The TV Industry Will Unravel Faster Than People Think - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/the-tv-industry-will-unravel-faster-than-you-think-283485420ca6#.dai145ph7 <comment><USER2> While TV mega-conglomerates transition into the future focusing on what they think works best for their business model to maintain/increase revenue, others like myself see what it should be, access to everything whenever access is wanted.

"Unraveling" television isn't what's happening, it's a huge knot that needs to be cut out. Netflix is now successful as a content producer, not just a distributor. Netflix has become a channel, and I'm okay with a handful of channels that collectively have all of the content that I get to choose which I subscribe. Make it simple:

Two all you can eat options: 1) Subscription w/ no ads 2) No subscription w/ ads.

\- Any pre-recorded video content should be on demand through a subscription service or rental service.

\- Any live content should be streamed online, with rental/purchase access for the time of the content, unless content is under one of the subscription umbrellas

\- Implement better filtering systems to find content based on studio, talent, reviews/ratings, date, and the other categories already established

\- Major networks need to pull the bandaid off, and stop this confusing business of licensing per device (content removal after expiration, only on web not on mobile)

While I understand this is easier said than done, we all know what the best experience would be in the end, and eventually we'll get there, but communicating that to the TV heads of yesterday shouldn't take stripping them of viewers and revenue by moving over to services such as Netflix. It's such a slow transition this way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the idea that Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter would be the biggest beneficiaries is mistaken. Facebook is obviously a behemoth in anything it does just because its user base is so huge right now, but it is in decline. The future of anything is not in Facebook. Young people know Facebook isn't cool.

Snapchat is cute but it's never going to be the dominant anything. It's an app for seeing pictures of naked girls that people also use to share pictures of food and stuff.

Twitter has also stagnated and Periscope was a still birth.

Youtube is the king of online video, and will continue to be so for some time. Twitch is the king of streaming live gaming video, and will continue to dominate that space. Its efforts to expand into other areas have been hindered by the fact that a) the audience for watching people do other stuff besides play games live is not as big and b) for things that might have some audience appeal like say cooking or whatever, Twitch hasn't reached those audiences (and its not friendly to those audiences since everything about Twitch screams gaming. Which it should since that's where its money is.)

The place where Youtube and Twitch fall flat is narrative entertainment video. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon obviously dominate that space. I agree with the analysis that the current industry mindset of "We all make our own apps and make our own money!" is not the future. Everybody's only limiting their own audiences there. If anyone can manage to bundle multiple quality video subscription services (e.g. if Amazon could bundle Hulu + HBO) _of your choosing_ they would see massive subscriber increases.

That's the thing that's missing right now, is a la cart bundling. And why the cable industry is dying. We by default have a la cart bundling online right now but there's no discount for doing multiple. If someone can manage that (i.e. Apple) they're in a good state.

<comment><USER4> > The future of anything is not in Facebook. Young people know Facebook isn't > cool.

The future doesn't have to be cool, though. Facebook is nearing the position of just being a universal social platform. Not "buzzy" and "cool", but nonetheless something everyone uses.

> Snapchat is cute but it's never going to be the dominant anything. It's an > app for seeing pictures of naked girls that people also use to share > pictures of food and stuff.

OK, you lost me there. I don't use Snapchat myself, but even at a quick glance it's clear that the younger generation use it obsessively, for everything. The "naked pics" argument hasn't been true in years.

<comment><USER3> It's past the point of being something everybody uses, that's what I was getting at. Young people don't use Facebook and more and more people are leaving it. I think we are past Peak Facebook. :)

Snapchat has high usage right now but it's like Instagram or Flickr or Yahoo Images before it, it's not a social network and it's easily abandoned at a moment. In fact, even more easily than any of those since you don't have a library of content on it that you are tied to.

<comment><USER5> It's not that FB isn't cool. Facebook is something for people who have established identities. It's not a place where you can experiment with different identities. Young people have FB accounts, but they don't spend much time there b/c youth is the time you have to establish an identity of your own.

<comment><USER3> That's not it at all. FB is just lame. It's the place where your grandma posts rants about Obama being Hitler. It's the place where your mom comments on all your pictures with your friends.

It has nothing to do with establishing an identity and everything to do with it being the online equivalent of your Aunt's living room on Thanksgiving.

<comment><USER5> Defining and expressing "coolness" is an essential part of articulating an identity. As is curating your relationships to different audiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All that's changing is the medium. The media aren't even that different -- the same coaxial I plugged into for television and internet now gives me just internet which I use to view the same content as before via Netflix, PSVue, HBO Go, etc.

As for financial news, I watch Bloomberg which has already streamed on many devices including Roku for years.

I don't want to watch television on my laptop or phone either. I want it on my television.

<comment><USER7> > All that's changing is the medium.

This is not a minor thing. The competitive landscape and barrier to entry is completely different on an open platform like the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is just a blog post from an investor who wants this to happen.

</comment><comment><USER9> > It seeks to reinvent financials news for the millennial generation.

Is it horribly cynical to think this is just going to be an even worse version of something like CNN?

<comment><USER10> Am I completely off by thinking that good content will be popular across generations without needing to focus on only one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just wish I could pay 20-30 bucks per month, and stream all sport live.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The most obvious beneficiaries of the decline of old TV media will be the > dominant social networks who nail video: Facebook, Snapchat,* and perhaps > Twitter, if the whole Periscope thing works out.

I did a double take at this. Snapchat and Twitter? Where are Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, or Twitch?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am not able to load chedder.com, hopefully they can bounce back relatively quickly. [1]

Generally, I think this is a pretty good analysis. I think that it's very difficult to predict when this shift is going to happen though. Clearly the demographics are not in traditional TVs favor, but there are still significant lock-in effects due to sports and other live events. There is also a tremendous amount of media content that is owned by these traditional networks, and on top of that they seem to be verticalizing.

As a milllenial, I don't have a cable TV subscription, I pay for Netflix/Amazon due to the amazing original content and the non-stupid delivery on my internet devices. I do watch a ton of TV shows through 'alternative' means. For live sports, I either opt-out of the sport altogether, go to a bar, or go to excruciating lengths to pick up an online stream. There is no easy way to be a cord cutter due to a cluster-f __* of blackouts, poor distribution systems, and ancient players trying desperately to cling to their old business models. My household is probably worth another $20-$50 a month for a competent streaming service. I will check out Cheddar. I 'm also not alone, basically everyone in my income, age, and geographic breakdown is the same.

1\. I work for the CDN Fastly, if you are from Chedder we can help get your site back online, email me at [myusername] @ fastly.com if you need assistance.

<comment><USER14> it's [http://www.cheddar.com/](http://www.cheddar.com/) not chedder.

<comment><USER13> Ahh, I see that now, Thank you! I went off the spelling and the link from the Medium article.</comment></comment></comment>


Nodejitsu's new pricing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nodejitsu.com/changes-in-nodejitsu-public-cloud

<comment><USER2> It's cheaper to have 3 micro's than one small?

</comment><comment><USER3> Nodejitsu is running on fumes... they have done some good for the the OSS and node.js community through their open source efforts, but that isn't enough to keep them afloat, hence this.

They have continued since last year when they went into public beta to provide a mediocre service (Downtimes, way more than publicly blogged about, issues left unaddressed, spotty support service, etc.).

Don't get me wrong, their support is stellar. Often I could get help with an issue and have it resolved in minutes (if it was something nodejitsu could control-if it was a 3rd party like a database or their logging system with loggly, good luck getting anywhere with that). Unfortunately, they don't have support round the clock and its not scalable either. During there most recent outage They had several support agents on their IRC channel frantically trying to calm tens to hundreds of users down. Many of which were businesses.

I will venture to even say this is Nodejitsu's last chance before they sink or float. Speaking to a few employees there I have gathered information that their largest user base are individual plan users, and that they make $3000-$7000 a month from all total sales.

I thought how could this be? They have 25,000 developers deploying to nodejitsu. I was told that many of the users in the system were left over from beta and test accounts, half of which were just "invalid users"? I asked how many were active, when asked if there were 2000-3000 active developers currently on their system, "that sounds about right".

So to put things into perspective there is around 2-3k developers bringing in an optimistic $7k, the math doesn't fit well of course. So putting aside the fact they've had many employees since 2009, we see that Nodejitsu is gambling that their user base will stick with them and essentially pony up and pay 3-5x more then they currently were. At a very extremely optimistic rate we could extrapolate that nodejitsu could potentially make $35k from this action. This could ensure 4-6 employees get paid well, maybe more if they outsource to contractors.

Realistically, a drastic change like this in a business model this late into the game generally sees 30% retention rate. Given that other PaaS like Heroku, Azure, AWS, etc are now supporting web sockets through nginx and other means, and addressing many of the issues that made them sub-par to nodejitsu, the novelty of nodejitsu filling a niche is wearing thin. Extrapolating this at best case only results in $10.5k per month, this can only support a few employees, if that. Where are they getting this kinda money to employ 15 people let alone 20-25 employed last summer? Well from their funding of course <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/nodejitsu> . $750k in funding is a nice chunk of change to get back in 2011. At an extremely optimistic rate that could support 15 employees for a year each getting average $50k.

An interesting development happened in the last quarter of 2012 when I noticed nearly half of the employee base was removed from their site. This coincided with Marak's departure from nodejitsu, officially nodejitsu said leadership grew to be at odds, but what it really looks like was he was driven out against his will and so was every other founder except Charlie Robbins. Money to blame? Maybe. Inexperience(<http://www.linkedin.com/in/charlierobbins>)? Most likely. Unofficially, "10 or so employees left in the same month to pursue other careers".

Granted, Nodejitsu's business plan can't just rely solely on individual plan users can it? Word is on the grapevine nodejitsu has got some feelers out with walmart, bloomberg, and/or a partnership with Microsoft for there enterprise clients, but apparently nobody knows anything about them or is keeping mum. (though I thought Eran Hammer - hapi creator - was smarter than that, though as I said it is just a rumor) What am I going to do? I've stuck with nodejitsu for a while now, I believe what they originally set out for was a good idea, to be the best node.js platform and give back to the OS community, and that they've certainly tried hard. But it seems they've really fallen short and now they are asking me to pay 5x what I used to pay. I already moved my business projects off of nodejitsu several months ago due to their numerous outages/ 3rd-party/partner outages. I had hoped that things would change so I've kept my pet projects and dev work on nodejitsu helping keep the idea alive, but the outages and downtimes have not gotten better. Being forced into this "business plan" mentality goes against everything I've experienced with my apps on nodejitsu, nodejitsu is no longer a solo developer friendly platform, unless you got tons cash to spare. I'm not sure if I should feel insulted, I know most likely that me, along with other hackers, entrepreneurs, and students helped make nodejitsu what it is today, and they are turning their back on us by forcing us to comply with the new prices in 15 days or else.

What makes it even more ridiculous is that as I outlined above, this change even on best case scenario will not even support their current staff (unless these employees are paid extremely sub-par). This whole blog post is just a last ditch effort to get nodejitsu on a pricing model that might actually support a few employees. It focuses blame on insufficient research(assumptions) then shifts the blame to businesses running on individual plans as if they were harmful to nodejitsu. I'm not running my business on nodejitsu individual plans, why should I be punished too? Its clear that my contribution and the 2-3k other developers just like me aren't making for a sustainable business, but its helping, but come on, increasing my bill 5x? Nodejitsu is just trying to drive me away along with every other hacker, tinkerer, student. And its working. I will be moving to heroku for most of the dev projects I have, I may take some time to check out <http://saewitz.com/node-dot-js-websocket-hosting-roundup/> if i have some time.

So what should YOU do? Are you looking to host a business on nodejitsu? Don't. Nodejitsu is very immature as a company and its processes, unless you want to waste time and money. (Node.js in of itself is immature, compounding this is that nodejitsu is built entirely on node.js, do you really want to risk it?)Are you a hacker, dev, student, entrepreneurial? Skip nodejitsu unless you got the time and money to spend. Pick heroku or AWS free plan, or any of the other more forgiving and might I add reliable PaaS solutions.

I personally think the node.js community should seriously consider boycotting nodejitsu over this. It is clear nodejitsu is looking out for itself and not the majority of who we are, morphing into a B2B business. Why do you think so few node.js community leaders except those that work at or have a partnership at nodejitsu don't rave about nodejitsu's platform? My answer is because nodejitsu's business model is based on getting suckers to pay them, all they are doing now is clarifying they want rich suckers.</comment>


Hulu to Change Model of Free Streaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2012/04/30/hulu-tv-networks-to-change-model-free-streaming/

<comment><USER2> This is absurd. The networks (some of which own Hulu) are used to double- charging the consumer: you pay for a subscription, and then you pay by watching ~18 minutes of ads for every hour of TV.

I watch Hulu occasionally, but I never watch TV. This is a stupid move on Hulu's part. Instead of being a service that will aim to move people away from TV and to a new distribution model, they have chosen to remake TV on the internet.

For many reasons, the profits from TV will never be as high as they have been historically. Television now has to compete with free, because try as they might, the TV networks will never stop piracy. But trying to milk more money from paying customers (or those who try to legally watch shows online) will push more users away from their platform.</comment>


After man says dog dewormer cured his cancer, researchers look into treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/after-edmond-man-says-dog-dewormer-cured-his-cancer-researchers/article_00691b72-a223-51a5-aec0-e743faf1eed4.html <comment><USER3> It does appear that anti-cancer effects have been discovered in research in both Fenbendazole [0][1][2], the treatment that he used, as well as related anti-helmintics like Flubendazole [3], specifically when paired with certain vitamins like Vitamin E rather than when administered alone.

Flubendazole's particularly interesting as it's already FDA-approved for human use.

[0]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687140/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687140/) [1]: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30158-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30158-6) [2]:[https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/03/406321/deworming-pill- may-...](https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/03/406321/deworming-pill-may-be- effective-treating-liver-cancer) [3]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25811972/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25811972/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This story is very poorly organized. The structure is especially bad for scientific subjects because crucial details can be obfuscated.

Take this one for example, which appears well into the article:

> Part of Tippens' treatment regimen was CBD.

Nowhere does the article describe in one place exactly what the treatment regimen was.

Was it just CBD + fenbendazole or other components? When did the CBD begin? Even the nature of the trial (?) that Tippens was part of (or not) during his cure is cloudy.

<comment><USER5> In the linked blog post, he details his regimen

        Tocotrienol and Tocopherol forms (all 8)  of Vitamin E (400-800mg per day, 7 days a week).
            A product called Gamma E by Life Extension or Perfect E are both great.

        Bio-Available Curcumin (600mg per day, 2 pills per day 7 days a week).
            A product called Theracurmin HP by Integrative Therapeutics is bioavailable., and

        CBD oil (1-2 droppers-ful [equal to 25mg per day] under the tongue, 7 days a week) oil

        Panacur C (fenbendazole) (1 GRAM PER DAY FOR 3 CONSECUTIVE DAYS) per week.
            Take 4 days off and repeat each week.
            Each gram of Panacur C has approximately 222 mg of fenbendazole,

[https://www.mycancerstory.rocks/single- post/2016/08/22/Shake...](https://www.mycancerstory.rocks/single- post/2016/08/22/Shake-up-your-life-how-to-change-your-own-perspective)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to oversimplify the complexities of cancer or anything, but for some reason, Peter Hintjens' (creator of zeromq) suspicions about the primary cause of his own cancer came to mind after reading this [1].

 _"As for not getting cancer… the probable cause in my case was a parasite called a liver fluke, which attaches to the bile duct and produces carcinogens. Nature is nice like that. The parasite comes from farmed fresh- water fish. The cancer I had is a major cause of death in SE Asia. I think it was cheap sushi that almost killed me."_

[1] [http://hintjens.com/blog:109](http://hintjens.com/blog:109)

<comment><USER7> Liver flukes have an outsized impact on Americans as well, specifically Vietnam vets:

[https://www.livescience.com/61057-liver-flukes-vietnam- veter...](https://www.livescience.com/61057-liver-flukes-vietnam- veterans.html)

To avoid them, make sure freshwater fish in SE Asia is fully cooked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This might be the paper from Johns Hopkins: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687140/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687140/)

<comment><USER9> Looks like it. The hypothesis is not completely far out, the benzimidazoles interfere with microtubule assembly, and some chemotherapeutic agents in clinical practice (taxol, the vinca alcaloids) do the same.

The strange thing is that the affinity of benzimidazole anthelmintics to mammalian tubulin is much lower than to roundworm tubulins, but as we say, more research is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once saw a case on a conspiracy forum of a guy who claimed that taking worming tablets had cured his cancer. It wasn't a clear case to me, as he'd also been taking traditional chemo. His doctors apparently told him that the worm tablets he was taking were harmless and he could go on taking them, but the doctor didn't think it had any effect on his cancer.

The real issue I have with this sort of reporting is that the plural of anecdote is not data. If 1% of people with a given kind of cancer will survive, and some percentage of them take alternative medicines, then a smaller, but nonzero, percentage of people will believe they were cured by taking just about anything.

Controlled, double blind, randomized trials are the only way we can know whether these anecdotes have anything to them.

<comment><USER11> Agree with the studies, but the singular of data is not "cure" or "safe". A substance that is shown to be beneficial in general may not be beneficial for you, and may even be harmful for you.

I have a family member who cannot take various common medicines, not because of the active ingredient (which they need) but because of the inactive ones which are generally considered safe.

Conversely, it is possible for a substance which is not shown to have a general effect in a study to have an effect specifically for a person or small group of people. Discounting this and hiding behind "evidence based medicine" is not helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [Speculation] This is interesting to me because Crohn's Disease (and Inflammatory Bowel Disease in general) is known to respond to certain antibiotics such as Metronidazole and Ciprofloxacin [1]. Maybe a analogous action is at play here.

[1] [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/inflammatory_bowel_disease_c...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/inflammatory_bowel_disease_center/about_ibd/index.html)

<comment><USER13> Not sure if I understood correctly. Metronidazol helps to keep inflammation at bay ? Im asking because I was taking this antibiotic and Ive seen huge change in my skin inflammation, joint pains and bowel pains.

<comment><USER14> _Is Psoriasis a bowel disease? Successful treatment with bile acids and bioflavonoids suggests it is._

[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.clindermatol.2018.03.011](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1016/j.clindermatol.2018.03.011)

Fwiw: The article actually suggests that Psoriasis, (and IMHO, by extension, potentially autoimmune disease in general), are associated with liver dysfunction, _driven_ by bowel disease.

<comment><USER15> I've read that paper. It's fascinating.

The research and resulting protocol is inspired by an earlier Hungarian study in 2003 [1] that was able to seemingly cure psoriasis in 79% of its 500 test subjects. We don't know for sure; but 2 years later, 58% were still in complete remission. To be clear, that's a _completely unheard-of_ result in psoriasis research.

All current, "mainstream" forms of treatment for psoriasis only treat the symptoms, not the cause. Even the newest, most advanced immune-suppressing biologics are merely stupid off buttons for the signaling misfiring that causes the superficial symptoms; meanwhile, psoriasis sufferers have much- higher-than-average incidences of cancer, liver disease, heart disease, IBD and so on. Treatments only keep the skin/joint symptoms at bay, and require the patient to continue taking the drugs, which tend to stop working after a while.

Pretty excited about this direction in psoriasis research.

[1] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092846800...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928468003000427)

<comment><USER14> Fwiw, I've found infrared induced hyperthermia to be extremely useful, but it's gruelling, time consuming and has a very short period of effect. I've been performing it most days for ~12 months.

"...nine cycles of whole-body hyperthermia (target body core temperature, 38.5 degrees C; duration, 50 min)... caused a significant reduction of all cytokines by 40-50%"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19089489](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19089489)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6263304/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6263304/)

I started the protocol outlined in Dr. Ely's paper recently. It seems to have reduced my symptoms somewhat, but it's too early to tell for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems to be the same as this: [https://www.odditycentral.com/news/man-claims- cheap-dog-dewo...](https://www.odditycentral.com/news/man-claims-cheap-dog- deworming-medicine-cured-his-terminal-cancer.html)

Apologies if this is stolen content etc. but I can't read the original in the EU apparently.

<comment><USER17> This URL also returns "Not found" in the EU.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, I removed 1 character too much when I cut off the tracking stuff. It's .html, not .htm (fixed).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact email@example.com or call 918-581-8300.

<comment><USER19> This is one of the many viable options US companies have for dealing with EU traffic.

GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement, especially for complex software comprised of thousands of microservices that handle customer data. And imagine working in an industry where data retention is legally mandated by other jurisdictions...

I'm not saying GDPR is bad (I'm all in favor!), but the costs can be quite large to implement to the letter of the law (GDPR export requirements, etc)

<comment><USER20> > GDPR compliance can be extremely expensive to implement

I always find this argument a bit skewed.

Yes, it is expensive if your site has more js than content and if your business model is to overtrack and overprofile your readers

On the other hand a static page is GDPR compliant. Doesn't seem to be too expensive to implement.

<comment><USER21> The GDPR compliance of a static page can be debatable depending on how you interpret it, if Apache is logging accesses.

<comment><USER20> Yes but logging is logging

To be very honest even if you keep the logs it is extremely unlikely just logging, even with full IPs is a "material" violation of GDPR unless your static page/file is extremely specific

(You can also expire or fully anonymize the logs before keeping them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fun fact: there's a vaccine for Lyme disease too.

<comment><USER23> A safe one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Probably not a popular position here on HN but I'm becoming more and more intrigued by the power of a placebo. Furthermore, it's possible we are often undermining a placebo's power but telling ourselves it's science and only science that can save us - even tho', trust is, the placebo effect is very real.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/melanie...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/melanie- warner-the-magic-feather-effect/586012/)

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure why it wouldn't be a popular position. There are countless scientific studies demonstrating the efficacy of placebo. The human mind is a powerful thing.

<comment><USER24> -3 votes. HN is so predictable sometimes.

<comment><USER25> I don't think it's because you're saying placebo is powerful. It's because you're anecdotally suggesting that there's some group of people who think that placebo has no place in science, and then you're connecting that hypothetical group of people to the HN community.

The predictability is a good thing I think. If you fart in an elevator, people will predictably be disgusted. It's about social expectations.

<comment><USER24> ". It's because you're anecdotally suggesting that there's some group of people who think that placebo has no place in science, "

I'm suggesting that __science__ has suggested (to some people) that - <USER2> the science - the placebo has no place in solutions/cures. That science is the only hope.

Not only does that subvert placebos, it's self-fulfilling for science. The problem is, science's success rate still comes up shorts.

That's not anecdotal.

<comment><USER25> Who exactly are the "people" when you say "to some people?"

Specifically what science has suggested that placebo has no place in solutions/cures?

Cures for what?

Despite what science?

What success rate still comes short?

Short of what? Success with respect to what?

Everything you're saying is completely anecdotal and somewhat difficult to follow, unfortunately.

There's nothing wrong with being anecdotal, just acknowledge it and recognize that it's pretty flimsy for any kind of argument, especially generalizations. I often make comments saying "Anecdotally..." And then I provide opinions which are frequently shown to be inaccurate. Nobody downvotes me because I'm not trying to sell my opinions as facts or common sense.

If you don't want to be dismissed then provide specific evidence or research.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Gen Z Pyramid Scheme Sweeping Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@juliaonken/the-gen-z-pyramid-scheme-sweeping-instagram-e6d53e0e2b46 <comment><USER2> There are a lot of judgment posts in the comments here. Let me ask a few questions of the HN crowd:

* When were these kids educated about pyramid schemes and other scams? When were they taught the patterns to look for?

* Who is responsible for teaching them? Most of you will say "Parents", but are they equipped to understand and teach?

The old cliche is _Those who don 't know history are doomed to repeat it_ but who is responsible for teaching that history?

And it's not just this scam. It's all over Cryptotokens right now. It's in our free-to-play games. It's MLM. It's the house-as-an-investment because "housing will never go down". It's thinking you're "Smart Money" so long as you aren't the bagholder. And for the first few entrants, these tactics really do work.

This pattern of economic exploitation is old. Instead lets educate as many people we know about the warning signs. It's especially important to teach kids as they have no prior experience to guide them.

Everybody is stupid until we are properly taught, or burned. Maybe somebody will warn you against a "hot new thing" that's hypnotized your attention.

<comment><USER3> Maybe games like this _are_ the education. Part of me wants to see Instagram/venmo allow these to continue to happen because it's better for these kids to lose $150 now than $10,000 later.

<comment><USER2> That would only work if everybody experienced the $150 expense. However the winners never feel this pain. Additionally not everybody is exposed to the Venmo scam. How many of us are hearing about it for the first time here? It's a first for me to be sure.

Instead think about vaccinations: It's supposed to be distributed universally and it does not harm the individual receiving the inoculation. This is what you want. We can design tools for parents and teachers that have the same educational impact without the side-effect of harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like they're putting THIS IS A PYRAMID SCHEME on top and people are still buying into it.

(Admittedly, pyramid schemes usually do work if you're the one starting them and you don't get caught. It's also nice to see someone starting a pyramid scheme that doesn't involve blockchains for a change :) )

One thing that makes me skeptical about this post is talking about "sweeping instagram" in the title and "hype" in the post, but the best evidence for how wide it's spread they can muster is

> The trend has been picking up speed over the last few weeks. My colleague, > Danielle and I, could only find examples on Instagram stories but it's > entirely possible that it's spreading on Snapchat too and we just don't have > the right friends.

Like other supposed worldwide youth crazes, until I see better numbers it could be that something like 100 (ok, 128) people in the whole world have done this and it's not half as big as it's claimed to be.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that pyramid schemes need to be stopped ASAP to limit the damage they do.

<comment><USER6> There isnt much damage. No money is lost, it just moves. Admittedly into fewer hands. The damage is mostly capped at $150 or so, I would imagine.

Normally in a ponzi there is a pretense of a business that you are funding and so you can really empathize with those who were fooled, but no one is being fooled here. They know the risks. This is a ponzi game, not a ponzi. It's social gambling.

<comment><USER7> > No money is lost, it just moves. Admittedly into fewer hands. The damage is > mostly capped at $150 or so, I would imagine.

I mean, that describes literal robbery too.

<comment><USER8> Nah man, what if there are like 3 robbers. Then the money moved into more hands (I guess if some of the robbers only had like one hand though...). Pyramid schemes aren't a scam because _it 's fewer hands_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO this is a good opportunity for them to learn how a scam works before they go out in the real world with real money and really get taken for a ride.

Everyone falls for a scam at some point in their life, better to learn early with minimal loss of money.

<comment><USER10> $150 is real money.

<comment><USER9> It represents what, two days of work at minimum wage? Sounds like a cheap price to pay for falling for a scam. You could lose a lot more in this world. _A lot_ more.

<comment><USER11> There are few things that appear more crass than this. Have you ever been poor?

<comment><USER9> When I was poor I couldn't afford to go dumping 2 or 4 days worth of work into weird schemes.

Once I did have more money though, I did get swindled, and for probably 10x as much. But I learned.

Maybe the people taking part in these pyramids aren't as poor as you think, but probably still poor by some standard.

<comment><USER11> Sadly there is not very much overlap between that kind of logic and poverty. Remember all the people that blew their FEMA debit cards on strippers and shoes?

$150 was a huge amount of money when I was poor. It represented several-days to a week's worth of earnings. You've got to be doing alright for yourself for $150 to only be a day or two's worth of pay, after taxes and expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was a kid, people were doing the exact same thing, only with the U.S. mail, dollar bills, and much bigger pyramids. I'm kind of surprised it took this long for me to hear of a social-media/online-payment accelerated version.

<comment><USER13> There was a popular one few years back called "money flipping". Mostly on Instagram and Facebook. Not sure if it was a pyramid format but definitely a get-rich-quick scam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems to me that pyramid schemes like this are orthogonal to many other types of schemes, particularly in politics and entertainment, where the buy is sometimes primarily time but the end result is the same, a waste of resources which was supposed to result in happiness or achievement, that only benefited the charismatic SOB's at the top.

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo It's interesting how prone the major social networks seem to be to outright scams. You can find plenty of cult leaders and fake cancer treatments on YouTube, Holocaust denial material on Reddit, etc.

Of course those companies have every right to keep that material up, but it's strange how those scams are tolerated when other stuff is taken down. The pure scale of it all probably makes those scams more effective than they used to be as well. You don't gotta sell your miracle water from town to town anymore, you just make a YouTube video and send it out to a million people. Cryptocurrency scams really take advantage of this.

Not sure why those companies don't care about users getting taken advantage of, but they don't. Sometimes it feels like our economy is based on scams all the way down.

<comment><USER15> But maybe there is a positive side to this...

50 years ago this scam would have been targeted at middle aged people, in the prime of their scam detecting abilities.

These gen-z kids are getting hit with this stuff earlier, but will possibly spend more of their lives as savy, post scammed individuals. So the exposure leads to greater societal intelligence.

And because the scam is aimed at the young, the amount of money they are losing is generally in the hundreds, not thousands of dollars, and has less of an effect on their overall quality of life or their retirements.

<comment><USER5> Not everyone who gets scammed learns. Many people become "rubes" again and again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Actually, the funniest thing is that they have to strike a balance of people who understand how the system works enough to pay in and recruit others to do the same, but not enough to stay out. I found a craigslist ad that shows that difficulty: [https://micronesia.craigslist.org/fns/d/turn-150-into-1200-o...](https://micronesia.craigslist.org/fns/d/turn-150-into-1200-one- time/6455553260.html)

(Disclaimer: this is not my ad, and the only thing worse than the unconscionable stupidity of participating is the support you're giving to the the stupid person above you to keep being stupid.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Trying to understand the "rich" part in "get rich quick" in this.

So let's assume I'm the one who started this thing - if I just start it I only get 1200$ out of it. How often do I have to "rejoin" the tree to cash in more? I'd have to pay 150$, so I can't randomly do that - or do I see that as an investment? Only thing that comes to my mind is keeping a whole "lineage" to myself with my fake accounts, so I only ever pay myself and cash in from the sidelines?

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to pull a pyramid scheme...

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone stupid enough to do this is getting off very cheap. If anything this will save them money in the long term as hopefully they'll only be swindled for the original $150.

<comment><USER19> $150 is probably not that cheap for a teenager; and I bet that a lot of them will re-"invest" into multiple stacks once they succeed once.

<comment><USER16> I think you're missing parent's bigger point. Nothing is big for almost any teenagers, because at the end of the day they don't have to pay rent or buy groceries or that type of thing. Plus, a good percentage of them are about to be saddled with 100-1000X that amount in debt. $150 is water under the bridge.

<comment><USER19> It's cheap compared to losing your life savings, but consider that being saddled with debt that's an investment(†) in college is different from losing $150 that you could spend on lunch tomorrow - in addition to the fact that they're likely not earning anywhere near as much as you and I are.

When I was in high school, losing $150 meant that I'm out of gas money for the next two weeks, which means that I'm riding the school bus every day at 6am, holding on to a paper bag with a sandwich I made the night before.

<comment><USER20> So...not a big deal?

<comment><USER19> Yes, my point was certainly that losing the ability to interact with your friends and peers in high school, as well as shifting your sleep schedule for half a month, is _no big deal_.

Can I have $150?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish I had three hands so I could triple face-palm.

</comment><comment><USER22> Everything Old Is New Again

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the transparent bitcoin ponzi scheme that was pretty popular for awhile before being shut down.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why would you buy into pyramid from somebody else over starting your own and avoiding the risk?

</comment><comment><USER19> Suckers keep being born.

</comment><comment><USER25> How does the scam author profit? Seems like all the funds 4x150 = 1200 get distributed back into the network.

<comment><USER26> 8x150. Presumably the originators were on multiple such pyramids. And if they're smart then they won't pay out $150 to anyone, just start a new one. Or maybe start themselves in the middle of one.

<comment><USER7> Or make 7 fake accounts, friend 8 gullible people with 4 of them, and rake in $9600.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile Gen Y are playing with cryptocoins. Gen X are sitting on stock. And everyone older is collecting a pension.

<comment><USER28> Owning stock in public corporations that generate immense value, profit, employment, etc. and hold vast income producing assets on which their valuation is based is not even slightly similar to a Ponzi, pyramid, or crypto scheme.

<comment><USER3> I 100% agree that they are different, but I think it's also worth pointing out that value-producing assets can still bubble away from a realistic valuation.</comment></comment></comment>


Laughter Doesn't Scale - <AUTHOR> https://trackchanges.postlight.com/laughter-doesn-t-scale-89d3e5687a24#.aba785fx4 <comment><USER2> The problem isn't that it's a joke. The problem is that Google didn't do any kind of UX thinking behind the change. (It doesn't matter whether the change is serious or a joke, you can't just ignore the user experience.)

The new button performed a destructive action (because it blocked the recipient from responding to the email thread) without any kind of confirmation. Additionally, it was placed where it was likely to be hit by accident. (Apparently where the "Send & Archive" button used to be, although I don't have that on my Gmail theme.)

In short, they didn't _test_ the damned thing. Even a half-hour of user- testing would have shown how easily the button was pressed by accident, and how devastating an accidental press was.

And again: it doesn't matter if the change is a joke or not, you _don 't_ push up a change unless you've done some basic UX work on it.

<comment><USER3> Good UX is every action should be reversible. And have confirmations before any destructive behavior.

However, that completely goes against the point of this joke. It's not a prank if they prompted, "Are you sure you want to send a Minion gif and mute yourself from this conversation?"

<comment><USER4> > Good UX is every action should be reversible. And have confirmations before > any destructive behavior.

Nah, people just click through. GMail has a much better model: mask destructive / un-undoable behaviour behind a short timer, make the action undo-able until the timer is up.

<comment><USER5> Is that not what reversible means?

<comment><USER4> In some sense, yes. I guess it depends on how you want to define your words.

Strictly, the action you start when you click `Send' is reversible for a few seconds, before it actually launches the nukes. But I'd rather call it `delayed' when talking to a human about it.

Delaying is a way to make some non-reversible actions sort-of reversible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the bigger lesson is...don't mess with interfaces that a billion users have gotten accustomed to. Think of the massive outcry that happens on a redesign...With so many users, even a rarely used button like Send + Archive, is going to be used in thousands of ways that you do not anticipate. And I'm guessing a fairly innocuous feature change did not go through many levels of QA testing before they rolled it out on April 1

<comment><USER7> Don't mess with interfaces that a billion users _rely_ on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm. Laughter doesn't scale when you're not funny. Plenty of viral YouTube videos have shown that it sure as heck can scale.

The problem with this button is fairly obvious in hindsight. Google injected humor into many people's business and personal worlds where it wasn't wanted or expected.

This article is yet another apologist for what is clearly a lack of foresight by Google.

By the way, I notice society explaining away a lot of behavior by others lately. People seem afraid to criticize products and other people these days.

Let's call this what it is: a massive mistake. Google corrected it as soon as they realized it and apologized. We can move on.

<comment><USER9> If the stories of people missing out on job offers and so forth are true, Google did real damage to their lives and should make amends somehow.

I'll freely grant that I don't know what, specifically, they should do, but "sorry lol" doesn't really cut it.

<comment><USER10> If I were one of those duped users, I'd expect a service subscription refund from Google. Or maybe a few months' service on the house. At least.

/s

<comment><USER9> Well, that's the interesting question, isn't it.

Google offered a high quality service for free. (Well, "free" as in they're selling eyeballs to advertisers, but, you know. Internet free.) They aggressively promoted it to the entire world. Literally a billion people took them up on it and, after years of reliable service, have made it a central part of their professional and personal lives.

What is Google's responsibility at this point to not grief those billion people? Whether by bad April Fool's pranks, or anything else?

If the takeaway from your comment is that the world would be better if people paid for their email service, I wouldn't disagree. But how we get back to that point is not at all clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been reading _Design for Real Life_ ([https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real- life](https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life)), and its introduction is a fairly similar mirror of this kind of snafu -- using Facebook's "Your Year in Moments" feature as a stand-in.

When Facebook first launched it, they positioned it as a "look at all the awesome things that happened this year!" sort of feature, with lots of smiling faces and positive, upbeat language. However, the reality often didn't match up -- Facebook would add sad or otherwise unideal photos/statuses to the collage, such as houses burning down, depictions of illness, etc. etc. Lots of users complained, and as a result they shifted the tone of the feature to be more neutral. ("We thought you might like to take a look back at the past year")

Put another way: edge cases (or as the book refers to them, _stress cases_ ) exist not just in code paths but in your user's expectations and emotions. Just as a good architecture can handle these appropriately, a good design and UX accounts for the entire spectrum of users.

<comment><USER12> What's so odd about that is it's literally trivial to see that trainwreck well in advance. Maybe not if the entirety of your internal culture caters to sub 35 years old.

<comment><USER11> The willful ignorance of the assumption that everyone using your product is a happy, well-off individual with no sad/traumatic events in recent history is akin to the willful ignorance that nobody will try passing in a negative number to a method which takes an integer as an argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _There is no science behind this chart, but we're consultants._ "

And they say humor doesn't scale.

</comment><comment><USER14> Laughter is an all clear signal indicating that something looks weird but is actually harmless. If someone doesn't think you're funny, maybe they don't trust you enough to think you're harmless.

Strangers are always going to require more convincing than friends.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Humor requires context, and _context_ doesn't scale easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is _entirely_ possible to be comedic in tech. But the risks outweigh the benefits, unless you have a strong comedic background and a _very_ strong understanding of your audience and context.

"My friends laughed at it!" is a common standard for tech humor nowadays. It's highly misleading especially if you are a part of the echo chamber.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. As an example, the Pinboard dev (idlewords?) is quite hilarious in a dry, caustic but extremely cheerful way. I could never be as funny as they are, it's just not part of my skill set!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Laughter definitely scales, it's just not infinitely scalable..

The Onion scales. It doesn't scale past the Generation X audience, but oh, it scales.

<comment><USER19> You'd be amazed at how many of the "Generation X" have taken the Onion for real, or stand for the exactly inverse ideals.

It's like people think every 20 something in the sixties was progressive, but there were tens of millions of conservative kids that grew up into conservative adults...

<comment><USER15> What are Onion's ideals?

<comment><USER20> The onion doesn't have a strongly-defined partisan political stance, but it overwhelming "punches up" rather than punching down- meaning the butt of the joke is a person or organization with more power than the audience.

To me, this point-of-view tends to look more progressive than conservative, but I might be overlaying my own biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A joke should be simple, globally understandable – and if it isn't understandable, shouldn't be too annoying – and it should never be destructive.

Changing GMail to render (but not send!) all emails in Comic Sans would be such a change. (With a notification at top to turn it off)

Offering "Clippy" now also in Hotmail would be such a change. (with the ability to hide it)

Adding a "Send (and attach a gif that makes me seem like an idiot, and nuke the conversation)" button where a normal send button used to be is not.

A good joke is hard, and we all have made jokes that backfired before. But for a corporation, such as Google, in a huge project of theirs, they should try to double and triple check each joke for damage it might do.

<comment><USER22> > _" it should never be destructive"_

it's particularly important to account for psychological or social destructiveness.

Rickrolling someone can be funny. Pretending that you're pregnant and then saying "April Fools" later in the day can be psychologically harmful to those who struggle with infertility or who have lost a child. Replacing someone's PC startup sound with flatulence can be hilarious. Posting a fake, mean story about someone else can prompt others to pile on thinking that you're serious, and damage a relationship. Rendering all webpages in Comic Sans is worth a chuckle. Nuking someone's e-mail conversation can cost people their jobs, or at the very least can result in important (business-critical or even life- critical) information getting lost in the shuffle.

This joke could have been funny, if it had been carefully tailored to be non- dangerous and non-destructive. It wasn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Was this Gail Harrison's doing?[1] She's Illumination Entertainment's head of marketing and branding. She would have had to sign off on this for Google to use a Minions™ character.

Gail is a major figure in the branding industry. She was behind the branding of The Simpsons characters. She managed the Disney Princesses branding. Before her work, there were princesses in Disney films, but they hadn't been harnessed into a supergroup merchandising team, pulling over $3 billion a year in tie-in sales.

"Mic drop" had to have her approval.

[1] [http://variety.com/2016/film/news/illumination-gail- harrison...](http://variety.com/2016/film/news/illumination-gail-harrison- marketing-branding-president-1201725127/)

<comment><USER24> This small profile of Gail Harrison seems largely irrelevant and reads like you're trying to hype her up to make some sort of a sell.

<comment><USER23> It's more about blame. Someone whose job implies a professional understanding of humor at scale signed off on this. How did that happen? A good question for the trades (Variety, THR) to take up.

<comment><USER25> Maybe google just licensed or asked to use it as a part of an undefined April fools joke, and she / they assumed Google wouldn't do something irresponsible?

<comment><USER23> We don't know. But she should, and the trade magazines can ask her. Hollywood talks to the press.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you're interesting in this garbage fire, I recommend reading Andy Baio's whole Twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715747304444002304](https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715747304444002304)

<comment><USER27> This seems hilarious to me, sounds like an outcome of a good prank. Why exactly does Google need to apologize to these users? What are they gonna do, switch to Hotmail? When you're as big as Google, you can completely shut down entire services like Google Reader and get away with it.

<comment><USER28> Maybe they don't need to apologize to the users tweeting at them. But maybe you heard about people who, for instance, got fired because they hit this accidentally?

<comment><USER29> > maybe you heard about people who, for instance, got fired because they hit > this accidentally?

I would be willing to wager large sums of money that this didn't happen, and even larger sums that if it did, it was resolved in about 18 seconds, and the person is still employed come Monday (with a good laugh to share with coworkers).

<comment><USER30> Even with at-will employment in the US, when someone gets fired it often comes at the end of a lengthy and combative process. Picking up the last straw may not bring the proverbial camel back to life, if your manager was already looking for an excuse to get rid of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A typical Google April 1st joke is a product announcement (Google Japan hit the front page with theirs earlier) but this one is the opportunity for users to prank other users (and easily doing it by mistake)

Since users are quite good at doing everything you don't want them to do, this create great opportunities for mistakes and abuse.

</comment><comment><USER32> Laughter definitely scales. I mean, how many other tech companies did April Fools Day jokes yesterday? Tons of them, yet it's mostly Google that's getting the criticism for messing up here.

Google's problem was this joke was forced on people, even when they weren't in a mood to make any jokes. If it was an optional button to the right, or activated by some other means that wasn't 'click a button that many people used, or sometimes have it wotk automatically', then people wouldn't be complaining about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some jokes are not scalable. Funny cats on youtube are scalable.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is why web apps are bad. (among other reasons) The UI can change for any reason without you knowing and with no way to stop it.

<comment><USER35> That is also why they are good. The UI will change and evolve and perfect, without you thinking about it.

\--

Glass half-full kind of guy.

<comment><USER34> Hahaha. I don't think I've ever used a single web app where the UI got better over time. Perhaps hn is the only exception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me, the best April Fools' joke was when GitHub added SVN support[1]. It was funny, ironic, useful, and best of all, real. I always think of it as the April Fools' joke that keeps on giving.

[1] [https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn- support](https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support)

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anybody know of a book containing a good analysis of humor? I'm wondering if there is some structure to be found in the things we find funny.

<comment><USER38> Not sure if it's what you're asking for, but I found [http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Jokes-Using-Humor-Reverse- Engin...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Jokes-Using-Humor-Reverse- Engineer/dp/0262518694) interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Between Gmail being announced an April 1st, and Apple being founded on another, maybe the best way to celebrate this day is with the truth.

</comment><comment><USER40> That highlighted quote really nailed it deep for me. I've felt that network effect on twitter for many people.

</comment><comment><USER41> Everyone should just stop this shit. I too enjoyed these things years ago, but not anymore. There are too many now, but it also seems a bit sneakier or more malicious now than it used to, the Gmail thing is a great example. And it just seems de rigeur rather than fun or funny.

</comment><comment><USER42> >and, sometimes, if you're a woman, by a miscellany of invasive threats

What the heck? I'm not a woman, so apparently no one can threaten me on the internet?

Sure women probably receive far more internet threats, but we should use language to reflect _that_ , rather than outright lying and trivializing all the instances where men were threatened.

<comment><USER43> Actually, men receive just as many Internet threats, but they tend to ignore them, while women tend to take them seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I can't imagine the overall impact, I guess that the child that pushed this "feature" is sweating a lot right now.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd say the popularity of sitcoms (in the US at least) proves that comedy scales pretty well as long as you don't stray from the formula. (Bump, set, spike!)

</comment><comment><USER46> Bad move on Google's part. But I would think by now people would be used to seeing media being inserted into a free service. If you want to get rid of the ads, get a paid service.</comment>


[poll] do you use Firefox mobile? - <AUTHOR> Every time firefox mobile is mentioned, everyone claims nobody used it. Do you? <comment><USER2> Was this created using the /newpoll page?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll](https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll)

If not, I recommend resubmitting.

</comment><comment><USER3> no, use Chrome because in the past it didn't sync well with it's browser in a desktop/laptop, don't know if it's a working thing today or not

</comment><comment><USER4> Forgot to add choices?

I use Pale Moon for android

</comment><comment><USER5> Exclusively

</comment><comment><USER6> I use it

</comment><comment><USER7> mainly

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> no

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> yes</comment>


Prezi - The Zooming Presentation Editor - <AUTHOR> http://prezi.com/index/ <comment><USER2> Prezi is certainly a cool innovation in presentation style, but you have to be even more careful than you do with Powerpoint that you don't let your presentation be dominated by the tool over the content.

I've seen Prezi used subtly to great effect, but I've also seen it abused where complex transformations are used for what really should have just been plain text.

Where it works is where you have a true overall structure (such as a map or blueprint or the object you are talking about) that actually represents your presentation, and isn't just some abstract pattern you've decided to shape your text around. For example a presentation on a new model of car where the overall structure is the drawing of the car and the Prezi moves around and zooms in as you discuss individual parts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Our presenters used it at last month's DrupalCon in Chicago.

On the plus side, you can build very quickly once you get the hang of it and not get sidetracked with a lot of formatting options. It's also nice to be able to flip to a non-linear mode where you can just click to whatever it is you want to talk about and not flip back through your slides. The zooming provides for very simple hiding and emphasis of points, including "hiding" extra content for future sharing (eg, embedding).

The big downside is you have to be _really_ careful with the panning and zooming. What seems like 'just a little' when your building can easily feel like an amusement park ride when it's on a big screen. Also, you can't upload to slideshare unless you record it as a video first.

Overall, we were very happy with it, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. But you definitely want to build some practice Prezi's before doing the real thing. We found it very useful, but it has the potential to be very distracting if you aren't careful.

</comment><comment><USER4> For some reason, Prezi has been _really_ widespread at humanities venues since 2009 or so, especially any sort of computer/media/digital-oriented areas of the humanities. But, I've never seen it used at a CS conference.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps this is a shortsighted and gross overgeneralization, but I would imagine CS conference attendees are more interested in the content of a presentation than the humanities. Presentation style and stylistic elements that can make or break some presentations are more important in a digital media oriented field than more academic or technical fields.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but I think the parent wants to point out that it is popular in humanities as in academics (who are also interested in content).

To me the difference seems to be that CS people are more aware of current technical possibilities, and take a "we've been there before" attitude. To humanities people, it's all new and spectacular. And who doesn't want to impress their peers?

As someone who works on the border between both fields, I can only hope this soon blows over. It tends to be overused and annoying, though I can see it as beneficial in non-academic fields.

<comment><USER4> That's probably true, although parts of CS have an almost active aversion to new technology, especially on the UI side, which might be part of it. Sort of the stereotypical bearded Unix guru who doesn't want any of your damn newfangled touchscreens or GUI widgets near his computer science.

(I don't even really mean that negatively; my own computing style tends towards CLI, and/or "weird" window managers like dwm.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Among people I've seen use it, there's this tendency to dive in head first to use it. I get the impression that the general thinking is to differentiate themselves from the crowd (and since I'm in school, the thought is they'll get better marks). In reality, a bad presentation is a bad presentation, no matter how you package it (lipstick on a pig anyone?). Once Prezi becomes a norm like PowerPoint (I think it will), I'm curious how Prezi will position itself

</comment><comment><USER7> Great tool - highly recommended.

One tip: go very easy on the movement - you'll make your audience sea sick!

</comment><comment><USER8> good use of prezi, the presentation on the chip & pin break from last year.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3dxjvqk7Y></comment>


New Seed-Stage Incubator in Blacksburg, VA - <AUTHOR> http://www.dayoneventures.com/

<comment><USER2> Huh. Their office is literally about 200 feet from my desk.

On what people said about Blacksburg: yes, it's cheap. For another calibration point, a bottle of PBR is $1.25 at the bars. Yes, it's a beautiful area.

For the bad: I have to disagree with lallysingh on "if you're single and younger than 30" it's a good place to be in. Once you've been out of undergrad a few years, you start to realize just how _young_ some of the undergrads are. I'll be 29 in June. I look at most of the undergrads as "kids."

In contrast, I spent two summers in the NYC area, and I was amazed at how much easier it was to meet people who were at a similar point in life.

College towns are nice, but the farther you are from being a college undergrad, the harder it will be to socialize.

<comment><USER3> I left when I was 29. There were enough grad students/vet school students to keep me going until then.

Edit: also, Schlitz for $0.86.

<comment><USER2> It's up to $1 at The Cellar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spent 11.5 years at VT, in Blacksburg. Loved it. Only NYC could make me leave.

Some notes:

(1) It's a _young_ town. It's 25k students, almost all undergrad. 6k nonstudents. If you're single and younger than 30, it's a pretty good spot to be in.

(2) It's _cheap_. My rent in 2008 for a small studio was $320/mon. Friends had roommates and kept their rent below $250/mon. You can go cheaper if you don't mind adding 5 min to your commute. Everything else (food, drinks, etc) was cheap. As a calibration point: $4 Guinness pints.

(3) It's out in the country. Really, really out. But, it's also utterly gorgeous and there's plenty of outdoors to enjoy.

The Corporate Research Center (CRC) described is also where the VT CS dept is, and it's on the other side of the VT airport from campus. Quick access to the highway and maybe 2 miles from the next town over, which has all the standard chains/amenities: Starbucks, Walmart (24hr), Staples, Panera, etc.

It's also a nice little bicycle ride from main st to the CRC.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got my undergrad at VT, and spent time working at the CRC. This is EXCELLENT news for the entire VT community. I wish there had been more of an entrepreneurial spirit/teachings when I was in Blacksburg. Hopefully this will motivate some of the students to create something amazing.

<comment><USER5> Agreed.

I was in Blacksburg at VT for five years, and there is a huge amount of talent in the engineering school and CS / math departments there. If DayOne is right in the CRC, it's a fertile ground for hiring great candidates. Best of luck to them, I'd love to hear some success stories!</comment></comment>


TSA Agents Hate New Pat Downs, Find Them Disgusting And Morale Breaking - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101119/10225611947/tsa-agents-absolutely-hate-new-pat-downs-find-them-disgusting-morale-breaking.shtml

<comment><USER2> > I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home > and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.

This really struck a chord with me, not because I feel that they should get a pass, but because apparently these agents have drunk the Kool-Aid and really believe that what they're doing is a noble endeavor that people should be thanking them for, like one would thank a veteran.

"Honorable service to your country" does not include routine violations of the country's Constitution and the harassment and intimidation of her citizens.

I know that at the end of the day, most of the screeners are regular Joes looking to put food on the table, but honestly...I'm glad that these new procedures are destroying morale. I wish no harm to the individuals, but the TSA as an organization won't be able to survive the rotting from within that results from an utterly demoralized, underpaid, abused workforce. Public criticism is one thing, but if your workforce starts evaporating because your policies are too brutal, the simple economics of the situation requires that something change.

<comment><USER3> well said.

like you've got mixed feelings. as individuals i'm sympathetic: they signed up for a job serving their country, and are now being told to do things they find unpalatable, being exposed to an unknown about of radiation (they're not allowed to wear dosimeters), and taking abuse from passengers. in this economic climate, it's got to be a really difficult tradeoff. on the other hand, as you say, "Honorable service to your country" does not include routine violations of the country's Constitution and the harassment and intimidation of her citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's based on a post by Steven Frisching (aka @FlyingWithFish) who polled 20 TSOs. 17 responded unanimously against the new pat downs. Stephen said "I expected most to not like the pat downs … but what I didn't expect was that all 17 mentioned their morale being broken down"</comment>


Lost typeface printing blocks found in river Thames - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31188255

<comment><USER2> Its a lame blurb, the story of the Doves Typeface is here: [http://www.economist.com/news/christmas- specials/21591793-le...](http://www.economist.com/news/christmas- specials/21591793-legendary-typeface-gets-second-life-fight-over-doves) which is somewhat interesting. That they have found a few more pieces of it is, interesting as well. No need to click the link though and read this :

 _Printing blocks for a typeface called Doves Type have been discovered in the River Thames.

The font has not been used for nearly a century as the printing type blocks, used to print letters, were thrown into the river in 1917._

And have your screen start talking to you with an advertisement.

<comment><USER3> I came to provide that exact link ... it's a great article and the fact that they've found some of the type lends credence to the legend (that it had been dumped in the Thames). I can't wait to see this on Google fonts!

<comment><USER4> It is for sale, not on Google fonts [http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves- type/](http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/)

<comment><USER5> If the font is really that old, shouldn't it be out of copyright? Courts have held that faithful digital reproductions of public domain paintings are not copyrightable; could the same apply to fonts?

<comment><USER6> Typefaces aren't copyrightable to begin with. When you license one, you're only licensing the ability to use the name.

<comment><USER5> Could you provide a reference for that so we can learn more? That sounds contrary to what I've read previously.

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protectio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. It sounds like it's still possible for a font _file_ to be copyrighted, though:

 _However, in 1992, the US Copyright Office revisited its 1988 decision, and determined that the latest digital outline fonts in fact had elements that could be protected as software.[4] Since that time, the Office has accepted registration of copyright for digital vector fonts, such as PostScript Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType format files.

This is part of the basis of the unpublished opinion in Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc., decided in 1998, wherein Judge Whyte found that Adobe Software held a valid copyright for its Utopia font and that it had been infringed by the defendant(s) in that case._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a better article: [http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr- blog/2015/february/recove...](http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr- blog/2015/february/recovering-the-doves-type)

</comment><comment><USER8> You can buy a digital version of the typeface for 40 pounds at [http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/](http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/)

<comment><USER9> The 'Qu' almost-ligature is great. But wow, is font licensing screwed up...."contact us" for > 10K views per month!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is the article? Or is it just the blurb.

<comment><USER11> The "article" is the video embedded in the page. Although it doesn't have much more information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what other things are sitting on the bottom of the Thames.

<comment><USER13> This could be an interesting topic for the Discovery channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh no - quick hide it, otherwise we will start to see a rash posting of web design blogs swanning around using it and claiming how individual they are, in a copied each other kind of way.</comment>


Installing PostmarketOS on Mozilla Flame (Weston and Plasma Mobile) - <AUTHOR> https://sizeofcat.github.io/post/postmarketos-on-mozilla-flame/ <comment><USER2> Too bad it's hard to get one of these device.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, though take a look at their supported device list: [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices)

You may be able to find something more commonly available.</comment></comment>


Math, iteration, and perfection. - <AUTHOR> http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/13/math-iteration-and-perfection/ <comment><USER2> Just wait 'til you learn about integrals! They're even more exciting :)

<comment><USER3> And cardinalities of infinite sets are cool.

Did you know not every infinite set of numbers has the same magnitude? (Informally, "they can have a different number of numbers.")

<comment><USER4> When I first understood Cantor's diagonalization argument, it blew my mind. It remains one of the most clever pieces of reasoning I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you like that, check out the way to derive the golden ratio with continued fractions: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio>

image (wiki): [http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/4/c/4/4c453149032c9c6840e8a...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/4/c/4/4c453149032c9c6840e8ae814df707cd.png)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like he discovered Riemann's hypothesis.

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

<comment><USER7> I don't think so, just geometric series: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_series>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > perfection (or in math terms, infinity)

Seriously?</comment>


Lala shut down by Apple last night, May 31st - <AUTHOR> http://www.lala.com/sshutdowninfo <comment><AUTHOR> Apple obviously wasn't interested in Lala's users, and I don't expect they were interested in code, so was it a talent acquisition or did Apple just do this to remove a competitor to future online music services?

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER2> Regardless of the merits of Lala's service, I highly doubt that the biggest music retailer in the U.S. had a reason to be afraid of any competition from them. Certainly not reason enough to be forced to buy them. Apple are infamously frugal when it comes to M&A, so this must be either "buying technology" or "buying talent". I guess we'll see which once the iTunes "cloud" service is launched.

<comment><USER3> What if it doesn't launch?

<comment><USER4> lala.com will not relaunch. Talent or technology will be integrated into iTunes and the consumers will get a something new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What the world needs is a giant repository of all music (legal, of course) and accessible by an API for streams and downloads.

Any access to the API would charge for the rights to play the song, of course, but it would be up to the retailer to decide how the song was paid for, whether it be web-song stream rights, subscription, download sales, ads etc. This would open up a whole new market for music sites without having to directly manage deals with music publishers - we the web entrepreneurs could focus on creative delivery instead of fearing / bargaining with labels.

This is a ludicrous pipe dream, obviously, based on how technologically frightened and fractured the music industry is today. But it would make the world a better place I think.

<comment><USER6> Remember, the music industry doesn't want you to buy their music. They want to "deal" with you.

An example of a company that wants you to buy their stuff is Amazon. Click a button, make an API call, and you have a new server. That's because they are the ones providing value; they are not the middlemen worrying about being cut out of the loop.

The music industry is different -- they don't do much more than act as a loanshark to the artists, which the artists put up with because the only way to have your music advertised is with the record labels. If there was just an API where you could sell your stuff, then the record labels wouldn't be necessary. Your laptop, a good soundcard, and free software is all you'd need to "play in the majors". That's not good for the middleman.

Bittorrent is an acceptable interim solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Grooveshark will give you 1 Month of VIP if you are a Lala user. <http://vip.grooveshark.com/lala>

</comment><comment><USER8> Lala's streaming catalog was huge (>8 million songs) and included music not available on iTunes. I enjoyed using the service and have since lost any infatuation with downloading and storing MP3s. Being able to listen to anything once was great but the day has already come where you'll be able to rent access (cheaply) to an entire collection and listen to what you want, when you want (e.g., mog.com). Still to come: better tools for organizing the music you're interested in, learning about artists, and finding new music.

<comment><USER9> What stops you from using Rhapsody, then?

<comment><USER10> Their library is often missing songs I want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apple's Lala purchase has little to do with keeping Lala at bay, nor disallowing a competitor to purchase it.

Their acquisition history speaks for itself:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

While Lala, Placebase and Quattro are notable because they fit in the Google space, the quantity of acquisitions suggests to me Apple is still deliberate about their purchasing -- and a defensive move is not a good enough reason.

Lala's purpose at Apple is specific and grand; it provides another something to enrich our world and their ecosystem. I have little doubt.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Credit amounts will be based on your account activity as of May 31, 2010. iTunes Store credit amounts will be rounded up to the nearest $1 for refunds under $10, or to the nearest $5 for refunds greater than $10."

Pardon my ignorance, I'm neither Lala or iTunes' user, is this rounding thing is common?

<comment><USER13> It probably has something to do with good faith or perhaps even something specifically with itunes gifting system.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More information:

<http://mashable.com/2010/04/30/lala-shutdown/>

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/apple-to-shut-down-lala- on-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/apple-to-shut-down-lala-on-may-31/)

</comment><comment><USER14> They weren't that great anyways, you had to pay for listening after the first time. This is fine with me, but think about all the teenagers out there, I am sure they have found other ways to access music given their practically zero income. Once I talked to my 14 year old niece, and she told me none of her friends use limewire or similars, they use myspace and youtube downloaders. I think that the effort from Apple to shut down paid competitors may not be the solution to their root cause...

<comment><USER15> limewire?

<comment><USER14> limewire, napster, kazzaa, gnutella, all those things that will be gloriously remembered in the history books :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's keeping someone else from making a Lala clone if Apple isn't interested in keeping the service around?

<comment><USER17> I have to think that it is a pretty big PITA (and cost) to get the proper licenses to sell a library as large as the one Lala had online.

That said, I would love it if someone did step up. I have looked at a few similar services, but haven't found any that make for an adequate replacement.

<comment><USER18> I actually _prefer_ mog.com. It doesn't have all the same social networking features, but those weren't the draw for me anyway. It's certainly a much better bargain.

<comment><USER19> mobile apps "coming"

[http://blog.mog.com/post/611539321/mogs-iphone-android- apps-...](http://blog.mog.com/post/611539321/mogs-iphone-android-apps-are- coming)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "All check refund requests for wallet balances will be mailed to your shipping address no later than June 14th."

Does this apply to web song refunds as well? I was just wondering what linux users could do since they obviously won't have a use for iTunes credits.

<comment><USER21> It's a bit of a hassle, but Linux users _can_ just buy the songs on iTunes on a different computer and then copy them to their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google is using iLike now as default for his Google music search.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd never even heard of Lala before Apple bought them. Now, if they purchased and shut down grooveshark, both my mother and I would be grieving.

<comment><USER24> Canadian too? I kind of wish I could try Lala and Mog. And Hulu. And NBC...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe it had something to do with Apple's core competency. If ITunes is already dominating, why create another one?

</comment><comment><USER26> WWDC related? Cloud iTunes??

</comment><comment><USER14> hey, checkout lizten.in, slightly different in its conception, but could be a good alternative

</comment><comment><USER27> _moment of silence_</comment>


Ask HN: analytics for web api? - <AUTHOR>

Is there anything like Google Analytics for analyzing web api traffic? Preferably self hosted so the data will stay on my server.
I launched an iphone app that generates a lot of web api requests. I spent half a day rigging up a simple jqplot system for displaying simple stats, but now I want to do geo-ip and displaying which country/state is using my app.
So instead of reinventing the wheel, is there already an web app that can do the analysis for me, and I just need to feed it the data in the proper format? <comment><USER2> If you shoot your stats data out in the same (or similar) format that Apache does, you could use AWStats or Analog (or numerous others) to get graphs and analysis pages - including IP resolution and geo-locating,error frequency, etc.

They're not web apps, per se - you'll need to download and run through PHP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, AWStats, Webalize and the like will work, but GA handles time series data better and can drill down on specific urls.

I'd also like to be able to modify the code and customize some analysis. That's why I want something like a web app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could always integrate mixpanel or something similar.

Or tweak the log format output from your webserver so that you can shove it into any of many analytics programs.</comment>


How is Authorea different from Google Docs? - <AUTHOR> https://authorea.com/6055

<comment><USER2> I think your competition isn't Google Docs so much as writelatex and sharelatex:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US&q=Authorea,+wr...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US&q=Authorea,+writelatex,+sharelatex&content=1)

I've used sharelatex before for academic publications and it was convenient. The reason is the academic publication I was submitting to had this latex template that I had to work within and sharelatex imported that without issue.

For academic publications almost no one uses Microsoft Word except for a small minority. I think that in the online world then it is still going to be latex that dominants for academic purposes.

Having live data drive the documents is a great idea though, and your UI looks polished, but its content should be primarily latex with some wysiwyg interfaces on top of it in my opinion if your market is academics.

<comment><USER3> > For academic publications almost no one uses Microsoft Word except for a > small minority.

Sure, we're all biased by our own experiences, but I've found this to be blatantly false in the biological sciences. Microsoft Word dominates, if only for its comment and change tracking and ease-of-use.

I'd love to use latex, but very few of my collaborators even know the syntax. I think latex predominantly rules in physics, math, and perhaps some engineering fields (but certainly not BME). Definitely not all of academia.

(As an aside, I have a hard time not pronouncing the name as Authorrhea).

<comment><USER4> I can also attest to the biological sciences reliance on Word and Track Changes. It's maddening at times but then again my 80 year old PI (whose in the lab everyday doing wet work still!) can use it and every computer on our campus (some 1000 or so) can be used to edit our drafts .

I and some of my other colleagues would much rather move into something like Google Docs and we've done so to a limited extent. I wish someone had told me about Authorea a month ago before I started another manuscript in Word. I'm happy to take the hour and my PI is happy to spend the hour for me to show him how to use other editing and collaboration tools. I just need to know about them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These guys are still vulnerable to heartbleed. I witnessed my username and password in plain text from the server's memory when I signed up with a test account.

<comment><USER6> Entirely my fault, very sorry about that. Should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a side note, when it comes to various solutions and ideas wrt using LaTeX + Markdown, there is a discussion: [https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup- language-utAjFcYuv...](https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language- utAjFcYuvvB)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I will join the discussion. And wow, hackpad looks so good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great product. You should have friendly URL's for users, like Github has [https://github.com/username](https://github.com/username). Also, it would be nice to make it easy to incorporate secondary information. A lot of scientific publications involve code and raw experimental data, which is usually not included in the final paper, but is nonetheless of potential interest to others. Providing hosting for this seems like an additional revenue opportunity.

<comment><USER6> You can add any additional files to the repo. In the browser upload the file size is limited to 10MB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So say an academic lab wanted to move all their projects in Authorea and they're already using git for versioning. Can we import and maintain our versioning?

<comment><USER6> Although this is not really possible entirely from the user-side I'd be happy to help getting your projects setup on Authorea. Generally speaking, importing an existing project creates a new git repo on Authorea which can then be mirrored to Github. However, I can setup your articles from the admin side using existing repos as the starting points.

<comment><USER4> Gotcha, that's pretty nice. I'll talk with my PI about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Social logins would be great

<comment><USER6> And they have been on the todo list for a shamefully long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where were you the last 5 years?!

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, but not ethical. This wants to be the _scientific_ version Google Docs? Well, have a good fight with [http://substance.io/](http://substance.io/) which is 1) opensource 2) very well implemented 3) has a broader vision 4) 5 years ahead of it.

Get the science back to the people, please.

<comment><USER12> _not ethical_

Can you elaborate, please? I honestly cannot make a connection between the original post and any question of dubious ethics. While I am unlikely to use Authorea any time soon (not in the target market) it seems like a very cool idea. Where do the ethical concerns arise?

<comment><USER11> I answered on @apepe. Mostly it's about the openness of the product. The formats are open, but how you interact with them is not.</comment></comment></comment>