed ("Schmiergeldübergabe", transfer of bribes, becomes "Schmiergeld-übergabe") or the linebreaks are slightly changed, for example one word is moved to the next line.

At this stage, it's very hard to tell how much the final mechanism is going to change the original text, but I can't see much changing of very minor elements like punctuation.

It's still a stupid idea since many of these above elements are important to the "vibe" and meaning of a text - the way an author orders elements, or the specific words used by authors can be interpreted differently.

[1] [http://www.scribd.com/doc/148113352/Sidim- Changes](http://www.scribd.com/doc/148113352/Sidim-Changes)

</comment><comment><USER23> Why on earth do the organizations that 'fight' piracy keep suffering from the delusion that it's just random everyday people who share a copy with a friend that are the source of pirated material on the internet?

<comment><USER24> Have you been to a torrent site? Are the hundreds of seeders of a single e-book all friends?

<comment><USER23> I'm really not sure what you thought I was saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is more of treating the symptom(s) and not the problem(s).

Regarding DRM in general, it exists to prevent piracy, and piracy exists because content is easier to obtain, consume, and share through these 'illegal' methods.

If prices came down, accessibility went up, and shareability is embraced, piracy will fade into the background, and the remaining people doing it will be unjustified in their actions.

If content creators and distributions embraced a system that benefitted the consumers everyone would be better off, but they are years (if not decades) behind the times.

</comment><comment><USER26> > the DRM shuffles some words around, inserts synonyms, changes the paragraph > format or the punctuation. For example, the word "unsympathetic" could be > changed to "not sympathetic," and so forth.

This is horrible! I would prefer my book to be pirated than to have an algo. mix words up.

Besides, if you wanted to do this, why couldn't you use non-printing characters instead, like the soft hyphen U+00AD or zero width space U+200B?

</comment><comment><USER8> And another comment...

I've always wondered if companies like Apple, Google, etc do text watermarking of company-wide confidential emails. Everytime I see an e-mail in the full text posted to Techcrunch, I imagine someone just got busted...

<comment><USER27> Elon Musk used this technique at Tesla in 2009, though it backfired hilarious when he didn't tell the company leadership, and the general counsel sent out his version to the entire company as well.

Hate using gawker as a source, but it's what I found first:

"Musk set out to entrap potential leakers by sending each employee a slightly altered version of an email which he expected would get sent to the media. Musk began the memo, "I'm a big believer in trusting employees."

By altering phrases scattered throughout the email — changing "I'm" to "I am," for example — a Tesla IT employee created individualized memos which would have a detectable "fingerprint" in the text. In the memo, Musk asked everyone to sign a new, stricter nondisclosure agreement. The agreement wasn't the point of the email — it was just a ruse to catch the company's leakers."

[http://gawker.com/5164035/tesla-ceo-in-digital-witch- hunt](http://gawker.com/5164035/tesla-ceo-in-digital-witch-hunt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember seeing a startup doing something similar to catch employes leaking internal docs. Can't find it now, though.

<comment><USER29> Agreed, remember a story, but can't place it. The technical term for this apparently is a "Canary trap" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> DRM where I can still email my favorite books to friends. I support this.</comment>


Does it matter if immutable data is slow? - <AUTHOR> http://lhorie.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-it-matter-if-immutable-data-is.html

<comment><USER2> I can't read all the code because the sidebar obscures it on the right.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> code reviews welcome :)</comment>


Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/hate-mail-and-the-new-religious-wars-in-tech/?nl=technology&emc=cta2_20120621 <comment><USER2> I'd cut it right back to people merely being weird and antagonistic for no reason. It's easier to realize sometimes you're just the latest random target of a touchy, unstable human animal and drive away as if in a safari park.

We had a woman come up to us on vacation and say our 2 year old daughter was an "evil little thing" merely for chattering away while eating lunch. I said nothing and just grinned at her until she popped a vein and stormed off. There are plenty of antagonistic oddballs out there, just grin at 'em (or don't reply to their e-mails) until they go away or start being civil and rational.

<comment><USER3> First off, what happened to you and your daughter is just disturbing. It's a great example of offensively manipulative and disagreeable people, as well as how to deal with them effectively. People like that actually do exist, and knowing how to deal with them is beneficial.

The less obvious but much larger problem is simply miscommunication. It happens all the time, and the limitations of written text only compound the problem. When you think about the tiny fraction of a percent of the human population that qualifies as "great writers" over history, and the fact that they often rewrote their best works multiple times before publication, it's easy to see how our quick text writing (like this discussion forum) is pretty much doomed to constant miscommunication and increased hostility until things spiral out of control.

I don't claim to know you, but for years I've read the thing you've posted here on HN, and you've always seem like a good and reasonable person to me. None the less, I can think of a time when you and I interacted, and some strange miscommunication took place. It was regarding the decor of the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo. If you and I had been discussing it over a beer, I'm sure the miscommunication would have never taken place. I'm certain topic doesn't matter that much to either of us, and in person, we'd mostly agree on it, or at worse, agree to disagree in a friendly manner. That exchange of ours has stayed with me; it's a personal reminder to try being more clear in the things I write.

None the less, I see the same sort of thing constantly on HN and everywhere else. A poorly worded statement, misinterpreted out of context, spiraling the discussion out of control in some pointless, heated, and in some ways harmful direction.

Miscommunication happens to all of us, even when we're good people with good intentions. For the record, I'm sorry we disagreed about the decor of some hotel, but looking back at it, it's hilarious and it's a good lesson in how one poorly worded statement can make a pointless mess.

<comment><USER4> _I see the same sort of thing constantly on HN and everywhere else. A poorly worded statement, misinterpreted out of context, spiraling the discussion out of control in some pointless, heated, and in some ways harmful direction._

This is why the last few months I just stopped commenting here on HN, and quit a lot of other forums/communities. My communication skills just don't seem to be solid enough to help me avoid unintended conflict.

<comment><USER3> Chris, I don't know how old you are or how many decades of experience you have with open discussions, particularly open technical discussions, but my advice is still simple, "Don't let it bother you because it doesn't really matter."

Technical discussions can often be contentious, but often, they are contentious for the "right" reason, people care. When people actually care about building the "best" possible code, emotions run high, even though such unrestrained enthusiasm has substantial drawbacks. As you already know far too well, many thrive on the competition and conflict as much as they thrive on getting things right.

As Peter wonderfully points out, none of us can claim "A total lack of crazy," or for that matter, "A total lack of asshole." On top of these all too human failings, we also have our moments when we just get it all wrong. It happens. Roll with it. Let it go, but learn from it.

Good communication takes practice. Ask grellas sometime about the effort he put into learning to write well. It shows. He wasn't born the skill he has. He learned it. If you stop communicating, you're robbing yourself of a chance to practice.

As for me, I rarely post on HN due to my health not being very good. I deal with chronic pain, and often it hurts too much to type. As you might imagine, when I'm hurting a lot, I can often be less than pleasant company, and it's best for everyone for me to just remain silent. For me, typing comes at a cost. It means I'll be more sore by the end of the day. The cost has taught me something important; the things I say should make a difference, but often, my opinions don't really matter.

Treebeard: "You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say." -- J.R.R. Tolkien

<comment><USER5> > _& but often, they are contentious for the "right" reason, people care._

Perhaps. There's also the fact that people are communicating via typed messages, which are signal-deficient. People may be using a language which is not their first language.

People do not follow Postel's Law: "be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept" - saving that flaming response to draft and sending a few hours later would help.

Some online communities have been entirely too content with flaming and have done little to stop it.

And, I say this gently, some people just don't have the social communication skills they need.

Sorry to hear about painful typing - that sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, the same phenomenon that makes people write those emails can make them "double down" on a tech choice. A friend defaults anti-Apple so refused to buy the "Jesus phone". After four Android phones, each less reliable than the last while his sister's still rocking an iPhone 3GS, he switched last week ... To Windows Phone 7. He just paid $500 for a phone that, 3 days later, was announced would not be upgradable to Windows Phone 8. All because he is determined that Apple users are smug fanboys.

(Personally, I think he should have gotten a Google Galaxy Nexus if he wanted his sister's mockery about constant obsolescence and non working hardware to stop.)

<comment><USER7> iOS 6 won't run with most features on 2 year old hardware. Windows Phone 8 - Won't run on < 1 year old hardware. ICS Can run, but doesn't because of carriers.

They're all shite.

<comment><USER8> iPhone 3GS will be 3 years old when iOS 6 is released.

iPhone 4 will be 2 years old. It will only lack Siri, FaceTime over cellular network and support for 'Made for iPhone' hearing aids.

I wouldn't call that 'most features'.

<comment><USER7> iPad 1 released in 2010 (two years old) lacks all features. iPhone 4 lacks turn by turn navigation, 3D maps, Siri, and Facetime over cellular.

So I get what with an iPhone 4? Passbook, Facebook, and a maps app that no longer tells me what train I can take?

Im going to have to stick to the most features.

<comment><USER9> > So I get what with an iPhone 4?

The ability to run apps targeting iOS 6 and above, which is arguably more important than everything else you listed.

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One thing that wasn't addressed in the article: Unlike the 80s or early 90s, online anonymous discourse is now a mainstream activity. The standards for discourse on practically everything -- politics, local news, technology, style, health, etc. -- tend toward rudeness, hyperbole and ad hominem attacks.

Another trend: Writers are no longer seen as a protected class. Magazines, newspapers and broadcasters and other professional gatekeepers (PR agencies, marketers, etc.) used to control the discussion. While they still guide and feed the discussions, readers know they make mistakes and have biases. To many, the media is suspected of being under the thrall of some perceived agenda (liberal media, Apple fanboy, shill for XYZ).

<comment><USER10> This is a very insightful comment. I'd go further and argue that this kind of media-directed hate mail scales with a general unraveling of our faith in our institutions - the media being an important category. Although the OP has made a really good suggestion about how people take gadget reviews personally, he failed to bring up how a general lack of trust also creates a lot of fear and animosity.

Ah, and I'll add a possible contributing factor: envy. There may be a quite a lot of envy of the author's voice and audience, and acting out because the person feels powerless to influence their peers, like the author does.

The lack of trust and influence that contribute to the generation of such vitriol are actually very tightly linked. As standards for intellectual integrity go down, on a personal and societal level, trust decreases proportionally, and "influence" starts to depend more on emotion than reason. Seeing well-reasoned arguments lose again and again, people (quite reasonably) start adapting, start using the "effective" strategies for influence like invective, emotionally effective fallacies, and general buffoonery.

This is why Fox News is so corrosive. Whatever your politics, the people at Fox are all _liars_. A clearly biased news channel that bills themselves as "Fair & Balanced" - and yet they have a huge audience, and are extremely successful. People learn from this. This is also why people like Blagojevich are so corrosive: even though he (eventually) went to prison, his months of shameless pandering gave people the sense that shame and responsibility are truly outre. The Republican party in the US has been particularly bad about not accepting responsibility for mistakes, wrong-doings, or inconsistencies: they present a disciplined, consistent defense of any accusation of impropriety. And it works, and people see that it works, and it destroys us.

<comment><USER11> I agree with all this, but it would be silly to blame Fox News or the Republican Party (or for that matter Apple, with its locking down of hardware/software and questionable environmental practices) for choosing what _works_.

The blame is totally on the uneducated electorate (or "consumerate"). Conversely, IMO, education is the only lasting solution to these problems.

(NB, there is at least ONE non-liar at Fox: Shep Shepard. It's hilarious to see him directly contradict his co-worker shills, often earning him a place on Jon Stewart).

<comment><USER10> I actually strongly disagree with you, and I think that your comment itself is a very nice example of the problem. And I think that you might be able to see how very easily.

It is the very fact that we don't "blame" Fox News for choosing something that is evil, even when it works, that makes it work. It is up to those who have principles and who believe in right and wrong to draw real lines in the sand, and stop giving people a pass for choosing the expedient, if wrong, option. It's one thing to show compassion for people's foibles, it's another to completely abandon the duty of honest application of principles, if you have them.

Basically, we need to STOP saying, "You can't blame Fox for being liars because, after all, it works." That perpetuates the problem.

So, yes, the blame is on the consumer, but for every consumer that wholeheartedly believes in Fox, there are 10 more that know Fox is a liar but tolerates it because it "works". By pointing this out I hope to make a real difference in how behavior is perceived, and shape the world's institutions into the kind that _I_ want: ones that value integrity above all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not one person likes to be wrong about the choices we make. That's human nature. Some individuals have a need to defend these choices to death, even when faced with greater realities that negate anything they could possibly say about their choice. I remember one guy who would show-up at these professional meetings around the time the iPhone came out. He would make it a point to go around the room and tell everyone that his Blackberry was the only professional business phone out. I was using Blackberry myself at the time and had done so for ten years. Even I thought he was beyond weird. He simply didn't want to be wrong. Never bothered to engage with him in any way. It was pointless.

There's also a tribal or team-oriented element. This effect is often seen in fora such as, yes, HN. Group behavior is also a very natural human trait. Some find it hard to resist it. If you dare go against tribal dogma you become the subject of a brutal "coordinated" attack. Unless you have a thick skin these events can be emotionally draining.

It is often hard to be the one thinking outside the group. People have a natural aversion to change and will resist and attack anything that goes against the direction of group thought. Either join them or deal with the punches. Just remember that all nearly all great discoveries stemmed from questioning what the majority took to be the truth, sometimes at great personal risk. The message is that, just because everyone thinks a certain way, behaves a certain way, supports a certain product it doesn't mean they are right. It just means that they are doing what "everyone else" is doing.

It'd be interesting to see the range of hate-mail these tech columnists get.

<comment><USER13> I think it's more basic than not wanting to be wrong.

It's not wanting to be _disagreed with_ , even if right/wrong doesn't apply. If I decide product X is the best because of features Y and Z, and someone else decides product Q is better than X because they don't care about Y and Z, we may have both made completely correct choices based on our preferences/goals. It's not as though I was wrong about features Y and Z, or about their importance to me. But another person disagreeing about their importance can trigger psychological defenses.

The hate mail in the article concedes the phone has great hardware, but complains that it's a "nerd phone", "heartless", with "no vision". Posts on car forums might concede that a car gets great mileage but complain it has "wrong wheel drive". Blackberry guy thought it was important that he had a _professional business phone_ that was designed with that role in mind. This is where that sense of tribalism comes in: someone has decided that a particular attribute is _really important_ , and anyone who doesn't care about that is an outsider and a weirdo.

It takes a certain degree of maturity to recognize that things are good for different purposes and that it's OK if someone else's purposes don't match yours.

<comment><USER12> Sure. Of course. That's a more fundamental feeling. Interesting takes on this in Dale Carnegie's book. A very interesting read but not necessarily the easiest concepts to apply due to our aforementioned mental programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The cure for this angst is to know the consequences of your decisions, and to accept them as being made with the best intentions at the time.

For example, I regularly work with no less than 7 different OS combinations (OS X, OpenIndiana, Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, iOS, FreeBSD), and don't hesitate to recommend different ones in different circumstances.

To recommend software or hardware without at least passing knowledge of the merits of alternative solutions is frankly negligent. For example, I don't have any Android devices (mainly because of the software upgrade issues), but I know situations where I'd definitely recommend them.

Living in a tech monoculture, whatever it may be, isn't healthy.

<comment><USER15> Nah, the cure for this angst is not to _care_ so much about whatever consumer electronics you're using.

My phone is a bit crappy. There are definitely better ones on the market. But I don't care, it does the job. There are better TVs than my TV, better ovens than my oven and better vacuum cleaners than my vacuum cleaner, but they all do the basic job for which I bought 'em and their imperfections don't cause me any huge grief, so who cares?

<comment><USER16> > Nah, the cure for this angst is not to care so much about whatever consumer > electronics you're using.

I dunno. I see non-technical friends and relatives choose the wrong devices out of ignorance pretty regularly. They waste hours of their weeks fartzing with text messages that are much more difficult to type out, having trouble reading email from people they want to interact with, and spending lots of their hard earned money on other things like external cameras that are mostly unnecessary when you have a decent camera on your phone and learn how to use it properly.

I'm here with my in-laws this week and one of the problems I've noticed is that they paid for the lease of a really crummy wifi router from their ISP. The darned thing doesn't even let them Skype with their grandkids on their iPad unless they're in the same room. To compensate, they have to either go out and spend more of their fixed income on a new router or just not get the benefit of the technology that they've pretty much paid for (but bought the wrong one of).

Like most things in life, knowing when to spend the time and energy to care and when to just make due isn't an easy no-brainer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Relevant to this is the story about working at Apple stores,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151336>

It isn't just writing nasty emails to people that positively review products from competing companies. It's that the level of adoration and devotion is so high in some cases, it affects people's choice of career. One quote in the article basically said, "I pushed Apple products for free, so getting paid to do it is even better".

I do not understand this behavior myself. I can see being a fan of various things (I'm a fan of Linux for example), but of a multinational corporation like Apple, Microsoft or Google?

</comment><comment><USER18> There's something very specific about the tech industry that seems to attract this kind of vitriol. I mean, you don't often hear people saying, "Oh, you bought a Camry instead of a Civic? You're a fucking idiot!"

But when it comes to technology this type of flaming is all over the place, even as times change: yesterday's Windows vs Mac has become today's Android vs iOS, and programmers are constantly arguing about static vs dynamic.

What is it about tech culture that makes people so attached to their decisions, and so willing to attack others who happen to have made a different decision because they happen to have a different opinion?

<comment><AUTHOR> The discussions occur in practically any field where there is a perceived rivalry among brands. All you need is a forum and a critical mass of anonymous or semi-anonymous users (and trolls). E.g.,

 _lol do this in an unmodified civic you'd get your ass whipped by that camry_

<http://conceptmods.com/modified/camry-vs-civic/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _In the 1980s and 1990s, consumer-tech religious wars were a little easier to understand. Back then, there were only two camps: Apple and Microsoft._

As an Amiga user I feel a bit different.

<comment><USER20> As an Atari 400, I too feel a bit differently.

He forgets the great Commodore / Atari rage wars and the great switch with the ST / Amiga.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This isn't really surprising when you think about human nature. We tend to create rivalries where none should exist. Country vs country, state vs state, college vs college, high school vs high school, team A vs team B, boys vs girls, company vs company, department vs department, ... well, I think you get my point. People are tribal and competitive. Tech fanboyism is just an extension of that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Marco and the like are probably a bit guilty of stirring the pot and encouraging this sort of behaviour to an extent, but reading this article his definition of a fanboy did certainly come to mind:

<http://www.marco.org/2011/04/10/fanoboy-fan-boi>

fan•boy |ˈfanˌboi| noun

1\. informal derogatory: a term used to describe people who bought a product that competes with the one you bought, which is probably more popular than your choice, for reasons that you wish to discredit or diminish because you're secretly afraid or upset that you made the wrong choice.

<comment><USER23> The very funny thing about that is that Marco wrote that as a counterpoint to people calling him an Apple fanboy, when the iPhone was more popular than Android.

>which is probably more popular than your choice, for reasons that you wish to discredit

At that time, the usual suspects Horace,Gruber, Siegler et al. were vehemently claiming that Android would never overtake the iPhone(which Marco seemed to have fallen for) but it happened later in 2011.

So that quote seems especially funny now in retrospect as it has been turned on its head and now actually describes Apple fans calling Android fans "fanbois".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I work with audio and music, and at various times have needed which software platform I was going to use. DAW software is very time consuming to learn, and there are all sorts of platform "lock in" effects. Also network effects to consider. If the software you use is bad, your life and work can really suck. For professionals, there is actually a lot at stake. So I have had periods of evaluating which software to use, checking out forum discussions and so forth, and always found myself disturbed by my own inclinations towards tribalism.

I finally decided that it makes pretty good sense to take sides when your livelihood is at stake. For most modern people there choice of technology does affect their work, even if it's not directly related. The emotional tendencies towards tribalism are probably one of the "survival heuristics" that cause us to pay attention when faced with important decisions. Since it isn't always easy to tell which decisions are ultimately important, we are primed to treat many decisions as if they are. That's my desk chair hypothesis!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is an effect of human tribalism and occurs in just about every aspect of human life. People need to be part of a group, and part of being part of a group is castigating outsiders.

Businesses that recognize this and play to it will always have more loyal and ardent customers, but you have to be willing to black-ball some potential customers in the process.

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems to happen anytime people are forced to make a choice from a limited number of options. Everything from sports, to politics, to consumer electronics of different types. I think it's because our brains are really good at comparing two or three things. It may even be that we have a sort of obsession with comparing things. We just can't help ourselves. When your available options expand though it becomes far more difficult to compare. The thrill of comparing two objects and reaching the correct conclusion is gone at that point. The stakes are also much lower. Few people are going to sit down and compare a dozen different things so even if we do make the _wrong_ choice no one is going to notice.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've really tried to make a conscious effort to always assume that someone's opinion is valid, even if I disagree, and to extend this to all matters of taste and opinions. I understand that some developers like working in Windows, or enjoy developing native iOS apps. First, I can't assume that it's always because of cognitive dissonance or ignorance that people enjoy things I loathe deeply. Second, I need to make an effort to recognize the aspects of the thing that are desirable and assume that the things that bother me, don't bother everybody in the same way. It's an unpopular mode of thinking among software developers, which is normally ruled by tribalism and prejudice.

<comment><USER28> I did that for a long time. It's still my default working assumption.

I've actually worked to consciously question that. There are ideas and belief systems which are actively dangerous and hostile (Fascism, Qutbism/Islamist extremism, certain strains of new-agism, and, I'm starting to believe, so- called free market extremism and modern strains of Rousseauism).

Or maybe I'm just getting old and set in my ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is not as much about tech as it is about advertising and commercialism. Our young generations are exposed to more and more advertising, commercialism and crass materialism throughout their lives, so it is no freaking wonder that young people will turn their phones into some kind of pillars of their existence.

This was fueled by the so called "tech journalists" that fueled the original mania about the ipods and iphones, etc. which basically resulted in a bunch of monsters that defined themselves by the type of gadgets they use.

So in a way that NY Times writer has only himself to blame.

<comment><USER30> Where I live we're slightly behind the curve: my peers still define themselves by their football (soccer) team. And I define myself by the lack of one ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've gotten to where I don't have any particularly strong attachment to brand names. I've used Windows all of my life, but just recently ordered a Mac. I still like both operating systems a lot (and would like to experiment with Linux as well). I suppose a decade ago when I was 12 I may have made some disparaging Apple comment, but now it seems juvenile that anyone would spend a lot of time debating these sorts of things.

Then again, I spend very little time shopping for clothes or reading about cars so maybe this is just a product of being less social than most.

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/>

</comment><comment><USER33> I always thought this kind of thing was catharsis like yelling at people while driving.

</comment><comment><USER34> Free software allows for freedom.

Most (if not all) frustration in tech comes from the lack of it.

<comment><USER35> This post perfectly illustrates the kind of passive aggressive statement that can light the touch paper of a flame war. It's essentially the same as saying "it just works" from an Apple perspective. It's another example of tribalism and closed thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > When you buy a product, you are, in a way, locking yourself in.

Yes, but more or less.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days.

 _Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products._

 _Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever consider purchasing.._

Given that cars are so expensive and visible I can kinda see how people get their identity so caught up in them (though I strongly suspect that most of the people with the sorts of opinions expressed above are probably too young to drive). Phones, however, are a mystery to me.

<comment><USER37> Calling the things we carry in our pockets today "phones" is nothing more than an artifact of history. (In fact, my iPhone is a terrible phone.)

Smartphones are devices we use constantly, all day, probably some absurd number of times per hour, and it is a statistic that is surely going up. It's hard to think of any other product we have a more intimate relationship with. It's become more and more of a tool that we cannot live without. These are the attributes of a product that cause an emotional attachment, and is the reason people get so worked up about "phones". (You'll note this ferver didn't really reach a fever pitch until after "phones" were no longer phones.)

<comment><USER38> > _Calling the things we carry in our pockets today "phones" is nothing more > than an artifact of history. (In fact, my iPhone is a terrible phone.)_

Really? In what other way except "battery life"?

Sound reviews found it had excellent sound, and same goes for reception. And the reliability of the phone network, even for simple calls, if far better than what it was back in the day.

And the contact list, search function, visual voicemail and ease of use for those functions is far better than most, if not all, pre-iPhone phones.

<comment><USER37> I live in emerald hills and I'd say about 80-90% (no exaggeration) of calls drop within the first 60 seconds. (Not an iPhone thing, a AT&T thing, of course.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter search - 3x faster by replacing ruby on rails with java - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/04/twitter-search-is-now-3x-faster_1656.html?

<comment><USER2> "In the next phase of our deploy, we will eliminate Ruby on Rails entirely, connecting users directly to Blender and potentially reducing latencies even further."

Obviously for an app the size of Twitter, cutting CPU load and search latencies even a small percentage offers significant monetary savings, but I'm curious how to actually calculate the return on investment of this sort of improvement, specifically how "faster search returns for the user" should be account for, or other UX benefits.

Thoughts?</comment>


Show HN: MirrorDraw – A small project to draw on a canvas - <AUTHOR> http://mirrordraw.herokuapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure if this would have been better as an Ask HN.

This was a small project to learn to use canvas and Ruby on Rails better. It isn't an ongoing project but I would like to keep learning and get feedback on what I can improve on. Especially where I am doing something wrong in the javascript or completely against how I should be using RoR.

Source: [https://github.com/Rhebel/MirrorDrawing](https://github.com/Rhebel/MirrorDrawing)

edit: I have a huge question for anybody who knows a solution. I don't know how to search for this properly. In the console you can adjust the line width manually; MD.PX = 20

Draw something after doing that and things are strange. I _think_ it's because the line doesn't know which direction it should go between points so it seems to be pretty random. I had an idea that adding points would help but I don't know and I'd love to figure that out.

<comment><USER2> I'll take a shot at your line width question. When you are dragging across the canvas slowly, you get sent an event for every pixel the mouse touches, and your code is drawing a 20px wide line between each new point. If the pixel is down from the last pixel, it will draw a 1px by 20px horizontal line. If it's the to right it will draw a 1x20px vertical line, because it's just trying to connect the last point to the new point. If the next mouse event happens to be perfectly diagonal from the last, it will draw a 20px wide line that's diagonal. Since the mouse is moving pixel by pixel, if you drag it diagonally, it's path will basically randomly be one of these three movements, so you get a mixture of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Notice that if you move the mouse quickly enough, you don't get an event for every pixel along the path (since the resolution of the mouse's motion isn't high enough), and it will draw a clean 20px line between each detected point.

What I would do to handle this is when you are drawing fat lines, draw a 20px diameter filled circle at the beginning point, then the line to the ending point, then a 20px diameter circle at the end point. This will give you strokes with rounded ends. Another possible improvement along this lines is that you could paint a circle when someone first clicks on the canvas rather than only when they move the mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The first few lines are drawn really slowly over here... after a couple of lines, they appear instantly. Weird behavior, is this intended?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's not intentional. I have seen it but it is variable. On one computer it never happens and on another it happens like you said and on another it's always slow.

The way this works is that I add points to an array while dragging. There is a loop that adds a point and draws a line to the last point. I think that interval of drawing is what slows it down but that is just what I felt like it had to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a fun toy to play with!

One thing I would improve: When drawing on the left half and moving to the right half without releasing the mouse, the drawing stops. I would expect the drawing to continue on the right canvas, while mirroring back to the left canvas, and vice-versa.

Maybe it's a browser specific, I'm on Chrome 38.0.2125.122, OSX 10.10.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I had tried but never got it working. The problem was knowing when to stop one canvas and start the next (which is done with mousedown/mouseup or bounds right now).

This and the kaleidoscope are two things that could keep me busy.

<comment><USER4> Is there a reason to use two separate canvases? You won't have this problem if you had just one canvas.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I started it was set up so that only the left canvas worked. I spent some time to make it work for both.

I could make it so that when drawing it reverses from the middle so that it was just one canvas. Well, I could try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you can make it like Kaleidoscope

</comment><comment><USER6> Writing chinese characters on it is an interesting experience...</comment>


How to Borrow a Stranger's Phone - <AUTHOR> http://dskang.com/post/36794154264/how-to-borrow-a-strangers-phone <comment><USER2> How to steal a strangers phone: Ask if you can borrow his phone, let him/her hesitate a bit, hesitate a bit yourself, suggest you have them hold your wallet. Hand over cheap wallet filled with rocks. RUN!</comment>


With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/google-plus-one/ <comment><USER2> It's an interesting way of arranging a link aggregator, in that the links are already present. That said, I don't see this taking off. People compartmentalize their life based on functionality. Some will see google only as a search tool, digg/reddit/hn/slashdot/etc as their social news site, gmail/hotmail/etc as their mailing client - and wont use those products for anything other than their mentally compartmentalized purpose.

The other issue that I see here is the culture that is present. Think of everyone that uses google - do you want all of their votes to influence the content that you see? I don't want to see the eggplant tofurduken recipe that Aunt Millie +1'd. Sure, you can limit the influence to just your circle of friends, but that doesn't bring much new to the table. Reddit has done well because it allows for this context of culture to be one of it's primary features (via subreddits). Even HN has this driving niche focus sitewide.

All that said, while I dont expect this to take off, I do expect to see a "+1 THIS!" button next to the "tweet this!"/"digg this!"/"reddit this!" button on every blogspam post out there.

<comment><USER3> I agree 1000% that people compartmentalize based on functionality, which is why Google shouldn't be afraid of Facebook on search (that and Facebook not having search and search being difficult).

<comment><USER4> What if I'm facebook and I'm processing >500M "likes" a day?

Could I create a reasonable search engine only using URLs people have "liked" and weight search results based on number of likes and whether people in my friends list have liked it?

<comment><USER5> That'll work great if you're searching for the latest hamster-on-a-piano video. It might not work quite so well if you're searching for something with substance. Despite the hype, most people aren't especially good at uncovering original content.

<comment><USER6> A totaly agree, people don't usualy share much stufs on facebook? Have you seens around a link to a Hadoop tutorial in your news feed yet?

<comment><USER7> I think that sharing that sort of thing will be in a more targeted way, via e.g. yourpane.com. I never share links that don't appeal to everyone on Twitter or Facebook, but I send things to specific friends all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The obvious: I'm sure it won't be long before Google creates an embeddable +1 button, for you to include in your site/blog/webapp. Because right now I don't see why I would run a search, click the result, go 'whoah, good article' and then hit back to the results page to '+1' aforementioned article.

What I _really_ like about this, though, is that it sounds so good.

"I'd +1 that."

"Have you +1ed?"

"Where's the essay? Uh, it's in my +1s"

<comment><USER9> I don't see anything that would keep them from moving this to the gtoolbar, Chrome or a javascriptlet.

I agree with the branding of it. I doubt I will use it much, but it is catchy.

<comment><USER10> There is something very Google about the branding. It's a little bit nerdy, very simple, and cool. I like it a lot more than "Like".

<comment><USER11> "It's a little bit nerdy," is exactly the problem I see with this. They are taking a piece of internet/geek culture and expanding it to my Grandma. My Grandma know what it means to "Like" something, but does she understand "+1"? Probably not.

<comment><USER12> Did people know what a "googol" was? It doesn't really matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER8> Well to be fair, Andrex, people still _don't_ know what a 'googol' is. They know 'Google', and what 'Google' means to them is very different from 'googol'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see hundreds of thousands of billable hours of mechanical turk and dungeon grade Indian and Chinese IT Services time spent +1ing SEO spam farm links.

<comment><USER14> As PageRank is a trust metric, and their entire system is based around that, I'd imagine they would perform similar calculations for +1 results. Especially as +1s contain no implicit _content_ , as they are merely flags, I find it unlikely to suffer from SEO like search does - trust metrics are practically _designed_ to handle farming.

<comment><USER15> How can you calculate a trust rank of +1s? Remember that people don't +1 other people, and don't know who +1ed what, so not even people can assess who does quality voting.

<comment><USER14> Google's aiming for the social game, and has been hosting, indexing, and correlating it for a long time. They have blogger, buzz, gmail, people's names, credit cards, links to and searching of your twitter account, your blog, your friends, your x, your y, even your z. Why can't they infer popularity that way, identically to how PageRank works?

And people _do_ see who +1d something, it requires a public account - it's visible on the link (as displayed in the video, and implied by the same behavior with tweeted links) and on your profile page.

If a nobody from nowhere +1s a link, their friends will see it, but it's unlikely to affect the world at-large. Similarly, trust-metric wise, if a cluster of nobodies +1s a thousand pages, the impact will be restricted to their cluster. If an extremely-highly-connected person, who many people follow on Twitter / Reader / etc, +1s something, it'll have more impact simply by being visible to more people _and_ because their "importance" can be inferred by those connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google actually played around with a voting feature awhile back. When you searched for a term, there was an up arrow on the results, so it moved those results to the top every time you searched for those terms. This was incredible useful for me, because for example I was too lazy to bookmark api documentation and just search for example rails api, and the links I voted up were automatically at the top. If this works like this I will be happy, the social aspect I don't care for, but can see how it will be relevant if enough people are voting for good content.. thats associated with specific search terms.

</comment><comment><USER17> Possible unintuitive user experience?

Google's usage comes from leaving Google's site as fast as possible (search for a term, then leave Google to visit the result).

This looks like you would do a search, visit the resulting site, and then remember to go back to the Google results page to click the +1.

<comment><USER18> If the website you are visiting also integrates +1, then there is no need to go back and +1.

But yeah, going back to the Google search results page is a pain and I doubt very many people would actually take that action, unless they are really impressed by the site and are familiar with the +1 feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 4chan already regularly troll google search results by mass-searching for a specific, disturbing sentence. This seems like another tool in their arsenal.

Not saying Google should let bullies dictate their behaviour, but this _could_ be abused.

<comment><USER20> I bet the SEO underworld is also going bananas with the potential to game the system.

<comment><USER21> > I bet the SEO underworld is also going bananas with the potential to game > the system.

The value to the SEO underworld depends on how Google interprets the +1.

Google can use +1 data to identify folks trying to game the system.

The easiest way to get around said identification, or rather, to keep Google from using your +1 to hose you, is to provide good data.

Since Google wants good data .....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> '+1' proves that Google is run by engineers.

I, for one, prefer it to 'Like' or 'Tweet'.

<comment><USER23> It can have a nerdy connotation, but +1 is pretty well known. The average person probably sees it in the party invite/club culture context where you vouch for one person, much like you'll be vouching for sites.

Probably not better than Like, but definitely not worse than Tweet.

Edit: And the ultimate arbitrator of slang agrees: <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plus%20one>

<comment><USER24> I don't agree with Like. It's good for socializing, but not for this.

I've never heard anybody say they 'like' an article from Wikipedia, but they might find it interesting, so they'd +1 it.

<comment><USER25> Yes, +1 has the connotation of "noteworthy" rather than "fan".

So it is more generally useful. One could +1 a news article about an earthquake or horrific disaster, but might be reluctant to Like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd rather see a "-1"; so when I go back to the results because the result didn't match my need, I could indicate it (w/o a full ban). I'm not likely to ever return for a +1 result, since, almost by definition, I'm done searching at that point.

<comment><USER27> There's not a "-1 button" but you can block search results in a couple ways:

\- Install the Personal Blocklist extension in Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef)

\- Click on a search result, then click back, and you'll see a "block example.com" for that snippet.

The first option is easy and always shows block links; the second option is server-side, so the blocks work on different browsers.

<comment><USER26> I love the "block" functionality, but it is really a different feature. Block says "this site is spam, don't show it to me anymore." "-1" says "this result isn't relevant to what I'm searching for, alter the future results accordingly."

Regardless, I love what Google is doing here in taking individual consideration into account.

<comment><USER28> This is good interpretation of the functionality is meant to be used.

However, we have seen several cases where the usage of the functionality slowly drives how the feature is morphed and I am guessing Google is experimenting with the button initially to see how the users like it and would try to weave other functionalities around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Maybe I'm missing something, but what benefit do I get as a user out of +1-ing something?

<comment><USER29> Bookmark-ish functionality I guess?

Maybe you could pretend it's a microtransaction gift to the receiver, which it probably is in some vague way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I got a few downvotes last week saying google needed exactly this to fend off Facebook constructing a search engine based on it's like button data.

This goes a long way but the problem I see here is that I want to be able to +1 on the page itself, not have to click back to the search results, find the result again, and then press +1.

<comment><USER31> "So they're taking it slow. There will be no +1 buttons for publishers at launch (but they're coming)."

<comment><USER32> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c#t=0m45s>

"And soon you'll be able to +1 more than just search results. You'll also find the +1 button on sites across the web, making it easy to +1 pages after you visited them."

<comment><USER33> But isn't this the classic problem regarding the dinosaur and the egg ?!

I would have made sure that those embeddable buttons (some basic rudimentary version) are out along with the roll out. Because, I know literally no-one who goes _back_ to the search results page for anything !

<comment><USER30> Right! If the page is good, actually what you are looking for, are you going to back out and tell google? I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> WSJ's coverage, "Google Seeks Answer to Facebook With 'Social Search'", is here: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870380630457623...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232771273306208.html)

Search Engine Land does a good job of relating this announcement to prior Google social projects and rumors: [http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the- fac...](http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook- like-button-70569)

You can join Google's +1 experiment here: <http://www.google.com/experimental/>

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://www.google.com/experimental/>

</comment><comment><USER36> I wish they would add a -1 button

<comment><USER37> they do: "block all example.com results" or whatever. it's just not shared (yet?)

<comment><USER38> Serious question: why would you want to share it? I think the default for most websites is already that no one goes there. Telling someone "This exists but don't go there" is like the canonical, "Don't think of a polar bear."

<comment><USER39> On the other hand, telling Google "you know this exists but it's useless" is a useful bit of information. It's not like your blocked websites would be shared in a list, they would just be used to influence the ordering of search results.

<comment><USER38> Yes, but this goes back to magicalist's comment above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else having flashbacks to Yahoo in 1996:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo....](http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/)

And then in 2006:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20060101035628/http://www.yahoo.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060101035628/http://www.yahoo.com/)

? Google has featuritis.

<comment><USER40> They do seem to be adding a little too much to the search engine itself. I just noticed that they've finally hidden "realtime results" behind a link you have to click, instead of shoving random idiotic Twitter crap in your face when you search for current topics.

There's an idea that had some potential, but seems to have made no progress since its debut. It's still no better than a simple Twitter search.

Google seems a little too eager to adopt random crazy ideas (SearchWiki) and a little too willing to kill off good ideas that don't take off quickly enough (Wave). I can't think of a recent new feature or product that was a big success, which is disappointing.

<comment><USER41> I thought Wave was a good idea, and a good amount of my friends used it for a while. I think integrating it more with gmail would have made it dynamite. Or some how using it as a regular email account. I kinda miss wave now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a defensive move on Google's part. I imagine there are talks inside Facebook to either develop their own search or work with another search provider to integrate Facebook into the results. I am not sure how widely this feature will be used but, in my opinion, it is definitely the right move.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't find this very useful. My friends often like things that I don't like. They're not my friends because they like the bands or movies or web sites that I do. Recommendations from my friends carry no more weight than they would from anyone else.

The only difference between a friend and a stranger is that I might engage a friend in a conversation with specific questions about something they've used or seen that I haven't, but the value of that conversation comes from the detail of the exchange and targeted or objective questions I'd ask, it's not expressible as a boolean like/+1 or a 1-10 rating.

</comment><comment><USER43> Announcement on the official Google blog: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right- recommendati...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right- recommendations-right-when-you.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> Oh look, Google's very own "like" button.

Lets see how well they do with it.

</comment><comment><USER45> This might sound dumb, but it's not really obvious how I add people I know to my google profile as a "friend". With facebook, it's dead simple and it makes sense why you would do that.

I assume I have to connect an account here: <https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts>

But then don't my friends have to do that as well? I don't really see why they would.

<comment><USER46> The searchengineland article explains it: [http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the- fac...](http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook- like-button-70569) As far as I understand, things from connected accounts is the social connection. The friends are your buzz friends (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> To jumpstart user identities in googles take on social google could buy communities like github, photo.net and import user identities from there. Of course the privacy and the UX of such a move will dictate whether users go "wow this is great" or "oh my god now the whole internet knows about my tinfoil hat". In the meanwhile they could try to integrate identities from services that google already owns - youtube, picasa, google reader etc.

</comment><comment><USER48> I see this as potentially being very useful.

Imagine if you had the ability to Google search all of your friend's 'Likes' on Facebook. This is what Google is trying to create here, except for webpages instead of social snippets.

This suggests a parallel competing feature for Facebook: Make all of your friend's 'Likes' searchable through the search toolbar on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER49> A thought: Liking (or +1-ing) at the URL level seems useful but too coarse- grained as a general model. Maybe I've made too many Git checkins today, but I'd like to be able to select some text and +1 it. That's what I use Twitter or my blog for at least half the time: to point out an interesting sentence or two. You, know, the money quotes.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can I opt-out of the social part but still allow my results to be used anonymously in their ranking algorithm?

</comment><comment><USER33> It would have been so cool if I could have redirected ads to a particular friend. E.g, I know he's looking for a camera, and I see this great deal when looking up some reviews for him.

+1 -> Bob's a happy monkey !

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't see mainstream users regularly +1'ing (or plus'ing???) search results. Feels awkward and forced to me.

Hopefully this is just a very small part of their larger plan.

</comment><comment><USER52> Puts an interesting spin on SEO. It seems the best technique is still to simply produce quality content that people want to link to and share with their friends.

</comment><comment><USER53> The oddest thing to me is having it on the search results page. I understand that's where they hand off control, but on the other hand won't most people have to click through the links in question to figure out if they like the content? I generally only go back to the search results if I didn't like the results and want to check out sites lower down.

</comment><comment><USER54> I hope, along with fixing everything else about Google Bookmarks, they add a feature to automatically +1 all of your bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like it. Seems unintrusive and simple, but useful en-masse.

(-1 the mouseover animated highlight glossy thing though.)

<comment><USER29> edit: Heh, and the url? <http://google.com/+1button>

Confusing broken URL cracking code everywhere. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Isn't a search result assessed on its relevance to the search terms? I don't see that a site recommendation does an awful lot to help me know if it has what I'm looking for.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is brilliant - and outdated. Do all Google engineers play RPG's? +60 credibility to my twitter feed!

</comment><comment><USER57> The first one who publishes something, so we can integrate the +1-button on our websites, get's a +1! ;)

</comment><comment><USER58> Is this going to be a new way for people to game search results? I personally wont be using it

</comment><comment><USER20> Some of the websites I use are a competitive business advantage. Others are private topics of personal interest.

I love Google but I hated Buzz and I think I will hate social search too.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't understand the icon. What's it supposed to be? A file folder with colored tabs?

</comment><comment><USER47> They could have gone 1+ and made the lisp folks happy.

</comment><comment><USER60> i wonder if this will promote junk content. if paris hilton starts popping up over paris france when you search paris there might be a big issue here.

<comment><USER60> also longer and richer content might get pushed aside by shorter gawker style content. wikipedia should be ok though... =)</comment></comment>