Rethinking rent: Maybe we should stop trying to be a nation of homeowners - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/22/rethinking_rent/?page=full <comment><USER2> Home ownership strikes me as just a symptom of another more fundamental sacrosanct value in society, that of stability and security.

The author alludes to that in the article, but I think he needs to play it up more. For many people, _this_ seems the real default, and buying a home is just outward evidence of that. Buying a home is a statement of commitment, that you will be there for at least as long as needed to make up the closing costs and what-have-you. Whether the house is just a byproduct of that attitude, or meant to directly project it, I don't know. But I don't think that everyone should make that sort of commitment, or that we should disproportionately laud those that do.

This is not a critique against people who desire security and stability, this is a critique against the attitude that you _must_ be secure and stable to be worthy. I've seen it make a lot of people around me become depressed, because they simultaneously desire a more interesting life but fear being branded as flighty and irresponsible. Maybe this is their own problem, for being unable to reason their way out of this internal battle, but it is ubiquitous enough that it indicates a more fundamental brokenness.

I also wonder about the reported psychological benefits the author mentions. I wonder how much of this is induced by the belief that home ownership is meant to make you happy. If it doesn't then there is something wrong with you, not with your decision to buy. Not that there aren't happy homeowners, but that there _are_ unhappy ones. It's the same with a lot of defaults; everyone else seems happy enough with them, why aren't you? Perhaps one of the biggest defaults, and the one that drives a lot of this, is the belief that those who follow the defaults are happier deeper than the image they project.

<comment><USER3> There's something to be said for stability too. I'm getting tired of losing all my friends every two years.

Also, if you ever try to get involved in your local community, you will find that nobody really cares about you if they know you're going to be gone in a year. The people that have influence in the community are the folks that stick around.

We live in a very young-thinking age, anxious to throw out established wisdom and forge our own way. However, I fear that we are too eager to discount the _wisdom_ in established wisdom. I'm not saying that we have to swallow it wholesale. But there's a reason it came into existence in the first place.

My peer group has no concept of "community". We don't belong to one. Or rather, we belong to a new one every two years, which amounts to the same thing.

We pay lip service to the ideas of helping our neighbors and building strong communities, but we have no idea what those words actually mean. We try to fulfill these ideals through national politics, but it's not the same thing as actually helping your neighbor, personally, in real life.

So sure, people need to rent and move around when they are young and finding their way. But eventually it's good to settle down and belong to a place. In the aggregate, it builds a stronger society.

I went to a church around here on Christmas (I'm an atheist, but I like the carols), and it was startling to interact with people outside my peer group. Some of the parishioners had lived in San Diego for decades. They had known each other for decades. They knew who had children, and who was elderly, and who was sick and needed help. They knew who was widowed and who had children overseas in Iraq and could use a nice meal with friends. When someone moved away, it was a big event, and everybody was sad to see them leave.

When I'm sick or need help, my facebook friends send me nice messages. It's not the same.

Damn, I sound old for a guy that's 26.

<comment><USER4> What's so great about helping the "community"? This is an honest question.

I am European and I moved to California some months ago. I find it both amusing and mysterious that people here in the U.S. talk about "community" so much. I really don't get it.

<comment><USER5> There have already been some good answers to this question, but to answer from the asshole's perspective (read: mine,) helping your community is really about helping yourself.

Helping a sick neighbor hopefully helps to keep them from dying, which helps keep their house off the market, which helps to preserve your ability to sell -- nobody wants to buy on a street everybody's selling on.

Keeping the neighborhood clean preserves your property values, which is easier to see.

Looking out for your neighbors, or at least giving them the impression you are, means it's more likely they'll look out for you, which means they're more likely to investigate or call the cops when they see a prowler outside your home.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest. History shows that the systems that work work by aligning the interests of the individual with the community, economics, politics, society, it's all the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always rented.

While I've "tossed my money down the drain", I've been able to live on the coast, in a mountain town (wanted to learn snowboarding) and in Amsterdam, to name 3 places.

Is having the unique experiences worth it? To me, they were.

<comment><USER8> I've done both, and I like owning my own home.

Biggest advantage of home ownership? Freedom to do what you like with it; I can hack my own home.

But - I'm outside the US and I pay far less (half) in mortgage payments than I would in rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Others favor greater security for renters - such as laws making eviction more difficult"

This is nothing more than a government-mandated insurance policy. Landlords require higher margins due to the risk of freeloaders. Also, landlords may avoid renting to those most likely to be "helped" by such policies.

It is ironic that today's laws make home ownership a safer choice if one defaults on payments -- In most states, foreclosure takes much longer than eviction. So, given the choice between renting and taking on an interest-only, no money down home loan, the less risky choice for a family is ownership. Of course, those families couldn't get such a loan today.

<comment><USER10> Totally agree with your sentiments, but the obvious objection to your argument is that ones credit rating would take a massive hit on default, affecting everything from car insurance, to rental agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In pursuit of my hobby of photographing abandoned buildings, I drive through the parts of Cleveland recognized Nationally as the "epicenter of the foreclosure crisis." On almost every block in the ghetto is a home with part of the roof covered by a blue plastic tarp. The owner doesn't have the money to repair the roof (or doesn't believe doing so to be a good investment?). There is much other evidence of short-term choice rather than long-term economically optimal decision-making when it comes to property upkeep. Perhaps, if these homes were owned by professional landlords, repairs would be made.

<comment><USER11> Funny, from personal experience landlords need to get pushed by tenants constantly to make repairs.

<comment><USER12> They have an incentive to keep repair costs under control, not to avoid repairs entirely. But, that said, not everyone is economically rational. Some landlords do perceive fixing stuff just as an expense rather than a way to ensure repeat business.

I'm either lucky or super picky because my landlords have usually been great about fixing stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Homeownership by itself is not useful, but it does promote saving. For the average family, a home is the most expensive thing they will ever save for. After 10 years in that mortgage, they'll have significant equity that they probably wouldn't have otherwise had.

Is it a risk and possibly a poor choice to own a house? Versus other investments, possibly. Versus consumption and other disposable income spending, absolutely not. There a lot of people that could do better if there were more knowledgeable about ways to save capital, but it the absence of the knowledge, owning a home is not a bad default.

<comment><USER14> This is one of the most important points : the enforced savings plan and relatively illiquid asset. For many people, the enforced discipline of putting money away by paying down their principal pays off for them. Of course you can refinance or trade homes every 5 years and get nowhere. But if you stay put for a long period of time, buy wisely in the first place, and maintain the property, it will pay off. Well placed property is uniquely inflation proof because it normally contains intrinsic value.

You can achieve the same thing by renting and regularly putting a portion of your income away into quality assets : but the temptation to liquidate part of your portfolio always will remain strong. This is where people come unstuck.

The danger is in this advice/thought process being taken to apply to all property, regardless of location. I can foresee far-flung suburbs with long commutes continually falling in value as people factor in the cost of transport to their overall living costs.

The government should exit the property incentive market. No tax deductibility for renting or buying. No incentives or guarantees for high-risk mortgages. Let the free will of the people decide what is the best for them. The only laws in place should govern the quality of the property, and against unfair eviction/foreclosure. And there should be laws in place to allow for longer term tenancies. On any commercial property, it's easy to get 10-12 year leases on a property. It's rare to get more than a 12 month lease on a rental property : probably precisely because it's easier to evict a commercial tenant than a residential tenant. The more government controls are put on tenancies, the worse the overall effect for tenants (like rent control, which results in a good deal for a few tenants, and a bad deal for most)

If you could sign a 10-year lease on a house and be allowed to modify the interior (paint, floorcoverings, etc) then the merits of onwnership vs renting could be more equally compared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Owning a home is lovely. But being overexposed to real estate, like any other asset class, is imprudent.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Someone_ must own those homes. Then, is the article suggesting more corporates/govt/funds become homeowners and gen. public pay them rent? When too many gen. public rely on rentals would it not lead to oligopoly of few who own the homes?

<comment><USER17> It's not uncommon for a middle-class family to buy a multi-family house, live in one unit, and rent out the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad the article points out the cruel government incentive to buy rather than rent. It's one of the few regressive taxes (other than the lottery, some might say) that we have in the US.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget cigarette & alcohol taxes

<comment><USER9> Good point. When Cleveland levied a new sin tax to finance its stadium, the local labor unions opposed it citing the unfair burden such taxes place on their members!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagree with that article...home ownership is something everyone should strive for. The home equity line is a huge security blanket for living in today's economy. Thats an additional $100-200K line of credit that you'll always have access to.

<comment><USER9> I couple hundred grand in insured CDs would be a much better security blanket.

<comment><USER19> obviously...but what makes you think you'll be able to get that much, when most of your money is going towards rent? At least with home ownership, most of the money you pay, will go back in your pocket when you sell the house

<comment><USER20> If you can sell the house. In a down market, you might lose money, or like the article says: get stuck in a bad local job market.

The potential payoff from selling your home isn't "security", its counting your chickens before they've hatched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I only finally purchased a house in an attempt to get away from a series of noisy apartment neighbors. I'd had enough trouble with noise in apartments that I was unwilling to make a purchase commitment in a similar environment (shared building).

If apartments and condos were quieter, I would probably have continued to rent. Being not "settled down" at this point in time, the flexibility and lack of hassle dealing with ownership issues (especially maintenance) are definite pluses. Or I might have purchased a condo or coop unit.

As people natter on about more efficient living, I continue to wonder whether there is a model that could incentivise the construction of apartment units that make a serious attempt at soundproofing. I guestimate 10% - 25% additional construction cost, depending on degree of soundproofing and on economies of scale. Hopefully toward the lower end, even with good soundproofing, particularly if there were a significant amount of such construction occurring.

(I don't know about retrofitting, although I am skeptical as to its being effective in many situations.)

<comment><USER10> Dude. Sound proofing is exceedingly cheap. I was trained as a structural engineer and met many building engineers and architects throughout my time. There are materials that cost less than a dollar per square foot that can reduce sound to nearly zero. Think 1% not %10 to %25. Thing is, sound proofing isn't even on the constructors radar half the time because it doesn't sell units. That is the problem.

<comment><USER22> I would probably buy the _How to Soundproof Your Apartment or House for Cheap, Guaranteed_ ebook. You could probably find some not too competitive keywords for this, or find people bitching about noisy neighbors on Twitter.

How hard/expensive would it be to do as a retrofit?

<comment><USER10> Retrofit would be more pricey, but not because of the materials, mostly because of the electrical appliances you have to move.

There is an online magazine called "Design Build Magazine" that had an article on soundproofing/fireproofing. You are right though. Maybe I should do some research into soundproofing and write a "How to Soundproof Your Apartment or House for Cheap, Guaranteed ebook" I'll even give you a free copy as your cut.

<comment><USER23> you don't have to get it down to perfect. any noise reduction technique that doesn't look completely goofy would have me as a buyer. for example, the only noise that really gets me is low-frequency foot-sounds from people walking around in the unit above me, and even then, only in my bedroom. I never hear my adjacent neighbors. I imagine each renter's situation would be different. also, it seems that most documentation on sound-proofing is written by the same audiophiles that can tell if you're using gold or copper connectors. I'm not that picky, I just want to sleep a little better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> On the one hand, a house is one of the only forms of leveraged investments the majority of the population will ever have access to.

On the other hand, it's a massive liability. Reduced mobility, little to no protection against disasters(fire, flood, tornado), property taxes, maintenance and repairs, unpredictable market forces, and so on.

I rent a house.. it's the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER25> A couple more articles like this and I'll start looking to buy a home.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree. Actually, this is not a new idea. I remember hearing this view expressed around 1999 or 2000 on Online Tonight on CNET's Radio if you can believe it. That view has stuck with me ever since.

</comment><comment><USER27> What we need is lower home prices across the board, along with smaller homes instead of 4000 sqf for a family of 3. See the Rocio Romoro homes.

<comment><USER28> How does this address the problems raised in the article?

<comment><USER27> The article states that "owning" is not the right solution for everyone, but what it omits to state is that in most of those countries where the majority of the population can afford to not own a home, their social security takes care of individuals once they reach the age at which working to fork that rent out is not possible anymore.

In the US, that is not currently possible. So the solution indeed is to buy a house and hope that by the time you reach retirement and cannot work anymore, you at least have a home and maybe the tiny bit of money you were able to save will suffice to pay your bills and food.

The solution in the US is not to fix social security and ensure those who rent today will have enough to rent when they retire, it is to reduce the cost of home ownership, so by the time you are 65 you already own a home you can afford to live in because you own it after only 15 years of hard work, not 30+.</comment></comment></comment>


How Capitalism Changed American Literature - <AUTHOR> https://www.publicbooks.org/how-capitalism-changed-american-literature/ <comment><USER2> This is fascinating. For those that want to save time reading, the author used a text classifier and had a 70% accuracy rate predicting if a book was published by a conglomerate or an independent publisher.

Which means there is a distinct difference between the type of content that indies will publish vs conglomerates.

Whether this has an effect on literature is what the rest of the article is about.

<comment><USER3> > the author used a text classifier and had a 70% accuracy rate predicting if > a book was published by a conglomerate or an independent publisher

Genuine question: is 70% actually a very successful rate? It's hard for me to tell without more information; if 70% (or 30%) of books are published by independent publishers, then 70% would be the same rate as just guessing the more common one every time.

<comment><USER4> It depends on your definition of success but 70% accuracy for classification problems with 50/50 odds is at least useful. In this case, "guessing the more common one" would not be a problem as the data were evenly split between indie and RH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or we could just say that any system of economic relations in order to finanace books and produce will cause distortion in litrature. Its a comparison to a nirvana that never existed and will never exists. And the difference he explains can be argued about in many different ways, and how it differs from the 60s can also be explained in a number of different ways.

Seems to me the authors was trying to find something that confirmed his priors and he did and then used that as confirmation for a whole larger theory about how he sees the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> Article cities this essay by the brilliant Zadie Smith -- though sadly behind a pay wall:

[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/11/20/two-paths-for- th...](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/11/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/)

Smith has read aloud several of her short stories in free podcast form at The New Yorker. All are cunning social satire, wielded against on a wide range of deserving targets.

[https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting read, I have a hunch we'll get similar results if these models were applied to contemporary music as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author is basically taking a situation open to interpretation and using it to slam capitalism as producing mechanical literature?

His conglomerate/nonprofit dichotomy is more accurately free-market vs. state- sponsored. The "conglomerates" which come off as evil in the story have to prove their value to their customers who voluntarily fund them. The "non- profits" are free from the constraint of needing people to actually want to read their books because the population is forced by the government to fund them via taxes.

There are very interesting questions of how economic forces affect art and culture but this author isn't asking them.

If anything the machine learning model showed that when people _voluntarily and intentionally_ fund the publication of books they prefer a certain type of language, but how this author sees this language as "mechanical" is beyond me.

<comment><USER9> Yeah - sadly it seemed "experiment tailored towards conclusions" as opposed to analyzing the reasons behind it. Especially if they had ones published by one author in one framework and one in another to compare.

The supply side and logistics could make it "mechanical" because it is known to sell well but much of it seems to be anti-popular rhetoric that anything widely liked must be flawed.

While there is a lowest common denominator drive from sheer weight of numbers (most money per person, targetting mean and below average getting good money per effort - frankly the higher brow crowd demand more effort) that doesn't mean they are automatically inferior nor those outside of its framework neccessarily advantaged. The converse doesn't mean "unpopular" are automatically better. Really popularity isn't that great of a heuristic either way.

To get to a larger point qbout writing everyone produces to some sort of motivation or incentive. Even "pure" writers doing it not for making money have at least an emotional connection - let alone attempts at gaining status or promoting ideas.</comment></comment>


iOS Maps: Replacing MapKit with ArcGIS - <AUTHOR> https://developers.geoloqi.com/ios/maps

<comment><USER2> As someone who had to work in ArcGIS using their C++ COM, their java, .NET and their python implementations for several years can I strongly urge you not to do this?

Why? Well, things that worked in one language, wouldn't in others. Bugs where we had to work around one way, had to be worked around another. The fact that the API had "get_Foo", "GetFoo" and "getFoo" methods all in different classes should really give you an idea. The library was awesome way back when it was cutting edge but from using it, I'd wager that it was developed by different teams, staffed with different resources, all made to work under different deadlines.

<comment><USER3> Can you recommend any better alternatives? They seem to be a defacto standard, but I've found them..."fussy" to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another alternative to MapKit is MapBox's opensource iOS SDK. They have better support for OpenStreetMap layers and custom maps built with TileMill.

<comment><USER5> Here's a few links about the open source Mapbox iOS SDK: <http://mapbox.com/mobile/>

Installation/Guide <http://mapbox.com/mapbox-ios-sdk/>

Github Repo <https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-ios-sdk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meta: I really cannot get over thinking "Cisco" whenever I see " _I_ OS". Is HN auto-capitalizing these titles?

The first few pages of results on HNSearch reveal that whenever iOS is the first word in a title, it is "IOS", but if it isn't then it stays correct. Except for this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4673060>

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, it autocapitalized on submit, but not on edit.</comment></comment>


The Mystery of the Missing Files: Windows 8 versus NTFS - Kilo-byte https://plus.google.com/+BenSkinner/posts/fdAkMweF7j1

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing I don't understand - why on earth wasn't NTFS-3G refusing to mount the NTFS partition? I am sure that if it detects it isn't fully unmounted it refuses to mount it read/write...</comment>


Three easy ways to fix the App Store. And one really, really hard way. - <AUTHOR> http://seldo.com/weblog/2009/11/17/three_easy_ways_to_fix_the_app_store_and_one_really_really_hard_way

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the author isn't barking up the wrong tree. I don't think that the App Store review process can be 'fixed'. Instead, it might be doomed.

Android allows for unfettered development, as does Symbian. WebOS is headed that way too, according to their developer relations team. On every other smartphone platform, you are (or will be) able to just develop an app and deploy it onto people's phones, without running the gauntlet of an approval process.

Judging from the current state of the App Store, the review process doesn't materially improve the quality of applications. However, it does slow down and frustrate developers. If open platforms like Android gain enough market share, I think a lot of devs are going to jump ship just so they don't have to deal with the headaches of review any more.

The folks running Apple aren't dumb. They're sticking by their guns because the iPhone ecosystem is working marvellously right now. However, if they start to see a large migration of developers, they'll probably do whatever it takes to bring them back. And that might mean killing 'review'.

<comment><USER3> >Judging from the current state of the App Store, the review process doesn't materially improve the quality of applications.

It's hard to know that for certain. We don't see exactly what gets rejected. We only hear the horror stories of basically good developers encountering frustratingly arbitrary and trivial objections to otherwise solid submissions.

But the majority of rejection we probably don't hear about, and we don't know what exactly they are able to keep out of the iPhone App Store with this review layer. Apple may see a lot of apps being rejected for very good reasons, but we aren't necessarily hearing about those rejection.

Ultimately Apple is going to have to weigh things for themselves, balancing the frustration of good developers versus the legitimate protection of the end users from malicious or malformed submissions. So far they seem satisfied with the ratio, and are happy to prioritize the end user over the developer.

<comment><USER4> I find it interesting that we keep acting like Apple somehow invented the App Store. These are issues we've been dealing with for a LONG time, in a variety of different ways. Handango, for instance, has been functioning as an on- device app store for getting close to a decade.

It's interesting, then, to look at their product and see how they never really solved these issues particularly well either.

The BIGGEST issue for Apple isn't really touched on in the article. It's about proper discoverability. The problem with app-stores in general is that they have a lot of trouble allowing the best apps to filter to the top. The more apps that clutter the store, the more difficult it becomes to differentiate between them. If there is a password manager that everyone universally loves, then how do you grant exposure to a new password manager that may be better, but doesn't have the user recommendations (yet) to match it.

It's that problem that plagues these stores. Handango (and others) tried a number of approaches. The "what's new category" isn't enough really. The exposure length is to short. Staff picks are nice, but that becomes an exercise in political maneuvering as opposed to app quality.

It's this issue that really mandates a review process. The review process at least serves as a rudimentary filter that keeps the REALLY bad apps from competeing for mindshare with the quality new ones (thus increasing exposure, even if it is for an already to brief period).

Ultimately the app store lives and dies with it's ability to put the best applications for a purpose into the hands of customers looking to solve problems. Apple is starting to deal with the problems of scale, and that is where it should be focused.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Oh, and for the love of god give me some ability to get a refund for an app. Read reviews and count the number of times folks have essentially gotten ripped off by a product that barely functions (or sometimes doesn't function at all). Eventually we all are no longer enamored with the novelty of iPhone applications and we want some accountability behind our purchases.

I'm very wary with paid apps at this point for that reason alone.

<comment><USER5> Allowing refunds might relieve some of the downward pressure on prices. No one really cares enough to get 99 cents back for an app that sucked, but conversely, no one's willing to pay more than 99 cents for an app that might suck without any possibility of refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They don't need to fork Objective-C to lock down the use of private APIs!

They just need to check for disallowed or computed symbols in the sumbitted binaries. They don't do any static analysis whatsoever — not even strings!

<comment><USER7> The fact that private APIs can crash the device, access private data or cause issues with the network means Apple hasn't done their job in securing the OS. If OS X allowed processes in unprivileged user accounts access to hardware or other users' files, that would be considered a massive security hole

<comment><USER8> The vulnerability was due solely to users running SSH (which is not installed except by jailbreaking) without changing the default root password. It's surprising that such a gaping security hole took as long as it did to be widely exploited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anything on Cydia ever "broken the network" by using these private APIs, whether accidentally or maliciously? I'm starting to think this whole "cellular networks are fragile webs of tissue paper" meme got started from a pure guess, and even if previously correct, may no longer be correct for 3.5G.

<comment><USER10> Wasn't there a rick roll virus spreading between jailbroken phones just last week? I'm guessing the next one could be a lot more malicious and with enough phones involved cause some service disruptions.

<comment><USER11> I believe that was because many people never bothered to change the default password for the OpenSSH app. It's seems like that kind of thing could be exploited regardless of venue.

<comment><USER12> Apple doesn't allow daemons which should slow down worms quite a bit.

<comment><USER7> Except for MobileMail, MobileSafari, SpringBoard, locationd, mdnsresponderd, pasteboardd, mediaserverd, launchd, configd, fairplayd, dataaccessd, accessoryd, BTServer, CoreTelephony, apsd and MobilePhone

<comment><USER12> We're talking about security vulnerabilities introduced by third-party apps, so your list isn't relevant. An approved third-party iPhone app cannot include a daemon, therefore it's less likely that a bug in said app would allow worms to get into the phone.

<comment><USER7> Worms don't require a user-installed daemon when the Apple-provided ones are also vulnerable (example: the SMS vulnerability in 3.0)

I agree though, disallowing third-party daemons reduces the damage exploited apps can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The whole "we need a review board because otherwise VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN!!" is just a scare-tactic to justify Apple's draconian attitude towards developers.

Android is open, and nothing bad has happened in over a year. BlackBerry and WinMo have been open for years and nothing bad has happened. Quite frankly, if you believe that Apple line, you're a fool.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.obsessable.com/news/2009/01/26/android- applicatio...](http://www.obsessable.com/news/2009/01/26/android-application- deleting-data-from-t-mobile-g1-phones/)

> The application has reportedly deleted all the contacts from the device's > internal memory, as well as all data on SD cards on the device.

I'm not justifying Apple's review process, I'm just saying bad stuff _has_ happened on Android before.</comment></comment>


The Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://mobocube.com/post/16512228268/cleartrip-hurry-algorithm

<comment><USER2> Hi,

My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work.

Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure.

In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price.

When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers.

Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this:

1\. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats.

2\. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point

3\. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on

At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of.

I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a minor usability problem has cost you a potential customer. The question is how many other customers have had the same problem but not bothered to write blog posts.

Relying on tooltips is probably a bad idea. Maybe change the button text to 'X seats at this price'. Don't make me think. :-)

On the bright side, be thankful for the good user feedback. I wish everyone who stopped using my product wrote a blog post.

<comment><USER4> This made them a ton of customers who read the label as everyone else, felt pressured and bought the ticket [ _].

[_] Not that I endorse that practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just tested it myself and can't confirm it. I started by searching for a flight for one person and got a few offers which said "3/4 seats left" and if you hover over the image you'll get the alt text "x seats left for that price".

It actually looks like a neat feature which shows you how many seats are left in the cheapest fare group that applies to your settings.

EDIT: I just did some more testing, searching for different person counts, and it does exactly what I thought.

When you get "3 seats left" then you can book for 3 persons for the cheapest price, and whenever you add a 4th person, the price is higher than four times the 1-person price

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty inane article and mildly paranoid conclusion. If it had said "x seats available" it would have been grammatically correct but too long for a button. And yes, "algorithm" was geek linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER7> It basically shows the number of seats left in the same fare-basis. The problem is with the communication, and not the supposed "algorithm".

</comment><comment><USER8> There's this super-budget airline in Australia, Tiger Airways, so budget that they skimped on training pilots and got shutdown for some time.

Anyway, their website at some point had two hidden features: if you tried to book in a group it would charge you more per person (because you're depriving them of "credit card surcharge") AND just checking the price of a certain flight a certain amount of times (showing interest in that flight) would raise the price by some increment for every other customer on the website automatically.

<comment><USER9> There's at least one site I know that raises prices when you are re-visiting the specific flight (via cookie tracking).

<comment><USER10> Is there a reason you can't tell us which one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why I've completely and utterly screened out "limited special offer" anything these days. I will not be conned into not shopping around (which is why they do this, obviously), and I don't buy things unless I need them at the time. Occasaionaly I'll lose out when there genuinely was limited stock available and it was a good price, but overall I'm probabbly better of and certainly less rushed.

All retail (web or bricks-and-mortar) and services advertising is lies pretty much at this point. A colleque gets an SMS from the local Bannatynes gym that he used to be a member of telling him about a limited time "rejoin" offer that has limited places. He has had the same message at least once a month for the last twelve months so basically both the calim of limited places and the claim that it is a limited time offer are basically lies. Or the DFDS sale "you'll never see these prices again!!!!!". The list is endless.

By being dishonest in these ways, some in the retail and services industries are pushing people like me (people with enough money to not mind that they might sometimes pay a little extra in order to avoid being lied to) away.

Having said that, the example given here _isn't_ actually lying (they don't say "only X seats available") though it is misleadingly presented, either accidentally or the site is being deliberately disengneuous, and if that is deliberate than it is little better than a lie.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is arguably an application of so-called "Dark Patterns"; the black hat of UX design. The red colour, the suggestive copy are all chosen to invoke a sense of urgency. A List Apart has a good article on the subject: [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns- deception-v...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dark-patterns-deception- vs.-honesty-in-ui-design/)

<comment><USER13> I think the theme of false urgency/scarcity is the main annoyance of the Cleartrip presentation. The rest of it is just a matter of Cleartrip displaying few seats for a narrow price, vs MakeMyTrip displaying more seats with a wider pricing range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since the price is not proportional to the number of passengers, I assume there are only x seats at the displayed price. Still misleading but not es "evil" as otherwise.

PS: I kinda take the word "algorithm" in teh lheadline as link bait. Without it, I would have never klicked the link.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people are calling this title linkbait for using the word "algorithm". But I think the author is being a bit _sarcastic_ here and hence the title of the post.

P.S: I'm not the author, I only found the article interesting when I found it on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER2> We've posted a more detailed explanation with screenshots and examples here:

<http://bit.ly/yP3muv>

<comment><USER15> Your screenshot shows the tooltip visible, which aren't by default (as already noted by a couple of commenters already).

Someone on twitter mentioned that they had bought some flight tickets only because of this 'confusion' : <https://twitter.com/#!/jayeshb/status/162512878287589377>

Is that a one-off case because of confusion?

<comment><USER2> We only launched this feature last week, so it's hard to say whether it's a "one-off" case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They won't change the interface, as it works for them.

When deciding between being shady and getting more money, and being honest and getting less money, they already chose their side.

</comment><comment><USER2> We've redesigned the feature now and it is now live in production.

Details of the design changes: <http://bit.ly/y3uvv0>

</comment><comment><USER16> PAWNed

</comment><comment><USER17> Well spotted... although it seems a little generous to call this an algorithm :-)

<comment><USER18> I am pretty sure I have seen the exact same "trick" being used on sites here in the US - including Kayak, and Orbitz etc. So I don't think Cleartip in the only travel site that does this. And probablly that is how Cleartrip got the idea from. Also, not to defend this practice in any way, but did not the OP realize that the price of the seats was changing each time he increased the number of passengers.</comment></comment>


What Product Managers Can Learn from Jiro Ono - <AUTHOR> http://ramen.io/post/102346825774/what-product-managers-can-learn-from-jiro-ono

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Trivia: this is actually the essay that is responsible for most of our attributable revenue at Blossom ([https://www.blossom.io](https://www.blossom.io)).</comment>


Apple releases dev preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with AirDrop, FileVault - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/24/apple_releases_preview_of_mac_os_x_10_7_lion_with_airdrop_filevault.html

<comment><USER2> So it looks like they are removing the need for the Quit command and the Save command, and are adding automatic document versioning.

In other words, Apple has finally brought the key features of Lisa OS to the Mac. It took a little longer than expected.

<comment><USER3> It took 6 years for the iPod to gain Wireless and more space than a Nomad. So I don't see why you are shocked about 27 years for complicated stuff like Versioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I reading this right? That Lion Server is included in the normal OS X Lion release?

That's pretty awesome if so. Means I'd be willing to fork over the cash for one of those Mac Minis to use for Calendar/Contact syncing instead of using MobileMe.

<comment><USER5> Previously, only OS X Server was allowed to be virtualized (on Apple hardware). I wonder if Apple is going to open it up to everyone.

<comment><USER6> Probably not, but I really wish they would. It would make experimenting with programming kexts a lot less painful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Block-level full disk encryption would be a huge win, eliminating dependence on PGP, which is pretty close to abandonware at Symantec (a recent 10.5 dot release corrupted PGP WDE drives, for instance). Presumably, if it's cool enough to have a brand name at Apple, it'll also gracefully handle hibernation, which no FDE currently does.

Fingers crossed!

<comment><USER8> Sadly this feature comes just as SSDs are heading toward ubiquity -- whole disk encryption greatly slows down SSDs to near hard drive levels when done in software, as PGP users have learned ([http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk- Encryption-for/PGP-WD...](http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk-Encryption- for/PGP-WDE-very-slow-with-OWC-Extreme-Pro-RE-SSD/td-p/35153)).

That said, some SSDs can do their own encryption in hardware, but they need OS support (via Trusted Computing Group standards) for it to be effective (storing the key within the controller would defeat the point). Hopefully this, too, will be supported under Lion. Certain versions of Windows 7 already support it.

In any case it's a very positive (if long overdue) move.

<comment><USER9> Whole drive encryption (e.g. TCG Opal) has many drawbacks. Most importantly: it's "whole drive". There's no way to segregate individual user data and still get the benefits of hardware accelerated encryption. For systems that need segregated users (or even something like an unencrypted system volume with a single encrypted user), you need to toss encryption hardware into the upstream IO pipeline for any benefit. Sticking such hardware into the drive is too restrictive, and also raises the cost of each drive.

Furthermore, many chipsets (such as Nehalem and Sandy Bridge) have integrated AES acceleration that offer _significant_ encryption/decryption performance improvements. While encrypted reads/writes will never match the performance of standard reads/writes, Nehalem and SB very much mitigate the performance hit and will still give multi-hundred MB/s throughput on fast SSDs.

If I were Apple, I'd ignore TCG Opal and focus on distributing Nehalem and Sandy Bridge throughout the product lineup. (Or, in the case of iOS devices, toss custom ASICS on the upstream IO pipeline.) Then you can offer true encrypted user segregation (or one encrypted user and an unencrypted OS volume) while still buying standard HDDs and SDDs in bulk. Win-win.

<comment><USER7> The point of WDE isn't to do fine-grained separation of interests by security level; it's to ensure that a stolen drive yields nothing to an attacker. In a lot of settings, anything less than whole disk encryption sets a process in motion requiring formal disclosures.

Segregated users and accelerated filesystem-level encryption is all good stuff, but even with it, you still need WDE.

<comment><USER9> No, you don't. Only user data needs to be encrypted. There's no value in encrypting the OS or any apps. None. By definition, they must ship on unencrypted media. Why pay any encryption/decryption cost for information that exists unencrypted?

Assuming a perfect implementation, whole disk encryption costs money and power. Any additional logic on the drives will raise their cost (at no benefit if there's already CPU provided acceleration for the same operations) and will raise power consumption.

The biggest benefit comes from truly segregated, properly and completely encrypted user volumes, where all user-created is always encrypted with their private key at all times. Chrome OS does exactly this, and all OSs should strive to do the same. [1]

Opal solves a single use case. Flexible per-user encryption solves all cases and offers better performance.

[1] [http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/p...](http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/protecting-cached-user-data)

<comment><USER10> Without WDE, how can you verify that the OS and apps haven't been altered? If a laptop with WDE is left in my control for days and then returned, you know you're still safe. Without WDE, you have to completely wipe the unencrypted portion lest modified apps upload your encrypted user data once the system boots.

<comment><USER9> Arguably, all binaries comprising the OS and installed apps should be individually signed to ensure they're never modified, even by a malicious user who can access the encrypted disk.

Whole disk encryption guarantees nothing more than your disk is encrypted. On pure single-user systems that are _never_ accessible by other users, that might be fine. The second you allow more that one user, remote or local, to access the disk, you may as well treat the disk as unencrypted. At that point, you need to rely on per-user data encryption and OS and app signature validation to prevent malicious attacks.

<comment><USER7> Yes! WDE only makes sense for single-user systems (ie, most systems). Yes! WDE does nothing about malicious software. You are correct on both counts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Still no talk about resolution independent UI or some sort of DPI scaling. I have to wonder how people are using OS X on their 27" iMacs with very high-res screens. My eyes bleed on my 17" MBP with 1920x1200 - Windows DPI scaling works quite well for the most part.

<comment><USER12> Well, working on a larger monitor eventually weans you of the obsessive need to full screen everything.

Once you get used to working with documents scattered all over, and clicking on them to move them to the front and so forth, it becomes a more productive way of working.

I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things. I think possibly the thing is that all windows look so similar on Windows that there was never really any visual clue about where the window you wanted had gotten to, so it made doing that style of navigation much harder.

I don't think the scaling is particularly good in Win 7. From memory it used to be better. I recently had a crack at using it, and I played around with different resolutions. Every single resolution that I tried other than the native one was blurry. Some were only a little bit blurry, but some were very blurry. I remember it being better than that (maybe I've just gotten fussier). I ended up in the native (highest) resolution because anything else was too horrible.

<comment><USER13> > _I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full > screen way of doing things_

For myself, it's because so many applications have massive amounts of chrome and tiny vertical scrolling content areas. Height is necessary. Add to that that you can drag things above / below the borders of your screen, and unnecessary borders on everything, and no shadows to show "height", and your desktop becomes a cluttered, disorganized mess with too much scrolling in almost no time.

7 fixes a _lot_ of that. You can drag things to the top of the screen to maximize, and pull away to un-maximize. Height via transparency and shadows. And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all.

<comment><USER12> My experience with 7 was that it made the clutter worse, not better, especially in the Microsoft Office programs (not part of 7 I know, but first time I'd used the most recent one coincided with the first use of 7. But I'm thinking of things like how the buttons and toolbars are laid out in the UI rather than drop shadows.

Didn't know that about dragging stuff to the top of the screen to maximise, that's a good tip, thanks.

How does Win 7 perform with multiple monitors? Good? Bad? No change?

<comment><USER13> Pretty well (I use two for work). The drag to top & bottom, and Windows + arrow keys (try it if you haven't) make for some pretty fast screen organization. You can also resize vertically to the top or bottom of the screen, and you'll make the window fill height but not width.

Not that many applications have a rational layout if you drag them across two monitors' worth of width, or restrict them to a half-screen. _Especially_ Microsoft applications. But omg is it nice to have full-width code from two sources side-by-side... it almost makes Visual Studio bearable (though I'd vastly prefer being able to rip windows _out_ of VS). I still keep a _decent_ programmer's text editor handy for quick changes and better side-by-side comparisons, but it's not too bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apple has updated their page on Lion with descriptions and screenshots of (all? At least all those mentioned in the linked article) its new features: <http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/>

<comment><USER15> How many of the coolest-sounding features like Auto-Save, Versions and Resume will require special support per application? Resume is the only one that seems doable without that; they can piggyback on the existing OS support for suspend-to-disk hibernation.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Currently OS X supports per-app Time Machine rollbacks, yet the only app I've ever seen support it is iPhoto.

<comment><USER17> Mail.app supports it as well. It's saved me more than once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From Apple's Mac OS X Lion page [0]:

      "When you're done with AirDrop, close *the Finder* and
      your Mac is no longer visible to others."

I wonder if that's a typo and they really meant 'Finder window' instead of 'Finder'. In the current Mac OS X, you can relaunch the Finder but you can't keep it closed.

If the copy on the Lion page is accurate, then Apple is moving towards operation without the Finder, replacing it with Launchpad and Mission Control. I can see how that could work for first-time Mac users, especially those who already have an iOS device.

It reminds me of At Ease [1], an environment that hid the Finder from new users, offering something similar to Lion's Launchpad.

[0] <http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease>

<comment><USER19> Ah, good ol' At Ease. The crippled app-launching interface it provided seemed to be entirely responsible for the nearly universal hatred of Apple computers by students at my high school. Compared to Windows 95, At Ease gave the impression that Macs were only capable of performing simple tasks. Everyone was thrilled when the Macs were replaced with cheap Windows machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mail 5 looks almost exactly like Sparrow: <http://sparrowmailapp.com/>

Although, if Mail 5 is inspired by Mail on the iPad, it's probably more fair to say that Sparrow looks almost exactly like Mail on the iPad. Also, is that right that the developer preview is being distributed via the Mac App Store? How does that work?

I will say though, I'm looking forward to impressing potential clients with some fancy swiping at the coffee shop :)

<comment><USER21> The power of sparrow isn't the UI, it's the deep integration with gmail. More specifically, the labels are the killer feature.

<comment><USER22> For me it's the completeness of the integration - labels, starring, spam. There's not much you can do it the web client you can't do in Sparrow.

<comment><USER23> Then why not just use the web client? It has 100% integration.

<comment><USER20> Sparrow is faster, doesn't take up the same memory that a tab does, and it's faster to find the icon in your Dock than dig through 40 tabs, plus it's nice to be able to quickly switch between Gmail/Google Apps accounts.

<comment><USER24> <http://fluidapp.com/>

<comment><USER25> Cool, now I can add the memory footprint of an entirely separate browser instance just to check my email! What a great idea.

<comment><USER24> That's definitely a valid concern.

I use fewer site-specific browsers than I otherwise would because of memory usage, but these days many of us have 4-8 GB RAM and running one or two SSBs doesn't break the bank, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone else catch this tidbit from Apple's site?

 _File Sharing for iPad: Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for iPad. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iPad users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages._

This sounds like the OTA iOS file sync we've been waiting for.

<comment><USER27> Sounds more like the "Copy to WebDAV and "Copy from WebDAV" options currently present in all iWork apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Any reports from HN users who have done the upgrade?

</comment><comment><USER12> From the article: _"Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;"_

I really really hope they offer a "blow it away and restart from scratch" option for apps. Having to delete and reinstall apps on the iPad that have properly crashed (as in fall over, and then when restarted just crash straight away again†) is annoying.

I actually preferred the 'inferior' way of doing things back when iPad was single tasking, because hitting the home button would undo most programmer screw-ups.

†Not sure how they manage this, probably via some settings in their core data that they read in and then get borked up again each time. My theory is that removing the app and then putting it back in works because the persistent storage for that app gets reclaimed when removed.

<comment><USER29> You can force quit iOS apps. Double tap home to bring up the menu, then tap and hold the offending app icon. This will bring up the "jiggle" and a kill icon.

<comment><USER30> That's not force quit. That's uninstall.

To force quit, you stay in the app you are quitting, hold down the power button til you get the power-off bar, then hold down Home til the app quits.

<comment><USER31> No, the GP said "Double tap the home button", which brings up the Multitasking tray. If you go into jiggle mode there, you can terminate the app. You'll see a red icon instead of the X used for uninstall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm really excited about the new version of wiki server. (Scroll all the way down to the bottom)

</comment><comment><USER33> Netkas has confirmed the following about Lion: >Lion requires hardware with a Core 2 Duo processor or better. A lot of apps are sandboxed. OpenGL 3.2 support

I'm happy about the OpenGL 3.2 support. But what about 4?

<comment><USER34> Every Core 2 Duo processor onwards has been 64-bit compatible; any Lion-only software can safely drop the 32bit portion of its binary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No word on an HFS+ replacement.

Also, what's AV Foundation? Is this what QuicktimeX was supposed to become? Will we finally get codec plugins without having to program for the crusty old Component Manager?

</comment><comment><USER35> Finally. Apple is getting rid of the default, always-on, scroll bar.

</comment><comment><USER36> Tried it briefly, but Dropbox won't even install on it. In addition, Evernote doesn't work (it seems to be relying on a private API that doesn't exist anymore) and NewsRack sync with Google Reader is completely hosed due to a memory leak that I'm assuming is a problem on 10.7 (but not 10.6 for some reason). Needless to say, I'm going back to Snow Leopard for now, since Dropbox is a vital tool for me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does vmware fusion's support for installing OS X Server guests allow Lion Server?

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone else catch the new power key to the right of the eject key on what looks like the 13"? Maybe I'm slow, but I was pretty sure the last generation still had a circular power button - is this from today's update on the machines? Scroll down to "Gestures and Animations" <http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/>

<comment><USER38> My bad. That's the MBA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Its funny, but the first thing I thought of when I read about Versions is the old Vax/VMS file versioning system([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_naming)). That feature alone saved me tons of re-work in college. :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Full-screen apps, increased emphasis on gestures, an app store... looks like they're trying to add an iOS feel to the user experience (at least within apps that use the new features).

<comment><USER41> I believe that was the whole point of the 'Back to the Mac' introduction to Lion from a few months ago--bringing iOS back to the Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> if I enroll for $99 now would I still get a dev preview of Lion? I am already an iOS member.

<comment><USER43> Yes. Whenever you enroll, all current member benefits are available to you.

You'll also be able to download the latest 10.6.7 build if you'd like.

<comment><USER44> Do you still have to buy the production version when it ships?

<comment><USER45> In the past, apple seeded the GM build to developers shortly before the release date. So no need to go buy the same build in the store.

<comment><USER27> Although it's worth noting that Apple sometimes has a very weird definition of "Gold Master". The latest Xcode 4 GM, for example, is pretty much just another beta version. It's not production ready at all.

<comment><USER46> Wait, is this true?

iOS GMs have always been ready to ship, minus a few 3rd-party apps and last minute exploits(JBs). If they are throwing GM designator on anything that isn't usable than I'm severely disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is it me or is Aqua being dropped?

</comment><comment><USER48> no fullscreen mode for safari?

<comment><USER49> Safari does fullscreen just fine from my own testing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Screenshots or it did not happen!</comment>


Slack has refused to implement user blocking for years - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/767806840524705792 <comment><USER2> It's a corporate communication tool. Harassment, etc. should be dealt with at the corporate (or legal, if required) level. It doesn't make sense to allow people to block their workmates. It's for work, not a dating app. Tinder needs and has blocking, Slack does not.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why I can't mute certain people or group DMs when I can mute channels. Sometimes I need push notifications if I'm messaged from a specific person, but can't/don't want to be bothered by other specific people. There are ample productivity reasons for implementing this feature aside from the added bonus of tamping down on harassment.

<comment><USER2> If it's just a matter of turning off device-level notifications, then I agree (my office used MS Teams, not Slack). But actually blocking people so that you don't see their messages at all, or that they know they've been blocked? Not an appropriate feature for an internal comms tool IMO.</comment></comment></comment>


Craig Federighi talks open source Swift and what's coming in version 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/12/craig-federighi-talks-open-source-swift-and-whats-coming-in-version-3-0/ <comment><USER2> > "Objective-C is not going away. We still love Objective-C as a language; we > still very much depend on Objective-C and do a tremendous amount of work in > Objective-C here internally at Apple," Federighi told Ars. "We'll be > supporting Objective-C and continuing to evolve it as necessary to fit into > this evolving world. We do think that Swift is the language that we > recommend for new developers to our platform who are investing for the > future and building new apps. We think Swift is absolutely the right place > to start. But we'll continue to maintain, advance, and support Objective-C > for as far as we can see."

That's good to hear.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "We think [Swift] is how really everyone should be programming for the next > 20 years," Federighi told Ars.

That's quite a statement.</comment>


Incanter 1.5.0 has been released - <AUTHOR> http://data-sorcery.org/2013/06/09/incanter-1-5-0-has-been-released/

<comment><AUTHOR> Incanter is a Clojure-based, R-like statistical computing and graphics environment for the JVM. More information is on [http://incanter.org/](http://incanter.org/)</comment>


Show HN: IMDb Top 250 available on Netflix Instant - <AUTHOR> http://paulisageek.com/imdb-250-netflix/

<comment><USER2> You might want to double check "Gladiator" because I'm pretty sure the one on IMDB isn't the one available on Netflix instant. :)

I told my wife this was one of the most important web pages I'd looked at in a long time.

<comment><USER3> Same thing for Heat. I was expecting Al Pacino and ended up with Joe Dallesandro.

<comment><USER2> Which is strange because I'm pretty sure I watched the Al Pacino version of Heat on Netflix instant in the least 6 months.

Edit: I just checked and it's not on instant, but I'm pretty sure I watched it on instant recently.

<comment><USER4> Netflix routinely adds films to Instant Watch that it will only keep for N months, presumably to keep an interesting stream of new titles available while saving costs on licensing.

<comment><USER5> It's not to save costs on licensing. It's because those titles are going in and out of licensing 'windows' and Netflix isn't allowed to offer them.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the length of those windows determined by what Netflix is willing to pay? Or do the content owners restrict it?

<comment> X-Istence Content owners restrict it, for example if a movie is about to be shown on television it will disappear from NetFlix's instant streaming service a week or two beforehand and re-appear a month or so afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title should be:

IMDB Top 250 THAT are available on Netflix Instant.

It's not a list of 250 movies as it seems many believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry :( I can't edit the title now. I thought IMDb 250 was a known enough list.

<comment><USER7> I'm well aware of the list and I originally read the title as "All of the top 250 are now available on netflix instant".

<comment><USER8> I thought so too. And I thought "Awesome!"

Then I got disappointed. Oh well, at least now I know to watch _Rashomon_ before the 20th of June.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, this submission totally blew up while I was out for dinner. Thanks so much!

You're invigorated me to put some more effort into it. I'm working on the feature requests. :) Check back soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool :) I spend a lot of time finding good TV shows. Wish I could do a join between the IMDB database and the Netflix one: Show me all the TV shows which score more than 8.5 on IMDB and are on instant watch on Netflix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a really good idea. That'll be next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. I'm surprised that this list isn't on <http://instantwatcher.com>. For those who don't know, Instant Watcher is a phenomenal resource for Netflix fans.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is cool! Perhaps in 20 years time or so, Germany will have a service similar to Netflix... (and then, 10 years later, even something like Netflix instant).

Good for you, sad smiley for us :-(

<comment><USER12> s/Germany/Europe/ . :( from Ireland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Toy Story 3 is in there twice, with ratings 34 and 143.

On another note, it's amazing seeing all the movies in here which aren't available in Canada.

<comment><USER14> There are services that get you a US IP allowing you to have access to all those unavailable titles. Haven't tried any myself though.

<comment><USER13> I have an under-utilized Linode instance that could presumably do the same via ssh tunneling, and at about 1GB/movie (incoming and outgoing) it should still be under the transfer limits. Though I was under the impression that Netflix also required a credit card with a US billing address. Not an insurmountable challenge, but I'd have to look at the hassle:benefit ratio if that is the case.

<comment><USER15> I'm using a French credit card on Netflix and my vps in the US with ssh tunneling for the ip. Haven't had any problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slight off-topic, but does anyone know of a good way to export ratings out of Netflix? I've only been able to find broken tools for this in the past. It shouldn't be too hard to scrape this myself, but I'd rather avoid redundant programming :) Ever since they removed the "Friends" feature, I've wanted to get my ratings into something else that I can share with others.

</comment><comment><USER16> Could you do one for the Bottom 100 as well? That would be almost as awesome.

<comment><USER4> If there's a way, it would also be very nice to also have a version of the top 250 filtered to remove films from the past decade or two. Recent movies get a lot more attention from voters on IMDB so it's a bit biased (most especially for titles from the last couple years).

<comment><USER8> It's not _too_ bad in that regard, with a couple of bizarre exceptions ( _Inception_ is the ninth best film ever made? _Really?_ ) But overall it's a better and more historically diverse list than I would have expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! Anyway you could link into my Netflix account to show/short-by my ratings? I'd also like to filter to only see unrated ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. That'll be a bit longer project, but we'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the best camera is the one you have with you, a corollary could be the best movies are available on Netflix Instant Streaming.

<comment><USER19> A corollary is a statement that follows readily from a previous statement; I'd say this is more of analogue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> When sorting by rank, there seem to be a lot missing. Why does it start with "8 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? Are all 250 really available?

<comment><USER13> The title is somewhat misleading. Think of it like "Venn diagram intersection of Netflix Instant and IMDB top 250".

<comment><USER21> His logo should be a venn diagram

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Add amazon affiliate links for missing ones =)

</comment><comment><USER22> "Toy Story 3" is at number 34 and number 143.

<comment><USER7> I just checked the actual list and Toy Story 3 is rank 34 and the original Toy Story is at 143. He probably stripped something like a [a-zA-Z] regex to improve misses that are actually hits because of slightly different punctuation or spacing.

Toy Story 2 isn't on the top 250 at all, nor any of the Die Hard sequels, and Terminator 2 is named "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" on IMDB so there the above explanation seems like the most plausible to me. Based on my cursory examination none of the other movies would have missed in that way if hes just ignoring digits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug reports. I'm now extracting the Year from the IMDB page and making sure the Netflix matches correctly on the year or else I throw out the row.

The main problem, is the first search result for "Toy Story" on netflix search was "Toy Story 3".

<comment><USER22> Thanks for this page. I was putting off watching "Fargo" again until I saw that it was expiring tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an awesome list. One of my big faults with netflix is that one account can be accessed by an entire family, but the genres don't mix and match and instead of rating a movie, they tell you what you might think of it. A list like this really helps.

<comment><USER4> You can split a NF account into several, and even optionally give each account their own separate DVD queues (so you can partition "3 DVDs a month" into 1 per 3 person household, if you want to). This also sections off ratings from each other's accounts.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately, you can't section off separate streaming queues though.

<comment><USER25> Even worse the other queues can't easily find out if movies in their queue are streamable which is really irritating when I get a dvd that I could have streamed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is great, thanks. I've been lamenting about how bad Netflix instant selection is. This list brings some evidence to the contrary. Netflix should have done something like this...it takes me too long to find a decent movie using their UI.

<comment><USER27> If you think Netflix selection is bad, try the Hulu movie selection. If you want movies from the 1930s-1950s, they've got you covered. I have not yet found even _one_ movie they have that is of the calibre of Toy Story 3, which Netflix has right now through Starz. I believe Hulu is pursuing a strategy whereby they can say with a straight face that they've got "thousands of movies", but they really hardly have any.

We've been trying Hulu Plus with a free month trial and we will not be signing up. It's pathetic next to Netflix _and_ it plays commercials. If you aren't an 18-24 year old preferably-male, Hulu is barren, and frankly you've got poor coverage even then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe you should rewrite to check the year of the film, not just the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Pianist in the imdb top 250 is not the one listed on this page. lol.

<comment><AUTHOR> All fixed :) Now I make sure the year matches as well as the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've love to be able to see / sort by rotten tomatoes score as well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Awesome!!! Thanks Paul!

</comment><comment><USER31> Would be nice to have genre and year. Great job, tho!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. Coming right up.

Year was easier than Genre. I'll but that one on the back-burner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> toy story 3 is listed twice at 34 and 143.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait, how is Oldboy in the top 250?

</comment><comment><USER34> Are they on Torrent? :-)

<comment><USER35> perhaps he could fill in the gaps with tube site links

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Major Win.</comment>


'Woke' social media network is a covert UK counterterror programme - <AUTHOR> https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-woke-media-outfit-thats-actually-uk-counterterror-programme <comment><USER2> This strikes me as a pretty good idea? Ads like these can really have an impact on youth who are at risk of radicalizing. But I haven't seen stats on how effective this is and it is a worrying trend of having essentially government actors on public platforms that aren't open about that very fact. The devil is in the details in this one for me.</comment>


Show HN: Check if a scientific paper has been supported or contradicted - <AUTHOR> https://scite.ai/ <comment><USER2> The guidelines linked to in your Terms of Service fails to load / doesn't exist: [https://scite.ai/guidelines](https://scite.ai/guidelines) You also may want to update your error message as it reports the Nginx version and Operating System being used.

How are "experts" classified? People misread studies all the time so trusting users to classify if a study supports or contradicts another study gives me even less faith than the text analysis method. Also as a suggestion, have the "Example Report" link to a random report or several different studies.

The presentation of this is really clean and it seems like an amazingly useful tool - as long as classifications remain accurate (even just the "mentioning" metric is extremely useful!)

I'm looking forward to opportunities to use the site more, this is totally something I am willing to get behind and support. Not sure how I feel about the indemnity clause, however unlikely it is to ever come up. Not even sure if it would be upheld by courts but I dislike how common it is to see nowadays.</comment>


The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find It, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite - <AUTHOR> https://www.matthewball.vc/all/themetaverse <comment><USER2> Really great related read: [https://m3-org.github.io/research/sweeney.html](https://m3-org.github.io/research/sweeney.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Skim reading through this, I still don't understand the need for a 'Metaverse'[1]. Sure it's a fun sci-fi concept, but what problem does it actually solve?

\---

[1] Or 'Matrix', or 'Oasis', or 'Cyberspace', et al.

<comment><USER4> Think of it as an electronic universe, to complement the physical one we've had for eons.

We already have a metaverse of sorts, whether it's coordinating events via Evites, playing fortnite on an xbox, or texting a friend.

And it can also connect us with the physical world. Ordering something off of Amazon, buying a plane ticket, getting a job on a gig site. And so on.</comment></comment>


OpenSSH 5.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=126801526410398&w=2

<comment><USER2> 'Add the ability to revoke keys in sshd(8) and ssh(1). User keys may be revoked using a new sshd_config(5) option "RevokedKeys"'

Nice. Uses SSH protocol v2 exclusively now too.

Only think I wish for is an official portable release for Win32 (not Cygwin).

</comment><comment><USER3> Changelog directly from OpenSSH.com

<http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-5.4>

</comment><comment><USER4> "After a transition period of about 10 years, this release disables SSH protocol 1 by default."

I'm sad that this hadn't happened sooner, but I guess as they say, better late than never.

</comment><comment><USER5> That was a very well-written Changelog. Seems like a pretty exciting SSH release.</comment>


Vinyl Revival Causes Discord - <AUTHOR> http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4433/full <comment><USER2> I have no problem with people enjoying the medium of their choice and if vinyl turns your crank more power to you, but as far as revivals go, this is not gigantic.

For 2011, a grand total of 3.6 million vinyl records were sold worldwide. The best selling vinyl album for 2011 was The Beatles' "Abbey Road" which accounted for 41,000 sales or a bit over 1% of all vinyl records sold last year.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's just my bass cannon...</comment>


Facebook and Mobile: Teens can't live without em - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/05/23/facebook-mobile-teens-cant-live-without-em/ <comment><USER2> _the first girl said she didn't think services needed to be combined_

This is something I found in my own research too. It appears most normal teen users cant stand mashups. I was building a platform that converted between sms, email, IM, facebook message so that you wouldn't have to check all your messages in different clients and ran it past normal users. They hated it. Users want communication mediums to stay seperate!

<comment><AUTHOR> dan: thanks for telling me this. I was about to start on something similar (mostly as a quick side project to learn some RSS parsing, etc)

<comment><USER2> Well I could always be wrong. Perhaps I approached the problem in the wrong way or pitched it at the wrong people. Orgoo appears to be making this work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder what this same conversation looks like in the suburbs of Connecticut, rural Kansas, or inner-city Chicago. I'm sure these SV kids are savvier than most (and richer), but this is still useful information.</comment>


Scientists say most likely number of contactable alien civilisations is 36 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/15/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36 <comment><USER2> Wow that is also my estimate of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!

In all seriousness, I would think that a) finding life on another planet in our solar system and b) determining whether it shared a common ancestor with life on Earth is the next thing that needs to happen to refine our assumptions for terms in the Drake equation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember watching a show in which Indian scientist Yash Pal had proclaimed that number to be zero. Argued that more a civilization progresses, more the chance of it being devastated by forces of nature, etc., thus its highly improbably that civilizations exist on other planets (or rather, we on earth are a very odd case scenario).

</comment><comment><USER4> So it _IS_ between _23_ and _42_!

Who would have thought...</comment>


The Bell Now Tolls for Social Networks - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/10/11/the-bell-now-tolls-for-social-networks/ <comment><USER2> props to Bebo for cashing out to AOL. $850mm... not bad.</comment>


Sexism in the name of diversity by Google and other Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/82800 <comment><USER2> Speaking about conspiracy by "pseudo-feminists and simps" doesn't lend a lot of credibility to the argument.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since you are from India, you already know that 40% of the kids in your class are there due to their caste, 20% are there due to the state of their domicile.

You gotta get used to this in life. You get very few things due to merit. Mostly it is due to who you are or whom you know.

You can try and come to US for masters etc but then again don't be surprised when a lot of companies will pass you over for needing H1. You will get your H1 eventually but then don't be surprised when you stay on H1 for life while your roommates from Sri Lanka and Nepal will become green card holders and citizens while you and your company's lawyers will be answering RFE's for life.

This is life. It is never fair. You gotta take it in stride and try to do the best you can.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what we can deduced from these anecdotal evidences. But would that be legal for a US company or university (e.g. academic job) to enforce quotas based on gender?

BTW, I remember a Facebook (or Google, dont remember) recruiter mentioning gender diversity in their company. He told me that they tried to be as diverse as possible, but that the bar was the same for everybody...

<comment><USER5> You can show that recruiter this picture:

[https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/step/](https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/step/)

Google at this point isn't even trying to hide that it's discriminating against white men, because it can get away with it. Still, I think it's a great company even with all its faults (I say it as a white man).

<comment><USER6> I count something like 20 people that look like women and 17 that look like men. Sounds pretty even to me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would like to give you an advice on this matter, don't fight against it at all. Why? Because you are bound to lose . You'll only fill yourself with rage and might be able to help a few individuals, but in long run it's not worth it at all.

Yes there is blatant sexism happening in Indian IT industry's Tech Giants and yes many more people are going to get rejected, but theres nothing you can do about it. Those who don't believe this, just ask placement interview experience from a coed university vs a girls only college. See I'm not against women empowerment or existence of girls only college here, but when one party gets grilled on advanced cp problems and the other gets asked about why should we hire you as their sole question (yes the only question they be asked about for a tech position like sdeI) then theres ought to be questions here. There are companies that are just ticking/filling their diversity quotas. I've many many examples(or anecdotal experiences) from me and many other people I know of and I am willing to share then if anyone wants to hear.

But we've come to a point where anything said against such rigged systems will get you labelled as women hater or anti_feminist. So what did I do? I caved in. I asked my girlfriend who got placed in a mass recruiter Company with mere 3.4 lpa to prepare for 1-2 months and give interviews for a big tech company in blore region and guess who gets 15 lpa package? I told her small sister who still was in last year of her girl's only college about diversity hiring and she got placed in another tech giant.

Don't fight them, instead go with the flow. At this point no one cares about your hardwork or actually helping under priveleged girls, all they care about is how to fill the diversity quota. Girls in those quota based hiring are already equipped with enough resources to get them jobs in tech giants without any external help, girls in ignou or not having formal degrees but great hands on experiences are severely neglected.

Anyways I know there's a big chance your post will be deleted or shadowbanned, most likely mine too so good luck with that. I just hope this messages reaches you and you move on past this problem.

<comment><USER8> Look at it this way. Yes, it's depressing. But when these companies got big and great, they weren't using these policies. I know, I was there in the early years and saw how it changed over time.

These practices are ultimately the undoing of these firms. Not now, not next year, but the future is moving away from them. The decadence that allows them to rationalise picking employees based on what they look like is killing their ability to innovate and tearing them apart internally.

I know _so many_ experienced Googlers that leaked out of the organisation over the past 5-6 years or so, many of them citing this sort of decline. Why take risks or go the extra mile when you'll automatically lose to a woman who does nothing beyond simply turning up?

The flip side of this is that momentum is shifting towards a new generation of company. This sort of thing takes a long time, but the reason Google/FB/etc buy so many startups is they know that's where the real risks are taken, where the real work gets done. They can't produce what they need internally anymore. That's your opportunity. Instead of looking from the outside through the window and wishing you were part of a culture that doesn't exist anymore, look outwards, towards what you can build yourself. Then sell what you made back to them. Or don't. Your choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a very small number of anecdotes with heaps of conjecture and outrage.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, this is nothing new and it is a unwritten rule in India that top tech companies select just female candidates from most unis, and some talented males (and females) from the top institutes-the IITs. One of the very first things boys learn in Indian colleges is that these companies discriminate and they have little chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facts are that many of these companies do not have the 50/50 perfect split of genders and are actively encouraged by some higher-ups to be able to tick that box as it is viewed as something that without could effect the share price.

How companies get to that ideal balance is questionable in some cases and the crux is that until the whole gender aspect is taken of the table and we just call each other humans, such things will always play out.

If it bothers you - just tick the "other" box in gender based forms, of which that option is provided by such companies.

<comment><USER12> > If it bothers you - just tick the "other" box

Or tick whatever you like. The question is "Which gender do you most identify with", and it's totally fine to change your answer every 5 minutes - it's your own choice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is this flagged

<comment><USER5> The topic is controversial, dang wrote many times about it in his comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds immoral and possibly illegal. Good luck ever proving it to the degree necessary to enact change

<comment><USER15> Do you know what Indian law is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you have a masters and your applying for an internship at Google you're doing it wrong.</comment>


Facebook To Let Advertisers Bid on Your Browser Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-about-to-launch-facebook-exchange-realtime-ad-bidding-20120613,0,2535363.story

<comment><USER2> We all know Facebook is creepy, getting creepier, and shows no sign of slowing down. They are in an arms race to mine your data (you are their product) for their customers.

That's why people are leaving.

I posted about how the experience of leaving is effortless and generally improved my life -- "Leaving Facebook is easy and fun".

<http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun>

<comment><USER3> "Real-time bidding technology is already used by Google, Yahoo, AOL and other companies to target ads to consumers as they surf the Web."

You should probably leave the internet in general.

<comment><USER4> I think everyone here understands that these are all layers of data-mining, and all the big players are doing it.

But it's the subtlety. Google (at least Google of old, who knows in the future) sort of offers you help as you're looking for things, just like in the example below about hotels in Istanbul. The average person probably doesn't understand what's going on under the hood there. People don't really know what Google knows about them. Facebook, on the other hand, is openly saying "We have all of this private information on you, and we're going to sell it to the highest bidder." It's the same, but different. One is PR friendly, the other is a PR nightmare.

This can't be a long term strategy for Facebook. _People don't want to know that their information is being sold_. They will tire of this.

<comment><USER5> I key this back to all of the social akwardness of the Facebook CEO. Honestly, that guy is a little weird. Even weirder that a billion people have trusted a socially awkard guy with their full browsing histories and every aspect of their social life.

This latest move just proves to me that Zuckerberg really is there to take advantage of you and spy on you. At first with the open graph and the like buttons and all of that people were speculating that Facebook could easily follow and gather internet crumbs and store them for later. And now here is a press release openly saying they are going to be selling this data for profit. There is ZERO tact in this.

It will take a while, but I'm starting to get the feeling that Facebook will destroy itself in its never ending quest to justify its hype.

<comment><USER6> "I key this back to all of the social akwardness of the Facebook CEO."

This truly doesn't really matter. It's not as if extroverted socially amiable people always make the best decisions.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to believe that socially well adjusted people understand that digging into browsing history outside of Facebook for profit is creepy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To play devil's advocate, is this any different to what Google is doing at present? Spend a few hours researching, say, hotels in Istanbul, and you'll see the ads that appear on Adwords-enabled sites change accordingly.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I think its the same idea - the article mentions Google, AOL and Yahoo are doing it already. It happens to me on my own blog, which has a google adsense banner (but if I click on it then I'm violating google's terms of service).

<comment><USER9> I would say the difference is that, regardless of how it is used or presented, this ultimately links the information to a _specific person_ , not just some generalized IP address.

<comment><USER10> For those of us with gmail addresses it's pretty strongly linked to our identity too.

Anyone with access to my google history including my email could tell much more about me than my facebook data; for starters they could easily find out my home address.

The real issue is that I just trust google more than I trust facebook. Facebook has had a lot of privacy issues in the past, while Google seems to have avoided them. Google is run by adults, facebook is run by children.

<comment><USER9> yeah. The thing about google though is that you can just sign out of your google accounts and they dont track you, I believe. Facebook -- nope. We're with you all the time !!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And the pressure to hit quarterly targets begins. I have stopped using Facebook frequently since the IPO and now only login in Incognito Mode so that the cookies are sandboxed.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Facebook isn't giving any advertisers information about users" So there's no evidence for the inflammatory headline here.

<comment><USER13> Of course they do. I mean, they don't package it up and send it in a spreadsheet. But when a company makes an ad, they can target it to users who meet certain criteria. So whenever a user clicks an ad, the advertiser knows they fit that criteria. They can know your gender, age, what city you live near, how much money you make, etc.

<comment><USER14> But you needed to click on the ad

<comment> mike-cardwell Will there be a comment under the Ad saying:

"By clicking this advert you will be informing company x that you recently visited the URL y"

No? Then they're collecting and selling that information on without your knowledge and without your permission.

Will there also be a notice and button under the advert so you can permanently and fully delete your browser history and tell Facebook to not collect it in future? No?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This obviously wouldn't work for smaller sites but ...

What if Facebook was transparent about how much they earned on advertising per user. Would you pay to use their service without the ads (and associated tracking cookies)?

Hmmm ... as I reread that, it kind of sounds like "protection". But I guess there are a lot of companies that won't make money without shaking down their customers in some way or another.

</comment><comment><USER16> Advertisers should bid to _me_. If I accept, Facebook gets a substantial cut.

I feel like the privacy issues and misaligned incentives would be corrected if only Facebook saw themselves as a broker between advertisers and consumers rather than Lord of the Data.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's stuff like that which makes me happy that I have never owned a Facebook account.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish somebody would develop a browser which would let me use facebook but automatically hide data from it.

Now, let me think... who in the world is a major browser manufacturer who would have an incentive to prevent facebook from being able to serve well- matched advertisements?

<comment><USER18> Incognito mode?

<comment><USER10> Yes, I just want a streamlined incognito mode that (a) automatically activates when I look at facebook and (b) remembers my login credentials.

Actually you wouldn't need it to be specifically targeted at facebook, you could target it at any domain you like.

<comment><USER11> There are extensions that do the first part:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gedeaafllmnkkgbinf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gedeaafllmnkkgbinfnleblcglamgebg?hl=en- US&hc=search&hcp=main)

Remembering credentials can be done with something like 1Password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone have a link for that Firefox add-on that protects your privacy?

<comment><USER20> On Firefox, Options > Privacy, check "Tell websites that I do not want to be tracked". Not sure if all websites respect this setting.

<comment><USER21> It would be pretty optimistic to assume that Facebook wouldn't store your historical data, if you're deliberately logged in with your account but sending DNT: 1. Facebook's whole user experience pretty much relies on the historical data it collects of the logged in users' actions.

(I mean this from the point of view that you are a Facebook user who doesn't want to receive profiled advertising as described in the article.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "It will certainly open up Facebook inventory to companies that want to > reach people in this manner," she said.

I like how she refers to Facebook users as inventory and people at the same time.

Also, I feel like some Bill Hicks ^^

<comment><USER23> The 'inventory' they refer to is _ad_ inventory.

<comment><USER22> Okay, then I don't like how she refers to people as inventory, but how the sentence would parse that way also; seeing how it's close to an interesting truth, instead of some blurb only advertisers would care about. HN doesn't stand for Ho News, does it. So there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> you are not the user, you are the product. but it's for free;)

</comment><comment><USER25> facebook should give a cut of the revenue to each user whose data was used.

<comment><USER26> why?

<comment><USER25> wouldnt this flip the issue. rather than users complaining about their data being used, they'd be involved in a marketplace to make their browsing data more valuable.

<comment> mike-cardwell Sounds like such a setup could be easily gamed to me.

<comment><USER25> how is this not good? it's exactly how "seo" became an everyday term...

<comment> mike-cardwell Google Adsense is much worse than it could be for advertisers because of people gaming it. Why should Facebook add an element of gaming to their own system which in turn makes it much worse for advertisers?

Also, it would cost a _fortune_ to build and maintain a system for sending payments out to millions of users.

Also, they could just keep the money to themselves instead of giving it away.

<comment><USER25> the whole point is that if they keep the money then the users won't game the system, they'll complain that fb is selling their data...

<comment><USER27> Users complain when Facebook changes a font size, or a button color. They complain no matter what, and Facebook has gotten quite good at just letting them whine away for a week or two until they give up and shut up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think people in hacker community are always way too afraid of where privacy is going. We should all understand, it's gone already. Facebook's remarketing is same as Google + Bing. Notice all those Tigerdirect ads. Personally I like ads on sites. They tend to be related content and helps site owners monetize. I think the conversation shouldn't be best way to stop cookie tracking but how to control what you want out there in a single place. It's really crappy to have to worry about privacy settings on hundreds of websites. I don't want to use the web on privacy mode.

<comment><USER29> I don't understand why people are worried. Every time you use a loyalty card in a supermarket your data is tracked, analyzed, and you're served up personalized ads in the form of the coupons that print out when you ring up. Every time you send an email in gmail, it's searched for keywords and targeted ads are served up to you. Every time you use your Macy's card your purchases are tracked and you get personalized coupons in your inbox.

I have never heard an argument against Facebook/Google/whatever that was any deeper than "But but but MAH PRIVACY!" Privacy was kaput when the first phone book was printed.</comment></comment>


What's the oldest website you've built that is still live? - <AUTHOR> many of us on HN have had a stint as a web designer at some time in the past, whether it was making a website for a relative or running a web design agency in the 90s. I'm sure there are some gems out there of Internet history! <comment><USER2> Where I work we have 2 customers that are still using the websites we build for them in 2006. Layout has been adjusted a few times, but they are basically the same to this day. Cannot provide urls.</comment>


Are millennials insignificant musically? And only relevant in the realm of tech? - <AUTHOR> http://readsource.com/lifestyle/music/dave-van-ronk-and-i-size-up-popular-music/

<comment><USER2> This is totally subjective, but the millennials do seem to me to be artistically on the sidelines. There are exceptions, but as a whole the generation seems both uninterested in making art and uninterested in art/music in general compared with previous generations.

I have a suspicion it might have something to do with economics. Art/music becomes an irresponsible diversion when you graduate with 50-200k in student loans. The millennials are largely indentured servants to banks.</comment>


Version 2: Turn a light bulb ON with every new user or download (Philips Hue)  - <AUTHOR> http://rigoneri.com/post/59467182686

<comment><USER2> Cool project :)

If i'd use the Hue for something like this, I think I'd use downloads/minute or something like that to control the hue or brightness instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> The second video kind of changes the brightness.. but it also changes the color :)</comment></comment>