+1's: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/1s-right-recommendations-right-when-you.html <comment><USER2> I really surprised at Google by this implementation--it seems like they didn't really think it through.

When I'm searching for something, my behavior is usually:

         Google search term
         Open the top couple results in a new tab
         Check each tab, to see if they contain the information I was looking for
         If tab is not useful, or more information is required, check next tab.
         If information is satisfied, close window (all tabs, including search)
         If no tabs remain, and still need more information, return to search page and check next results.

That process has been in place since I upgraded to firefox from ie6 all those years ago. Before then, my search process consisted of:

         Google search term
         Check first result link
         If information has been satisfied, close window.
         If more information is needed, go BACK, check next link.

My point is, Google search is a launching platform. I typically only go back to the results page when the result didn't provide the information I was looking for. In order to use the feature, I'd have to alter my process to include a return trip to the results page, find the link that led to the page I found interesting and then +1 it. No way this is gonna happen. Ever.

The only way I see this feature being implemented in a workable solution is as a browser addon--so that when I'm on a page that I find particularly awesome [whether I found it via search results or by following some page link] I can click on the +1 toolbar button.

Such an implementation would I think would also enhance the result set of affected links. In it's current implementation I'll only find plus one's when I just happen to be searching for the same or similar thing as some one from my social circle. Where as as a browser extension I'll find plus ones for any page that any one in my social circle has visited and found interesting regardless of if they ever issued a query for that subject matter.

<comment><USER3> The video hinted that they plan to provide embeddable +1 buttons in style of Facebook's "Like". Considering that, +1 can actually be useful because you would be able to see recommendation from your google contacts.

<comment><USER4> Except the nomenclature is so nerdy. You can't really say it out loud. Like is a nicely descriptive verb; 'plus one' is a phrase you see on a formal event invitation.

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what I thought, a "Facebook Like" ripoff with a nerdy name.

<comment><USER6> Google slapping social features on search is eerily similar to Microsoft adding internet capabilities to its desktop applications. Neither of them got it right the first time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still don't get this. What does my social circle have to do with my Google searches. I am friends with lots of people who I don't trust to influence my search results. The Hunch approach makes a lot more sense where it uses recommendations of people who have similar tastes to me. People I am friends with is not a good proxy for people who's opinion I care about when searching for camera documentation, or dog breeds, or Python libraries, or anything at all. I hope I'm proven wrong, but I just don't see it.

<comment><USER8> I think it would be more useful to show +1's from people who have similar search histories to you. That way if you search a lot for Python libraries and +1 useful content, the next guy doing a search for that will get useful recommendations. I don't see how non-techie people in your social circle could contribute in that regard.

<comment><USER9> Problem with finding similar people with similar preferences in Google's data is that the similarity matrix of any 2 people is very sparse.

I search for Python-stuff a lot, but I also search for stuff related to things I want to buy, or for people, or for my hobbies -- photography and now drawing.

The algorithm for finding similar people is going to have to be very smart (i.e. it should not rely on URLs alone), if at all possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't ever remember doing a search for something where one of the results was so cool that I thought "hey, I'd like to share this search result with everyone I know!" or even "hey, I'd like everyone I know to know that I think this search result is cool!" If I was going to share something it would a. be the actual page, not just the search result, and b. likely not shared with my friends and the general public, but with a specific friend or co-worker or a small group of people.

A search result is so disconnected from your social circle that it's hard for me to understand how this ever made it past prototyping. Search results aren't like party pictures or baby pictures or what you had for breakfast or anything people share on Facebook or Twitter. They're generally not even answers to questions, they're just potential answers. The answer itself is what you'd like to share.

Clicking +1 on an ad seems ridiculous to me for all the same reasons as above, plus the additional reason that I would be embarrassed to share any ad that wasn't superbowl-funny or a direct savings ($5.00 off a movie or something) and I've never seen an Adsense ad come close to either of those. Sharing any other ad is just spamming your friends.

<comment><USER11> I think the reality of how +1 will be used will be more like this: you see your list of search results. The first three are so-so and the fourth one is great. You think to yourself "why the hell was the great result not at the top?" and then click the +1 button to promote it. Google uses this info as a signal, both globally and for your circle of friends.

I think it could work, as long as it's not gamed into uselessness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Call me skeptical, but I'm not convinced by Google's partial rollout of their new social layer.

A while ago they rolled out the new top-bar and a little later they rolled out the new profiles and now this. It all kind of makes sense, but there is no killer app/driver for all these features.

The number of integration points seems to be a problem, too. Until last week Google Mail, Reader and Groups all used different revisions of the "Google bar" on top. Disabling Google Buzz in Gmail also removes your new shiny profile, etc..

I'm anxious to see where this is going.

<comment><USER13> Google as a whole is the killer app. They are just finally getting around to iterating through integrating their different products together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, Google should have done this years ago, even if it had no effect on result placement, think of all the data they could have collected. On the other hand, the big appeal of Google is the simplicity and minimal clutter, and this is just another useless (at least on the first search) thing added to the interface.

<comment><USER15> I think they've done this a few times, I remember there used to be an up and down arrow in search results, but they abandoned that a while back.

<comment><USER16> You could also add stars, and taglines...this is just another iteration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Facebook "Like It". Google "+1". Assuming Google A/B tests just about everything, I'm surprised "+1" seemed like the winning choice. I don't hate it, I'm just surprised...

<comment><USER18> The problem with 'liking' something, which would be especially acute on Google, is that it just sounds downright wrong for some things. Perhaps you're looking for news on the Japanese Tsunami. No, I don't 'like' it. Yes, it's relevant to what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER19> Facebook's Like button can be either "Like" or "Recommend", and publishes the selected verb into news feed. Many news sites use recommend for this exact reason (NYT, for example).

<comment><USER20> Still valid argument on the meaning of the like or recommend verbs in certain contexts. Eg someone may write something I disagree with and I don't want to like or recommend it but I may +1 for being articulate or a point well made. Geek in me and maybe too many q&a sites but I think +1 works

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is heading in the right direction, but I remain skeptical of the simple "you're connected to this person through some service (probably unconnected to the search query), so you trust them" symbol as the main recommendation symbol. This is one way Color actually interests me, they're exploring new symbols for connection, even if I think they're kind of weird and hard to understand at first glance.

Won't know for sure until I try it though.

<comment><USER22> I don't know how well this +1 thing will work, because as many others have noted, it's not passive. I have to actively click on it, and that's not something I think about when I'm running a search.

The you're connected to this person thing, however, has worked out quite well for me. A lot of the time, I'm looking for something that someone I follow on Twitter shared - and it just bubbles up for me. I'm a fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you Google for trying out. But it doesn't look like something I am going to use because most of my social contacts don't have a clue about my professional life - which is what I am searching for mostly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Unfortunately, Google just doesn't know enough about my social graph to make this much more than a noisy list of strangers and site owners trying to game the system.

They say they "may" "soon" incorporate your connections on sites "like" Twitter which would be an improvement but from the language it sounds like they haven't even talked to Twitter about it yet.

Of course they don't mention Facebook, who do know my social graph and are busy collecting Likes around the web that they can use to build a robust, trustworthy recommendations product. It's going to be hard for Google to build the assets they need to avoid ceding part of the search market to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER25> Social search is likely _the_ next killer app. The tastes of my friends are far more relevant to me than the judgement of bots.

The question is, who will do it better: Google or Facebook? The search engine or the social graph?

<comment><USER15> Have you really thought this through? For example, here are 3 possible search queries:

1) Is Blockbuster Movie any good?

Here the opinions of your friends might be more valuable to you, as valuable to you, or less valuable to you, depending on how important it is to you to have the same taste as your friends or whether you consider their movie tastes similar to your own.

2) Courtship rituals of early-modern spain

Here the opinions of your friends are almost certainly less relevant than that of a bot, unless you run in a very niche circle.

3) Directions to Skyline Chili

Here the bot is almost definitely a better choice than your friends.

Lastly, you always have to fall back to a bot because most searches are not going to have many results that friends have actively curated. So bots will continually have a place in search, and I would argue will because more important over time, as they become smarter.

<comment><USER26> Are you from Cincinnati?

<comment><USER15> No, KY. We have Skyline here too (though I'm not a fan!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If it is going to affect search ranking than it is the time to build network of professional (+1) recommenders with whole bunch of profiles with fake pictures and googleplex of "friends" build via social gaming. Basic package +1000 for your search term on 30th page to move it up a notch $99.99. Does domain name GooZynga available? :-) Anybody want to apply late for that project - it is a future of a Social Search... :-) You know "next big thing" :-)

</comment><comment><USER28> April +1

</comment><comment><USER29> Dear Google,

It's been great knowing you for all these years, but you're really starting to creep my out.

I've trusted you with my 1,000 contacts in my email system. I've trusted you because you've said repeatedly that you're not going to be evil. I've trusted you with what I'm saying in my emails, because you've said repeatedly that no one really reads my email, you just automatically scan it and provide "helpful" ads.

And then, you gave me a really shiny phone, and I was in love. (You know I don't like Apple. They hurt me, and I've never forgiven them). I really liked how you made my live easier, and all my email contacts were automatically in my phone. And, anything that I updated in my phone, showed up in my email system.

You also really helped me out by by making it really easy to find things by using my phone. Your navigation system is really, really nice.

But, you're starting to really creep me out, Google.

First, you automatically gave me a "Profile" page, and linked all my contacts to it, without my permission.

And, now... You're changing my search results based on who I know and what they've liked. I trusted you with who I know. Please, stop using that information. If I want to know what links my friends have clicked on. I'll ask them. If I want to look at their pictures on flikr... I'll follow their photostream.

Please stop. You're really creeping me out. You know a lot about me, and I don't think I trust you any more.

So, this is it. I'm breaking up with you.

You've been following me around with my phone, so you know where I am at any given point in time. You know who I call and when I call them. You tried to get a record of all my phone calls with Google Voice, but that was just a little too creepy for me. You've had a record of every email that I've sent for the last few years, and you know most of what I'm looking for on the internet.

You're around me too much. You're following me. You want a record of my voice. You are showing me results that my "friends" are looking at. It's just too much. I'm leaving you.

As soon as my new phone comes in this week, I'm getting rid of your phone. I'm changing my email system to an Exchange based system. And, I'm switching my search engines to DuckDuckGo, Bing and Blekko.

I do appreciate your helpfulness in the past. But, you're getting way too close for comfort. Did I mention you're creeping me out?

Goodbye.

</comment><comment><USER30> When it comes to innovations in social web, attempts made by google look pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone remember when Google Code blocked +1 comments?

<http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=677>

And now Google is adding +1 to their search results. Arrgh!

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't see my wife creating a google account so she can click +1 on a web page when there will be a facebook like button right next to the +1 button. Why would she? Her friends are on facebook.

<comment><USER33> This is a key point. Also, it's easy to "like" something if there is only one button. I feel I'm doing my friends a favor. When there are multiple buttons, I feel like I'm doing work for the website operator. The only exception would be the case where the content is really so awesome that I feel the whole world needs to know about it. My first thought after reading about how it works was "How can we consolidate all the vendors into a single 'like' button?"

<comment><USER20> Someone like add this may create one. There are already plenty of ways you can turn a like into a share on facebook, twitter, Tumblr etc instapaper's new social options is one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When Yahoo acquired Delicious, I assumed Yahoo would use Delicious users' links, tags, and relationships to create "social-powered search" like Google's +1.

But I guess I gave Yahoo too much credit.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems like an interesting way to try and tie in a social aspect to their search, but I think they're at a bit of a disadvantage when compared to Facebook mostly because Google profiles are not ubiquitously used. If you don't have anyone to share your +1s with then after some time I'd suspect people won't bother. I think redesigning the profile page was a step in the right direction and I think they have to come up with something to get people to fill them out and use them.

<comment><USER36> Might be a nice idea to 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><comment><USER37> There should have been a +1 button on Google's blog post. :-)

</comment><comment><USER38> I think Google went about this ass-backward.

I can seldom judge the usefulness of a site just based on a list of returned results -- however -- I _can_ often filter out junk (anything from experts- exchange for example). So it seems to me a -1 button would have been better. Not to mention less creepy than tracking sites I like based on my interaction with a search engine.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have to imagine "social media marketing" types are planning obvious ways to exploit this as we speak.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does Google think we all have superpowers? How do I know I want to +1 a link before I see it?

</comment><comment><USER41> The first thing I did. I went and voted for my own projects :-)

</comment><comment><USER42> I can see the value for shopping/purchase related searches.

</comment><comment><USER43> Google has cluttered its search results page with Preview button, Social search results and now the +1 button making it difficult to locate content.

</comment><comment><USER30> Google is late to the party, I thought they understood it when nobody used the 'buzz' button.

</comment><comment><USER44> People are taking this seriously? Looks like an April fools joke.

Better implementation - An in chrome button you can hit that -1 the current url. I'll never remember to +1 a site once I've clicked the link, but I do say WTF!?! once I'm there and I do want to sink the bad links w/o going back. Would be a cross-browser Addon.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone think "You +1'd this publicly" sounds quite ominous ?!

</comment><comment><USER46> Does this feel like an April fools joke to anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER47> +1 A Like button integrated with search.

Awesome.</comment>


Science-Fiction Writers Association Review of Kindle Publishing Contract (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Amazon_digital_publication_distribution_agreement_annotated_v3_080329.pdf <comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be cool if there was a web-based self-publishing thing that dealt with excerpts, payments, links to similar work, and pushing to reading devices of all kinds (basically: android, iphone, kindle, nook)?

Now that's some science-fiction I would read.

<comment> TD-Linux A bandcamp for books? This must exist already, but nothing comes to mind...

<comment><USER3> Smashwords.com does.</comment></comment></comment>


Soviet Arcade Games from the 70s and 80s - <AUTHOR> https://arcadeblogger.com/2019/06/15/the-museum-of-soviet-arcade-games/ <comment><USER2> Related from 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668085). Article at [https://web.archive.org/web/20100819104026/http://adangerous...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100819104026/http://adangerousbusiness.com/2010/01/05/the- museum-of-soviet-video-games/)

And from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171304)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow this brings back childhood memories! I played several of those and "Sea Battle" was my favourite. :) I think it was the physicality of the controls - I can still remember the smell of the rubber on that periscope! The actual gameplay was very primitive, very much in line with some of the Flash games that were so popular in the past on the web.

I also had a handheld "game console" which was a one-game thing with an LCD with 4 buttons that would move a wolf character out of a famous cartoon to the 4 corners of the screen to catch falling eggs.

<comment><USER4> This "handheld game console" is in fact a complete clone of Nintendo Game & Watch. :)

<comment><USER5> Probably from Elektronika, maybe you can recognize it from here: [https://www.gameandwatch.ch/en/faq-questions-answers/game- wa...](https://www.gameandwatch.ch/en/faq-questions-answers/game-watch- clones.html)

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah, that's the one! :) "Nu Pogodi" is the one I had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> During my recent visit to Saint Petersburg, I visited the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, and I would highly recommend all the games to everybody who is interested in the games! In case you are in the city, it's one of my top 5 places to visit, at least if you are interested in games. I went there alone, but I would highly recommend bringing a friend, as some of the games are designed for two players, and it's far more fun to play with a friend than a random stranger.

My favorite games were Sniper and Sniper 2, but I would recommend trying everything.

<comment><USER7> Similar museum trip in Moscow in ... 2011? 2013? I think Sniper was a fave until I tried Gorodki. :)

EDIT: [http://game-game.com/32102/](http://game-game.com/32102/)

Also, morskoi boy: [http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/](http://morskoy- boy.15kop.ru/en/) and flash version: [http://morskoy- boy.15kop.ru/en/game/](http://morskoy-boy.15kop.ru/en/game/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> OMG, i will definitely put my hands on any game, arcade or not, that has a ship wheel! it looks so awesome. we have all these forms to explore and yet we have been leaning towards standard forms introduced by consoles for years now... i was reading how gamers were so happy about the new xbox controller announced at E3 recently, and yet as a casual gamer i see the same thing. maybe their latency / responsiveness issues is all that was addressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree. What makes these old arcade machines (Western games included) are the uniqueness of the controls. Trackballs, Spinners, 360 joysticks, thrusters, yokes all added to the immersion. These are the things that connected players to arcade cabinets and the games. Today's androgynous joypads just don't do that.

<comment><USER9> Feels obligatory to mention Steel Battalion with its massive controller setup [0], that was an early 2000 console game.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion#/media/File:St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Battalion#/media/File:Steel_Battalion_controllers.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been lucky enough to visit this place twice; it's one of my favorite things to do in Moscow.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm the wrong generation for most of these games. But I did play a significant amount of pinball back in the day.

Never been there but if I ever get to Las Vegas the Pinball museum will be on my list of places to visit.

[http://pinballmuseum.org/](http://pinballmuseum.org/)

<comment><USER12> [https://www.pacificpinball.org/](https://www.pacificpinball.org/) in Alameda CA is really great.

<comment><USER11> Thank you! I'm going to be out in SF this winter and I will definitely check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the article it states that visitors to the museum get 15 kopeks to operate the machines. 100 kopeks is one ruble. 1 dollar is 64 rubles. Therefore it costs something on the order of 0.001 _cents_ to operate one of the machines. That's some crazy inflation!

<comment> e-max You have a small mistake in your calculation. 0.15/64 = 0.002$ which equals 0.2 cents. But!

It's much worse, actually. Russia conducted redenomination in 1998 with a coefficient 1000. Which means that 1000 old rubles were replaced by 1 new ruble. So considering this it would be 0.0002 cents.

<comment><USER14> Actually, in 1980th an official rate per US dollar was 0.6-0.7 RUB. But black market deals were 8-10 RUB per $.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting images! ( _Of course_ St. Petersburg!)

I'm left wondering about the _soundtracks_ on these machines. (Maybe it's mentioned somewhere and I missed it?) I assume that they had sound (going by USSR synth tech) ... and not that the proprietors simply played pirated rock recorded on old x-ray plates!

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny, I visited the Moscow museum just a couple weeks ago. What I especially enjoyed was was this solenoid based basketball game. Two player, about 15 places on the playing field where the ball could land. Each player the to hit the right button first to engages a little solenoid that would "throw" the ball towards their net and eventually score a basket. It was a reminder that for me, sometimes the simpler games are more fun that the complex high tech games.

<comment><USER17> Yes! This is a great game and existed in ice rinks and other places in middle America while I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s.

EDIT: Ah, here it is! Turns out TFA says specifically the Moscow game is an exact clone of _Sega Basketball_ :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wv2hqhh2Zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wv2hqhh2Zc)

<comment><USER18> Which came out two years after Midway's Basketball... ;-)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HCOOra_qs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HCOOra_qs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amusingly, Morskoi Boy/Sea Battle was one of the games in the arcade aboard Typhoon class SSBNs. A submarine game, on a submarine.

<comment><USER20> Apparently the Akula/Typhoon even had room for a 4x2 meter "swimming pool" and sauna.

[https://www.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/28/a_navy_day_tour_of...](https://www.rbth.com/economics/2015/07/28/a_navy_day_tour_of_the_akula_sub_44447)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a really awesome video game museum in Berlin on Karl Marx Allee that features an East German Soviet PolyPlay arcade machine with Wasserrohrbruch running on it. It's a terrible game, but the museum is worth a visit for anyone not going to Russia who wants to try a few Soviet-era games.

<comment><USER22> The pain game is worth the entrance price alone. Pain Battle 2 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerspielemuseum_Berlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerspielemuseum_Berlin) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HDIiakT7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HDIiakT7E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember seeing a photograph of what was supposedly the inside of a Typhoon submarine and they had a similar submarine video game cabinet as the one in this article.

</comment><comment><USER24> NI remember when my dad used to take me to arcades when I was a little kide: the sea battle was there! Nice.

</comment><comment><USER25> I presume the high score list on the machines contained 10 or so entries of the same score? That is of course, after the machine calculates and redistributes the scores of the top performers.

<comment><USER26> You are thinking of communism. This is the USSR, the scores are all sent to Moscow and then one point is reissued to each player. Then anyone who asks what happened to the rest of the points is sent to the gulag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_dhUv_CrI&t=14s)

<seeing myself out></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think we will use to develop frontend 5 years from now? - <AUTHOR> Do you think it will be React? Elm? Something compiled to WebAssembly? Some new web framework?<p>I understand that nobody can know this, but people on HN probably have the best chance of being close to reality, so just try to imagine. <comment><USER2> > people on HN probably have the best chance of being close to reality

I doubt that somehow. If you used HN as a basis to guesstimate what the IT industry (hint the IT industry is a shit load bigger than the VC startup scene) is doing _now_ you'd be way off, using it to guess what will be used in 5 years is like using tea leaves to guess the exact position you'll cut yourself shaving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I guess I'm more interested in the answer related to the VC Startup scene than to the industry as a whole anyway.

I want to know(or try to imagine), what will be used to build cool new awesome things in sexy startups, so I don't mind this kind of bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Javascript. It just won't die.

I'd love to see WebAssembly replace it, so that we can use better languages on the front-end, but I won't be holding my breath.</comment>


WhatsApp Reader - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prabhakar267/whatsapp-reader <comment><AUTHOR> Easily read WhatsApp chats from email text backups in a easy-to-read user interface</comment>


In GitHub: how do we block a developer's racist avatar from being displayed? - <AUTHOR> Background:  When looking a commit chain in github, the committing developer's avatar is displayed. This is a nice feature especially in these remote days.
A former employee has a blackface image as their avatar.
We tried contacting github and we were told how to block the developer. Clearly, an unhelpful answer.
Does anyone here know how to block just former employees from having their avatar displayed? <comment><USER2> Why is blocking not helpful? That sounds like exactly what you need to do.

<comment><USER3> I think if they block the developer, they won't be able to see his/her contributions, which they likely want to still see. They just want to block the avatar. Just a guess on my part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use some CSS to change it, there are browser extensions to help keep it persistent</comment>


HBS Student Creates Smartphone App To Detect Malaria - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/07/08/hbs-student-creates-smartphone-app-to-detect-malaria/ <comment><USER2> The sad part is: This app is basically useless. Malaria has very distinct symptoms. Malaria also has a 3-day pre-roll period where you know you are about to get malaria, but you are not yet in bed. Also, Malaria is the #1 drug every chemist stocks in malaria-infested areas. Furthermore, taking a malaria pill even if you don't have malaria has no side effect.

What this means is that if all the criteria of bad luck come together:

1\. Person does not know the symptoms for malaria

2\. There is no chemist around who stocks malaria pills

3\. The illness for some reason instantly hits the person without the pre-roll period

...then the person for whom all these criteria comes into question is about 99.99% not likely to have an Android phone around. And 100% not likely to have a lifelens attached to the phone.

<comment><USER3> This is from Wikipedia:

 _The mainstay of malaria diagnosis has been the microscopic examination of blood. Although blood is the sample most frequently used to make a diagnosis, both saliva and urine have been investigated as alternative, less invasive specimens.

Areas that cannot afford laboratory diagnostic tests often use only a history of subjective fever as the indication to treat for malaria. Using Giemsa- stained blood smears from children in Malawi, one study showed that when clinical predictors (rectal temperature, nailbed pallor, and splenomegaly) were used as treatment indications, rather than using only a history of subjective fevers, a correct diagnosis increased from 2% to 41% of cases, and unnecessary treatment for malaria was significantly decreased._

It certainly sounds as there is use for diagnostics tools.

<comment><USER2> You still don't get it. It's not neccessary to diagnose for malaria via blood. Malaria patients know they have malaria in almost all cases, because they are familiar with the disease. As soon as the symptoms show, they take the tablets. If the problem is not fixed, then it was not malaria. But if you live in a malaria area and you have the typical malaria fever, 99.9% of the time it will be malaria.

Blood diagnosis is unnecessary and expensive. Just take the pills.

<comment><USER3> I'm no expert. I don't claim to be. My point is that people actually appear to do testing. Now maybe you should relay your message to these testers, but it doesn't appear to be uncommon.

In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicate to Malaria testing:

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

And they note more than 20 commercial products for sale that test for Malaria.

Here's a paper from the NIH on the importance and state of rapid Malaria diagnosis:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223842/>

Here's another NIH paper talking about an Malaria eradication, and a big part of their plan is diagnosis:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21311583>

Again, I'm not expert (or even novice), but looking at the literature and what people in the field are working on -- it looks like they make use of diagnostic tools for Malaria. I've certainly seen no papers saying that diagnostics isn't useful in 99.99% of all cases, just pop a pill. Not saying that that's not what should be done, but I find the evidence thus far lacking.

<comment><USER2> The people who need to diagnose it are in a hospital, where they can just use one of many methods. They don't need to to peer through an android lens. Laymen rarely need to diagnose malaria because the symptoms are very very clear.

<comment><USER3> From the other poster, this is from WHO:

"Clinical diagnosis, the most widely used approach, is unreliable because the symptoms of malaria are very non-specific."

From the last NIH paper I referenced, "Many of malaria's signs and symptoms are indistinguishable from those of other febrile diseases."

Here's a paper from the Lancet about Malaria misdiagnosis:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15555670>

From the above: "Effective and affordable treatment is recommended for all cases of malaria within 24 h of the onset of illness. Most cases of "malaria" (ie, fever) are self-diagnosed and most treatments, and deaths, occur at home. The most ethical and cost-effective policy is to ensure that newer drug combinations are only used for true cases of malaria. Although it is cost effective to improve the accuracy of malaria diagnosis, simple, accurate, and inexpensive methods are not widely available, particularly in poor communities where they are most needed."

Additionally people apparently can build up a resistance to the Malaria treatment. See:

<http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78014>

 _"When people are sick in Mali, the doctor will usually tell them they have malaria whether or not they test for it," said Fatou Faye, an infectious diseases researcher and trainer at a privately funded medical laboratory, the Charles Merieux Centre in Bamako.

"The patients then buy anti-malarial drugs in the street and build up a resistance to treatment."

As a result, according to research by Dr. Imelda Bates at the Malaria Knowledge Project (MKP), part of the Liverpool University School of Tropical Medicine, this means people miss other causes of feverish illness such as pneumonia and meningitis, which can cause further illness and even death._

Again, I'm not saying your wrong necessarily, but everything I read seems to point to the fact that low-cost accurate Malaria diagnosis would be useful.

<comment><USER4> _Again, I'm not saying your wrong necessarily..._

Actually you're telling him that he's acting exactly like people commonly do in malarial areas, and are informing him that simply taking that course of action breeds worse varieties of malaria, and causes people to die of unrelated diseases that could have been treated.

This strongly suggests that he has practical experience with malaria. And is useful information for him about how the advice he has based on experience is suboptimal.

<comment><USER2> Medicine is a game of probability. If you have malaria symptoms in a malaria area, the chance of you having malaria are around 99%. Every other disease with similar symptoms (e.g Typhoid) is pretty rare.

When it comes to peoples lives, people very quickly reach the optimal solution. It's what humans do best. This android solution is a theoretical solution from people who have never experienced malaria and don't even live in an area where malaria exists.

Yes, I have practical experience with malaria. I also have practical experience with android phones. I am actually qualified to make experience- based judgments on the feasibility of that tool, and quoting theoretical papers may win you arguments on the internet, but it will have little practical usage.

When there is a disease in an area that has existed for so long that people have built genetic resistance to it, at the cost of having occasionally sickly children, then trust me, modern methods that work will quickly be selected.

Modern methods that don't work (bed mosquito nets), will be selected away.

Armchair solutions for problems you only partially understand are pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article claims that 90% of 8+ million childhood deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are caused by malaria, but the World Health Organization says it's responsible for only 20% of child deaths. Moreover, the latest estimates for annual deaths from malaria (all ages) is 780,000. In any case, it's a lot, and I'm glad this team has delivered a useful tool!

<http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/index.html>

[http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/26/malaria-deaths-are- dow...](http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/26/malaria-deaths-are-down-thanks- to-u-n-commitment/)

<comment><USER6> thanks for the links

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the deal with all the snarky remarks? They made something with the intention of solving a serious problem. Cut them some damn slack.

</comment><comment><USER8> The fact that it's a smartphone, or that it's running Windows 7, or that it was developed in Silverlight doesn't seem to have anything to do with the fact that we're looking at a glorified microscope.

Surely there's a cheaper way to get a microscopic image of a blood sample in Africa than flooding villages with Windows smartphones.

<comment><USER9> If this "glorified microscope" allows people to do their jobs tangibly better -- in this case, detect malaria -- then what exactly is the cost problem in your mind? We're not talking about gold-plated custom-designed malaria detection devices... we're talking about (commodity) smartphones with a small lens affixed and some software installed.

<comment><USER10> Do we know that it helps people do their jobs better? The article left me with this question: Is this different than other microscopes that you could use in the field, and if so, how? Does this make it easier/cheaper for the trained personnel to detect malaria? Maybe it does--I'm just not clear on that point after having read the article.

<comment><USER11> The real point is that now the mobile worker doesn't have to carry a phone + a large microscope. The mobile phone is continuing to replace more and more objects. Radio, tv, camerea, video, internet browser, and now microscope. Many more devices will be adapted to take advantage of the phones computation capability as well as things like GPS, internet etc. BTW, if that mobile health worker has to make a choice between purchasing a microscope and purchasing a phone, they are probably going to purchase the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel there's a huge flaw in the logic with this application.

If these people could afford smart phones, they probably wouldn't have a huge malaria problem.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> Wealthy Africans get malaria too, and besides, even the poor will be getting smart phones soon.

It's going to be like cell phones which were pretty ubiquitous in the third world years ago when it wasn't even the case here. They bypassed landlines and went straight to cell, and the same will probably be true of computers and smart phones.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention this can always be an ad hoc tool for aid workers and doctors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Next, the application's user simply has to know the difference between a healthy blood sample and one infected with malaria_

So...it's a microscope lens for a smartphone? Isn't that something already developed? What about this app "detects malaria"?

<comment><USER16> Well, given the look of the two slides, it seems like it wouldn't be the most difficult problem in the world to do some image analysis to determine.

<comment><USER15> That would be an interesting article, but as far as I can tell this thing is nothing but a microscope.

You're going to need a trained human in the loop just to handle the blood and apparatus in a sanitary way.

Humans are inherently better than any app at the image task, so why not just let the human do it?

This looks like a non-solution to me.

<comment><USER9> You have some false assumptions in your argument, mainly that it's just as easy to train and distribute humans across Africa (and elsewhere) to do malaria diagnosis as it is to develop and distribute copies of this software.

Moreover, as the software is improved, updating the software -- and raising the baseline of quality -- is a unique advantage over the "just use humans" solution.

<comment><USER15> The scenario is not "download an app and it detects malaria".

The scenario is "person trained to work with blood samples without spreading/contracting HIV deployed into field packing a small digital microscope and support software built on WP7." This person is likely already doing a variety of other community medicine and is the closest thing to a medical doctor many of their patients will ever see.

There's no argument against giving the practicioner a helpful tool, only that it may be automating an insignificant part of the overall problem (looking at the image).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its basically a microscope in a smartphone.

However, I see a few practical problems when these high end phone get distributed in Africa by some aid organization. Because an expensive high end phone is also a good gift. I hope they will maintain statistics of how many of these high end phones actually reach the medical centers. And how many of them remain in the med center after a year. Sometimes its better to just send a microscope that can not be used for anything else but blood samples.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great feel good story, hard not to see a ton of potential in the 1st world market too though. Imagine a comprehensive self-diagnosis app?

<comment><USER19> Not launched yet, but there will (hopefully soon) be an XPrize for that: [http://www.xprize.org/prize-development/life- sciences#artifi...](http://www.xprize.org/prize-development/life- sciences#artificial)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh, wow...

Okay, I just spent the better part of an hour working on a comment on this (hey, I just passed a hematology course, sooo... ;), and then, as I _finally_ got around to checking out the website, I catch this line in the video (emphasis mine):

"All that's really needed from an individual is a drop of blood from the finger to create a _thin smear on a slide_ for analysis with standard protocols."

That's a _lot_ different from what the linked article claims (again, emphasis mine):

"A single drop of blood from the patient is required _then smeared on the microscopy lens_."

Smearing the lens directly seemed an interesting idea, although it poses a few challenges I'll touch on shortly. However, a close listen to the video makes it clear that's _not_ what the project purports to do. The Lifelens "hardware" -- the lens -- is just meant to give a phone camera microscopic capabilities. How well that works isn't too clear, but it's definitely not the same thing.

It would actually be quite difficult to get an acceptable specimen on a tiny lens. The standard laboratory method is to place a drop of blood on a slide, then use another slide to draw it out into a thin film. Here's a quick video that shows a pretty good example:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA6ce-3sYgk>

Note how the tech drags the slide back at an angle over the drop, then pushes it forward almost immediately. It takes good timing and a lot of practice to get it right, and then you have to find _just_ the right part of the specimen for a proper analysis. What you get in a typical thin smear is a range of population densities, from a clumpy mess of cells crowding and overlapping each other, to rarefied lines and clusters of cells spaced widely apart. The nice, evenly spaced fields shown in the article are just a small region of the full sample, usally a couple fields behind the feathered edge. Getting that is a challenge just in the laboratory. On a tiny lens in the field? I'll believe that when I see it, and this is just the second step! (Getting the sample is the first) The specimen still has to be stained.

While RBCs with their hemoglobin do _en masse_ make blood red to reddish- purple, individual red cells don't actually show a lot of color without staining. Nor do white cells; they just look a bit larger and grainier than reds. To better examine cell structures, a stained specimen is needed. The standard analytical sample is a Wright stained thin film smear, which requires three different stains be applied and washed in sequence. This stuff doesn't just wash off, either, so don't expect to use the same lens twice. Again, however, that's not what the project actually claims to do. What it _does_ claim, on the other hand, strains credulity in other directions.

Sad to say, but a half-sphere lens on a phone camera does not a microscope make. Without going too deep into details (I hope), proper microscopy requires close attention to the properties of light and lenses. You can't just point a powerful lens at a specimen and expect to get a good image. You also need to ensure sufficient lighting, proper contrast, and _control your depth of field!!!_

I cannot emphasize that last point enough! Even squashed nearly flat under a cover slip, any specimen you examine is still three dimensional, with details you can only see by shifting the microscopic stage up and down by _very_ small amounts. The depth of field is very narrow. A professional scope's fine adjustment is fine enough to shift focus on a cell from "front" to "back" and anywhere in between. As you might imagine, that requires keeping the stage very, _very_ still. That's why scopes _have_ specimen stages. You won't get that out of a phone camera without clamping it down.

That's what made the article's statement so interesting. If an acceptable specimen could be obtained by smearing the lens directly, the fixed position might allow for proper analysis, but that's not what the project purports to do.

It might be interesting to see where this project goes, but at this point, it's still looking very alpha to me. I'd wait 'til they show this thing in action.

EDIT: Minor spelling error.

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.quora.com/How-important-is-accurate-diagnosis- in-...](http://www.quora.com/How-important-is-accurate-diagnosis-in-a- comprehensive-plan-to-fight-malaria)

</comment><comment><USER22> Hope they've considered the fact that the sample will need to be cleaned off.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it a Windows Mobile advertisement?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Enter Cy Khormaee, a Harvard Business School student, and his team at > Lifelens.

I believe you mean "HBS Student Takes Credit for People who Created an App to Detect Malaria".

<comment><USER25> It's a Boston-centric publication. Why wouldn't they anchor it to one of Boston's best known institutions?

If it said "Harvard grad student" there would be far less vitriol here. The fact that it is someone at HBS getting some startup press really pisses you off - doesn't it?</comment></comment>


Expensify sent images with personal data to Mechanical Turkers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/expensify-acknowledges-potential-privacy-problem-by-calling-it-a-feature/ <comment><USER2> Having happily used AirBNB in the past, I recently tried to book a stay in Toronto. They wanted a full photo of my passport or driving license to complete the boking. Looking a little deeper, not only did they outsource the processing, but when others had questioned them about it the response seemed a little noncomittal.

With leaks and lapses of judgment ocurring daily I feel like it would be an identity fraud ticking timebomb to use AirBNB and other services like it, especially given the attitude they seem to attach to security. I know others on HN feel diferently.

I took my business elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> Playing devil's advocate:

Where is the problem? Or, what does a passport or id card contain, which should be kept secret?

Your name? They have that anyway? A passport number? What could be done with it, except verifying that the passport is legit and not stolen? My height? Who cares?

While I really think there's much too much shenanigans, which can be done with an (US) social security number and personal information I just don't see the same issue with identification.

I'm happy, of course, to be educated otherwise.

Disclaimer: i did upload a foto of my passport in ordet to rent an AirBnb in Sapporo.

<comment><USER4> The use of passport is an example of an attempt to do identity proofing. In the practice of identity management there's a concept of "Identity Assurance Levels" where you have varying levels of validation of a person's identity. If you are interested in this, check out NIST Special Publication 800-63A.

AirBNB is trying to use the passport photo as a way to link you to a real- world identity, cheaply. They are in a sticky situation because their bonkers business model will suffer if customers need to go through intrusive processes. Simultaneously, they need to do _something_ to avoid being held negligent when a fake AirBNB host/guest hurts someone. The problem is that it doesn't really provide assurance of anything other than possession of an image of a passport.

The problem is that it's spewing alot of information that if handled improperly is a high risk for fraudulent use. For example, knowing your citizenship, date, and place of birth makes it trivial to fraudulently obtain your birth certificate. That makes it pretty trivial to do something like obtain a fraudulent driver's license.

There are many ways to do this more effectively and at much lower risk to the _customer_. For example, you could verify ownership of a bank account with trivial deposits. Or you could mail the customer a token. Or require a notarized document. Or some combination. But the risk to AirBnb of a negative outcome is low, so they push a risk that you may not understand to you.

<comment><USER3> I just stumbled over your reply right now (a $ short, a day late) and, well:

Thank you very much.

That was instructive, insightful and taught me a lot; namely what the actual problem is.

Sheesh! Sometimes it's really worthwhile to be a bit prissy, but seriously, I learned something from your reply and I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is too much fake marketing around companies adopting ML and AI today. We call this the "man behind the curtain" (wizard of oz). The rule of thumb is: if it takes minutes or even hours to OCR & data extract then it's human labor.

Lots of companies like Expensify, Bills.com, ReceiptHog and others use MTurk or services like MTurk to extract data from the financial documents. The accuracy is still not 100% guaranteed also the categorization is usually off since person categorizing your receipts doesn't have a history of your previous purchases and how they should be categorized in your business. This also means that if you are doing anything with PII or a healthcare company, watch out. These companies are NOT HIPAA compliant. They leak PII data. It takes 1 social hack to steal someone's identity.

How do I know all this? Because we ([https://iqboxy.com](https://iqboxy.com) YC W17) built a 100% automated solution for bookkeeping and expense management. You scan a receipt/bill/invoice and you get results in a few seconds. We have been offered many times to use those human labor services for "automated data extraction" but we believe it's not how this problem should be solved in 2018.

<comment><USER6> @dbirulia I see you have a "free plan" (the "paid plan" is currently too much for me for expected value, in my country it's ~10 coffees, not 2), but it has "Advanced OCR" grayed out. Does it mean it has no OCR at all (just stores image scans?), or rather some kind of "primitive OCR" (whatever this means)?

<comment><USER5> Hey @akavel the difference is that the system will not build ML models for your account and will not learn from your edits and categorizations. Give it a try and maybe it's enough for your case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "On November 25, Expensify's founder and CEO, David Barrett, announced a new "feature" the company was working on, called Private SmartScan, in which customers would be offered the option of recruiting their own backup transcription workforce through Mechanical Turk."

That is a pretty sorry attempt at deflection.

<comment><USER7> About what you would expect from a company with an $800 million valuation that pays its employees $2/hr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Expensify does pretty horrible categorization. It's does a really good job at determining what the amount is, but approx 70% of the time manages to screw up the categorization unless its really, really obvious (ground transportation for Uber) - it will even make rookie mistakes like seeing I classified a WiFi charge with United, and then classifying my next airplane tickets as "WiFi".

But - I've always assumed that Concur and Expensify had large groups of people manually correcting/categorizing receipts, so not too surprised here.

</comment><comment><USER9> Never mind them "still running until sept" - my wife occasionally does mturk in front of the TV, and maybe five days ago (Nov 20th) lots of the tasks were expensify.

Some of the receipts had enough info to identify people - store card numbers, buyer phone number, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone honestly think it was anything other than humans manually entering data from the submitted images?

<comment><USER11> lol so this is like the modern version of the _actual_ , original namesake mechanical "Turk" from the 18th centruy?[1]

"Um, you pretty clearly have some human wearing a costume and playing chess."

'No, no, I insist, it's 100% machine that happens to be good at this task!'

Now it's:

"Um, you pretty clearly must be using humans to interpret the receipts."

'No, no, I insist, it's all done by our proprietary algorithms!'

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

<comment><USER12> Can't wait for the Show HN of a mechanical turk backed chess bot.

<comment><USER11> That would actually be interesting! Humans are good st certain kinds of computational problems like approximate Traveling Salesman, so if you had agood algorithm that assumed access to such an oracle, you could indeed power it with Mechanical Turk workers in a nontrivial way.

<comment><USER13> > Humans are good st certain kinds of computational problems like approximate > Traveling Salesman

Are humans any better at it than computers? I wouldn't think that humans have a good enough heuristic that the extra 1000x processing speed isn't more of an advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I mean, we all knew it was humans doing the "SmartScan" transcription but one would suppose that there's some level of vetting and control in place...

<comment><USER15> How would you vet that someone is not going to sell your private information on the illicit market?

<comment><USER16> What "illicit market" could possibly be interested in a pile of random receipts?

Receipts would have any value if all of them are from the same person and can be used to reconstruct that person's activity. And even then it'd be pretty damn tricky to sell that "file" as it still has no exploitable value.

<comment><USER17> Ever looked at your health insurance bills? Medical records are a gold mine for social engineering. Standard restaurant receipts have everything from payment type, last 4 digits of your credit card, transaction history... great for social engineering. Oh and Uber receipts have your home address too ;-) Whoops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is why Crowdflower has the option to only show data to people who have signed a non-disclosure agreement. You don't just show private data to everyone on the Internet...

<comment><USER17> Your joking right? I'm sure Equifax used that one too. NDAs in 2017 is like toilet paper. How do you trust one of your employees won't go rogue? If you deal with a healthcare company in the US you need to provide a BAA and comply with HIPAA. So how do you handle that?

<comment><USER18> How does anyone trust their employees won't go rogue? If they are under NDA and are longtime employees with high ratings then there is usually no reason to think they are trying to "go rogue" by stealing some usually very boring but private data.

HIPAA has additional requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just like their AI/Bot/Robot/Skynet Concierge service that's actually human powered. See tweet => [https://twitter.com/kylelloydsf/status/738789931791699968](https://twitter.com/kylelloydsf/status/738789931791699968)

"A heads up, our team usually responds within 24 business hours (7am - 6pm)" lol.. I guess machines do dream of electric sheep after all ;-)

</comment><comment><USER19> I am imagining "self-driving" cars driven by mechanical turks! Big halls with what looks like arcade car games, workers specialized in all aspects of driving, controlling cars on the road at the other side of the planet...

Too crazy?

<comment><USER20> You might be interested in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer)

<comment><USER19> thanks, I'll check it out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> AI: fake it till you make it!

<comment><USER22> It would be better to just kick back to the user to resolve it. I used expensify and it took like 20 mins to process a few receipt images.. I ended up doing it myself anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We will start seeing such news more often. Privacy is a real concern in the AI world and either by machines or humans, plain sensitive data is being processed in most of the cases. Usually humans require to access the raw data in order to label it to train or tune the algorithms. The data ends up being accessible and often, by cheap labour as this is a very expensive process in the current state of AI.

</comment><comment><USER24> For anyone interested in solving this problem in their own business—we take privacy extremely seriously at Scale API ([http://www.scaleapi.com](http://www.scaleapi.com)) and implement numerous safeguards operationally and technically to ensure this doesn't happen.

<comment><USER25> > we take privacy extremely seriously...implement numerous safeguards > operationally and technically to ensure this doesn't happen

I hate that this is going to come off as snark, but a lot of tech startups make claims about executing "rigorous background checks" (Uber et al), which gets proven time and time again is not true at scale.

So what specifically do you do to ensure this? How do I trust your organization?

<comment><USER15> Just look at the reputation they've built up over the years.

<comment><USER25> The company is a year old...

<comment><USER26> Probably forgot the /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> TL;DR: Expensify's deceptive mechanical turk army may have resulted in me coming within seconds of losing $30k, and almost certainly leaves them exposed to massive liabilities as they wantonly give away personally identifiable information to low-paid contract workers that are not bound to confidentiality.

Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I have had my identity stolen twice, in both cases with the intent to steal access to accounts I use in connection with my business. Two relevant pieces of information: my employer pays for my phone, and I get reimbursements by submitting the PDF bill via Expensify. My employer is also a bitcoin company, and occasionally I have to buy bitcoin (a few hundred dollars worth) to top up our service's wallet for paying transaction fees.

When the second incident happened a few months ago I had just come back from a long International trip. I work in the bitcoin industry and know not to keep coins on exchanges, but I also know not to travel through customs with >$10k or with bitcoin private keys on my person. So I had 8btc, about $30k at the time, loaded on my personal account on a certain exchange, in case (1) I needed emergency funds and was locked out of my bank account for ordinary fraud prevention snafu reasons; and/or (2) I needed to top-up company accounts again. It turns out I did need to do the latter.

Immediately on coming home I filed my expense reports for reimbursement. Expensify, as far as I can tell, does not allow a way to opt out of SmartScan" from the mobile app. In any case I thought this was some harmless excuse for the CTO to have a machine learning project. Little did I know. This report included both my phone bill for the months prior, and the bitcoin transfer, a print-out from the logged in view of my account on the exchange.

Very shortly thereafter (days?) my phone was remotely SIM-ported to another device. I got extremely lucky in that I was using the phone at the very moment it happened, and saw it go from full bars to "No service" while sitting in my chair. I knew what was going on because this was the 2nd time it had happened to me. I ran do the coffee shop down the street to get wifi, and found I could no longer login to my email account. Yup, hack in process. Attacker used SMS authentication on my cell phone to reset the password on the email.

Lacking a phone, I rushed to the nearest retail store for my carrier, and after a short conversation I had my phone service back. I had to answer some questions to regain my account, questions like "from which country did you recently make international calls, and to whom?" On getting full bars back on the device, I sat down and did a recovery of my email account, using the same process as the attacker now that I had regained control of my phone. I opened the "sessions" tab and logged out the other device, an IP I didn't recognize from the other side of the country. 42 minutes elapsed from loss of phone service to account recovery.

Now here's where things took a scary twist: I go back to my inbox, and as I watch I see an "Account reset requested" email from the company that provides 2FA services for my preferred bitcoin exchange. Inside the email is a link to confirm the request and receive a code to download the credentials (they save them to the cloud?! wtf!?) to a new device. Right below that in the inbox: "Password reset" from that bitcoin exchange, containing a clicked link (I presume, the email was read) that takes you their new-password form that requires 2FA. The 2FA input box has a link next to it that loads the 2FA app reset procedure that authenticates by email & SMS and then sends the root seed information.

As quickly as I could get back home to my secure, non-travel laptop with a read-only USB boot drive, I logged into my exchange account using the old credentials, and swept the $30k of coins (thankfully still there) to my cold storage. The paranoia was because at the time I didn't know whether it was malware or what that had leaked enough information for the attacker to impersonate me. I spent the next few days reinstalling and virus scanning, resetting all passwords, and redoing my operational security to make sure this doesn't happen again. (General advice: draw a flowchart showing what information you need to have to reset each of your credentials. Make sure it progresses from most trusted to least trusted, don't have any loops, and keep your most trusted root credentials/passwords offline. Dollar-bill sized paper is excellent. Maybe an envelope with a $100 bill. Unless you are richer than I am, your instincts will _make_ you secure that.)

But here's what bugged me. Unlike the time before this happened to me, this was a hyper focused targeted attack. Even a few seconds later and those coins would have been _gone_. Unlike the last time the attacker didn't try to get into anything else — just went straight to the exchange, and that particular exchange. Additionally, as this had happened before I had instructed my telephone company in no uncertain terms to never, ever do a SIM reset without authorization in person using the best available methods.

Now it comes together, and I am pissed about it. I was able to recover my phone by answering questions about its usage only I would know… like who I called, and what country I called from. Only those are listed right on the phone bill! A form of ID might be required, but seriously what do they check on that? The name and photo? Faked. The home address? Printed on the bill! And why did they go straight to the exchange? Because I submitted a screenshot of a transaction that included exactly how much hard currency I was stupid enough to leave on it. My email was easily googable (the perils of having a truly unique name). Those mechanical Turk contractors who processed my receipts had access to it all.

So Expensify, you've got some answering to do. I pretty clear now I came within seconds of losing a rather large portion of my nest egg and deal with identify theft resolution because you shared confidential and private information with hourly (minute-ly?) sub-contractors not subject to background review, oversight, or background checks, and certainly not subject to your commercial and third-party confidentiality agreements. You may try to argue they were, but any competent judge would reject the proposition that a worker being paid mere cents to fill out a text field from a picture as quickly as possible before moving onto another task from another company, was able to read, understand, before seek independent legal advice on your agreement before clicking through, assuming it got showed to them at all.

"Oh but your company signed our terms of service" you say. Yes, well the relevant stuff is in the privacy policy, referenced by the terms of service. Let's look at that: Section 5, Disclosure of Personal Data. You say you only allow third parties (and further transfers) to access personal data in compliance with this same privacy policy, which forbids usage, like identity theft, not necessary to performance of services.

Maybe this is what slipped past your legal team: RECEIPTS ARE PERSONAL AND COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. That phone bill? Personally identifiable information. That receipt for hosting expenses? That's our raw cost, and company confidential information. Privacy of this information matters, and even if you tried to indemnify yourself in your policy, which you failed to do, you still run afoul of user protection laws, even in the company-friendly USA. There are stiff fines and civil liabilities for not taking sufficient safeguards to secure protected user data.

You damn lucky that I didn't lose that $30k, or you better believe I'd be lawyering up. But I sincerely doubt I was the only one targeted either, and some probably successfully. Can you cover that liability? Are your investors ready to take that risk? I almost lost $30k. What about the assistant to the oil company CEO who expenses a coffee down the road from the headquarters of the competing oil company the rumor mill says they're going to acquire? What happens when insider trading props up the price killing the deal, causing the company to enter bankruptcy and the shareholders file suit for the leak? You ready to carry that liability?

This is inexcusable. This is reckless. This is mismanagement of confidential company and personal data exposes you to knowable liabilities and reflects monumentally poor decision making. You'd better take steps NOW to disable this "feature", issue apologies, provide tools for users to know what receipts were "SmartScanned" by your totally and completely not automated or in-house service.

And you'd best do that before you start facing lawsuits.

<comment><USER28> Well, there's not really any way someone could execute this attack. Receipts aren't logically grouped by reports based on someone's identity... They said it was part of an experiment and only included a small group of free users (if you're not paying, then YOU'RE the product) plus their employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That image is racist.

<comment><USER30> If you are referring to the image at the top of the article, I'm afraid it is not. It is a reference to the origin of the name for "Mechanical Turk" [1].

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

<comment><USER29> Sorry, I ment the caption.

> Would you let this guy handle your benefit and business expenses?</comment></comment></comment>


The Pyramid of Software Developer Job Satisfaction - <AUTHOR> https://nimbleindustries.io/2018/05/26/pyramid-of-software-developer-job-satisfaction/ <comment><USER2> Although this may very well explain the author's major motivations and source of job satisfaction, can two categories really explain software developer job satisfaction for everyone?

It makes sense that someone would be more satisfied working on their own ideas than someone else's. The problems being solved are more personally relevant, and they have more control over the execution, for better or worse. The business end of things may be why proportionally few developers go this route.

In this article, an idea or project's success seems to be equated with its profitability and applies to business ventures in general. What about other measures of success: meeting performance and reliability requirements, being widely used, fixing some societal ill, or scratching the itch of curiosity?

How the idea is executed too may greatly affect job satisfaction. Many developers prefer working on greenfield projects over maintaining legacy systems. What is the pace of work like? The quality of the coworkers?

There are numerous variables at play.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's black and white. I'm currently working on a product that's 100% someone else's idea, but I'm pretty much in charge of everything, so design decisions, architecture, roadmap etc. are pretty much all my ideas, which I feel should definitely be higher up in that pyramid.

<comment><USER4> As a though experiment, consider the ratio of ideas you can or cannot pursue? You're thinking of lots of ideas, in order to implement someone else higher level idea. It sounds like you get to pursue all your ideas. Sounds satisfying.

Now consider a developer who is constantly told "sounds good, but that's not our priority right now", "no", "we'll maybe get to that later", etc. They don't get to pursue any of their own ideas. Sounds very dissatisfying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would put 'my own idea, miserable failure' under 'someone else's idea, huge success'.

And it's not all black and white. You can build a product for someone else and still have a lot of say in the product. Maybe a feeling of ownership is good enough.

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

I'm currently working on someone else's idea but all the technical decisions are up to me.

There is a nice trade-off in that I don't have to worry about negotiating with customers and other aspects of a project that don't interest me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The hierarchy of satisfying jobs for me, and I suspect for legions of creative, entrepreneurial software developer everywhere looks something like this:"

Is this Scientific?

When you take into consideration, risk, stress, anxiety, loss of direct revenues, loss of freebies, loss of nice brand on your resume etc?

I think we all want to work on something _we_ find passionate, but there's also something about working on a team of people that _other_ people, i.e. _customers_ find valuable.

Would be nice to see some data points because this is incredibly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a good concept for anyone who has to manage people. I don't think it only applies to a binary split between 100% ownership and none. Letting developers guide the project to some degree, instead of slogging through sprint after sprint based purely on sales team goals, will get you a happier team and hopefully higher quality product.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the site down? I get an infinite redirect loop.

<comment><USER10> archive.org has a copy.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20180718181856/https://nimbleindu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180718181856/https://nimbleindustries.io/2018/05/26/pyramid- of-software-developer-job-satisfaction/)

<comment><USER11> Sorry about this. I'm a nimble teammate and I'm seeing the same thing. It's due to our CDN. Please hang in there we're working on it!.

<comment><USER11> I think we've got it sorted, thanks for the patience and feedback.

<comment><USER12> Still doesn't work here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is pretty close to understanding a marxist criticism of the alienation of people from the fruits of their labor under capitalism - which most people can't opt out of</comment>


BAbI tasks: Task generation for testing text understanding and reasoning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/bAbI-tasks <comment><USER2> We're really excited at Facebook we've finally got this out! If you have any questions, please contact us.</comment>


Why Startups Occasionally Act Like Sociopaths - <AUTHOR> http://mattsencenbaugh.com/why-startups-occasionally-act-like-sociopaths/ <comment><USER2> "There are lots of words about 'empowerment' and 'changing the world'. Frankly, it annoys the shit out of me. "

Me, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> "the way startups spew forth their good intentions without recognizing the underlying goal of making money makes the whole industry feel unnecessarily slimy."

I'm not sure I understand this. I find it hard to believe that a large portion of startups don't internally recognize the importance of making money. Sure, their public rhetoric might not be centered around the their profit goals for this quarter, but how does that make the industry slimy?

<comment><USER4> maybe using the language of social reformers when in fact there is a profit motive just sounds disingenuous

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the current trend now is that it is much better to be a nice person as a startup founder/employee [1]

1\. [http://paulgraham.com/safe.html](http://paulgraham.com/safe.html)</comment>


Amazon launches RDS for Oracle - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/rds/oracle/?ref_=pe_12300_19991170

<comment><USER2> How long before a YC company starts selling slices of an Oracle DBA in the cloud?

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the AWS-Oracle license prohibits this.

<comment><USER2> I mean DBA, "Database Administrator". I think you mean something different, like a schema, which might be more interesting

<comment><USER3> Yes, we were talking about different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Learn to become an Oracle ERP consultant for 16 cents an hour.

</comment><comment><USER5> interestung that the premium over mysql seems to be 0 in the "bring your own license" mode, and less than 50% when getting the license with the service. So a single "large" resrved instance would only cost 400 dollars more a year.

<comment><USER6> The "with license" service only includes Oracle "Standard Edition One" which lacks lots of features. It doesn't have partitioned indexing or RAC for example -- among other missing features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's a single Oracle DB ? No RAC ?

<comment><USER8> RAC uses shared disks ([http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/clustering/overvi...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/clustering/overview/twp- rac11gr2-134105.pdf)) So unless EBS or an EBS-like service will allow the attachment of a volume to multiple instances or Oracle changes how RAC works, there won't be Oracle RAC on AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does it run on EBS?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised, I thought Larry Ellison wasn't sure what the cloud was. Has he finally worked out what it is or has he stopped spouting FUD now that he's worked out how to make it work for Oracle?</snark>

I think this will prove to be a smart move for them in the long run.</comment>


Stephen Fry: Poles, Politeness, Politics, and Twitter (Oct. '09) - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/10/19/poles-politeness-and-politics-in-the-age-of-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> Stephen Fry has an inimitable (though sometimes rambling) writing style that is immensely pleasurable to read.

In effect, this piece describes the social phenomenon that is "Twitter" from the perspective of someone who "dipped his toe" into it a year before this writing and emerged with around 1M followers. Full of interesting insights about how Twitter as a new development affects and alters politics, society, etc. much the same way as the emergence of the popular press first did a couple of centuries ago. Well worth reading for these observations alone.

The piece also includes a funny depiction of a major _faux pas_ by the author (in an interview, about Poland and Auschwitz) and contains a classy apology over the issue - in effect, serving as a model for how a celebrity should properly apologize in such a case and standing in stark contrast to the non- genuine apology one gets routinely these days from politicians, celebrities, and other public figures.

A long and fascinating piece for those who love Mr. Fry's writing style and insights (and I do, even though I often disagree with him on substance).

<comment><USER2> I'm a huge Stephen Fry fan but I can't bring myself to read his twitterings. I much prefer to think of him as Jeeves, not somebody who expresses oneself 140 characters.

Similarly, House was a huge letdown :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie _were_ amazing as Jeeves and Bertie, which is no small accomplishment since the historic attempts of others (e.g., David Niven) to capture the Woodhouse flair consistently failed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Poland was in no way responsible for the holocaust and it was a monumentally stupid thing to say but there was, and is, a very nasty streak of anti- semitism in Polish culture. I've spoken to Poles who suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis but didn't think getting rid of the Jews was such a bad idea. Some years ago, the New Yorker magazine carried an appalling article that documented how the people of a certain Polish village, with little more than a nod from the Nazis, rounded up their neighbours, locked them in a barn and burned them alive.

</comment><comment><USER4> The lack of any kind of single page view for posts on that site is really irritating. Anyone know a decent plugin that fights this annoying trend?</comment>


With light echoes, the invisible becomes visible  - <AUTHOR> http://www3.uni-bonn.de/Press-releases/with-light-echoes-the-invisible-becomes-visible

<comment><USER2> _Inserted in edit, lest people think this submission by jcr is just the same thing hashed over ... it 's not._

jcr adds that the two papers linked from this article are new. One was just published this month, June 2014, and the other will be published later this year, in August 2014. For more details, see his comment here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909458)

Hat tip to him for responding so positively to my finds and cross-referencing - thank you.

</comment><comment>==

This submission contains new information and new links, but there has previously been significant discussion on this topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3733850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3733850)

I've checked to see if all these really are the same story. They mostly are, although some have since gone missing, and, and mentioned above, this new submission has new results. Here are previous submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=486220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=486220)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1919117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1919117)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921131)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921573)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3731259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3731259)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734186)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3735493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3735493)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3748536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3748536)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3764775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3764775)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4405800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4405800)

Different, but related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879670)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4250128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4250128)

And then something with a similar title, but _completely_ different:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115072)

<comment><AUTHOR> Colin, excellent sleuthing on the topic. I'll dig into those links but the few I've checked so far seem to be fairly main stream regurgitations of university press releases.

The two papers linked [1] from this article are new. One was just published this month, June 2014 [2], and the other will be published later this year, in August 2014 [3].

[1] [http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/projects/multipath/](http://cg.cs.uni- bonn.de/en/projects/multipath/)

[2] [http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/publications/paper- details/Heide...](http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/publications/paper- details/HeideCVPR2014/)

[3] [http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/publications/paper- details/otool...](http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/publications/paper- details/otoole2014/)

<comment><USER2> I've edited my comment to try to make that clear - thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an excellent list of related papers here:

[http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/publications/](http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu/publications/)

But for some reason they have the 2014 papers listed as 2013.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Towards a Haskell Logic Library - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/05/10/haskell-logic-library/

<comment><USER2> Those interested in this might also be interested in an older (1999) discussion of embedding Prolog in an earlier version of Haskell: [http://www.silvija.net/0000OxfordPublications/seres_haskell9...](http://www.silvija.net/0000OxfordPublications/seres_haskell99.pdf)

And a 2004 LtU discussion of that paper: <http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/112>

<comment><USER3> the Spivey & Seres paper influenced miniKanren, so things are coming full circle here :)

Having worked on core.logic in Clojure for quite some time now, I'm curious to see how far along these ideas get pushed in Haskell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is Curry relevant here?

<comment><USER3> It is! Curry is much more like a functional programming language with logic programming features. miniKanren and miniKanren-like systems are usually shallow embeddings of relational/constraint programming in some host language.</comment></comment>


Astrid Winding Down - <AUTHOR>

Astrid Winding Down
Hi XXX,
First off, we want to sincerely thank you for being an Astrid user over the years. Your support every step of the way has meant the world to us. As of August 5, 2013, we will be closing the Astrid service.
We know that a transition can be tough, but we want to make it as easy as possible for you. Please go to this link: astrid.com/home/export to download your data.
Once you have your data, we recommend you check out one of these applications. They will allow you to easily import your data, so you can pick up where you left off: Wrike, Wunderlist, Sandglaz, and Any.do.
When we built Astrid, we sought to help as many people as possible become happier, healthier and more productive – and we certainly hope we helped you. Thank you again for your support.
Best regards, Jon Paris & the Astrid Team
Astrid Team 660 4th Street #259, San Francisco, CA, 94107 <comment><AUTHOR> showed up a few moments ago in my mailbox</comment>


The Rust language: memory, ownership and lifetimes - Nicholas Matsakis - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfCtbGiHcg0

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can handle the strobing on the slides, this is an excellent introduction to how Rust helps you manage memory predictably and safely without GC. Well worth the watch.</comment>


Upcoming SPDY support details - <AUTHOR> http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?29,226562

<comment><USER2> For the podcast-learning types, I enjoyed the Security Now episode where they went over SPDY, episode 343.

<http://twit.tv/show/security-now/343>

It was a nice gentle introduction to the subject while I was walking my dog.

</comment><comment><USER3> So with Nginx, Apache, Tomcat all supporting SPDY that will be quite a lot of the widely used servers. I wonder how popular and widely implemented SPDY has to get before Microsoft would cave and put it in IIS and IE? I am sure they will hold out for a bit, but at some point if 50% of web traffic can go faster and IIS doesn't support that, it's going to be a pretty big disadvantage for IIS.

<comment><USER4> Why would Microsoft hold out? Is SPDY technologically inferior in some way? Does it give Google some competetive advantage? Does not supporting it give Microsoft some competetive advantage? Is there a fourth reason that I'm missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> SPDY is one frackin' cool protocol. I could easily see it being used as the default protocol for _everything_ in the future, including inter-app comms in an OS.

<comment><USER6> SCTP is much cooler. It's not HTTP-foucsed, doesn't violate layering and no- one uses it!

<comment><USER5> AFAIU, the upcoming browser-to-browser networking in RTCWeb will be SCTP over DTLS over UDP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a variety of reasons I recently needed a reverse proxy(#1) and went with Apache 2.2 w/Google's mod_spdy. What are the advantages, if any (above and beyond that nginx has a lot of cred right now), of using nginx? In a prior build-out nginx didn't even support HTTP/1.1 on the inside side of the reverse proxy, while Apache 2.2 does.

#1 - We use it as a "least effort" geodistributed CDN. GeoDNS directs worldwide users (a small number of very high value users) to their local reverse proxy that has local caching of cacheable resources. Those proxies speak to the normal HTTP back-end servers through an SSH tunnel).

<comment><AUTHOR> Nginx is widely regarded to be much more efficient than Apache, as it using non-blocking IO. I believe Nginx does support HTTP/1.1 now.

<comment><USER8> Apache can use event-driven non-blocking IO too, as well as the more traditional thread-per-connection mode.

<comment><USER9> Apache's event MPM is not really an event MPM. It's a slightly modified worker MPM. It puts all idle connections (keepalive state) and listeners in a single thread. Each active connection gets its own thread.

The event MPM also behaves the same as the worker MPM for SSL connections.

<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html>

<comment><USER10> This is incorrect for Apache 2.4: In 2.4 there is async write completion.

SSL behavior is still like the worker MPM, due to design issues in mod_ssl and filter stack. This is unlikely to change until 3.0.

<comment><USER9> In what sense is Apache 2.4.2's event mpm event-based when this is the result of siege -c 1000 <http://hostname:port/sample.txt>

      server-info selections
      MPM Name: event
      MPM Information: Max Daemons: 1 Threaded: yes Forked: yes

      server-status selections
      1550 requests/sec - 1.6 GB/second - 1.1 MB/request
      9 requests currently being processed, 41 idle workers

      W__W_____W_W_______R______W______W_______W__W_____..............
      ................................................................
      ......................

If those are asynchronous response writing handlers in the sense that they could be handled by an event loop, why do they have their own threads?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Time Pyramid - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_pyramid <comment><USER2> Welp, that aint gonna be finshed. Less than a dozen more block say, and civilization will have collapsed.</comment>


Google to Acquire YouTube for $1.65B in Stock (2006) - daniel-levin http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/10/google-to-acquire-youtube-for-165_09.html

<comment><AUTHOR> They were sued by shareholders because they "paid too much".

<comment><USER2> And they may have. Today's bubble prices don't mean they didn't.

<comment><USER3> YouTube has 1 billion+ users and is doing $4bn / year. A great acquisition by google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chump change in today's market.</comment>


Designing your UI for feature discovery with user research data - <AUTHOR> https://io.usabilityhub.com/improving-navigation-elements-a-ui-optimization-case-study-with-user-research-data-e08648fd1011 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here! Would love to hear about similar research if anyone has any!</comment>


IPhone 4 may be Apple's Vista perhaps, but show me Microsoft's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflix.net/latest-apple-iphone/microsoft-exec-iphone-4-may-be-apple's-vista-–-perhaps-but-show-me-microsoft's-iphone.html <comment><USER2> I think the author is missing a few key points.

The author says 'iPhone 4, flawed as it may be, is also (in my opinion) one of the most advanced and beautiful pieces of electronics ever made'. But Microsoft doesn't make 'pieces of electroics' with the exception of a few devices recently which the author points to as shining examples Surface, ZuneHD, Xbox 360.

Microsofts iPhone is Windows and Office. Consumers don't gush about it because everybody has it. Same way we don't talk about great air or water. These are things that people use all day every day and as long as it works, we don't complain. When it fails (Vista) then we're all up in arms about it. Windows 7 is a really nice OS. But my computer isn't a Windows 7 computer. It's a gateway. It happens to be running Windows 7 but that is not how I identify it.

If you have an Android phone, you probably don't say it's an android. You say you've got a nexus one, or HTC desire or whatever.

For the most part, it seems we don't create the same attachment to non- physical things as we do to physical things. This is where Apple has always had an upper hand and used it VERY well to their advantage.

If you look around most coffee shops, people get the feeling that everybody is on a mac. Mac's all look the same. So even if you have 10 people with computers - 1 dell, 1 acer, 1 lenovo, 1 toshiba, 1 asus, 1 sony, 1 toshiba, 3 macs. It appears as though most people are on mac. but in reality, most of those people are on windows (ok, maybe 1 or two on linux).

What bothers me most about the iPhone 4 antenna issue, isn't that there is an issue. Stuff happens, and people still love the phone. It was more the initial message coming from Apple that it wasn't their fault, it was yours. And if it didn't work, it didn't matter, the customer was holding it wrong, or the customer didn't buy a protector for it.

Personally, with almost all Apple products I've bought (with the exception of early ipods), I've felt that the company is constantly over promising and under-delivering, and then it isn't their fault, it's mine. There must be something wrong with me if my Mac is slow/loud/whatever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows 3.1 perhaps or Windows NT if you want the business perspective.

<comment><USER4> Word, Excel, DOS</comment></comment>


Show HN: Causerific - Locate Good Causes and Charities in your area - <AUTHOR> http://www.causerific.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a side project I always wanted to put out. I have found that a lot of people actually want to help good causes or charities, but are financially unable. With Causerific, I have added features that let you find the causes within 50miles of your exact location, so even if you can't help financially, you may be able to donate your energy and time to build that playground for the orphanage or put together a house for the homeless. Feedback of ways to proceed with this would be appreciated! Thanks HN</comment>


The person they'll become - <AUTHOR> https://37signals.com/svn/posts/3660-the-person-theyll-become

<comment><USER2> Note the increase in 37Signals' posts as they ramp up for their book release next week. They are smart marketers.

<comment><USER3> What does this have to do with the article?

<comment><USER2> It mainly has to do with the fact that this is the second article from SVN to make the HN homepage today, and we can expect to see a continuous stream of articles being submitted until the book launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >> When I hire designers, I look for future perfect people. Some people have the potential, but they haven't had the opportunities. Their portfolios are full of mediocre work, but it's not because they're mediocre designers. It's because they've been given mediocre opportunities.

How? How do you figure out someone is "future perfect" and not mediocre? If things were that easy, wouldn't all of us be hiring "future perfect" people anyway?

<comment><USER5> I don't think he's implying that it's easy, but that he actually looks for diamonds in the rough instead of purely people who are amazing in the now.

Hockey is hobby that I follow a lot and despite metrics and scouting, a LOT of prospects who blossomed into all-stars ended up falling into later rounds while there are notable top ten draftees who ended up as huge busts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One time I read an article pointing out that more men tend to be hired for their potential, while more women are hired for their experience. Not 100%, but as a tendency.

Might be worth a gut check if we're looking for "future perfect people" who are both men and women.

</comment><comment><USER7> Everybody is an investor. Always. Either with their own money or with their own time.

There are good and bad investors. The good investors find the people to invest in early on by seeing what person they will be within five years before everyone else does. The bad investors...don't, they only invest in the people that are already amazing.

However, amazing people want to give the return to the ones early one who believed in them when nobody else did. They do so, because they know that by rewarding their early investors(this can be a girlfriend, friend, investor, co-founder), they skew the world a little more to rewarding the visionaries who can look into the future, which enables them to do the same thing all over again, just with an even bigger impact.

</comment><comment><USER8> Although I agree with Jason's article, his way of thinking of a minority. Most of the people/interviewers see what they have currently and make a split second judgement on the person as to whether they will be able to perform or not.

This is not just for designers but also for coders. Just because someone cannot perform in the interview does not mean they cannot perform in their day jobs.

I hope the hiring mentally changes their image of this.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a worthwhile, yet lacking perspective in our conversation about tech workers. No, the answer is not issuing millions of new STEM immgration visas, the answer is investing in supporter employees so they can reach their full potential.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is completely normal to hire someone you're willing to invest in. If you're going to a job interview, and don't get the impression that they're willing to invest in you. Then you should take that as a warning.</comment>


Umair Haque: Detroit's 6 Mistakes and How Not to Make Them - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/11/detroits_6_mistakes_and_how_no.html

<comment><USER2> Pull his string, out comes: "So all we have to do is leverage information across multiple paradigms to create a shift from a top down hierarchy into a holographically oriented multiplex and virally spread the data, growing value organically rather than forcing it industrially. In the 21st century 20th century thinking won't work, because it results in detroit, which sucks. Google doesn't suck because it knows how to tap communities, groups, and markets for information, resources, and ads, creating value from the decentralization of power. Detroit should be google because it's the 21st century or something." until the string runs out.

I swear that guy is on the same drugs I am.</comment>