Brussels Rocked by Terrorist Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/people-injured-after-explosion-at-brussels-airport-police-say-1458632527 <comment><USER2> What I find reassuring in the midst of this tragic mayhem however, is how little actual damage the terrorists could do.

They had explosives, weapons, the resolve to sacrifice themselves and tried their best to do as much damage as possible. And they managed to to kill less than 30 people (provisional count).

Of course every death that brought on by this fanatic mob is too much, but we should keep our perspective.

A bus accident in Spain last week left 11 exchange students dead, in the US alone every day more than 50 people die in road accidents.

Of course we should root out the people that try to bomb our freedom away. But don't let us be terrorized by something that doesn't make a statistically recognizable dent in our probability for survival.

<comment><USER3> A major airport and the entire rail system of the city was shut down. A lot of damage was done. And, of course, a bunch of people died from something not many signed up for.

Driving a car at least gives you the opportunity to reject taking on the risk.

The fabric of society is based around us not shooting each other/ blowing up trains. Every event like this (or, say, some countries bombing out neighborhoods in other countries) makes it harder to rely on the idea that this sort of thing doesn't happen.

Acknowledging that this happens because of conscious policy decisions by many people is also good.

There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0.

Not to mention that it's possible to worry about car crashes _and_ terrorism at the same time

<comment><USER4> > There's absolutely nothing inevitable about these kinds of attacks. We could > bring this sort of event down to a number real close to 0.

I don't think so.

Even if you exclude international politics completely the number still isn't zero. Take the 2011 Norway attacks where 77 people died. That was one guy, a Christian fundamentalist, likely paranoid schizophrenic who wanted to rid the world of Marxism/feminism/islam/something. Then you have the unabomber, most school shootings, and so on which you can point to.

My point is: This stuff is NEVER going away. All you can do is minimise it. Zero is certainly a laudable goal but likely an unachievable one.

<comment><USER5> Labeling Breivik as a Christian fundamentalist serves a political need, but if we really have to attribute to a religion what he did, he was more like a pagan fundamentalist ("Odinist") who expressed his belief that Jesus was "pathetic".

Edit: However I agree with the part that this is never going to go away (completely). You cannot totally prevent terror, and living in a society that could would be terror itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As sad as it is, I think the responses will be:

\- we need more surveillance rights and money for the secret services

\- we need more police and higher spending

\- and possibly bomb some country (Syria is en vogue)

What won't be said is:

\- How come this happens _again_ without anyone having seen it coming?

\- What does it say about the success of the Western anti-terror foreign policy adopted ~2001?

<comment><USER7> I think investing in explosives detection is a better approach. It is an irony that there were explosions at the airport while they are screening you completely before boarding a flight.

<comment><USER8> According to BBC the explosion are believed to have been in the checkin area, i.e. outside of the security screening.

<comment><USER9> This is a clear weakness of airports: where people regroup even before reaching the terminal, with no surveillance or security checks whatsoever. And that's not just in Brussels.

<comment><USER10> Only place I've seen some security checks was at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, where there was a mild security check when entering the airport.

This consisted of a small interview on what I've been doing in Israel, where I am going to, with whom and who packed my stuff. This all was before even entering the actual terminal building.

<comment><USER11> I see Europe in the future adopting many of the (some call paranoid) security measure of Israel. For example security checks before entering all malls.

<comment><USER12> In Paris, there are security checks at entrances to malls and big stores now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a mess larger than I can comprehend, with scores of innocent dead. The spectrum of political issues this crosses is vast. We're talking nationalism, immigration, religion, extremism, surveillance, privacy, and war to name a few.

The nuance required to understand and attack the big picture is almost nowhere to be found.

I saw the French PM said something like "we're at war" \- I'm not sure who they're at war _with_ but onward with the endless war.

I've seen plenty of comments about ISIS. It's like a 99.999% chance it's not ISIS - maybe Al Qaeda, maybe a different extremist group. (For _why_ it's probably not ISIS and one of the most fantastic explanations of the what's and whys of ISIS, see [0].) But it shows just how vastly uneducated most people are about the issues that lead to attacks like this.

This breeds calls for extremism in response, like expelling all Muslims (and can only help Trump's campaign) or comments like the one from the French PM above.

I can't imagine being in charge of trying to address all of the underlying issues that feed into attacks like this. And I don't know that those in charge are up to the task.

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what- isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really- wants/384980/)

Edit: ISIS _inspired_ maybe, but not ISIS planned and backed. "During his visit to Mosul in December, Jürgen Todenhöfer interviewed a portly German jihadist and asked whether any of his comrades had returned to Europe to carry out attacks. The jihadist seemed to regard returnees not as soldiers but as dropouts. "The fact is that the returnees from the Islamic State should repent from their return," he said. "I hope they review their religion.""

I always stand to be corrected.

<comment><USER14> > This is a mess larger than I can comprehend, with scores of innocent dead.

What's most sad about it, is that the current situation is the result of doing nothing, despite having crystal clear data on the situation, and in which (wrong) direction things has been changing.

It's been clear that something needs to be done for years, even decades, but actually doing something about the situation would mean publicly acknowledging these facts. And nobody has been willing to do just that.

In fact actually _using these known indisputable facts_ has been systematically avoided for fear of being seen as "racist" or whatever.

Putting the specific issue of immigration aside, I think that it's a very bad sign for the future of enlightened democracy when actually running a fact- based policy is deemed as "risky" and even unacceptable from a public relations point of view.

If we let this attitude persist, we can do lots of wrongs in other areas as well: Think about environmental changes, etc etc.

We need to heighten the status of cold data, of facts as a matter of indisputability. But that's not a left/right issue and I don't think you will find any party fronting such a position.

<comment><USER15> > that the current situation is the result of doing nothing

I think the current situation is the result of doing _way too much_ the the past decade (or two). If the US and EU stayed out of the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria), the EU+ME part of the world would be a much more peaceful place.

<comment><USER14> Fair enough and absolutely a valid counterargument.

Allow me to amend my comment slightly, and emphasise that I'm speaking of domestic policies.

Across Europe we've seen increased ghettofication, social segregation and religious extremism.

But because this has mostly been within demographic segments considered "weak" or "minorities", the explicit policy has consistently been sweeping things under the rug and proceeding as if nothing has been wrong.

And that has landed Europe where it is today.

Anyway. This is HN and I don't want to get more political than I need to. What bothers me the most is honestly the low status facts have in the politics of nations today, something I think should be a fairly incontroversial position.

<comment><USER16> > What bothers me the most is honestly the low status facts have in the > politics of nations today

100% agree....when you can sit and watch a debate or discussion on TV, and one side or the other, or both, are using arguments that are known to be factually incorrect, it's bound to not turn out well.

I think if we are going to accept immigration from anywhere, we should first figure out how to assimilate all cultures to prevent as you correctly note ghettofication, social segregation and religious extremism. The things we're seeing today might be small potatoes compared to what could happen if there's a mass uprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "2 bombs exploded close to where I was sitting, so scary." \- [https://twitter.com/lrz/status/712173581103448064](https://twitter.com/lrz/status/712173581103448064)

"Bombs at Brussels airport. I'm alive but I think there are casualties." \- [https://twitter.com/lrz/status/712173286281650176](https://twitter.com/lrz/status/712173286281650176)

Laurent Sansonetti MacRuby & RubyMotion's creator and lead developer was near the blast.

</comment><comment><USER18> People always freak out when this happens. As long as there have been people with enough hate (or often political motives) there has always been terrorist attacks. Even the Romans suffered as much.

I don't think there is any solution which makes everyone perfectly safe. Politicians always want to guarantee perfect safety but it's not possible. Some things you can prevent, some things you can stop, but some horrible thing will inevitably happen.

<comment><USER19> You seem to attribute a lot to politics. I would argue that religion is the variable that plays the dominant role in this war of ideas.

<comment><USER20> You and many others seem to post that there is a mental cancer infecting 1.5 billion people on this planet, and at any time it could transform its host into a bloodthirsty murderer seemingly at random.

I don't buy it.

<comment><USER21> Islam, and radical Islam specifically, are not the sole ingredient transforming random people into murderers or suicide murderers.

It is an ingredient. Eric Hoffer's _The True Believer_ is a good sketch of the phenomenon. Among the disaffected, some will latch onto any available dogmatic belief system. As long as radical Islam is in the news, and is accessible, some among the disaffected will choose that path.

Not all dogmas result in blowing yourself up in crowds, or setting off bombs or gunning down people in theaters. Doesn't it make sense to preferentially attack those dogmas that bring out, _at present_ , the worst characteristics in their adherents?

It would be great if our foreign policy in the past 1.5 (or 3, or 5, or 7) decades hadn't been a disaster and promoted unrest in the region, because that undoubtedly increased the seriousness of our current situation. We (by that I mean our leaders who make foreign policy and military decisions) should try to learn from history and not repeat the same mistakes, although they all (no matter their politics) seem to do a very poor job of that. But the question of why radical Islam is such a problem now is irrelevant to the question of whether we should fight radical Islam. It's not a very reasonable thing to conclude that because we're partly responsible for the rise of radical Islam, we should do nothing and let it conquer the world if it wants.

<comment><USER20> Deal with individuals goading others to violence by all means!

What I think would be an awful mistake is to replicate the Roosevelt style policy with regard to Muslims.

Also, The True Believer is already on my to-read list, I'll bump it up after I get done with Piketty. Thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We havent seen a group of 50 militants take over a city and reck havoc because our surveillance systems can detect such levels of organization. As horrible as this sounds, anyone with an IQ above 60 can plot and kill 30 people because there's not enough signal in the vast noise our communication networks generate to pick up on it. If we can prevent terrorist attacks that kill thousands of individuals we've won.

<comment><USER23> If entering a major _airport_ strapped with explosives undetected and blowing up _twice_ killing tens of people isn't a spectacular security failure, I don't know what is. I agree that it's nearly impossible to detect/prevent random shootings/stabbings (like in Paris attacks), but this is not such case.

<comment><USER24> In a free society people can move where they please. The explosions happened before the security checkpoints at a very busy airport, so I don't see how this was some security failure. Intelligence failure yes, but airport security? I'm not so sure. Are you suggesting that a perimeter be setup around the entire airport and people are checked before entering the grounds?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Belgium hasn't had stable governments for many years, with many observers, especially in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, calling it a 'failed state'. I read an article about that a while ago, couldn't find it directly, but I found this one: [http://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-failed-state- security...](http://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-failed-state-security- services-molenbeek-terrorism/)

<comment><USER26> Let's not exaggerate. This is not a third world country. A lot things work really well. You're right that immigration was not handled well but except that Belgium is pretty well managed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My first visceral reaction was "Fuck it, just kill them all and bomb them back to stone age". I know I'm not alone on this -- the recent rise of nationalism, isolationism, Euro-scepticism and hostility towards refugees all over Europe is painful evidence for this sentiment.

But it's important to understand that these feelings are what such attacks are intended to invoke. They're intended to harden the gap between "us" and "them", to make Westerners despise anyone who looks conveniently foreign enough to be suspicious of belonging to "them" and to use them as scapegoats for the perpetrators who have often already escaped justice through death.

These atrocities weren't committed by "Muslims" just like the atrocities in the UK during the Troubles were not committed by "Christians". The perpetrators were individuals -- even if they belonged to a group that group wasn't "Muslims", it most likely wasn't even "ISIS"; just a small group of like-minded dangerous individuals who were convinced they would aid mankind by committing atrocities like these.

In so far as certain ideologies led to these convictions it is important to understand that you can't kill ideas with weapons. Yes, where there are armies fighting for dangerous ideologies they need to be stopped, but where you can't even clearly distinguish the soldiers from the civilians you need to destroy the ideology, not the people.

But unlike people, ideologies are very difficult to destroy and take a long time to fully extinguish. And in times like these it's far too easy to fall prey to politicians promising fast satisfaction rather than a long-term strategy towards a shift in ideologies.

We need to embrace our humanity and liberties. We have already had our period of enlightenment and we have overcome totalitarianism and theocracy. We must not allow ourselves to regress to the dark age, no matter how appealing it may seem in times like these -- neither here in Europe, nor oversees in the US.

<comment><USER28> > ideologies are very difficult to destroy and take a long time to fully > extinguish

I like that you used "extinguish" here.

I'm not sure if you intended it, but I think the behavioural psychology definition of "extinguish" is especially relevant.

In other words, to get rid of the ideology, we'd have to not reinforce it: i.e. to neither reward it or punish it.

And yes extinction[1] takes a long time.

Also see "extinction burst".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_\(psychology\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Facebook has activated Safety Check. — [https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/brusselsexplosions- marc...](https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/brusselsexplosions-march2016/)

I guess it's official. Facebook Safety Check is for terrorist attacks in white, western countries only. Good to know.

Edit: I was wrong and I take back what I said: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Safety_Check#Other_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Safety_Check#Other_deployments)

<comment><USER30> [https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraexplosion- feb17-2...](https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraexplosion-feb17-2016/)

<comment><USER29> You are 100% right, Facebook Safety Check was in fact deployed during both Ankara explosions this year, and for an attack in Nigeria late 2015. I take back my (unnecessarily snarky) comment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Safety_Check#Other_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Safety_Check#Other_deployments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How can technology help prevent such attacks without infringing on the basic right to privacy?

Perhaps some sort of real time image recognition of video streams from major public areas (like airports), which can detect things like guns and unattended packages and alert authorities automatically? Of course, that doesn't help detect the suicide bomber scenario.

Automatic facial recognition of known criminals? That would be hugely open to abuse.

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://archive.is/hJm1m](https://archive.is/hJm1m)

</comment><comment><USER33> Could someone provide a link to a not paywalled version? Going through google didn't helped.

<comment><USER34> [http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/mar/22/brussels-a...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/mar/22/brussels- airport-explosions-live-updates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Today is the first time since 9/11 that I can remember hearing the news of a terrorist attack and not being gripped by panic. I guess the Boston Marathon Bombings, Paris Attacks (Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan both) shootings and other events have kind of led me being in an oddly calm state when I hear news like this now.

This is not the way I want to feel. If you would've told me around 8:30 a.m. on September 10th the way things would be changed, I couldn't have fathomed it. I was sitting in my high school Spanish class, trying to get the attention of a girl who probably doesn't even remember my name now. But things changed and I kind of came into my own with those changes, growing up, going to college, getting one job, then another. It became normal.

Data is the buzzword now. I eat it and breathe it every single day. I work with collections of numbers and information. These are the same things that keep us safe from attacks - collections numbers and information. The NSA and others rely on it. For every attack we hear about, I cannot even venture a guess on how many are thwarted.

Given that numbers and information are critical tools in trying to prevent future tragedies, I struggle with the same question we all do: how much is too much? What do I want to let the government know about me? About my family? About where I travel and when? Is there an inevitable trade-off between safety and privacy?

I think abut these things at work, at home, while driving. It seems now that we are facing a new breed of terror that has evolved, even since 2001. It is calculated yet seemingly random, completely lawless yet in their eyes the only lawful way to live, more violent, vile and sadistic any other terrorist cell I have heard about.

So you would think, given the way I feel about this new iteration of terror, and the struggle I have with personal privacy questions, I would've been paralyzed with anxiety this morning, seeking meaning, trying to configure a strategy in my head for how the governments involved will deal with it and prevent future attacks.

But I did not feel or do those things. I poured my coffee and walked out the door. Of course I feel horrible for the poor innocent lives lost, but as far as worrying and obsessing about it, I just cannot. This is not how I want to feel. I fear that my not panicking signals attacks like this as a new normal for me, something my 17 year-old self never could've or would've wanted to imagine. Thanks everyone for sharing thoughts and insights on this, I think it is helping me process yet another attack in my own way.

<comment><USER36> I think one of the most important things that we can do when faced with these types of events, but which usually fails to happens, is for us to humbly drop our assumptions, and to dig in to try understand the deeply complex histories and motivations that led to the attacks. If we don't understand why something is happening (and no, it's not because "ISIS is evil incarnate", as some try to proclaim), how we can ever hope to stop it, or more importantly, prevent similar/analogous conditions that result in this type of outcome from arising again? Due to the complex cultural, historical, economic, and psychological factors at play, there is no "easy fix" that actually solves the problem in the long run.

Edit: I don't claim to have a rich understanding of the issue, but I appreciated the nuanced analysis in this article:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what- isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really- wants/384980/)

<comment><USER35> I completely agree. I spent lots of time, especially after the Paris attacks, reading about Daesh, and the origins of their beliefs. The Atlantic article you mention is a fantastic primer on this very complex and hard-to-digest topic.

Many people seem to view doing this kind of reading and learning as some kind of gesture that is sympathetic to those who commit such acts. I will never understand how wanting to be educated on the history of a group automatically means you are siding with them ideologically...but I am from the midwest and left quite a few beliefs I will never understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hopefully this doesn't end up as another call to "be united". I've seen how the governments in question abuse that. If they get all the support they need, then they start doing awful things, even illegal things against European laws and whatnot. But because the countries are "united", nobody says anything anymore.

What we need is to _think this through_ , which also means _challenging_ conventional wisdom, not just be "be united in following whatever said government wants to do".

</comment><comment><USER38> So what will the excuse be ,manufactured by pundits on the other side of the Atlantic this time ? "Belgium didn't integrate these people well" /s ? just like for Paris ?

</comment><comment><USER39> Other discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334908) (67 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11335167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11335167) (79 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11335518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11335518) (115 comments)

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder why this important event is getting not many upvotes and also ranks lower than other stories with less upvotes but older.

Is it getting flagged for being off-topic?

<comment><USER41> Quite possibly. Another submission had been flagged to death earlier today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334908)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Presented without comment: _" This is a solid Moment to get up to speed on the Brussels situation. Click the follow button to stay in the loop."_ \- @sacca

[https://twitter.com/sacca/status/712270790037610499](https://twitter.com/sacca/status/712270790037610499)

<comment><USER43> I know @sacca is a huge promoter of twitter (and investor in..), but I was in bed this morning putting off getting ready to go to work and I saw his tweet about the Moment. It was actually really useful, much easier than trying to aggregate wtf was happening from 20 disparate tweets and feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Erdogan knew it was coming: [https://www.rt.com/news/336769-erdogan-warning- brussels-atta...](https://www.rt.com/news/336769-erdogan-warning-brussels- attacks/)

</comment><comment><USER45> The BBC is once again doing their live update site: [http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world- europe-35869266](http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-35869266)

</comment><comment><USER37> Relevant:

[https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers- handbook-...](https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook- terrorism-edition/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how long it will take for people to connect the dots... Meanwhile Europe has no borders, massive security risk which we are only beginning to see the consequences of.

<comment><USER41> The problem is mainly with external borders, not internal. They are likely getting weapons and other aids from outside, you can't just buy AK47 in EU.

<comment><USER46> Should have been clearer, I meant external. But honestly, I don't mind having to show my passport while crossing internal borders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A third bomb exploded just now.

<comment><USER48> Source? I have yet to see any proof of this statement. All of the live coverage still only points to two attacks...

<comment><USER47> I was watching french info TV (BFMTV) when they announced the third bomb exploded a few sec ago. The airport was already empty though.

EDIT: it was a controlled explosion made by the mine-clearing experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/511cf974eea64581814f9777a40f0...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/511cf974eea64581814f9777a40f0fd6/explosion- heard-brussels-airport)

If you want a link without a paywall.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why is this on Hacker News? There are ten other channels through which people will get this message.

</comment><comment><USER51> The comments there are... as expected I guess.

<comment><USER52> I guess it's hard to feel in any other way when recent migration policies have translated into a sharp decline of our own security in our own developed countries.

<comment><USER53> The Paris attackers were French and Belgian, not immigrants. This has been the case with almost all attacks in Europe, where the perpetrators have almost always been local.

<comment><USER54> "Local", yes, keep telling yourself that

2nd generation _immigrants_

I'm not against immigration per se, but there's a lot of problems coming from people who _fail_ (because it's mostly their responsibility) to integrate

<comment><USER53> If they're born in the country and lived there their whole life, they're local by any non-racist definition.

<comment><USER16> That's rather disingenuous. They are second generation immigrants of a particular religion that seems to be coincidentally associated time after time in these incidents.

<comment><USER53> Second generation immigrants don't mean this a problem with immigration. Lots of people like to link this to the current Syrian refugee crisis, but none of them are refugees. If you want to make it about immigration, make it about immigration from France's former colonies in the 1960s and 70s.

<comment><USER16> > Second generation immigrants don't mean this a problem with immigration

And that they're not first generation immigrants doesn't prove it _isn 't_ a problem with immigration either. We are still left with this recurring coincidence aren't we.

I don't claim to know the absolute truth here, I'm just suggesting we honestly acknowledge reality during discussions.

<comment><USER53> It's not first generation immigrants or refugees doing this. It's not Syrians doing this. By what possible rationale could you say that recent immigration has anything to do with this, other than that they're Muslim?

<comment><USER16> > By what possible rationale could you say that recent immigration has > anything to do with this

I didn't say it was _recent_ immigration that caused this incident, we both know that (if they are 2nd generation, it couldn't be recent).

> other than that they're Muslim

You think that their religion has absolutely nothing to do with this? I mean, even unjust prejudice within their host country _because of their religion_ could easily cause social isolation and economic disadvantage leading to anger - that seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me and largely places the ultimate blame on the host country.

<comment><USER53> The original comment specified recent immigration. What gave you the impression I thought religion had nothing to do with this? Of course it does. I was talking about immigration though, and the fact they're both Muslim doesn't mean that these incidents have any connection to recent refugees from Syria, aside from the fact that the Syrians are running from these kind of people.

<comment><USER5> Actually, two of the nine Paris attackers were (probably) from Syria and had come as refugees, as they were registered with fingerprints in Greece.

A few of the others were French and were known to be in Syria, but how they came back to EU is apparently not known (could be with help from people smugglers, avoiding any registration at borders, because some of them were on wanted lists).

<comment><USER53> So three of them probably came as refugees. One of those has been identified and it turns out he was actually French, but you still assume the two unidentified ones were "real" refugees, rather than other French terrorists who had fought with IS and were trying the same trick?

<comment><USER5> I can't really say whether they are "real" refugees or not. The point is more that border checks have ceased to exist.

Schengen area doesn't actually even try to verify who comes in, and that enables also movement of jihadists - even if they are only a few among thousands and thousands, but the few can avoid border controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Riveting tech news right here.

<comment><USER56> I'm standing with you brother. Let them drag us down together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The more coverage this gets, the more you feed the terrorist troll.

<comment><USER58> I am almost certain they are not doing this for attention.

<comment><USER59> The whole point of terrorism is attention.

<comment><USER58> Is that so? Why is it that terrorism goes hand in hand with religion then? Terrorism is about fulfilling an arguably skewed view of religion.

<comment><USER60> That's just one strain of terrorism i.e. religious terrorism or more specifically Islamic terrorism as I may speculate that's what you intended.

There are many other strains of terrorism like the last terrorist attack in Ankara last week where a female Kurdish ultra-nationalist militant blew herself in a bus killing about 40 civilians in the process. This was just an instance of a political/nationalist violence/terrorism that has nothing to do with religion or Islam for that matter.

<comment><USER58> I stand corrected.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix severance package: 4 months full pay - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/netflix-severance-package-4-months-full-pay-2017-6?utm_content=buffer431f1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> While their severance package may be generous enough (depending on employee's tenure), it's surprising to hear the company uses the stack ranking/rank-and- yank system despite well founded criticisms of it and lack of empirical evidence of its effectiveness. Even worse that they implement such a subjective version, where a manager can easily take punitive action via negative ranking towards subordinates they're biased against or have been harassing:

 _"How does Netflix decide who works well on the team? One way is through what the company calls a "keeper test." It's pretty simple: If one of the members of the team was thinking of leaving for another firm, would the manager try hard to keep them from leaving"._

<comment><USER3> I don't think that really counts as stack-ranking at all. The manager doesn't ask, 'who's my worst employee?'; he asks, 'whom would I not fight to keep?'</comment></comment>


Show HN: XMoto.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js <comment><USER2> Looks really cool! Have you thought about adding multiplayer?

I really wish someone would do the same for Elma/Elastomania. I feel like it has much more funnier physics with it's elastic suspensions etc. Even the third party extension which added multiplayer support was amazing ten years back.

Btw, is this project still active? Last commit was nine months ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes of course I had multiplayer in mind the whole time. I even started a Rails application here for that purpose: [https://github.com/michaelhoste/xmoto.io](https://github.com/michaelhoste/xmoto.io) (it was more of a proof-of-concept)

But I'm afraid of the tweaking of the physics once the multiplayer game is started (and replays are created). Do I need to freeze them once-for-all and only work on supporting more levels or create an editor?

I still have plans for this project, but this is a side-project and like always, life happens and free time disappears...

EDIT : the work-in-progress is in fact in the "pixijs" branch, I almost finished the rendering engine switch to [http://www.pixijs.com/](http://www.pixijs.com/) (higher level of abstraction, more cool 2D effects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is so awesome! I couldn't play yet because I am on mobile, but I will definitely do it later. I always liked this game.

As someone who never coded a game (a part from one that don't use any graphics: [https://github.com/andreynering/sudoku](https://github.com/andreynering/sudoku) ), I always ask myself how hard is to code a 2d/3d graphic game. I say this because a game seems much more impressive than other kind of (boring) coding projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to start a blog to talk about the project's creation: [http://xmoto.io](http://xmoto.io) But as always, I prefer to spend my time working on the code than writing blog posts... So they are not up-to-date (and will never be).

Games are not my branch of work and I was like you. What I can tell you is that learning to deal with the game loop is the hardest part. The synchronization between the physics, the drawing and the game logic is not very intuitive for a web application developer :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like controls are completely different from [https://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/](https://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/). In Elastomania and original XMoto left/right just adds momentum, and in XMoto.js it just tilts the player forward or backward, which is more realistic. Is this behaviour intended? Compatibility with original XMoto is not planned, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> The keyboard controls are the same as XMoto (up for acceleration, down for brake, left/right for rotation) but they are applied differently. The smallest difference in physical value (torque, acceleration, grip, weight, etc.) changes everything and it's very difficult (if not impossible) to have _exactly_ the same behavior as original XMoto. So I just recreated some physics that are fun to play with and works well with the existing levels.

If you want to play with the physics, you can try to change some values here by clicking on them: [http://js.xmoto.io/?level=1010&debug=true](http://js.xmoto.io/?level=1010&debug=true) It's fun to do and I'm open to new modes :-)

If you are interested, the input code is here. As you can see, acceleration and brake are only applied on the wheels, like in real-life. But for the moto rotation, I cheat by applying some torque on the moto body because the driver was not heavy enough to make it rotate quicky: [https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/blob/pixijs/src/mot...](https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/blob/pixijs/src/moto/moto.coffee#L81)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice work!

I noticed a pretty significant bug (i think). The ghost character actually clears the checkpoints for the current rider! As an example, on level two, the rider must go right for checkpoint A, then left for checkpoint B, back to center for the finish. After finishing once, the rider only needs to go left to checkpoint B, then back to the finish. (Checkpoint A is cleared by the ghost rider).

Very impressive all that you've done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliment!

Nice catch for the bug! I fixed it on the wip branch here: [https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/commit/24855d191a43...](https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/commit/24855d191a4393369de22f6e66897ced2b0976dd)

There is an abstraction between player physics and ghost physics and I think I need to refactor the collision system to avoid this kind of behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat! I have loved Elasto Mania, Action SuperCross, XMoto and the likes for years and now I can play it on the browser! Apparently this project is 2 years old now, shame that I didn't know about this before hand (or was it not available?)

My favorite thing back in the day was making autorunner levels, where your wheels would be lodged against two tracks (of ground) and proceed to do all kinds of tricks.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought I was the only one who had played this.

</comment><comment><USER8> oh my this is wonderful. I spent so much time playing this in high school.

</comment><comment><USER9> Curious as to how hard it was to port the game to HTML5.

<comment><AUTHOR> There were 3 difficult parts:

* The most difficult one was recreating the physics with a modern physics engine (box2D) to make them feel like the original ones. The smallest difference was making some levels impossible. It's not perfect but I tried to tweak them the best I could. And I created a debug mode to help me (and others) achieve this: [http://js.xmoto.io/?level=1010&debug=true](http://js.xmoto.io/?level=1010&debug=true) (I had way too much fun with this mode!)

* Levels: the level format was documented but not everything was "well"-documented. So I had sometimes to reverse engineer things. Like you could see, there are thousands of levels and they added layers of logics with time. So the first levels are usually compatible, but not the latests. And when I tried to add some logics (parallax, checkpoints, etc.), sometimes, the first levels broke (it's difficult to write tests for this). I wrote a blog post about it here: [http://xmoto.io/2013/08/20/level-parsing.html](http://xmoto.io/2013/08/20/level-parsing.html)

* Replays: I tried to find the smallest possible format to save all player's replays on a database. The original purpose was to create a kind of online community where people could challenge themselves and replay size matters. I first tried to save the replays as "keyboard inputs" but it wasn't reproductible as physics engine are not deterministic between browsers (I learned it the hard way). So I had to save both keyboard inputs and physics "checkpoints" (every x seconds) to adjust the replays. I'm quite happy with the results because it's about 20ko for 1 minute of replay. Here is a big monologue about my reasoning: [https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/issues/8](https://github.com/MichaelHoste/xmoto.js/issues/8)

It was fun because I'm a full-time Ruby on Rails developer and I was way out of my confort zone :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is fantastic, great job!

</comment><comment><USER11> Fun game</comment>


Google Keep - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/keep/ <comment><USER2> I used Google Notebook fairly heavily, but they discontinued it. I love (and pay for) Evernote now, which has lots of great integrations with other products. Why would I trust Google again?

<comment><USER3> Evernote has taken hundreds of millions in funding over the course of five years. How they going to justify that investment with some portion of their 11 million users paying $45/year? Are they going to sell? If they sell, will the service survive?

<comment><USER4> It is a pretty high proportion though (>1M) and the user base is incredibly loyal. Combine with the lock in effect, lack of decent competition and opportunities into enterprise market and you have recipes for a bright future.

And there is no evidence of them selling. It is just FUD.

<comment><USER5> So Google Keep, a freenium product with Takeout, is evil, but Evernote, a paid product with lock in, is good?

Oooookaaaaay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Putting aside snarky sentiments about its inevitable shutdown: pretty neat, although as others have stated, it seems a little _too_ minimal. I imagine if your life is already on Drive that this could be pretty useful. I especially like the Android lock screen widget that lets you add stuff directly from the phone (mentioned on their blog)

Regardless of the product you use, searchable cloud-synced notes that you can quickly access are a life changer, even if they're just text files. It's like direct memory augmentation; I can't imagine why anyone _wouldn't_ want to have it. "The weakest ink is better than the strongest memory" and all that. The trick is to make a workflow for yourself that allows for writing stuff down _now_ and finding/organizing it later. I find OneNote + SkyDrive works pretty well - it ties you to the proprietary OneNote format, but the features you get from it are powerful, and as long as you have the client software and a place to put the files (preferably on the web), no one can "shut the service down". Perhaps I'll give this one a try though.

<comment><USER7> It's only Android 4 and higher.

Awful.

<comment><USER8> You can bet that they will release an iOS app in the coming weeks. As for people on Android 2.x, buy a new phone or yell at your phone manufacturer for not upgrading you to 4.x.

Android 4.x brought some pretty massive changes to APIs and behavior that it is not worth Google's time to continue to support it. They would rather try and push as many people as they can to 4.x.

<comment><USER9> The posted url opened and worked fine for me on this ipad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Warren Ellis: Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?

<https://twitter.com/warrenellis/status/314493398138630145>

<comment><USER11> Precisely.

I'd thought of building something like this for my own use last autumn, and ironically actually started building it over the weekend[1] (GF away for the week).

When I was young and naive, reading that one of the big boys was getting into the space where I'd just started a project would have scared me off and I'd have abandoned it. In recent, more clued-up years I'd have thought "ah, market validation!" and ramped up my development effort. Now, in the light of the Reader abandonment, it's more like a feeling of joy that Google will educate the world about how great an idea this is, and then abandon it just about when I have something that other people might actually want to use.

[1] <http://blog.memostream.com/2013/03/19/hello-world/>

<comment><USER12> > Now, in the light of the Reader abandonment, it's more like a feeling of joy > that Google will educate the world about how great an idea this is, and then > abandon it just about when I have something that other people might actually > want to use.

Drive, while also available for free, part of the core of the paid Google Apps offering, and its (as the parallel to OneNote) a key part of Google Apps being an alternative to Microsoft Office (and, consequently, to ChromeOS with Google Apps being an alternative to Windows with Microsoft Office).

Its hardly positioned similarly to Reader which, however popular it may have been with a segment that is overrepresented among active participants of online forums focussed on technology, was pretty distant from any core strategic focus for Google.

So, I wouldn't bank on Google canceling this any time soon (or even in 8 years, as happened with Reader.)

<comment><USER11> You may be right -- possibly I'm overcompensating for my earlier worries. Still, if the worst comes to the worst it'll still be an interesting project.

<comment><USER12> > Still, if the worst comes to the worst it'll still be an interesting > project.

And that can be a compelling reason to do it, anyway, sure.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. Though now that I've realised it's unlikely to make me my millions, I think I'll write it using Angular, Node, CoffeeScript, MongoDB, and possibly Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So many "they killed reader how can I ever trust Google again" comments. As if everything ever has been permanent and Evernote will outlast humanity.

It's a minimal todo list for godsakes.

<comment><USER14> Google Notebook also was just a minimal notepad and yet it was killed.

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

Evernote is completely dependent on it's product to survive, so they won't kill it unless they're going out of business. Same with One Note and Office, Microsoft makes billions out of Office every quarter.

Google Drive is pretty much subsidized from Adsense profits just like Google Notebook was.

<comment><USER15> They actually have a fairly large number of enterprise users. In any case, I think the parent's point was that even if Google did eventually shut it down, _it's a todo list_ so it shouldn't be that hard to replace.

<comment><USER14> The product itself can easily be replaced, but the pain of researching the best alternative, installing new browser extensions, new mobile apps, and changing your workflow is a pain in itself.

<comment><USER15> If you're super averse to switching costs, I don't imagine you'd ever switch to Google Keep from whatever you're using now in the first place. So surely that's not a major concern for the set of people that are actually considering switching?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No, thanks. I'll keep out of any new google services

<comment><USER17> I'm also looking to support some file syncing services in my new iOS/Mac app and as technically interesting as Google Drive SDK looks I think I can trust Dropbox a lot more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Where does this fit in with the forgotten Google Tasks, if at all? (Tasks is hidden under the "Gmail" drop-down). [http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2011/01/top-tasks-for-google- ta...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2011/01/top-tasks-for-google-tasks.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Google is scary. Soon Google will achieve semi monopoly in its ability to develop certain kinds of advanced machine learning / AI and analyze human behavior, due to exclusive access to vast amounts of data. I would prefer crucial advances in these disciplines to be described in detail in publicly available papers, with open implementation, by academic researchers, rather than outlined in announcement and mostly closed/proprietary, for the benefit of shareholders.

Evernote-like data is certainly a good addition. Google Glass is even scarier -- the ultimate tool for behavior analysis.

</comment><comment><USER20> I facepalmed when I saw that Google omitted a feature that they also left out of Tasks, even though this application clearly has a lot more energy and drive behind it - labeling / tagging.

It's such a simple, unobtrusive, and elegant feature that there really isn't an excuse to exclude it, given the enormous benefits it adds to any kind of note-taking or organization application. It instantly allows the user to implement any kind of organization system, from haphazard brain-dumping all the way up to GTD.

And it doesn't take a lot. You don't even have to clutter up your pristine, trendy flat UI with labels displayed over everything - just allow the user to 1) Add any number of labels to a note (They don't even have to be displayed anywhere, except maybe an out-of-the-way Labels dialog) 2) Filter the list of notes based on one label. That's all! That's not so bad, is it?

This is also the one, single feature that could have allowed this to immediately and effectively compete with Evernote.

<comment><USER21> All they really need is a way to bookmark searches. Then labels can be whatever system the user wants, #hashtags, @gtd_contexts, :whatever:

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just after killing Google Reader, and you think you can get me back so easily?

<comment><USER7> Paul Thurrott:

"You start using it, I'll start my countdown to the service's death."

<https://twitter.com/thurrott/status/314476511497445376>

<comment><USER23> Where does the countdown start? At nearly 8 years, which is the lifespan of Google Reader? How many other free services on the web lasted that long [1]?

I'm an avid Reader user. I'm terribly sad to see it go, but I appreciate the value I've gotten out of it while it existed.

Plenty of web services -- maybe most -- die after a while. Maybe the company offering it goes under, maybe nobody uses it, or maybe it's just not accomplishing the goals the company set out for it (ahem, Reader). In any case, 8 years _has_ to be higher than the average lifespan [1]. So I assert that even if you assume every new Google service will be killed in 8 years, you're still better off choosing them (from a longevity perspective).

[1] I would absolutely _love_ to see some data about average web service lifespans. I suspect that it is actually quite low. I also suspect that Google has a much better track record than the industry (again, on average).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm very surprised that they rolled this out without the "sharing" features baked into Google Drive already. You can publish the contents of a spreadsheet, but you can't get at these notes. I know the announcement says a feature like this is coming in a few weeks, but why didn't they just withhold the launch until it's more mature? I mean, who is going to early adopt something so crippled? There seems to be such a lack of focus from Google lately, and I'm not trying to hop on the bandwagon. But they could have rolled this out with the share features already found in Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is extremely minimal, I'd honestly expect more from a Google product. There's not even a tutorial or anything. Also why are there not any text formatting options? I'd love a real Google Evernote competitor but this is not even in the same league. Am I missing something, or is this just neutered Google Drive?

<comment><USER26> Lots of people, including myself, feel that Evernote is overly complex and not enjoyable to use. I've always wanted a simple app that lets me sync basic text notes across devices. All the ones I've been able to find have something off about them, whether it be interface, lack of sync, complexity, or other annoyance. I find Keep to actually be quite nice, and it fits my needs. I assume there are others for whom this is also true.

Edit: I guess you could say Google's Evernote competitor is just Google Drive itself. If you want text formatting, create an actual Doc. Keep seems to be explicitly for short-form, simple note taking. I think there's a large market for that.

<comment><USER4> The plural of anecdote is not data.

The facts are that Evernote has in excess of 30M users, with lots of paying users and growing rapidly. There is no evidence that this mythical complexity is affecting adoption.

And I don't see how Google Drive and Evernote are competition. Very different use cases.

<comment><USER27> Who are you even talking to? The post you replied to just made an argument for why this would be a viable product for some people, which is exactly what the topmost post asked for opinions on.

The only possible phrase that could be construed as needing "data" to back it up is "lots of people" being unsatisfied with evernote's complexity (which is not a statement about that affecting evernote's adoption, incidentally), _and_ it's a statement that could arguably be satisfied with an anecdote in any case.

You pulled the trigger on the negativity gun a little early here, even for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think Google has chased away the early adopter, free evangelists.

<comment><USER29> I would hope that early adopters know the risks of early adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> until they change their minds and it becomes google lose

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady It's nice but I expected more from Google. If a new startup launched this product it wouldn't get any press. Why should I use this when there are already similar options (Simple Note) and ones which have many more features (Evernote)?

</comment><comment><USER31> Android app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.keep) everything works, but recording(crashes app).

<comment><USER32> this makes a lot more sense to me than the web app. I'm usually in need of a quick dictation tool that I can sync with my home pc everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google has just released an Evernote competitor called Google Keep.

<comment><USER33> They killed Google Notebook a couple years ago. I don't know why I should trust this one. Pretty ballsy to call it "keep", bloggers can start drafting their "Google Loses Keep" headlines now.

<comment><USER34> Data from Google Notebook wasn't lost, just transfered over to Google Docs.

<comment><USER33> Well, that's true, and to Google's immense credit they're very good about letting go of data- I was referring more to losing the product itself.

<comment><USER29> The product wasn't great. I used it quite extensively (I didn't know of any other services) and it was filled with problems with layouts and pasting with styles.

While I wasn't thrilled to see it go, it shouldn't have been that huge of a shock to anyone. If anything, the best features from Google Notebook have made their way into Google Drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would love this if I could make it my Chrome start screen.

</comment><comment><USER36> I keep getting error popup. Anyone else getting this in FF?

<comment><USER37> Screenshots for y'all, it has a list view and a thumbnail view. You can add pictures and tag with a couple basic colors.

<http://awesomescreenshot.com/08d12lg0d3>

<http://awesomescreenshot.com/00b12lfvea>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ha like I will ever enter into dependence on another Google app.

<comment><USER39> I'd love to know how you posted that comment, then.

Because if you've stopped using anything from Google because they ditched Reader, presumably you've also sworn off all Microsoft products (they killed Clippy!), anything from Apple (R.I.P. QuickDraw 3D), Ubuntu (oh Gnome2, how I loved thee)...

And you won't be using any internet provider since they ditched gopher, or dial-up over the phone service because the bastards discontinued telex.

Or maybe you could admit that you're over-reacting slightly?

<comment><USER38> I suppose that would make follow if you interpreted my comment in the most uncharitable way.

Microsoft used to be known for bending over backwards to maintain "backwards' compatibility. Or used to be... I am in the process of moving away from MS. They still don't kill products with millions of active users for political reasons (<http://macsparky.com/blog/2013/3/the-rss-apocalypse>) as far as I know.

But I was really referencing that I have no longer have any more desire to depend on a free product (i.e. where I "am the product"), and put myself at the mercy Google's increasing fickleness over what constitutes a viable following.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> why are the css classes so funky? (e.g. class="TUdKmf-xhiy4-haAclf h1U9Be- xhiy4-qAWA2"). Are they randomly generated? what's the purpose?

<comment><USER41> It looks to me like they're just obfuscated words. If you look at one of the hierarchies, you see "TUdKmf-xhiy4-haAclf", then "TUdKmf-xhiy4-DKlKme-haAclf", then "TUdKmf-xhiy4". Seems like they're just taking a normal class like "note- body-wrapper" and "note-body" and obfuscating it.

<comment><USER42> What's the purpose of obfuscating css?

<comment><USER43> Make it harder to use userscripts for custom styling..?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is this? Posterus again?

 _this reminds me, I need to get all my crap out of docs/drive whatever before that gets shut down_

</comment><comment><USER44> Guys!... this is obviously an early April fools Google site, mistakenly released early.

</comment><comment><USER45> Waiting on Google Discard.

<comment><USER17> It sounds like something Google would actually do.

Like a black hole service for making objectionable internet material just vanish, never to be reachable again when logged into your Google account.

I'd add " <https://drive.google.com/keep/> " to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Looks nice, but I'm gonna hang onto SimpleNote, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER47> I use OneNote already. It works beautifully because I can also add attachments and images. Think Word + Evernote.

</comment><comment><USER48> everything from google is a living dead</comment>


News.YC Growth - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#8dec08 <comment><USER2> "we'll simply run out of new people the site appeals to."

That means eliminating politics stories, because those:

* Appeal to pretty much anyone with an opinion, including lots of non-hacker types.

* Really suck people in. "Someone is wrong on the internet!"

Look at how many comments there were on the Obama/Broadband story. Were any of them really that _interesting_? I would expect the hacker mind (at least those who are not devout followers of the 'keep the government out of it' school) to have already arrived at the fact that it's some sort of monopoly/oligopoly situation and to cast about for research on what sorts of policy approaches might cause what effects, and have what sort of consequences, both positive and negative. One minute with Google scholar turns up this, for instance: [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119176828/abstrac...](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119176828/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0) Most likely, someone who actually knows something about economics might be able to point to others of interest.

But that takes a lot more effort than the simple sorts of debate that tend to surround those stories.

</comment><comment><USER3> The degradation of quality posts/comments is inevitable as news.yc or any social news site grows. The only thing saving new.yc is the limited appeal of the subject matter.

This is like moving from a small town to a big city. Someone can be rude to another person in a big city because more than likely they will never meet a again. In a small town everyone knows everyone else and word spreads rapidly. You don't want to act like an ass in a small town because everyone will hear about it.

In large online communities, karma is supposed to act as an incentive to be nice and contribute thoughtfully, but it is not as effective as true reputation among people that you know personally. What the world as a whole thinks of you is less powerful than what your friends think of you.

A good experiment would be to enforce the small town effect on an online community. Partition a news site into groups of 100-1000 members. Comments and submissions would only be visible inside each members subgroup until upvoted past a certain threshold. With luck members would get to know one another inside a group and desire each others respect enough to contribute to the discussion meaningfully. Debates would last for days or weeks instead of an afternoon as is the case on current news sites. Trolls damage would be confined to one group at time as well.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like a really interesting idea, why don't you build it?

A few months ago I had an idea for automatically forcing people to submit story's to sub groups as the sight grows. So it starts as a base line then it's a Funny, then it's Funny, picture then it's Funny, picture, cat etc. And at each level people can automatically weigh how much they like each sub group. Then set the homepage as the average weight people give each sub group. Then redit started adding sub redits and I realized it was an easy idea to copy.

<comment><USER3> I might just try to build it. I don't have too much experience with web development, but I have some time off for Christmas and that would be a great way to learn. It sounds like you have spent some time thinking about news sites. Do you have any recommendations for language/framework/existing open source code?

<comment><USER5> Hey, I'm in the same situation as you. Look for my email in my profile if you want to work together -- or at least bounce around ideas.

I've got 3 weeks of nothing planned until school re-starts, and by then, who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is sort of related to the traffic here: a snapshot of my Google Analytics after having a link on the front page for about three days.

<http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/ga.jpg>

(This is the post, for reference: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388510> )

<comment><USER7> Off-topic: Kudos on the novel blog design. It's especially interesting how each of your three posts uses a different layout. The third one -- the black and red one -- leads me to believe you're either insane or insanely creative. Anyway, nice job, keep them coming.

<comment><USER8> He's definitely both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Other interesting data: <http://top.searchyc.com/>

<comment><USER10> I'm a tad sad seeing Techcrunch.com and ValleyInsider.com on the top 10 submitted urls ;( but this is still my number favorite site as far as people go.

<comment><AUTHOR> The list of top submitted sites is not a list of the sites users are most interested in. In some cases the site owners submit every post, but many never get enough upvotes to make it onto the front page. To find the sites users are most interested in, you want not the raw number of posts per site, but the number that get over some threshold of points.

<comment><USER11> <http://top.searchyc.com/domains_by_average_points>

Is this a better list?

<comment><USER12> What's scary is that 'Hot or Not' is on the list. That is the digg-type stuff we need to keep out.

But to be honest, I haven't seen a whole lot of 'fluff' in the short period I've been here.

<comment><USER13> <http://searchyc.com/submissions/hotornot.com>

It is not 'digg-type stuff'. It's a founder, talking about a successful startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Growth can't keep going at this rate forever without ruining the site, though. Between those two alternatives, we prefer growth to slow down."

I actually agree with you on this, and I wasn't going to say anything, but I've been a little discouraged by some of the stuff I've seen up-voted lately. I think Hacker News is a special place and hope to protect the community that we've built here.

<comment><USER15> I personally don't see the content of the articles degrading as much as the comments. If anything there seems to be more movement and moderation of the articles which mostly is an improvement. The thing that I notice is the depth and quality of the comments. It took me a while to build up enough confidence to go from a lurker to a member and actually make comments. It was nice to feel that sense of pressure to make a quality comment that actually adds to the conversation rather than simply take up space or repeat what another person has said so that I can make my post.

The moment a social news site begins to degrade in my opinion is when comments are posted that add little or nothing to advancing or starting conversation (for example "Modded up for _______", "Really Nice _____" or my favorite "When I read the title of this post I thought it said ___. I have had too much ________ today")

There was a period where it felt as though the same articles would sit on the front page all day. The increase in the gravity for old posts and the increase in total number of posts has caused me (and I would assume others) to become more active in the site. I think the focus in moderation should be on the comments to set an example for what is expected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's true, comments probably have suffered a bit. It might be possible to do something about this. Maybe I could use a statistical filter to auto- detect potentially vapid comments and ask the submitters if they're sure they want to post them.

<comment><USER16> The stupid filter (<http://stupidfilter.org/main/>) is out there, time to start using it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get this strange feeling that I may represent a third of all daily hits.

Perhaps I spend too much time here. Something about the company of intelligent individuals...

<comment><USER17> I imagine we all have this issue from time to time.

Is it because the experience here is so good, or...

Is something in your work "missing" so much that your passion pulls you here instead.

hn is great, but if it "attracts" you more than your project, then it's time to take a good hard look at your project.

<comment><USER18> It's the community.

I will most likely never release a webapp (I'm an embedded kinda guy), but I like seeing what others are doing and reading about their insights and experiences. It's one of the few places I can find a group of smart people doing something I find interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be cool to know what the big spikes on the graphs represent.

</comment><comment><USER20> meretricious |merəˈtri sh əs|

adjective

1 apparently attractive but having in reality no value or integrity : meretricious souvenirs for the tourist trade.

2 archaic of, relating to, or characteristic of a prostitute.

</comment><comment><USER21> In the Just Curious Dept:

Can you provide the number of user accounts?

Have the number of posts also increased 12x fold? The turnover on the new page seems more like 3-5x from what it used to be.

<comment><USER21> Also, any idea what those two huge spikes are at the beginning of August and, especially, the middle of September?

<comment><AUTHOR> Spikes in page views are usually misbehaving crawlers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The word 'meretricious' has always irked me because if you didn't know what it meant you might mistake it for a positive one.

Way off-topic I know.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just as a comment. I barely ever read the front page. I check the "new" page once every couple of hrs (and read/post al that).

The wealth of information is great.. the front page has.. well.. loses it's interest after a couple of hrs of the day..

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a query for the userbase: how much do you think the quality of this site would go down is URLs from Techcrunch were banned?

I suggest that it wouldn't be very much :-).

<comment><USER25> TC reviews of startups are the most reliable, in the sense that a) there will always be one (TC is thorough) and b) the quality and viewpoint is fairly consistent so they're _more_ valuable because you know the bias, as opposed to a review from some random site.

<comment><USER24> Somehow I don't accept consistent bias as an acceptable aspect of a review, or any journalism piece for that matter.

<comment><USER26> This is the internet. Surely something with a consistent bias is the lesser evil compared to an unknown bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 18,000? I thought this was about 100,000

</comment><comment><USER28> So PG's conjecture is there is a equilibrium point of appeal for people part of this site?

</comment><comment><USER29> the graph doesnt show any signs that the growth will slow down, rather the contrary.

</comment><comment><USER30> compete.com is way off:

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/?metri...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/?metric=uv)</comment>


Multics Execution Environment (2014) - vezzy-fnord http://www.multicians.org/exec-env.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a really shallow reaction but I was amused by the XXX's in the document. I got into the kernel at Sun and I thought XXX started with Sun, then realized it started at BSD. Who knew that it went back to Multics? Does it go back to the first OS ever?

I'm pretty sure you can grep the sunos sources and you'll find a bunch of LMXXX in the file system and a few in the VM system (LM being my initials).

I suspect everyone here knows but just in case, XXX in a comment in the kernel indicates something that you think needs to be fixed, it's kind of a "we haven't hit this issue yet but we will".</comment>


Doctors Perform the First Successful Penis Transplant - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/penis-transplant-a-world-first-south-african-surgeons-say

<comment><USER2> > Circumcision reduces a man's risk of contracting HIV by 60 percent, > Skorochod said in an interview.

I was surprised by this, so I looked it up: [http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/](http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/)

> There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of > heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three > randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by > well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe. > WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be > considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and > regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision > prevalence.

The CDC reaches a similar conclusion: circumcision lowers the risk of HIV acquisition by heterosexual men, but doesn't change male-to-female transmission of HIV, and studies have found no statistically significant protective association for male-to-male transmission.

[http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/prevention_research_malecircumcis...](http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/prevention_research_malecircumcision.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > But that's just the tip of the iceberg. As Boyle and Hill point out, the men > who were circumcised got additional counseling about safe sex practices > compared to the control group, and then they had to refrain from having sex > altogether for the simple reason that their lacerated penises had to be > wrapped in bandages until their wounds healed — leading to what Boyle and > Hill refer to as "time-out discrepancy" in the quote above. By contrast, the > non-circumcised men got to keep having sex during the full two month period > during which the treatment group was in recovery mode. Then (due to a > statistically significant effect having been detected) the trials were > stopped early — which tends to lead to an overestimation the true effect > size of the treatment.

[http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad- scienc...](http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-science- kills-or-how-to-spread-aids/)

<comment><USER4> Circumcision is done very early(between 2-6). If you are doing after, is either because some medical problem or you are moving to Islamism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By the way this is a serious problem, highlighted on the page below. BE WARNED: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES:

[http://ulwaluko.co.za/Photos.html](http://ulwaluko.co.za/Photos.html)

It is good to celebrate cultural traditions but not at this cost!

<comment><USER6> This is, indeed, a serious problem.

I concur on the warning: this is graphic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Serious question that the article doesn't appear to cover, but where did the transplanted penis come from? Was it a recently deceased donor?

<comment><USER8> It was covered. They said that part of the initial problem was convincing family members of deceased organ donors to allow them to use the penis.

They were finally able to convince a family by agreeing to construct an artificial penis from left over skin for the deceased donor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8208183/penis- transplant-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8208183/penis-transplant- successful-first-time-history#twt34), which points to this.

Submitters: HN prefers original sources. Everyone will appreciate it if you track these down before posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know about that and I will do bit of homework next time. Thanks for fixing the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know reddit / slashdot style jokes are unwelcome here, but I can't resist. The line of billionaires forms here --></comment>


Ask HN: Best Screencast software for PC? - <AUTHOR>

I want to create some demo and support videos for my start-up.  I use Windows 7 on a PC.  Anybody can recommend any screencast software based on personal experience? <comment><USER2> I have used Expression Encoder for creating demos. [http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4_Overvi...](http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4_Overview.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like <http://screencast-o-matic.com/> for what it does... and it's free for my purposes.</comment>