How Moving Is Linked to Losing Friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/02/disposable-friendships-in-a-mobile-world/470718/?utm_source=QuartzFB&single_page=true <comment><USER3> A lot of that is how we create friendships. Growing up in an area, you have many years with the same people. In college, you have many years with the same people. After you graduate, even if you're in the same area there will be multiple phases to friendship.

1\. You're going to be working and single/married but still have plenty of time to spend after hours and on weekends with friends. The crux comes from income disparities that might prevent some friends from spending money on activities that others are willing to do.

2\. As soon as kids happen, the group dynamics shift. The parents are often times going to be exhausted for a few years (especially if both are working), going out requires hiring a babysitter, inviting people over involves working around the kids or trying to avoid waking them. We host our friends all the time just because it's easier, but it's very different. Overtime this shift in dynamics becomes a big deal.

3\. The solution for getting together with friends when you have small kids is other people with kids the same age who can play together. This causes another significant shift in the dynamic as you start to create new friends with parents from your neighborhood, school, church, scouts, etc. If you're in an new area and many people in these groups already know each other, then you're going to be responsible for making the effort to get to know them.

<comment><USER4> > _If you 're in an new area and many people in these groups already know each > other, then you're going to be responsible for making the effort to get to > know them._

I never understood this mindset. From a sheer work perspective, it's easier for ten people in an established group to make a small effort to the new person than it is for that new person to make the same (or even less) effort toward all ten. And from a psychological perspective, they're already in an unfamiliar environment and likely without any friends or family. It's much more humane for the established folks to reach out to the new people.

<comment><USER5> I have about twenty friends that I regularly do things with. But only 3 of us organize 90% of our activities. A new person is a burden on that core group. We try, but some folks make it hard to bring them in. If they don't rsvp, or use nonstandard communication methods it makes it hard. They don't have to reach out, but they have to respond or after a while we quit trying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For this reason, I tell college applicants that there's value to going to a school in the economic area you expect to work in (straightforward if it's LA, SV, or NY). Most of your friends are going to stay in that area. I lost most of my college friends when I moved back to the west coast.

<comment><USER7> Is that actually a good idea, though? Schools in California and New York tend to be quite expensive. Moreover, it's arguably much safer for people, to move after college, when they have more maturity and an improved economic outlook than it is for them to move far away from home just after leaving high school. If a high-schooler gets into trouble in college, it's much better for them if their college is a couple of hundred miles from their parents and their existing social network, as opposed to being a couple of thousand miles away. It's much easier for kids who are marginal to get that extra support and attention, which can mean the difference between dropping out and graduating.

Certainly, in my case, I'm very glad that I chose to move away _after_ college, rather than before. I had a hard time in university, and the extra support I got from my parents was crucial in getting me out with a diploma. I would not have had that support if I'd moved to California or New York for my computer science degree.

<comment><USER8> I'm not so sure. I went to uni in a different state, 1000 miles from home. I was also one of those marginal students (low income, poor schools, poor neighborhood, single parent, etc). Freshman year, moving to a new state made me a bit monastic. While my new friends, who were in state, were going home, constantly hanging out with friends from high school I would spend my weekends studying, try new interesting activities, listen to music, etc.

Being so far from family just made me more self-reliant and resourceful. Example, my roommate would take a car load of laundry home every month because he didn't know how to wash his clothes and could not be bothered to figure it out.

While being self reliant prepared me for life it did not help with the studies. It took me a few years and a few failed courses before I really learned how to study. Not at the grade school level but at the university level. But that was not because of the distance to the school. Being first in my family I had no one to lean on. Now my siblings are doing much better because I was the first, took all the arrows to the chest and mentored them over the stumbling blocks I encountered when transitioning to university.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The majority of people can ultimately attribute meeting nearly all of their friends to either work or school. Having friends also makes meeting new friends both easier and far more likely.

People who move around often are hit pretty hard by that dynamic. I'd say people with little to no educational background who then work remote or otherwise solitary jobs also have it rough in that regard.

<comment><USER10> Ouch. I've worked remotely for years, have a history of moving, and haven't been in school for over a decade. I can easily vouch for your statements, not to mention two other factors - being in a Southern European country where "there's no future" (and thus it's the locals that move) and being in my 30s when most social circles are already established.

It gets more complicated depending on the type of country one lives in. It's been said that Portugal, where I'm living, doesn't have so much of a social culture while Spain very much does. This weekend I went to a Spanish border town and saw infinitely more people, of all ages, out and about. Crossing an artibrary EU border (just a sign) and suddenly everything changes. The problem lies in what this means for the individual. As it has been explained to me, social cultures are like peaches - easy to breach, hard to truly enter - <USER2> less-social cultures are like coconuts - hard to breach, but easier to truly enter.

<comment> eric-hu I'm in my thirties and felt as you did until I found the right social hobby (swing dancing). Now, my biggest social concern is balancing:

1\. Being kind and open to new people I meet. 2\. Dedicating enough time to the people I know. 3\. Dedicating enough time to myself.

I write this as an American living in Thailand for the last five months. I'm unfamiliar with Thai and many other Asian languages, yet in those months I've made friends with people from a half dozen countries in Asia and a couple in Europe. I would happily meet up with many for a meal. For some, I would even consider hosting them or asking to crash on their couches.

This is less of an advertisement for swing dancing or dancing in general, and more an advertisement for exploring different subcultures. I explored many before finding this particular one.

<comment><USER11> Heh, I think my wife and I accidentally stumbled on your swing dancing group. Is it the one that meets in that second floor bar with windows facing west just south of Sukhumvit from the British embassy? Looked like fun but people taking it oh so serious! Lots of expats. We were simply relaxing and amused at the difference with China, but I've since seen a similar event in Chengdu and we've since met an Aussie tango teacher who has just started up here in Kunming. From what I understand, swing is super popular with US west-coasters. Seems a bit of a thing in this area right now. Of course it's probably a faded fad by now in the more US-connected Korea/Hong Kong/Taiwan zone...

Guess I am the exception that proves the rule. 33 here, moved at least 10 times in the last 15 years, including 3 major international jumps, but still have a big circle of friends across the region in multiple cities. We are definitely more aware of parents now that we have a child but overall most friends are still without. Certainly couples are more approachable now than singles, though.

<comment><USER10> > 33 here, moved at least 10 times in the last 15 years, including 3 major > international jumps

35 here, moved at least 20 times in the last 15 years, including 3 major international jumps

FTFM (fixed that for me). It's fun but not always easy, as a single person, that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > American society was mobile in his day and has only gotten more mobile > since.

This is the conventional wisdom. Is it true? I've seen assertions challenging it in the past, suggesting Americans were _less_ likely to make big moves today than in the past, and instead remain in the same city (this was in connection with some divorce/custody cases).

Blurbs challenging the assertion:

[http://www.newsmax.com/US/americans-moving-less- than/2014/05...](http://www.newsmax.com/US/americans-moving-less- than/2014/05/28/id/573682/)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why- are-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-are- americans-moving-less-perhaps-they-dont-need- to/2012/05/18/gIQAi0L3YU_blog.html)

[http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=151554.0;wa...](http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=151554.0;wap2)

and one on how Americans are still mobile compared to the rest of the world: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/the-u...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/15/the- united-states-is-still-one-of-the-most-mobile-countries-in-the-world/)

</comment><comment><USER13> A related effect happens after you move. In your first months in a new place you can easily seem interesting and get invited to parties and whatnot because you're new in town. But you're like an animal in a zoo: look at him, so unusual, oh let's move on to the next one.

The people you meet will usually be longtime residents of your new home. They have evidence that your friendship will not last, because after all you just told them all about the place you left behind. You'll probably leave this place behind someday, so becoming deeply involved with you is likely a big waste of time.

Don't worry, there's an expat meet-up every Wednesday! We have no idea who will be there, but maybe you can meet some new people!

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess different cultures have different ideas of friendship.

For me a friend is someone you call at 3AM with "I need you", and he don't even asks the question - "who is this guy", while you bury the body. And some for whom you will do the same.

You may have a couple of those in your life if you are extremely lucky and you don't lose them even if they are half the world away and you talk once per year.

But I guess the majority of friendships the articles talk about are acquaintances. A true friendship is forged in fire, hardened, tempered and not brittle at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reading these comments makes me feel really good about what I'm trying to do with my startup, Krewe ([https://www.gokrewe.com](https://www.gokrewe.com)). It helps people make lasting, meaningful friendships that they can actually see and do stuff with everyday. It places people into a small social group where everyone lives within a half mile radius, and then encourages them to stick together and meet up often. There really is no reason why we all shouldn't have a close group of friends in our neighborhood, no matter how old we are, we just need an organization to help make those introductions and connections.

<comment><USER16> How well does it facilitate discrimination? For instance, in the small town I'm stuck in at the moment, most people are probably religious, and I definitely don't want to become friends with any of them. So a service that lets you find people living near you to be friends with would need to allow me to discriminate against people like that easily, or I'm not going to bother using it.

<comment><USER15> I think that would be a little too controversial for me to try to start out with.

<comment><USER16> Why would that be "controversial"?

It sounds like (without looking at your site: it's blocked for me) you're basically just setting up something like a dating site, but with a focus on meeting friends nearby rather than dating partners.

I've never seen a dating site (except Tinder) which didn't have basic properties plainly visible for every person in their profile: sex, age, marital/relationship status, religion, ethnicity, kids, and usually a bunch more like pets, income, job, etc. People discriminate when looking for dating partners all the time, and for good reason. If you're a 20-year-old hetero atheist female, you're probably not going to want to date a 70-year-old hetero evangelical female. It's not that different when looking for friends; most people form friendships starting from some shared trait or experience, and tend to avoid people they aren't likely to get along with. Religion is a pretty big factor here: a devout Muslim is not likely to get along with a devout Jew or Christian, and similarly an liberal atheist or agnostic is not likely to get along with a Bible-thumping conservative Christian.

So why wouldn't you want to help people find people they can get along with? If all you're doing is trying to push together people because they just happen to leave within a half-mile of each other, that's doomed to failure IMO.

<comment><USER17> There are existing fairly-good mechanisms for people looking to network whose primary criteria is shared religion (shared absence of religion has somewhat weaker tools in many locations, and I suppose a tool focusing _specifically_ on that audience might be valuable.)

So, while religious filtering might be of some importance to some users of a new friend-finder tool, there are, I think, fairly good reasons to think that the people for whom it is most important are _exactly_ the people that don't need a new tool at all -- people who network through their religious communities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've experienced an almost opposite situation a few years ago. Rather than moving away and losing friends, life brought me to a location in which I couldn't care less to live in. Because of this, I would make a great effort to not make friends, not socialize, and not have anything to do with the community. I lived with the assumption that it was a temporary situation and would be over soon. It wasn't as temporary as I had hoped...

<comment><USER16> I'm in much the same situation now. Don't listen to that other guy: if you're living in a place where you don't intend to stay, and the locals really aren't people you want to spend your time with, then don't. All the people around me are a bunch of small-town religious people, so I have no desire to get to know them, or else they're going to start asking me about my "personal relationship with Jesus" or somesuch. I'm just working on my finances and planning my move out of here, and for socializing I try to take a day every weekend and drive to the nearest big city and do something with a Meetup group there. I meet some very interesting people that way, unlike the people I currently live around.

<comment><USER18> Meetups really did help the situation! Luckily this isn't so much of a problem these days and I have carved out a small niche where I am at. Not exactly where I want to be, but I've found a way to be happy with where I am!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Generally, we've been really happy with our move from Italy to Bend, Oregon, but leaving our friends behind has been one of the most difficult aspects of it. I miss the social interactions with both friends and most people in general, in Italy. "Hi, how are you?" is a genuine question, and not asked if you don't expect an answer.

</comment><comment><USER20> When you move you change acquaintances, you don't lose friends unless you already wanted to lose touch with them. I know it sounds like a no true Scotsman but with cheap airlines, skype, online gaming etc. it's pretty easy to keep in touch if you actually want to.

<comment><USER21> What about my rock-climbing partner, and my musician friends (some of the stuff we do can be done over the 'net, but we can't jam remotely)? I guess these all fall under the category of "take a plane"? It certainly contradicts the spur-of-the-moment environment facilitated by cellphones though, whereby we tend to make plans just a few hours before meeting up.

Keeping in touch is definitely possible, but those types of friendships would become nearly unrecognizable if we're separated by a plane flight.

<comment><USER22> If a friendship revolves around being able to do some similar thing together, it's probably not a friendship. In a friendship it's about the other person and it doesn't matter if you can't climb/surf/jam together because it's not about doing. People I hang out with because of a hobby are pals, peers, even acquaintances. A friend is a couple of steps above that: a friend I would see outside the usual circumstances. I go have lunch with my colleagues but it's only one or two I actually meet outside of work, and those are potential friend material. Test of true friendship is when you don't have any other other excuse to meet except yourselves, and you still meet.

<comment><USER21> This seems highly subjective to me, and to be honest, I can't help but be mildly offended - you just discredited the vast majority of my friendships, and yet I don't even understand what you're trying to get at.

I don't connect with people via words. I've always felt people are primarily defined by their actions, so it is very much about the "doing" for me, and it's through doing things together that I make connections with others. Obviously, my friend with whom I rock climb isn't just my rock-climbing partner - we do other things as well, many of which are unplanned and are new experiences. But it's the possibility of playing out our spur-of-the-moment ideas, as well as the other regular hobbies, that make our friendship even remotely interesting. Without being able to do those things together (which is way, way more difficult when you have to take a plane ride to visit), neither of us would be able to glean any meaning from the other's existence.

I don't know - was I really far off in how I interpreted your comment? What _is_ a friendship, to you?

<comment><USER23> Not GP but I think he means friends are those folks that are there for everything, from the birth of your kid to picking you up drunk at 5 am from the pub kind of thing. If the interaction you have with someone is 95% based around a single activity, they are more in the real of acquaintance than friend.

This is very subjective and each person will define a 'friend' differently. I personally, if I don't count my wife, I can count the number of friends with just my fingers, but for me, the word friend means someone that are there for you for whatever, that even after not seeing each other for a few years, there is no awkwardness and you can pick it up from you left. For others, someone you see regularly, have a few beers are considered friends.

<comment><USER24> Those that I consider my closest friends right now, we mostly only see each other once a week and play board games with each other.

I'd say 90-95% of what we do is play board games together, but I know what's going on in their lives and they do mine, and I've attended their special events like birthdays and housewarmings and weddings, and helped them out when they needed it and supported them in their endeavors.

If that's not being a friend because we mostly just do a 'single activity', then I very much disagree with your definition.

I do agree about not having seen each other for years and there's no awkwardness when you get back together being a mark of friendship though. I have that with my old high school friends, and I'm sure it'd be the same with my main friends today.

<comment><USER23> You have been to their birthdays, housewarmings and weddings and helped them out when they needed.

This is very different from 'these are people I only play boardgames with them'. I have tennis 'friends'. These are people I only see in relation to tennis (either playing, practise or even go to watch a match with) but wouldn't get invited to their wedding or be asked to help them move for example. Sure, when we are at the club we chat a lot and are very friendly, but when I'm looking for someone to take care of my kid or lend me his car because mine broke, I won't be calling them (doesn't mean they can't turn to people I would in the future, but pretty sure for that to happen the friendship would have moved off the courts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I pretty much only had a handful of friends before I moved 2000+ miles away, but honestly, the one and only one that I still talk to was the only one that was really my friend. The rest were more close acquaintances, past roommates, etc.

Some are still on the 'real' friend list, but have lives that kept us from hanging out, even when there wasn't distance. Business, etc.

After moving my wife and I have picked up some couple 'friends,' but they are more playdate type (kids near same age), and party type acquaintances. I don't meet up with either of them individually (and they are socialites, so are always doing stuff with groups of people, I don't know that they have any friends that they just hang out together with, other than in a group).

My closest friend still hangs out with us once a year. We chat and email weekly if not daily, and we both fly to each other's cities to visit, or we meet somewhere and hang out, vacation-like.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        Lewin thought that this idea of friends as fast fashion—easily acquired,
        emotionlessly discarded when worn out—might be spurred by the United
        States's high level of residential mobility. American society was mobile in
        his day and has only gotten more mobile since.

How does the author square this with all of the recent studies that show that American residential mobility is at an all-time low? [1] And yet it doesn't seem that the average American is making more deep friendships, even though he or she is staying for longer in a single metropolitan area.

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/11/why-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/11/why- arent-americans-moving-anymore-heres-a-new-theory/)

<comment><USER26> Over the same time period, the US population has been increasing in diversity. Among other negative aspects, increased diversity increases social alienation. It reduces social cohesion and trust not just between groups but within them.

[.] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities)

[#] [http://politicalscience.ku.dk/staff/Academic_staff/?pure=fil...](http://politicalscience.ku.dk/staff/Academic_staff/?pure=files%2F130251172%2FDinesen_S_nderskov_Ethnic_Diversity_and_Social_Trust_Forthcoming_ASR.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not shocked. Its callous but I'm open with my friends that when they move, we're not really going to be friends any more. I don't see you any more, we don't chat all the time because you're in a different time zone, you have a lot of things to do. Why pretend that we're still friends? Its just a lot of hassle for everyone.

<comment><USER28> I think this has more to do with the way _you_ consume friendship than with the idea in general.

For me personally, even if I live in the same town as my best friend, I will barely see him. Most communication that deeply matters to me happens through text messages or email, not through in-person interaction.

I also tend to have a very small number of people that I consider friends, but I am fiercely loyal and protective of that small set of people. I don't want a large network of friends because my experience in life is that very few people are able or willing to help me and very few people share the perspectives that I have.

For the few that make good friends, geographical distance is one of the last things I would expect to affect the friendship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have spent my life moving from place to place. One thing I have learned is how to keep friends, because of the internet and cheap plane flights. If my friend lives in the U.S. it is basically the same place to me. This maybe an extension of the fields I work in as they are global and have been for awhile.

</comment><comment><USER30> Being born and raised in Minneapolis and still living here, I think about this dynamic every single day. I hate the cold weather here but I have a HUGE circle of friends and know tons of people in the city. I really want to move somewhere warmer but I dread loosing all my friends and family.

<comment><USER31> Also being born and raised in Minneapolis; leave and come back. Most of your friends will still be here. A huge amount of my college/20-something friendships live in Colorado. There is so much of the world to experience before a mortgage, kids, and a job tie you down to one place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The older I get the more I value the small number of real friends I have.

</comment><comment><USER33> i'm not sure this is exactly a revelation. did i miss something?

<comment><USER34> It _was_ pretty bleak except maybe the last paragraph. "Perhaps this occasional tendency to keep friendships from getting too deep, and being willing to let them go [...] comes from the knowledge of how hard it is to leave people."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I blame the Internet.</comment>


A Lesson in High Prices - <AUTHOR> https://marketingexamples.com/pricing/refactoring-ui <comment> Pete-Codes Interesting - I know Pieter Levels has sold a lot of his ebook at $30 as well which is a lot more than your average ebook. He even started selling before he had started writing it, haha

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine he had an intuitive grasp of elasticity of demand.

From what I know his audience is quite "hardcore", and there is hardly many substitute "Indie Hacker esque" stories out there.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think it's odd how simply changing the format of your product, i.e. eBook, online course, webinar etc ... has such a bearing on the price you can charge.

So I decided to write about it</comment>


On portability of Gnome - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/02/19/on-portability/ <comment><USER2> Not entirely related – but god how bad Gnome 3 still looks. I was under the impression that they would make some changes to the initial UI design. I'm sure they have, but it still looks terrible. I've not found a lot of UI design that hurts my eyes so much. I always get stuck on the upper left corner and the edge curvature of the menubar at the corner of the screen (activities: [http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/files/2014/02/gnome-on- freebs...](http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/files/2014/02/gnome-on-freebsd.png) ). I feel a bit bad when hating on open-source projects, but they really need to hear this.

I'm so glad there's XFCE.

<comment><USER3> I personally love Gnome Shell's look and UI. To each their own...

<comment><USER4> I agree - I was only willing to switch to Linux full time once Gnome 3 was released. I find Unity garish and Gnome 2 and KDE to be far too tweak happy with lots of ugly rough edges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So basically, "we're not forcing you to use systemd! you can shim it!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Systemd provides a replacement for things like ConsoleKit. It further makes various things much simpler for GNOME. It provides dbus interfaces. We're not forcing, it is that we do like to share the amount of work a slight bit. Meaning: those "portability" requests are nice, but almost everyone uses Linux. Isn't it logical that after 10+ years of making things also possible on _BSD, we now have Linux as main focus?

All those portability claims and that there somehow good: you're just doing things for lowest common denominator. Requiring a huge amount of effort to change or develop low level bits across _BSD and Linux.

Now systemd comes along and does a lot of things for us. While you'd still have dbus. We now have people who solely developed for Linux and they're installing FreeBSD, that's indicative on how much development resources there are on _BSD!

You imply that GNOME developers (none running or knowing anything other than Linux) are bad because they're not also developers for _BSD. I've seen other people claim that us focussing mainly on Linux will somehow reduce the amount of help we get from _BSD and so on. Yet practically speaking, the amount of developer resource we received during most of GNOME 2.x from_ BSD is pretty low (mainly implementations; hal, upower backends, etc). Plus often lagged behind a bit.

Recently we're making clear that we focus on Linux. We're still as open to portability as before, but someone really has to put in an effort to do this. Putting that with people who have only used Linux and mainly care for Linux is a bit strange IMO, especially after all those years.

Given that *BSD often did lag behind and did eventually provide implementations, the situation has not changed much. Expect for the often repeated claim of "forcing things".

<comment><USER6> _almost everyone uses Linux_

Actually, almost everyone uses Windows. Of those that do not, majority uses OSX.

As someone who's been a Linux desktop user since the early 2000s and was laughed out loud because everyone uses Windows so why even bother, I'm saddened by seeing the same logic from the GNOME team.

(PS. Obvoisly we're talking about desktop here so Android doesn't count).

<comment><USER7> Is it not obviously implied that the "everyone" here is "everyone interested in using Gnome"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually meant the people helping out at GNOME. So the developers, translators, etc. If everyone helping out in GNOME, then I find it logical that the focus is mainly on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some background on the OpenBSD video: [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140219085851](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140219085851)

</comment><comment><USER9> Meh. I understand the BSDs are great for server applications and that's where I'd happily use them.

But the market for a free desktop is tiny--for a BSD desktop (!OSX) miniscule. I see no problem with letting the burden of maintaining ports fall on those who would use them. (Assuming what he wrote was true, that they aren't making ports to *BSD difficult.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it possible to port gnome to nokia smart phones or other smart devices?

<comment><USER11> Yes bijan. it is possible but it needs tremendous amount of work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a remarkably dishonest argument. The example of gnome running on openbsd is precisely because the openbsd ports people patched the hell out of it to remove all the non-portable crap. Leaving a gnome with a bunch of features gone. And notice Antoine who did that work and provided that screenshot is one of the people who thinks there is no future for gnome on non-linux systems: [https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2013/10/msg00580.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2013/10/msg00580.html)

<comment><USER13> > _because the openbsd ports people patched the hell out of it to remove all > the non-portable crap. Leaving a gnome with a bunch of features gone._

Make up your mind. Was what they removed "crap" or was it "a bunch of features"?

<comment><USER12> Why do you present a false dichotomy? The gnome team (and presumably at least some gnome users) consider them features. Those features are implemented as non-portable crap. Saying gnome works fine on openbsd and pointing to part of gnome working only after an openbsd guy ripped out big chunks of it is just silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the blogpost referenced here as well as another blogpost, OpenBSD and FreeBSD developers appreciate the work that Ryan has been doing. Calling everything "crap" is a bit easy. What I did learn (since today) is that we were waiting for them (*BSD) to contact us (GNOME), while once only 1 person contacted them, we got a lot of cooperation going.

<comment><USER12> >What I did learn (since today) is that we were waiting for them (*BSD) to contact us (GNOME)

Really? All the patches that were sent upstream and ignored for years wasn't contact?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OMG current GNOME is really ugly</comment>


SQL Injection via table names and field names. Case study. - <AUTHOR> http://renesd.blogspot.com/2012/06/sql-injection-via-field-names-and-table.html

<comment><USER2> "About a year ago I had to implement a system where the table name could be configured for an application. Why would you want to do that? Lots of reasons really, like if you have a table generator via a web interface."

This is the reason you don't use a web-interface to do this. Allowing admin- level traffic to enter through the same channels as user traffic is generally a bad idea.

It's a major hole to an important layer in your defenses. Opening it up and you ask for trouble... even if you establish permissions, those can be bypassed with escalation exploits.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author demonstrates an SQL "injection" via "malicious" django-admin.py input. Is it really SQL injection if the user has access to your site's admin script?

Some input really is trusted.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am still amazed by the use of SQL language. Why use a text based language, instead of some kind of db API/ABI? You simply can't inject an API with only a parameter.</comment>


Google's Secret Social Initiative Delayed Until Spring, 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/11/29/google-social-2011/

<comment><USER2> They really need to give up and turn their attention elsewhere, because whatever replaces Facebook simply cannot be built by Google. And it doesn't matter how hard they try, because Google will build their social network in typical Google style -- a big, monolithic, overarching, ugly, centralized, database intricately geared for maximum advertising revenue. And that is precisely why Google will fail. At this point, a true Facebook threat would need to be something quite radically innovative that Google would never have even thought of it because they're focused on advertising dollars.

<comment><USER3> > Google will build their social network in typical Google style -- a big, > monolithic, overarching, ugly, centralized, database

Actually they are working hard on pubsubhubbub, activity streams, portable contacts, salmon and all the other federated web stack protocols in order to make facebook (and twitter) features available to any apps (wordpress, diaspora, status.net, gnusocial, buddypress already implemented those). They are trying to make social something open, in other words they are trying to pull an android on facebook by making it irrelevant or at least not as needed as all websites will get the same features. You will be able to communicate with/share photos with/follow your wordpress friends from blogger.com or diaspora or status.net or buzz. Only time will tell if it will be as successful as Android.

I think this is a good strategy, google can't beat facebook at their own game by creating a facebook clone just like they could not have beaten the iphone with their own phone. Making all of facebook features an open/easy/distributed/federated stack and attacking facebook with the help of the rest of the web seems like a much better strategy.

<comment><USER4> You mean OpenSocial?

<comment><USER3> No, ostatus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google is a systems/infrastructure company. They should figure out how to build frameworks that other people can build on top of and turn into something real and usable than to try to build everything and copy everyone else. Google isn't Apple, or Facebook.</comment>


Ask HN: How to effectively generate big data reports? - <AUTHOR>

My co-worker and I have been developing a tool in our free time to help us monitor our servers at work. At work, we have to keep an eye on nearly 100 servers - most are virtual machines. We wrote a tool that fits our exact monitoring needs (monitors a particular process, and various attributes about it) and have been collecting data on a per-minute basis from all 100 servers - we have quite a bit of data collected thus far. We're storing all of this data in MongoDB at this point.
The second part of our goal is to be able to view reports via an intranet web app. These reports are going to include data from all 100 servers, or that's our goal anyways. We'd like to start off by simply sorting these servers by CPU usage (we're storing CPU usage for each server, every minute), and viewing a graph of CPU usage over time.
First, uneducated plan of attack would be to simply run a report generating routine every minute or so that does the big query and stores that data set on a per minute basis. So, the dataset for this CPU usage would just include all server IDs and their CPU usage every minute - leaving out everything else we collect. I'm not sure if this scales very well, though.
Does anyone have any suggestions or pointers on how to plan out my scaling strategy for this? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Have you tried doing this in real time yet, or near real time with maybe a short lived cache? I mean, 100 points doesn't seem like much. If you just want the last load measurement for 100 servers, seems like a pretty lightweight mapreduce with an inline/streamed return value. You could cache the results in your app server for ~10seconds and have the front-end refresh every 10 seconds (giving you max-stale data of 20 seconds).

Beyond that, for your scaling question, I am a fan of generating reportable data asynchronously and keeping the UI stuff as a very simple select/find (which seems to be where you want to start). Each report would be its own transform - some of which might be more real-time than others. If your data is really huge and a single report is limited by MongoDB's single-threaded map- reduce, you'll need to look at the Mongo-Hadoop bridge.

Another solution is to simply store your data into a reportable format upfront. Of course, if you need to look at your data 50 different ways, it now turns into 50 inserts instead of just 1.

I think I'd try in real time, especially just for your initial cpu load, then move to an asynchronous transformation..and when that no longer meets your needs, deal with it then...I think it'll be a while before you get there.

You might be well served by asking this in the [active] MongoDB user group: <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mongodb-user>

<comment><AUTHOR> When you suggest trying it in real time, initially, are you saying to just go ahead and generate a new report every time the page is requested? I might as well go ahead and try this, knowing that it's not going to be under heavy user load. That might give me a good cpu load benchmark, as you said.

<comment><USER2> yes, though like I said, there's no reason you can cache the results for a short time (whatever works for you..I've seen as short as 5 seconds and as long as 5 hours). That way, if 10 users happen to look at it at the same time (common if you have an auto-refresh ajax thing going), it will keep the load low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Make sure you generate everything you need when processing data in one pass. ie. you take the last 100 data points, (or what have you), turn that into your graph. Then work on the next set of points, etc.

The key to this is to make sure that everything is constant sized. Don't have anything that has to run over every data point you collect.

As an example, you can take the last 5 minutes worth of data points (as a buffer), and then create a single five minute graph. You can then create an average of the 5 minutes worth of points and move that in to a second buffer which would have say an hours worth of points in 5 minute intervals, etc. Each step has a constant sized buffer and will draw in constant time.

Also, when you view your report, only view pregenerated graphs/tables/etc. It just makes things easier on you, and it stops you from having to care particularly about how long it takes to run your analysis.

<comment><USER4> It's worth noting that a sliding window of summarized monitoring samples is a solved problem: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRDtool>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One way to do it: every XXX minutes generate a file containing all the data pulled from MongoDB for the past YYY minutes. Have that sit someplace accessible within the Intranet.

Use some XMLHttpRequest on the browser side to pull the data up. Load it up and parse it into arrays and then throw it into a dataTable[0] or some custom Raphael.js [1] stuff. Reload every XXX minutes.

It seems like that if you just generate data on the server side and then do all the processing on the client side, you can keep the load light on the server and still do neat stuff with your data.

[0]<http://www.datatables.net/> [1]<http://raphaeljs.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> What's wrong with Cacti?

I ask this not as a veiled suggestion to "just use Cacti", but as a serious question, to figure out what it is you are trying to do and specifically why that's not good enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> We did setup Cacti but we were wanting to focus on tracking data particularly about the CPU of each server, as well as 1 particular process running on it. For that process, we wanted to track various stats like thread count, open network connections by it, open files by it, etc. We also wanted to monitor some environment metrics. The system we wrote is simply a Python app running under a cron job, reporting this data to our database server(s). We're going to be adding some notification type functionality to it so that we will be notified if things go awry, which they tend to do at least once a week. :(

I'm pleased with out data collecting setup - it's working well. But, obviously the power is in the reporting which is what we will be working on this upcoming week. I'm just researching the best methods for doing this in a scalable manner.

<comment><USER6> It's still somewhat unclear to me how Cacti is deficient. You know it can track anything, right, not just what it ships with out of the box? I have a chat-like server process that holds open TCP streams to clients indefinitely, and we wrote something to feed Cacti that number, and it tracks it like any other.

I don't know how the internals look so I don't know whether it ends up being useful for other uses or not.

The other thing you probably ought to specify is the frequency of the reports and what you want them to be reporting on. On a decently-spec'ed system it just doesn't seem like you're really talking about _that_ much data here, you should probably try to be more clear where your bottleneck is.

And you should probably head to some community that can pay attention to something like this for a longer period of time, a forum or a newsgroup or something.</comment></comment></comment>


AT&T U-Verse almost a complete failure - <AUTHOR> http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2011-02/msg00074.html <comment><USER2> One of the rare instances where we might be better served with a title different from that of the article. Even Matt Dillon probably wouldn't suggest U-Verse is a "complete failure" for normal people.

U-V (I _hate_ this name) is AT&T's high-speed service; it's FTTN (fat pipe to a DSLAM in the alley) 10-15mb over phone copper. It's a triple-play service (you get your TV and phone over it). I know a bit about it because, uh, I have it.

Dillon is pissed because the U-V router/firewall, which you can't really replace, is so bad that it breaks power user configurations. He's right, it does. BitTorrent also chokes it (yay!). I can add other problems: the set-top boxes are flaky, the reliability isn't awesome, customer service is atrocious.

On the other hand: it is f-a-s-t and cheap. I had Comcast before it, and before that I had Speakeasy (who I'd been loyal to since before the Best Buy takeover until I couldn't ignore the terrible performance anymore). I wouldn't go back to any of them. I hear good things about Vzn's fiber service, but in Chicago, I think AT&T is the best available bet.

<comment><USER3> > Dillon is pissed because the U-V router/firewall, which you can't really > replace, is so bad that it breaks power user configurations. He's right, it > does.

I don't know which router you and he have, but the one I have (a 2wire, don't know the model details) is configured to DMZ a pfSense box. I can torrent, use Vonage (QoSed in pfSense), etc.

I agree that they have atrocious customer service (still having connectivity issues after numerous technician visits due to old/crappy last mile cabling), but what large ISP's don't?

<comment><USER4> > (a 2wire, don't know the model details)

Probably 3800HG (V?), or something else in the 3000 series. I haven't been inside AT&T for many years, but Lightspeed/U-verse is all the 2wire 3000-series ("MediaPortal?" Fuzzy on that).

When I first started in IT I teched its regular DSL brother, the 2701. I still have one flashed with employee firmware, which unlocks what AT&T doesn't want you to have (parental controls and remote management and so on).

I say this without any former employee bias (my parting from Ma Bell was unsavory at best): the HomePortal line is a pretty solid device, for its target market. At least with traditional DSL if you don't dig the device (and if you know what QoS means, you won't), there's a plethora of other things out there. You can find something else to do gateway things, and the 2701 will act as solely a DSL modem if you ask it nicely.

Lightspeed/U-verse, though, well...

> I agree that they have atrocious customer service (still having connectivity > issues after numerous technician visits due to old/crappy last mile cabling)

Finding an excuse to blame it on your in-house wiring, too?

Count your blessings, though, I'm in the same boat with Comcast and I pay per- visit unless I yell, which I hate doing because I've sat in that chair.

<comment><USER3> > Finding an excuse to blame it on your in-house wiring, too?

Actually, no. The technicians visited, looked at the in-house wiring, discovered new problems, looked at the last mile cabling, agreed it was in very poor shape, and then proceeded to replace only parts of it, most likely in order to save money. After several complaints, they've replaced the majority of it, but there are still times when the connection goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wondering, "The heck is U-Verse?" The AT&T website doesn't say†, so here's Wikipedia: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AT%26T_U- vers...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AT%26T_U-verse)

> _AT &T U-verse is a registered service mark under which AT&T offers VDSL and > ADSL2+ services in various parts of the United States. It provides broadband > internet access, TV, and phone through a fiber-to-the-node or Fiber to the > Premise communications network._

† _it merely, inscrutably says "everything is better" on U-Verse. And requires Adobe Flash to say so._

</comment><comment><USER6> For different data point, I'm ecstatic about U-verse here. It's definitely the fastest, most-stable residential Internet connection I've had. I know that some cable service and things like FiOS are faster, but U-verse is the fastest thing available to me here in the 'burbs.

I believe I do have a different router/modem than he's describing though. Mine's a 2Wire that doesn't seem to be as invasive. My only gripe is that it doesn't support 802.11n.

<comment><USER7> I don't use U-verse, but everybody I know that has it swears by it, which is why I was surprised at the sentiment of this article.

Looking at all the technical gripes the user raises, I guess its just another case of average person vs enthusiast-geek gap rearing its ugly head again.

<comment><USER8> _another case of average person vs enthusiast-geek gap rearing its ugly head again._

That's certainly a valid perspective if the reason that it works for the average person is the reason that it breaks for the enthusiast. e.g. one button mice, no user accounts on an iOS device, and so on.

However, if it appears to work for an average user but irritates the enthusiast for no reason other than apathy on the part of the vendor, this is not the same calibre of trade-off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I pay a lot ($109/mo including 5 static IPs), but I am extremely pleased with Comcast's business class DOCSIS3 cable. 22/5 guaranteed, never seen less than ~35/8. No limits, no throttling/blocking, great SLA. When I first got DOCSIS3 I was dropping packets. Called them at 5:30PM and someone was at my front door 20 minutes later.

</comment><comment><USER10> I switched my friend to U-Verse one year ago from Comcast. The switch was... PAINFUL. After repeated service calls and guys climbing the poll outside, the picture and internet worked fairly well. Did it work with our state-of-the-art home theater I just installed? NOPE. When we adopted U-Verse AT&T didn't support 5.1 or 7.1 sound over HDMI. Only 2.0 sound would be available. I was sooo upset. I spent hours complaining to the tech support, they insisted it did support it. Higher level tech would reveal the cablebox is running a version of MS Windows that only supports 2.0 sound over HDMI. While all this is happening AT&T is running commercials all over the place advertising HD picture and digital surround sound.

EDIT: months later a box software update was released to fix the problem. AT&T was almost completely silent during the issue, and acted like they did me a favor when it was fixed.

<comment><USER4> > Higher level tech would reveal the cablebox is running a version of MS > Windows that only supports 2.0 sound over HDMI.

No equipment associated with U-verse runs Windows, aside from a PC connected to it.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the whole U-verse system is running off of Microsoft Mediaroom 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My only gripe with U-Verse was that they have had a ridiculously long-standing problem with DNS (this was a problem when I had the service installed in 2008 and there's nearly a 2-year-old thread on DSLReports about it). Downloads were super fast but the DNS latency made browsing feel painfully slow.

I threw the AT&T provided router into "DMZ plus" mode (which is the closest you'll ever get to bridge mode), then used my own wireless base station with Google DNS programmed into it, with no problems after that.

Last year I moved and can't get it at my house right now, and ended up back with Charter who is giving me 18/1.5 internet service for $40/month. I had been paying AT&T $65/month for 24 down/3 up before.

</comment><comment><USER11> In Canada the company in the west that's running this is Telus and they have the exact same issue. Originally they were offering it with the 15mb and 19mb ADSL 2+ profiles with a Thomson Speedtouch modem and a D-Link gateway or you could substitute your own router. When they moved to the VDSL2 profiles they started using the Actiontec VDSL modem/router combo which is a requirement.

There's no way to turn bridge mode on and the best you can do is turn on the DMZ and run your own router out of that. However, you're then double NAT'd which possibly could slow your connection down and it also allows the ISP to have a direct line into your personal network with wich they can mess any settings.

The main complaint is that the ISPs used to just own the line form the node to your modem and now they are DEMANDING to control your internal network as well which is a fucking joke.

</comment><comment><USER13> I live in Austin and got uverse for $30 / month. 10 megabits down and 1.5 up. I honestly can't complain.</comment>


Show HN: LoveNest – find and rate places to date, make out, or have a sexy time - <AUTHOR> https://getlovenest.com/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> One of the suggestions for a first date in SF is The House Of Air Trampoline Warehouse.

I took a girl there once on a first date, we were having a great time until she took a knee to the mouth and we spent 4 hours at the hospital waiting for some stitches. We ended up dating for awhile and for a few weeks I couldn't kiss her on the mouth because of the stitches.

I hope this project adds more love and joy to the world, good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do you mind adding a review for The House Of Air Trampoline Warehouse? Or I add it on your behalf? I would really like to collect these type of stories for each location :)</comment></comment>


Predatory Behavior Runs Rampant in Facebook's Addiction Support Groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/21/17370066/facebook-addiction-support-groups-rehab-patient-brokering <comment><USER2> My understanding from friends who spent time in 12 Step groups a few years ago was that the general consensus was for people in the groups to actively discourage each other from connecting on Facebook and other social media and from otherwise revealing their status as "recovering addicts" in these avenues. The expectation of this sort of thing happening was already there, and the principle of anonymity is already broken just by going online and discussing these things. As I understand it, the in-person groups were generally quite effective at self-policing to discourage commercial interests from creeping in. Of course, for people in rural, isolated situations some online contact with others might be the only option. Generally, the groups themselves run online forums and Skype group meetings for these situations. They may not be as flashy and all-pervasive as jumping on the latest social media hype train, but they are a heck of a lot safer when this sort of thing is going on.

<comment><USER3> Agree in-person help is required, but the groups aren't for everyone. Personally I kicked my habit with a psychiatrist, a therapist and some new friends — sometimes that's all you need.

Really the thing folks need most is someone they know knows their world. Someone to pierce the veil and tell you it's all bullshit, and that if you want help you have to actually want help. This is what addicts are looking for online, and unfortunately it's all too easy to manipulate people in this state.

Dealers and con men taking advantage of this ease of manipulation is as old as drug addiction.

This happens in NA/AA meetings too, but the sponsors are usually pretty good at spotting them. I don't trust Facebook to play that role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous reporting by the author of this piece also inspired a great episode of the Reply All podcast last week. [0]

[0] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain- funnel](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain-funnel)

<comment><USER5> Totally agree. For folks not wanting to listen to the whole episode (although you should!) the basic synopsis is:

Obamacare mandated that all insurance should cover rehab costs. Several rehabilitation companies opened an enormous amount of "clinics" in Florida. "Rehab SEO" companies then offered services to these clinics to funnel patients to them. Clinics could charge upwards of $5,000 per urine test from the insurance companies.

It became so profitable, that rehab companies would pay to fly patients down to Florida, pay $1,500 commissions to the SEO companies, and more.

This system of misaligned incentives resulted in the "rehab" companies to buy drugs for their patients, so that they would fail a drug test. This would allow them to "reset" billing for that patient. There is an anecdote from a patient describing one such clinic directly next to a crackhouse with prostitutes. Apparently many patients spent years rotating through these clinics because they had no other options (except maybe homelessness, due to their addictions).

Florida eventually legislated rules that prevented this behavior, which resulted in many of these "rehab" clinics moving to California.

More reporting on this system:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/addi...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/addiction- inc.html)

[https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/sober- homes/](https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/sober-homes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The same is true for anything remotely to do with credit or credit repair. There is a whole rat's nest of companies run out of the same PO Box in Minnesota that was shut down by the governor at least a few times now, but they basically have people go on and on about how these repair places worked miracles and post fake pics of "credit reports" that show these amazing 70-80 point boosts overnight. Now those sorts of jumps can happen but they are the exception, not the rule. They give shoddy credit advice to people so their scores initially go down to make them eager to sign up for a monthly recurring bill where they will basically sit on their hands and collect a check. It's revolting.

<comment><USER7> There's one of those that hawks bad terrible credit advice products on local PBS pledge drives, leveraging PBS's credibility to bolster her own. Same with the shady quacks peddling their snake oil. All revoltingly trading on the vulnerabilities of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I immediately assumed, upon reading the title, that this was some sort of Facebook Addiction group, rather than addiction groups on Facebook. I live a pretty shielded life as far as knowing/seeing legitimate drug addicts, but I found it interesting that I know many people who would definitely benefit from Facebook/social media addiction therapy. Probably communicating over email.

</comment><comment><USER9> Along similar lines, Reply All recently did a segment on predatory "treatment" centers that basically milk money from Medicare w/o providing effective treatment:

[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain- funnel#episod...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/121-pain- funnel#episode-player)

<comment><USER3> Same author actually. But yes, Medicare fraud is all too common. I honestly don't understand why — Medicare fraud is very easy to catch with modern analytics and the penalties are stiff. But it persists...

CMS is moving to outcome-based payments for this reason. Too many relapses coming from your treatment center? You get less per patient until your results improve. That should eventually help reduce this kind of behavior.

<comment><USER10> May reduce this kind of behavior but this type of measurement for competency selects for centers that only recruit and accept people that are likely to recover and not the hard cases (who are the people most in need of the service). Hard core addicts need not apply. The principle/agent problem pops up everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Slightly OT: John Oliver did an interesting, albeit satirical, piece on rehab centers last night.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y)

</comment><comment><USER12> I use reddit's stopdrinking subreddit - it's very good.

</comment><comment><USER13> In some years we'll begin to see actual Facebook Addiction Support Groups.

<comment><USER14> Where will they meet though?

<comment><USER15> Google+?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > There's a very long history of people going to [12-step] meetings and being > taken advantage of by drug dealers

No, there isn't. This seems like another pop-culture meme that comes out of drug war hysteria.

<comment><USER17> I don't know about a long history, but it does happen today. Source: I know someone who is a substance abuse counselor.

<comment><USER18> I've been going to meetings for 21 years, and this is utter nonsense.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps different people's experiences are different?

<comment><USER18> 21 years of direct experience all over the country is hardly equivalent to "knows a guy who said a thing."

<comment><USER20> Youre also just a guy who said a thing though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reading the title, I had assumed this was just going to be the digitization of the typical AA / NA creep hitting on "fellow" attendees, or drug dealer looking for clientele. Instead this is predatory companies looking for a meal ticket.

I can't help but think just how much the internet opens the door to bad actors trying to pillage and plunder. Really makes this line of work feel like a massive mistake.

<comment><USER22> >Reading the title, I had assumed this was just going to be the digitization of the typical AA / NA creep hitting on "fellow" attendees [...]

One of my friends from high school jokingly told me they call that the thirteenth step. So it must be pretty widespread to have a name, which is sad. You go some place for help and your fellow attendees prey upon you instead.

<comment><USER23> I don't think it needs to be that sinister; people tend to form relationships with those they feel emotionally close to, and there's probably a pretty rapid onset of intimacy in support groups like that.

I'm not saying there aren't predators, mind you, I just don't think that every relationship there stems from one person trying to take advantage of another.

<comment><USER19> Also... there is a severely reduced dating pool for someone actively in the middle of addiction recovery. If I had met a girl when I was single who said "I'm a recovering X addict with 32 days sober" I most likely would have not been very romantically interested. And if I was, it would be hard to connect with something when I have no experience of something so dominant in her life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a great recent Reply All podcast episode called Pain Funnel on shady rehabs. Diabolical, perverse-incentive capitalism at its finest. For example, giving drugs to teens kicked out of one rehab so that they can "piss dirty" to get accepted to a new detox/rehab. On top of the drugs, they give them a cash bonus for doing it. The rehabs then do stuff like urine screens three times per day which they can bill insurance at $5000 per screen. Insane!

</comment><comment><USER25> "Don't talk to strangers" is applicable to social media, too.

<comment><USER26> You realise that advice is for children, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is nothing new, rehabs do the same predatory shit and provide terrible treatment, in order to keep addicts relapsing and coming back. See John Oliver's latest episode today.

<comment><USER28> Never thought about that. Poor treatment means repeat customers. It's the same thing that drives pharma to seek treatments for symptoms over cures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Marketers from the treatment center had to approve every post in the group, > which gave them the first opportunity to privately message good candidates > for their rehab and try to talk them into going to Windward in California. > They needed that edge, Mendoza explained to me a few weeks ago, because they > knew a Facebook group that big would be full of other marketers, waiting to > swoop in as soon as a juicy message was public.

There is something uniquely... American about this comment. By that I mean that divorced from the ethics setting up large Facebook groups and using them to funnel patients into your addiction center is a _great_ strategy, and it clearly works. It seems, to me at least, to make good business sense. That's not to say that the practice itself is unique to America, more that it's encouraged by the hyper capitalist 'profit above all else' that America espouses.

After taking a step backwards however then you're just exploiting/taking advantage of vulnerable people looking for help and using that to manipulate them into giving you money.

<comment><USER30> _> After taking a step backwards you're just exploiting/taking advantage of vulnerable people looking for help and using that to manipulate them into giving you money._

This describes an uncomfortably large section of our (customer facing) economy. Casinos, tobacco, payday loan sharks, etc are the obvious actors. But if you look more closely, you will see that there are essentially two families of competing in b2c:

* productive: quality, service, price.

* destructive: bait and switch, seduction through marketing (unrelated to the actual product), etc.

All of the destructive forms eventually boil down to: abusing the faults in our human brain. Once you start looking at the world this way, you will see it _everywhere_. Almost every commercial on tv is destructive. E.g. car commercials never talk about car specs; they just try to seduce your fallible brain. Perfume. Clothing brands. Any food franchising (which are not about food, they are marketing companies who happen to sell food). Etc etc etc. None of these advance society forward.

There is an all-out, 24/7 war on your brain. It is what hippies mean when they talk about "buying shit you don't need". The only problem with that statement is it puts the blame with the consumer. But we are only human, and fighting a mental war 24/7 is exhausting. The problem is more insidious than mere gluttony / consumerism.

The example here is egregious and very clear. But make no mistake about it: it exists, in smaller form, everywhere you go.

<comment><USER31> "There is an all-out, 24/7 war on your brain."

And the sad part is that a lot of our brightest people work at Google, Facebook and others to win that war for the seducers.

<comment><USER32> As long consumers keep paying more to be advertised to (buying) than they're willing to pay to not (donations, subscriptions, boycotting) it'll stay a lopsided game.

It seems to me like there's plenty of good people willing to fight the good fight, but their lifestyle comes first and ideals second.

<comment><USER33> That only works if companies actually support that option. Many don't, because it would cut into the data that could be collected and remarketed.

Furthermore, try sitting down with a teen, twenty, thirty, or heck, anyone not technologically inclined and try to explain the causes and ills that "marketing" causes. It is difficult. However, many are aware of and despise it, but have no idea what to do about it.

I'm sorry, but GP is right. Advertising has gone too far. It really is just customer predation at this point. It is no longer about making sure your business is out there if the consumer comes looking, it is about exploiting every heuristic that can be used to short circuit the consumer making a conscious decision to see anyone else but you.

At some point, the intrusion and attention manipulation has to end.

<comment><USER34> > Many don't, because it would cut into the data that could be collected and > remarketed.

The reason advertising companies collect all this data is to use it for marketing/advertising (among other things). The truth of the matter is that Google et. al. would lose users if they charged them what it actually cost to run and continually improve their services and make a profit (which is their prerogative/duty as for-profit companies).

Consumers may say that they'd be open to paying for services, but I have a strong suspicion this is not true at a large enough scale to be even worth exploring.

People paying for online streaming services versus cable may be a counter to that argument, although then it seems like it takes decades for the ad-fatigue to set in...or the ratio of ads to content has to steadily keep increasing until it reaches the tipping point where people would rather pay (and still throw a fit when Netflix raises their prices).

<comment><USER35> _People paying for online streaming services versus cable may be a counter to that argument, although then it seems like it takes decades for the ad-fatigue to set in._

Pay-TV over cable arrived in the US in 1972. Netflix's streaming service was first available in 2007. The problem wasn't that people took decades to be annoyed by advertising on cable but that for decades Netflix (Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Now) did not exist. Once paid commercial-free streaming services arrived, uptake was rapid.

<comment><USER36> Your example doesn't refute his point.

20 years ago, I knew plenty of people who would be willing to pay good money for a TV service without ads.

Today I find almost no one willing to pay _enough_ for, say, Facebook without ads. Most people I asked say $0 or $1/month. To get the same revenue as they currently do, FB would need to charge $20/year to _everyone_. Since many (most) will not pay that amount, they need to charge even higher.

I don't see how a company like Facebook would make that much profit without ads.

And to be frank, decent enough non-ad supported alternatives exist. I can't get one person in real life to switch to them.

News is another example that mostly hasn't worked without ad money. There are some examples (e.g. government funded), but even those don't have enough reach compared to what the ad supported ones did 20 years ago.

That it worked for TV is not an indicator that the general model can be applied to all ad-supported services out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Strong found a dwelling for the weak, and preyed on them.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's just Sutton's Law at work.

(Willie Sutton was a notorious bank robber, who allegedly upon being asked why he robbed banks, replied «Because that's where the money is!»)

While distinctly in poor taste, it can hardly be a surprise that these groups are preyed upon by marketers.

<comment><USER39> To some extent this is like the garbage for profit universities, for which Federal student aid is the target and the wrecked student finances are merely collateral damage. In this case insurance money is the target, and its not important whether anyone is helped.

What makes such problems difficult is that they precisely cannot be solved by _throwing more money at the problem_ which in many cases can exacerbate them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > "I reached out to Laurie to see how I could help," Calvert responded when I > reached out to her.

Man, what's with this fascination with "reaching out"? Here we a sales person targeting victims of addiction for a sales pitch terming it "reaching out", setting up some pretty negative associations of that phrase. Yet the journalist is so conditioned they use the very same words for the process of requesting a comment from one of villains of the story!

I guess it's just poor editing, but the blindness is still remarkable!

<comment><USER8> You could spin it even more, calling it an "outreach program"! Yeah, that term has come to be industry standard for "I want something from you, so I am going to now insert myself into your life until I manipulate you into giving it to me".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The weak, the desperate, the vulnerable--these are always the first to be victimized by the self-interested and unscrupulous, the scammers, the cons, the gutter scum.

<comment><USER42> You could say the same thing about doctors. How dare they try to collect a paycheck saving vulnerable trauma patients who can't even consent to treatment.

To me, where it becomes a scam is if/when they proffer completely ineffective treatments. If this place happens to make a buck while saving someone's life, more power to them.

<comment><USER43> "You could say the same thing about doctors. How dare they try to collect a paycheck saving vulnerable trauma patients who can't even consent to treatment."

No, you really can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Therapy is a _terrible_ match for the free market. The fundamental axioms of free trade are in contradiction when participants' irrationality is one of of the axioms.

Look at how aggressively advertisers bid for ad spots on [credit counseling services] [https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+counseling+services](https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+counseling+services)

</comment><comment><USER19> I know the "correct" Silicon Valley position is to be anti-death penalty, but damn there are some people who need to be doused in gasoline and set on fire.</comment>