People care more about privacy than they think - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/opinion/privacy-facebook-sexting.html <comment><USER2> Privacy often guides my tech choices, I do have a Facebook account for events but I don't use their apps and I only log in when I'm invited to something. I try to use DDG though it's almost impossible to avoid google in my language. And so on, but one area I can't avoid is banks, and I've been wondering why they are sneaking past the privacy talks.

I'm Danish and we're rather digitized. I mean, I have a national ID that can authenticate me anywhere that support it that runs in a mobile app. I use it for things like banking. Anyway, we also have a range of financial apps. Two are particularly interesting in terms of privacy. One of them is called mobilepay, and mainly handles transactions between small shops or when you need to send/request money between friends. As such it knows who my closest friends are more accurately than Facebook ever did, because I never Facebook chatted with people I see every day, I do however go to various events with them where we manage the bill with mobilepay. And since mobile pay isn't just linked to a contact, but an actual phone number they have that too.

That's not really the part that worries me though. It's the way they track my purchases. Mobilepay lets you do electronic receipts, meaning they can read what you buy. It's voluntary so you could opt out of it, but we have another app called Spir which helps you budget and organise your private economy by accessing your accounts through bank APIs. Spir can also see what you purchase, so even if you're not opting into it, banks tack everything we buy unless we're using cash. I'm not sure if this has to do with our national payment-card called Dankortet (kind of a mixed credit/debit card, but not exactly) or it's just how modern transactions work. However that information is much more accurate than my search history.

I have anxiety, I also recently had a hemorrhoid, I'm fairly certain google might think I have cancer. My bank knows that's wrong though, because they know I bought hemorrhoid medicine at the pharmacy.

<comment><USER3> You can always shoot a couple of GDPR data requests...

And you can use cash for sensitive purchases.

<comment><USER4> > _And you can use cash for sensitive purchases._

This isn't always a viable option.

For example, in Sweden, we have stores that are kontantfri (cash-free) and it's projected that almost all of Sweden will be cash-free by 2023[0] to 2025[1]. (Sorry the links are in Swedish but you should be able to use <your chosen provider here> to translate them to your language.)

Given that the nordics tend to trend together, I imagine that Denmark is relatively along the same path to being cash-free, as well.

I think a better (but more complicated) alternative would be to use two different SIMs for separating those apps from an every-day number; however, that comes with the problem of carrying a second phone. Dual-SIM would just present a surface to tie the two numbers together but so would the two phones being in the same area (in proximity of each other) almost all of the time.

In other words, I don't really know how to solve this problem because it depends on everyone else not jumping on the bandwagon; however, to your suggestion, cash will not be a viable option for any purchases - much less, sensitive ones - in the very near future.

[0] - [https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.690197/kontanter- slut...](https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.690197/kontanter-slut-datum)

[1] - [https://www.compricer.se/nyheter/artikel/24-mars-2023--da- ar...](https://www.compricer.se/nyheter/artikel/24-mars-2023--da-ar-det-stopp- for-kontanter/)

<comment><USER5> Could you buy pre-paid credit cards with cash? then use a different one each month/week/day depending on your level of concern?

<comment><USER6> Pre paid cards need to be registered before you can use them, so they have all the same details as just using your cc. Faking these details is fraud.

<comment><USER5> While it may technically be fraud, the registration information for non- reloadable cards is only a name and address, which is not verified. If the processor uses an AVS check (in the US, this is usually just the ZIP code), then whatever you enter must match what you registered with, but that could be... whatever.

When one considers how fat the deck is stacked against individual consumers in today's market, I would be inclined to tolerate some Thoreau-style civil disobedience on this. The desire for privacy -- to effectively "use cash" at "cashless" establishments -- may require the need to engage in this activity.

The other question would be, who is being damaged by this fraud? Presumably the seller of the card (and banks/processors in between), who would like to link all your card purchases to some master profile. Well, I wouldn't begrudge anyone with disobedience on that one too. They're still collecting fees on every purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny. My favorite example to demonstrate why people do absolutely not care about privacy is Signal. In terms of privacy it is a superior messenger to Whatsapp and Telegram, but in terms of usability and convenience it is horrible and that is the only reason why it is not used. Convenience and usability will beat security and privacy every single time. I know it sucks, but it is what it is.

<comment><USER8> Signal isn't particularly inconvenient, but it is ugly compared to every other mainstream app -- and looks matter.

The reason I stopped recommending Signal to anyone is that its message delivery is abysmal compared to everything else. When I was using it regularly, maybe 5% of messages wouldn't be delivered right away; they'd get there a few days later, or up to a week later. I don't understand that failure mode, but after having a panic over a pet sitter not getting some instructions (the pets were fine) I tried out Telegram; never had one delivery failure in about 8 months of heavy use.

It's a shame, because I liked Signal.

The other showstopper Signal has is also a UI thing; you cannot set a contact to "never use Signal". Which means, if you get one of your family to start using it, and they don't like it and uninstall it, you're forever forcing Signal to "send via SMS" to that contact. They can "unregister" but you can't do that for them.

I had two or three people who I'd send a message to, not hear a response, 30 minutes later realize that it went to their nonexistent signal account, reset as SMS and got an instant reply. Very irritating for a messaging app and so easily solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "20th century democracies found out that people care strongly about their human rights, but they were easily distracted from them."

\-- Hoyt Kingston, "Dystopias that brought us here"

</comment><comment><USER10> I think people would care more see if they could see how much data on them companies have, where it goes and what it's used for. I think they don't really understand the extent of the data collection and selling.

<comment><USER11> People would care about data if it actually impacted anyone in a tangible negative way. IRL getting served relevant ads and simply having 'more data out there' isn't terrible enough to make most people give up using the Internet.

<comment><USER12> It's not that something impacts people in a negative way, time and causual linking are paramount. Like slow cooking a frog, if the rate of change (e.g., decline) is slow or even delayed enough, most people won't connect the two events of cause and negative consequences.

If something effects people in a negative way and they see or are effected by the consequences immediately, they often react quite rationally from my experience. If there's any time casual separation, ambiguity, or a time delay resulting in such ambiguity, most simply shrug and accept consequences as "the way things are."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      (...)a recently graduated researcher at Harvard who set out to test the privacy paradox.
      His conclusion: We do care about our privacy, even if we don't always act in our best interests.

FYI: This _is_ the privacy paradox. The author seems to assume it means that people just don't care...which wouldn't be paradox. No, the idea is that people rate privacy very high or even place a lot of value in it in sandbox behavior experiments, like the one described in the article. Thus it is surprising how people then behave "in the wild", There are a lot of theories about the Why, which I recommend you to read up upon if interested.

It would help and also show professionalism IMO if the author wouldn't just link other oversimplified articles from NYT when quoting science...

<comment><USER9> Simple explanation for the "Why" is that caring about something takes mental resources, and our consumerist free market is optimized towards extracting all our available mental cycles and put them either to produce or to consume, for the benefit of the companies that make up the economy.

Life is easier if you just follow the script and go along. Any remaining resources for "caring" about your life and your best interests must be detracted from the race to make a living, and not everyone is in a financial position to afford that luxury. Quite a departure from the vision of the founding fathers who designed our political system, who _were_ people in a position to care for such things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I seem to value my privacy more than most people around me. That is why I left windows and installed Linux on all my machines.

I have un-googled my life as much as possible and don't have any social media where you post under your real name. I think more people should follow suite.

<comment><USER15> It can actually passively increase contacts if you are not on facebook. Had already two cases where people from the almost long forgotten past called me to ask why I am such a ghost on the net. Was really nice hearing from them again. Couldn't convince me to join social media though.

<comment><USER14> Nice to hear, but I think it's mostly the reverse. I have missed parties, missed group convos that I probably should've known about etc because I don't have facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rlv-dan If someone says they don't have anything to hide, my reply is "then why do you lock the bathroom door"?

<comment><USER16> I strongly dislike that reply, because

1\. it fails to address their actual argument, which is that they have nothing to hide from companies or the government, especially law enforcement.

2\. it fails to convey the actual threat of loss of privacy: the threat to democracy and freedom of speech when journalists can't protect their sources, lawyers can't be trusted by their clients, etc.

I therefore prefer to emphasise that latter point, that even though they might have nothing to hide, people they should care about do.

Although lately it's become easier to convince people that even they have something to hide: as political actors (e.g. Cambridge Analytica) learn more about them from their data, they can target you (and people like you) with tailor-made lies to influence who you (and people like you) vote for.

Doesn't convince or even interest everyone, of course, but more than before.

<comment><USER17> In my personal experience the people who use the 'I have nothing to hide' argument, use it because they are unwilling to expend the cognitive effort to delve into the topic in any meaningful way.

Trying to reason with someone about some topic they didn't use reason to get to their position on in the first place is often a losing proposition.

So these days I just say "if you don't want to even think about some problem or issue, you should just come out and say 'I don't want to think about this' instead of saying something so obviously and unambiguously ignorant. That just makes you look bad". Then I move on. I can't make folks think. I can't save them from themselves and their privacy isn't the hill I'm going to die on.

<comment><USER18> >So these days I just say "if you don't want to even think about some problem or issue, you should just come out and say 'I don't want to think about this' instead of saying something so obviously and unambiguously ignorant. That just makes you look bad". Then I move on.

That seems overly dismissive and presumptuous.

<comment><USER17> Of course it's dismissive. This is because "I don't have anything to hide" is not an invitation for some long drawn out discussion about the intersection of philosophy, technology, culture, and civil rights. It's a no-thought dismissal. Pretending it's anything else is a waste of time and fundamentally dishonest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All that shows to me is that the perceived value of being able to use gmail or Zuck's vanity mirror is somewhat more than $2.50 (still less than a decent cup of coffee). But honestly, haggling over the right price for one's data doesn't count as giving a shit for one's privacy with me.

</comment><comment><USER20> It makes me think that there are, at least, 2 ways to move forward:

\- What can we do about this situation we are in ? Is it a problem that Technology can solve (I'm thinking about startup in the privacy field) or it's more political and in this case it will take years to fix.

\- What can we do about the other fields where we still have some power ? Like Smart Assistant, self driving cars with AI. Someday we are going to wake up again and realize that again someone used one our of weakness and abused it. It will again return against ourselves by restraining our freedom and/or make us more dumb.

I'm sure history has many examples about that global behavior: "change for the worst, acknowledge it, repeat". What is the way to avoid taking that direction again ? I'm not sure education is the answer nor politic or technology... I'm out of answers...

<comment><USER21> These Bruce Schneier _Talks at Google_ try to explain this:

Liars and Outliers: [https://youtu.be/m3NJ-Ow2Lvg](https://youtu.be/m3NJ- Ow2Lvg)

Click Here to Kill: [https://youtu.be/GkJCI3_jbtg](https://youtu.be/GkJCI3_jbtg)

Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World: [https://youtu.be/GhWJTWUvc7E](https://youtu.be/GhWJTWUvc7E)

Highly recommended it since you seem interested.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the links, so from Bruce Schneier, the problem needs to be taken care of by citizens (politic) like it was done for many industries (car, food, pharma...). Except that this is going to be much more complex in the information era where everything is a computer. Hence there is a need to have tech people in the public sector to help decisions to be wisely made. Enforcing the rules is the only way to make the industry to change, in this case, in terms of security and privacy.

However I tend to think I have more power as a consumer than as a citizen. I spent dollars everyday while I vote every 2 years. It seems that since there is no other way, the last resort is to go through the political way. I'm happy we have governments but still, I'm convinced there is a way to convince consumer. Do you ?

<comment><USER21> I personally agree with Schneier. I don't see how BigTech can be made to respect privacy given the current status quo and the data wars. I think regulation and government intervention is very much necessary at this point.

In some instances, BigTech, BigTelco, and govts have incentives aligned (surveillance and censorship), so its paramount for folks part of the tech industry to help steer the conversation and laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _...anything that relies on people taking it upon themselves to protect > their data is doomed._

This isn't enlightenment...this has been meta since...the internet was born?

</comment><comment><USER23> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it really sounds like the study was also comparing people's attitudes about gaining $X vs losing $X. It is well known that people hate losing money more than they enjoy gaining it.

If that is the case, then it invalidates the conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER24> I hope privacy becomes a core thing people care about, as much as having a right to free speech.

It already is a bit but it isn't quite mainstream enough.

It's more like a nerds concern, but it should be everyone's.

Maybe because free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution but not privacy.

<comment><USER25> Here is some anecdotal historical context. Recently my parents were reminiscing at a family event about mid 20th century small town American life. The local telephone exchange operator (always a woman) could freely listen in on any telephone conversation going through the switchboard. It was not unusual for a teenage girl to substitute for the regular operator. Everyone in town was at least vaguely aware. No one cared.

<comment><USER15> But that girl probably couldn't listen to all calls simultaneously, did not have a photographic memory, didn't live in a society where a sentence could ruin your career, didn't share the deepest secrets with advertisers, didn't act as a spy for intelligence agencies and created a dosier on basically everyone.

I wouldn't have cared much either. But the environment is profoundly different today.

<comment><USER8> People also didn't have a great deal of privacy at either end of the phone conversation, anyway. The phone would've been in a central location in a house, attached to a wall. Back then you wouldn't be hidden away in a bedroom, saying salacious things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You probably need an SS or Stasi (Nazi / East German secret police) to get people to actually understand and value their privacy. It's just too invisible and intangible of a thing to properly recognize and value, without the "aid" of losing it and experiencing the result.

It's a bit like news sensationalism. It just doesn't get processed because it doesn't trigger your brain's "simple" circuitry. Since you don't notice Google or Facebook building their huge databases with all kinds of information about you, it seems like it doesn't concern you. It doesn't hurt and in most cases doesn't incite fear. And you can't quite hump or eat it either.

Maybe we need some huge privacy disaster to learn this the "hard" way. Seems preferable to a bout of fascism at least. I'm not sure how else we can make headway on this. (And don't get me started on GDPR... it's an annoying dialog box that people click "Accept" on.)

<comment><USER27> The loss of privacy was not the issue with SS. Then being elite soldiers of group that believed in lack of empathy, domination and valued ruthlessness and loyalty above all else was.

Likewise, the issue with Stasi was torturing, imprisoning and killing people.

I get what you mean, but there is too long slippery slope between privacy on web and these. And they did not slide that way anyway.

<comment><USER26> Sorry, I should've been more clear on what I meant with the SS. Some (dutch, I think?) cities had registrations of their citizens with religious affiliation listed. The SS got a hold of that "database" and used it for their purposes.

As far as the Stasi is concerned, I just disagree with you. The Stasi was really about gathering as much information as they could get their hands on. They didn't have to torture people, blackmail was much easier for them.

And, yeah, neither of these is connected to web privacy. I'm trying to make the argument that privacy is just hard to grasp. "People care more about privacy than they think." You don't notice till it's gone. SS and Stasi were wholly different situations, but at least for the latter it had the effect of people understanding the value of privacy. GDR citizens knew the Stasi was surveilling them. They knew saying certain things would mean they'd never get their children into university, or they'd just lose their place on the waiting list for a car. The effects were close enough to be noticed.

They aren't on the web.

<comment><USER28> Except again: the problem was they were willing to kick down doors and murder people and no one was stopping them.

If it gets to this point, being anonymous won't save you.

<comment><USER9> Having a database of all their opponents had a big part in there being no one to stop them. Haven't you heard that poem of "First they came for the Communists..."?

<comment><USER27> Yeah, but that is poem not history. Database or not, they were stronger military wise and ruthless. That was what won the day.

There were people who had potential to speak up or even spoke up when then came for communists and jews and all that. They died first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd assume privacy concerns are not the only thing being measured with this sort of experiment. People also worry about their accounts being somehow used for spam.

</comment><comment><USER30> This decade has something slightly twisted. Was there a time where technology was so subtly obnoxious to our state of mind ?</comment>


Tom Wolfe, the Art of Fiction No. 123 (1991) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2226/tom-wolfe-the-art-of-fiction-no-123-tom-wolfe <comment><USER2> _It doesn't matter if your audience doesn't know what a gadrooned platter is. Often people are flattered to have an unusual word thrust upon them. They say, Well, that author thinks I know what he's talking about!_

This is one of those rare sentences that changes the way my mind works. When I read a weird word in a magazine piece, I usually think the author is being pretentious or needlessly flowery - perhaps even a secret handshake inside a literary class where I don't belong. It never occurred to me to think this was showing respect to the reader.

<comment><USER3> The irony of condescending to your readers is that it's only the people you actually _want to impress_ who will notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've read my share of Tom Wolfe, always with pleasure - he worked hard at making sure of that.

I'd say that "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" is probably the single most enlightening thing he wrote about how society works after 1960.

P.S. Just the note on gadrooned platters makes the interview worth reading (not even auto-correct knows what _that_ is ...)

P.P.S. _" If people want stories serially they'll go to television."_ ... ah well ... that's really 1991 for you.

<comment><USER5> Can you clarify what you found enlightening about it?

<comment><USER4> There was a change in the way social conflict is handled. The late-XIX century way was making a city like Paris have wide, straight avenues and "pour la canaille la mitraille" \- a straight military approach to class warfare.

The late-XX century is on the side of psych-warfare and pouring oil on troubled waters, i.e. buying peace on a piecemeal basis. It's right out on Wolfe's first paragraph: _" They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to."_

(I was going to quote that originally, but forty years brought that line too close to today's reality bone ...)

<comment><USER5> There seems to be a common belief that the 'modern' era is somehow different to the past. I'm open to the idea, but in the most part it seems based on so little data that it can be discounted.

Maybe Wolfe has got some evidence, but I tend to be skeptical of those kinds of arguments. My default assumption is that people are exhibiting a historical or narrative bias.

The late 20th century didn't produce Sun Tzu or Machiavelli, for example, so it seems like counter-examples are available. Would love to see data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >What about Thomas Wolfe? Did he float into your consciousness at all?

You are all witnessing the moment I discovered these are different people.

When the news came out that Tom Wolfe died I said "damn wasn't he super old though?" to my partner, and completely misinterpreted the weird look she gave me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17074489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17074489)

This same Paris Review article was locked; I'm glad they unlocked it now. But other Paris Review articles are all locked and require subscription.</comment>


Show HN: Easy small benchmarks in .NET - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bodyloss/Benchmarkable <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, I like the fluent syntax. I'm curious how it stacks up against the accuracy of Benchmark.Net for microbenchmarking.

<comment><USER3> The need to change whole syntax when switching from two benchmarks to three is unnecessarily tedious. Single syntax for any number of benchmarks would have worked better IMHO.</comment></comment>


What effects do startups have on your resume? - <AUTHOR> http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/sandbox/startup-effect-your-resume/

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, but I'm actually more interested in what effect having _started your own_ startup (and failed after, say, a year) has on your resume.

<comment><USER3> I was in exactly that situation a couple of years ago. It definitely closed some doors for me. At every single interview I was grilled about my desire to start another company. It definitely cost me a job I really wanted. They freely admitted that I was well qualified, but their concerns over my bolting for another run at my own thing kept them from hiring me.

Of course, they were right. I was out on my own again within 6 months:)

<comment><USER4> It's all in the presentation. If you write 'programmer for xxx.com' on your resume that's one thing, if you put 'CEO of startup xxx.com' on there then that's quite another.

In both cases you do the same work but the first is not going to raise too many follow up questions.

<comment><USER5> Then when you are asked about your work as a programmer for ___.com, do you entirely neglect to mention you were the founder?

<comment><USER4> If they don't ask you are under no obligation to volunteer.

As a rule though, those that have worked for start-ups and/or were founders will not normally go back to big-corp to do a 9 to 5, and in the age of google even if you don't disclose it you may be found out anyway.

Yes, that's illegal in plenty of places but it happens quite frequently regardless of that.

<comment><USER6> _As a rule though, those that have worked for start-ups and/or were founders will not normally go back to big-corp to do a 9 to 5,_

You'd be amazed how things change when you get into your 30's and start having kids. ;)

<comment><USER4> > You'd be amazed how things change when you get into your 30's and start > having kids. ;)

Yes, that's pretty much my situation, only you can add another decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have worked with a number of people in the industry over the years and have seen a bias against startup founders, more than a desire to hire them. But on the flip side people want to hire engineers from startups. Basically being at a startup is desirable because they often think it bring good qualities (of course evaluating the position and individual too) but being a found brings the concern of them being discontent with the job and leaving to do their own thing again.

I think you have to look at the individual, their specific fit and how old they are.

<comment><USER8> > I think you have to look at the individual, their specific fit and how old > they are.

Isn't that descriminatory ?

<comment><USER9> Neither here nor there, but I've found government programs that only fund people under 30 (Canada's Youth Employment Program) for enough that it would be foolish to look at anyone over-30 for a lot of positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps, other things equal, it's better to have a big-name company on your resume. However, consider that you'll probably make more contacts doing a startup which may be useful when you need to find a job later on -- you'll never be sending your resume "cold" again.

<comment><USER11> > you'll never be sending your resume "cold" again.

That's the takeaway. If ten years into your career (baring a situation such as a move to a new area or wanting to work on something completely different from what you're doing now), you're sending in your resume cold to HR you're doing something wrong. You should have made connections in the industry: people who can vouch for you, whom you respect and want to work with. A good resume (with interesting projects as well as companies which do interesting, technically challenging things) _can_ make you a more lucrative target for passive recruiting. However, a resume is a representation of your experience, not the other way around: it gets you in the door, but if you can't pass a technical interview an impressive resume won't save you.

Go where you'll be working with the smartest engineers (you _can_ tell that an interview, based on what questions they ask and how they answer your questions) and the work (specific projects you'll be working on) is the most challenging and interesting. If out of all the places you've talked to, the place that meets that criteria is the a startup, go there; if it's a big company (but with serious technical DNA) go there instead. Don't join a startup for the sake of joining a startup, don't join a big company for the brand-name.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. 10 years in Silicon valley, I have never had need to submit a cold resume for a decade. That includes 5 job changes including 3 startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only purpose of a resume is to get you past the first round of screening. Name recognition trumps everything else. A job at a well-known and respected tech company like Google or Facebook gives you an automatic pass to the next round. Right or wrong, this doesn't include many startup companies unless they're already successful enough that it's debatable whether they're still startups.

Once you've got an actual person on the phone, the company you worked for is much less important than what you did and your ability to relate it. Still, speaking from personal experience, you should be prepared for interviewers to question whether you worked for a 'real company'.

</comment><comment><USER14> My first and only job has been at a startup. I've been here 3.5 years and gone from junior tech to senior sys admin. I hope this reflects nicely on me for my next jump. One thing I am afraid of however is a lot of what I've learned is self taught, I'm not entirely aware of the way big business handles system administration. I dont know kickstart, veritas, san arrays, perl, etc. Im all about open source and if it doesnt work then I'll write it myself.

To answer the question, I'm not sure how it will reflect on me when going for something in a banking environment, however for another startup, the experience with open source might be appealing.

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw a slight division where the startups/small companies seemed to place less emphasis on the brand-name employers than the larger/traditional orgs would. For both, it's just one more data point. Is it just me that read it that way?

<comment><USER16> Good point, when applying for a position at a traditional corporation coming from another traditional corporation might be a positive on the resume, if for nothing else you are accustomed to all the office politics of a big corporation.

As a side note I came from a 3 developer software company a few years ago when I got my current job with a major television broadcaster and to this day I am baffled with the amount of office politics people employ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Scale matters more than name recognition. If you worked at a 50,000 employee F100, your skills aren't going to be suited for a 10 person startup, and vice versa.

<comment><USER4> Why not?

<comment><USER17> The environment at a large shop is more constraining, and the people are more specialized. You'd go from being a small cog in a very large machine to being the entire machine yourself. At a large shop it's like being in bootcamp, everything is systematized. Transitioning from that to a green field can be a shock when you have become too reliant on the rest of the machine.

Conversely someone coming from a startup wont understand working in a large team where progress is more methodical (slower). They will seek to circumvent processes they see as slow or useless. Perhaps they will try to 're-engineer' towards things they are more familiar with. In the process they may cause a net loss for the entire team.

In general I'd say its easier to go up than down. If you're used to the functions of a large organization it would be difficult to scale that back (network engineers that can't work without Cisco gear for instance). Someone coming from a startup is likely to be adaptive, and I'd rather have a generalist in a large organization, than a specialist in a small one.

Although I'm from an IT background not Dev so YMMV. The limit of my programming is single page perl/python scripts.

<comment><USER4> People that have worked in start-ups are very well suited to being trouble- shooters in a large organization, and people that have worked for a big company stand a chance of running a start-up that interfaces / sells to big companies because they can relate to the party on the other side.

I'd think that it's a net win to have experience about the other side of the table, and that your skills are actually worth _more_ by having been 'on the other side of the line' for a while.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Subtraction.com: Blu-Ray Blues - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtraction.com/2011/01/10/blu-ray-blues <comment><USER3> The only advantage I see in blu-ray discs is the image quality - <USER2> else is a severe letdown - the glacial load times, the unskippable trailers and warnings etc. I'm actually less inclined to purchase blu-ray discs than DVDs - I used to buy DVDs for all sorts of movies - comedy, drama, action. However, I find the user experience of blu-ray discs so annoying that I now only limit my purchases to action movies.

I feel that the image below perfectly sums up how the movie industry has done more to encourage movie piracy than anyone else:

[http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/02/why-p...](http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/02/why-people-pirate-movies-steps-to-watching-video.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mirrors my experiences with conventional DVDs. I have vowed I will never buy a Blu-Ray DVD or player because of that. I have constant problems with DVDs, they seem to require clean-room storage and handling to avoid skips and freezes, and forget about letting your kids try to use them. I might as well set $20 bills on fire and save myself the time, than to hand my kid a DVD to play.

I have not bought a DVD in several years. I sometimes rent them from RedBox but have moved almost completely to NetFlix.

As far as physical media, video cassette was the best medium for the consumer, picture quality aside (and for most purposes, the picture quality was good enough). I never had one problem with a VHS tape. I could fast-forward over the ads and trailers easily. If I couldn't finish a movie in one sitting, I could pop the tape out and resume it a day, or a week later exactly where I left off.

<comment><USER5> You never had your VCR eat a VHS tape? Definitely happened to me a few times. And the whole having to rewind thing was kind of annoying too. I'd take a DVD over a VHS any day, even if the picture quality was the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad I'm not alone in being frustrated by blu-ray. This post could have easily been about my own experiences. I wonder if the phrase "bag of hurt" was hinting at inherent problems in the spec that give rise to bad user experiences.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought it was well known by now that the PS3 is the only set top sized device to have the computational power to properly handle all that the blu-ray media can throw at it.

After all, media playback is a streaming decoding problem, and the PS3 is (in)famous for how the Cell Architecture is well adapted to that problem!

</comment><comment><USER8> I would be curious to know which two Blu-Ray players the author purchased. Personally, having a PS3 has made my Blu-Ray experience rather flawless. I haven't had a single issue. Great picture quality from Blu-rated films on the AVS forums. Bonus-material is more or less the exact same as DVD with the interactive ones being mostly a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Between iTunes and Netflix, why are people still using physical media?

* Cost? (Not all of Netflix is streaming and non-streaming iTunes content is between $0.99 and $4.99 on an AppleTV that's $99)

* Convenience? (I can't imagine anything being more convenient than the AppleTV setup, especially now that 1mil+ devices have been sold)

<comment><USER10> No one can stream with Blu-Ray quality yet. Consider most blu-ray encoding bitrates are at between 25-45Mbps. Netflix's best HD Streams I think are about 3Mbps, maybe slightly higher. Even if you're streaming at 1080p (which Roku now supports) that stream is going to be smashed to bits to get that resolution out of it.

Also no one is streaming 5.1 surround sound yet either. You'd chew up your whole bandwidth allotment on audio.

Blu-Ray is still a considerably better format for video then streaming.

<comment><USER11> > Also no one is streaming 5.1 surround sound yet either.

While NF streaming is great, this is one thing that it's really missing.</comment></comment></comment>


Is (React) Fiber ready yet? - <AUTHOR> http://isfiberreadyyet.com/ <comment><USER2> What is "Fiber"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fiber is React's new core algorithm.

[https://github.com/acdlite/react-fiber- architecture](https://github.com/acdlite/react-fiber-architecture)

<comment><USER2> DoIFeelOldYet? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> what the fuck does this mean

<comment><USER4> The article was a whole lot of nothing, but TIL that React doesn't already merge/coalesce overlapping `setState` operations. Sounds like Fiber will start doing that.

<comment><USER5> React does merge setState if they are within an event handler. It goes that more aggressively in Fiber though because setState is deferred.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google release demos and products before they advertise them. Unlike Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Fiber is in React master, you are welcome to try it any day. It's not ready yet though ;-)</comment></comment>


Tile: The world's largest lost and found - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetileapp.com/?src=hn <comment><USER2> Why are the only comments about keys? There are a lot of things you could do with a full year of tracking. Put it inside your bike's frame. Bam, you'll know where it is if its stolen. Hide it in your car for auto theft deterrent. And, of course, hide it in someone's purse and see where they are.

Point being, there are three comments, and they're all about finding car keys. You people are more creative than this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Bichiliad, I think it's friends trying to help us out since they've been waiting for this.

Yes, would work great on a bike if you could hide it well. Don't put it in a bike's frame though. Would block the RF. Under the seat would work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's very fishy to me that the three comments about keys are all from new users with this being their first post. Not to mention the extra excitement in the form of an exclamation point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Joebo, I think they were friends that were excited for us. Some friends have been waiting for this for a while and want to help, so I don't mind!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The iPhone app sends off the ID of a missing device into the cloud.

Other devices download a list of "stolen" IDs, and send back a report w/ GPS info if it ever gets a hit.

I love the concept.

It just needs such a huge infrastructure to become useful.

Maybe an API that other apps could insert, with a way to monetize, such as a reward system?

</comment><comment><USER5> How does it work? It says no batteries, yet it only works for 1 year?

<comment><USER4> I'm sure there's a small lithium inside - it's just sealed so you can't replace it.

(Simplifies the design, but makes your customers mad.)

Great for repeat business, though - if you can avoid the torches and pitchforks.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Office Hours – The card deck for startups - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
As it's the last day for YC applications I thought I would launch Office Hours Cards.
It's a card deck to help you prepare for an accelerator interview or startup pitch.
It's a side project I've wanted to launch for a while, it's slightly different to most things I've made as it's a physical product!
I'd love to hear if you think this would be useful for your team when preparing for a pitch or if you have any ideas for how it could be marketed direct to accelerators.
I'd definitely like to turn it into a series if there is enough interest!
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think it could be great for founders preparing for a startup pitch.

PS: I posted you on ProductHunt: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/officehours-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/officehours-2)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link [http://officehourscards.com](http://officehourscards.com)</comment>


The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari  - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html <comment><USER2> This was a chilling read when I read it years ago. Slavery is real there.

On a lighter note, there's the story of the Frenchman who dressed up in a burka to escape Dubai: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/08/09/AR2009080902421.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> old. from 2009. It's been three years, what is happening now?</comment>


Alibaba's new payment system lets virtual reality shoppers pay by nodding - <AUTHOR> http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/alibabas-new-payment-system-lets-virtual-reality-shoppers-pay-by-nodding/ar-BBxl25P <comment><USER2> I bet this will revolutionize online payments.</comment>


The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2010/05/12/the-big-game-zuckerberg-and-overplaying-your-hand/

<comment><USER2> Quote of the day: "Zuckerberg is clearly the worst thing that's happened to our industry since, well, spam"

Couldn't agree more.

<comment><USER3> Ironic, coming from the CEO of Mahalo.

<comment><USER4> Mahalo's not a business I can get excited about, but this Calcanis guy consistently writes extremely interesting stuff, has done huge things for entrepreneurs, and is prolific in ways that deeply impress me. Can't take that away from him.

<comment><USER5> Calcanis is the ringleader in a racket. He talks more than he actually does anything. He writes posts like this to get traffic. He's like the Sarah Palin of the valley. Amusing to watch, but otherwise worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I prefer 'Zuckerpunched' over 'Zucked" - implies a level of underhandedness.

And I think the various items on the list represent different things. Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. You are not stealing anything from Foursquare, or twitter, unless the whole industry is stealing from everybody all the time.

Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is available.

These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and support the government taking away out rights if they want to.

This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on the entertainment news shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No wonder he settled with ConnectU:

 _Zuckerberg: Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out._

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not ready to cut and run from Facebook yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Zukerberg is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the Internet. It just doesn't feel right.

<comment><USER10> It is difficult to distinguish between talent and people who are lucky.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but it is so hard to tell the two apart, especially when you are talking about someone a lot of people have strong opinions about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This criticism of Zuckerberg is insular and reactionary. He's due for a minor user backlash, but there is no way the most recent Facebook changes could trigger a backlash at the level of Beacon 1.0. I think this hope that Zuckerberg crashes and burns is a combination of jealousy and wishful thinking.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I agree with you. This thread is full of one sentence comments with large numbers of points. Not exactly HN at its best.

<comment><USER13> I work for Facebook and am naturally biased, but even in my cap as a longtime HN reader, I was disappointed at the difference between the reception to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339248> versus the other Facebook- related posts here.

<comment><USER14> Fair enough. I'm a user who isn't even all that concerned about privacy, but it's still not a pleasant feeling to have Facebook continually rearrange what they have decided to do with _my_ information at their every whim.

It's sort of like dating someone who all the sudden decides to start calling you at work throughout the day. Just a bit unnerving.

Facebook ends up feeling dictatorial and paternal. And that's aside from whether the privacy concerns are valid (which at least some appear to be.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Asperger's-like entrepreneur_

Bad sentence. It implies that Asperger's is a derogatory term.

<comment><USER16> If he said "Zuckerberg is a cancer on the internet" would you have the same response? Asperger's is an illness. It is a bad thing.

<comment><USER17> Asperger's has nothing to do with being amoral or immoral. Asperger's people have trouble following certain more subtle social norms but that has little to do with morality.

Some of the biggest amoral criminals in the world have been very adept socially (think Goebbels or Bernie Madoff), while some people whose morality was always lauded were known to be socially awkward (e.g. Einstein).

So while Aspergers is a disorder it is completely wrong to equate it with lack of morality.

<comment><USER18> Actually, there is also some problem with Asperger's folks and empathy. They don't have a lot of it. This is a fairly well-known characteristic, and there are related things: only talking about things that interest you, that sort of thing. From this perspective, AS folks could be called "less moral".

Of course it wouldn't really be a fair comment. And calling them "amoral" is just being a dick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal."

Saying that Twitter and FourSquare were "Zucked" is a bit much. Great companies do this all the time.

<comment><USER20> I disagree, great designers innovate. You build on the shoulders of those who came before, but if you're not doing something new and innovative, it's not great.

The biggest example I have is Apple.

<comment><USER19> Was the original facebook an innovative myspace/friendster?

We're reacting negatively to Facebook infringing on foursquare's turf because facebook is the bigger company.

Like Microsoft was ten years ago.

What about bing? Now that Microsoft is the underdog they're a lot more palatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find Calacanis a bit annoying, but I think he's mostly right. Contrary to what Calacanis thinks, adding new features that let you compete with other apps isn't wrong. Its part of business. If they want to muddy the purpose of their product by adding 101 bells and widgets to compete with everyone under the sun, they sure can do it.

I do agree with Jason that Zuckerberg seems to have a questionable history of integrity...based on rumor. And I certainly agree that Facebook seems hell- bent on harvesting the souls of their users. The latter is far more troubling that any competitive feature additions.

<comment><USER22> Calacanis should hang out with Mark Cuban. They're both getting less relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When this is all over, when Facebook has returned to Orkut status, its bold dreams of the entire web wired up by Like buttons and Instant Personalization into the Facebook mothership dashed upon the iceberg of the fickle social market, what will we have learned?

<comment><USER2> That only the truly open... oh wow, look at that shiny app. Rounded corners!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I could not get past the initial self-promotion. Talk about overplaying your hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> disagree. i think few people write as persuasively as Calacanis - his ability to make a case for something and to articulate it is, despite the tasteless self-promotion, admirable.

"Didn't anyone read "Tom Sawyer"? We're whitewashing Zuckerberg's fence."

<comment><USER25> I think Apple was the first to get us to do this for them at 40% cut rather than 30%. Both remarkable takes for their subsequent effort.

<comment><USER6> Of course, you're not paying them for their effort. You're paying them for creating a distribution channel you can access, and then the ongoing product development that maintains and grows that distribution base.

Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge $1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn new dvds.

<comment><USER26> Actually reading this I wonder why facebook gave applications the ability to collect email addresses easily? Lowers platform lock in as someone like Zynga if they do move away from facebook can just use the email to keep the user base they have acquired.

<comment><USER27> They had to give the FB app developers some alternative to newsfeed notifications to keep them from getting to enraged when their primary source of recruiting users was yanked out from under them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Grammar PSA: hyphen != dash!

The hyphen is the key on your keyboard. It's what goes between some words when they're acting as one word, e.g. mother-in-law.

The dash is longer--it's either a long ("em") dash character or 2 hyphens, as I used here--and it's the grammatical construct that acts somewhat like a comma.

And I'm not just nit-picking. It's confusing to use a hyphen when you mean dash, especially when you also have hyphens in the vicinity. Here's the sentence that convinced me to post this:

> _I predict a complete heads-up match with Facebook–Zynga's now been double- > crossed not once but twice by Zuckerberg._

The characters in "heads-up" and "double-crossed" are both hyphens, but the character between "Facebook" and "Zynga" should be a dash (or 2 hyphens).

Edit: So he's using en dashes, which are shorter, but they are different from --and slightly longer than--hyphens. But it's much easier to tell an em dash from a hyphen than an en dash from a hyphen, and the em dash is proper.

Here's a hyphen, followed by an en dash, followed by an em dash:

-

–

—

<comment><USER29> Were you actually confused? Are you smart enough to know what an "em" dash is and not smart enough to know that the hyphen in heads-up works differently than Facebook-Zynga. The only way that would make sense is if they merged and for some reason kept Zynga as part of their name. Given the context that's obviously not happening.

An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation.

Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do so.

<comment><USER28> Was I able to figure it out? Sure. But did I have to pause for a second to figure out what he was saying? Yes.

Proper punctuation makes it much easier for readers to read and comprehend the material quickly. If you don't believe me, try reading a paragraph with no punctuation at all. You'll spend most of your time trying to figure out what words are grouped together because there's no punctuation to clue you in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone who calls fb credits a "tax" knows nothing about payments. A ubiquitous payment system where users are already authenticated could easily double conversion rates once deployed at scale.

30% off of 2X is a great deal

<comment><USER31> Sure, but:

Social Gold - <http://www.jambool.com>

Live Gamer - <http://www.livegamer.com>

GamerSafe - <http://www.gamersafe.com>

MochiCoins - <http://www.mochimedia.com>

HeyZap - <http://www.heyzap.com>

and more...

And none charge 30%.

<comment><USER30> None of those are ubiquitous. I'm describing the network effect, making this quite relevant. Also, I'm pretty sure some of those do charge 30% regardless.

Apple takes 30%. Needing to enter only a password to pay for something (instead of a credit card) probably makes that worth it. Facebook doesn't even require the password.

<comment><USER31> Pretty sure they don't charge 30% - I know the guys behind half the list.

Facebook are starting from scratch with credits, these companies and others have millions of existing users who have existing money in their accounts. Facebook on the other hand have hundreds of millions of _facebook_ users, not people topping up their credits to buy stuff in games. Most of their users don't even play games.

That doesn't make Facebook ubiquitous _and_ it will leave people wondering why they can't use the balance of their other account in the games they play like previously, _and_ it will leave developers eating a fee that is up to 22% higher than it was through 3rd parties.

Although some will 'win' and make assloads of money overall it's not a 'win' anymore than it would be if you could _only_ accept Visa.

<comment><USER30> Like I said... "once deployed at scale."

Their system is in closed beta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Takes one to know one.

</comment><comment><USER33> I like the comparison with poker. Doesn't mean that Facebook is out of the game by a long shot, it does open the space up for some competition. Maybe the companies that helped push FB along should get together and start their own?

</comment><comment><USER34> Very persuasive. I finally pulled the trigger and deleted my account tonight. I'm not sure that Diaspora is the answer either, but frankly privacy is only half of my problem with Facebook. The other half is that it's simply a massive timesuck. That hour a day I wasted being a voyeur of friends and family's lives can now go back toward living my own life.

</comment><comment><USER35> It seems Leo Laporte was Zucked by Jason Calacanis.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is the only piece of Calacanis' work that I've liked thus far. He is 100% correct.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wait, am I missing something or is Jason really labeling fb's clamp down on crapville spam as a stab in the back? Not a zuck defender by any means, but defending zynga... Come on.

Guess it takes a spammer to defend a spammer.</comment>


Use Python and Sockets to Create a Honey Pot and Catch Bad Network Actors - <AUTHOR> https://mindchasers.com/dev/net-python-socket <comment><AUTHOR> Just discovered Hacker News two weeks ago. Love it. This article is from three months ago, but it seems relevant to this site.</comment>


Analyze Your HN Posts with Watson User Modeling - <AUTHOR> http://hn.mybluemix.net/ <comment><USER3> It's worth keeping in mind that with things like these you get what you put in.

When the service first came up on the front page, I punched in some personal writings from my journal into it. Comparing my results from that to this HN assessment is like night and day. The HN assessment shows me as highly intellectual, imaginative, and adventurous, with a strong value for self- enhancement. The personal stuff showed me as being much more emotional, with a huge emotional range, because—surprise, surprise—I tend to write more about emotional parts of my life in my journal than on HN comments.

While this service might be useful to get a broad sense of people for marketing purposes, using it on an individual basis is like talking to a fortune teller—it could tell you nearly anything about yourself, and you'd be able to come up with an explanation to justify it.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. We adopt a different tone based on the venue and, since no one shows the same face everywhere, even with the same name, these are going to be wildly different.

Ironically, this really did feel like a machine based cold-reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems to be down for me: 404 Not Found: Requested route ('hn.mybluemix.net') does not exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, it's just hosted with IBM right now so they must limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did this with Twitter: twurl "/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?count=200" | jq -r ".[] | .text" | pbcopy

paste it into [http://watson-um-demo.mybluemix.net/demo](http://watson-um- demo.mybluemix.net/demo)

87% Openness, 5% Agreeableness, that's funny.

<comment><USER7> This inspired me to do the same with reddit, so I threw together this function in zsh (should work with bash too):

            function redcom(){ ! [ -z "$2" ] && i="&after=$2" || i=""; data=$(curl -s "https://www.reddit.com/user/${1}/comments.json?count=100${i}"); j=$(jq -e -r '.data["after"]' <<<$data); echo $j; (jq -e -r '.data["children"][]["data"]["body"]' <<<$data)>>${1}-redcom.txt; echo $(echo -e $data|wc -l) lines; ( [ "$j" = "null" ] || [ -z "$j" ] ) || redcom $1 $j ;} ;

It's a bit more complicated due to the reddit api, but if you run that, then run redcom <user> and it should throw all your comments into <user>-redcom.txt

Never user/heard of jq before, it's a pretty nice tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any insight as to how this works? I got an Openness rating of 97% and a Harmony rating of 100%, both of which I know are not true. (I also received a Love rating of 1% under my Needs, although that's pretty accurate.)

<comment><USER9> A problem I've observed with these kind of blackbox systems is that the process from input to output _really_ is a mystery.

When the results are right, they're just "right" so you should accept them, when they're wrong they're actually also right by whatever magical hamster wheel is operating inside of the thing and you just don't "get it".

The problem is that humans like to have some clue as to how the results were derived, something easy to explain that gets the gist across. Something like "Watson counted all the words you use and compared them to different reference lexicons to arrive at the score". This provides a little bit of context so we understand the semantics of the result and how to consider them and reason with them.

But for all we know the results we're seeing are from some arbitrary stochastic method:

openness=rand(90,99) harmony=rand(90,100)

etc.

For things like this to be accepted by the users (humans) there needs to be a quick explanation for how this works otherwise we get head scratchers.

<comment><USER10> Please see my other 2 responses in this thread for some insight. I think I posted them about the same time you posted this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very cool. Although I don't know how accurate this is, if calibrated and tuned to yield a certain degree of accuracy it will have a variety of use cases.

For example -- When interviewing someone, being able to run their github username (if known of course) to analyze their commit messages, comments, discussions. Or even their hn, reddit, twitter user names (if the usernames are linked with their first names, nothing creepy). It will potentially help to identify candidates that are downright rude, arrogant etc.

Or analyze internal mailing lists, hipchat/slack channels for co workers who are potentially burnt out.

<comment><USER12> _> >It will potentially help to identify candidates that are downright rude, arrogant etc._

This sounds very dangerous to me. I assume when recruiters and/or lead engineers decide to reach out to me via LinkedIn, they did their homework on me. I purposely link to enough stuff for them to realize "smtddr" is my handle. The same blog & youtube channel in my HN profile is also in my LinkedIn. But I expect a _human_ to look, not some computer judging me. I can totally see people getting lazy and just doing stuff like only filtering for people who rate 80% on openness or something. Then everyone will start grooming their posts simply to get positive results... then someone will create a social website that claims to block those scanners so people can say whatever they want.

It just forces people underground and the filters won't work anymore since at that point you might as well assume everyone is gaming the system.

 _(fwiw, I 'm also against standardized tests. Anything that forces a whole group of people to start grooming themselves for a very specific measurement kills diversity, imho. Since the very term "standardized" kinda goes against the concept of diverse... and people become lazy and just rely on such tests to make or break the deal)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would love to see something like this for reddit, where I'm a more active poster on a wider variety of issues.

<comment><USER14> something like this?

[http://www.redditinvestigator.com/](http://www.redditinvestigator.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! I like the fun guessed data. I am from Canada, game of choice is ping pong, nor do I have children.

"""

Probably from: Canada

Support OWS: Probably no or doesn't care.

Children: I do not think so...

Gamer: Only pong probably...

Like trees: Must be in a really good mood.

Behavior: Candidate as replace for Good Guy Greg

"""

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those that like this. There is a similar thing I saw awhile on here (I am guessing) that analyzes facebook posts and compares you:

[http://labs.five.com/](http://labs.five.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Gregariousness 8%

Given my name I found that funny Also I know it's wildly inaccurate on several characteristics, but maybe my persona here is like that! Interesting.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think it's worth keeping in mind it's scoring you based on your comments on a particular kind of site which tends towards certain kinds of interactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Watson internally use observations drawn from this study[1]?

And another question---is this applicable to non-native English speakers? Do they acquire the same language habits as if English was their mother tongue?

[1]: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783449/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783449/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Now I'm consistently getting this:

        502 Bad Gateway: Registered endpoint
                         failed to handle the
                         request.

So, still not working for me.

 _Edit: In fact, entering someone else 's username worked, and another, but mine continues to fail. Is it just me?_

<comment><USER19> I believe you are talking about the hn.mybluemix.net app. That is not an IBM app - a HN user put it together. It appears to be crash often

<comment><USER18> Well, yes, because that's the link in this submission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you picked random English words and put random numbers next to them, I wouldn't be able to tell.

<comment><USER21> But that's how the stock market works...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not a lot of documentation on the IBM page about what the characteristics mean or how they learn a mapping from text to these categories.

Curious to know what the average hacker news scores look like? I'm imagining it is a pretty small segment of "normal" society.

<comment><USER10> See my response to minimaxir above about additional documentation coming soon, and a link with good background info on the technology. Meanwhile, here are brief descriptions of the Big 5 Personality traits: Big 5 Personality: \- Openness - associated with curiosity, intellect, and an appreciation for art and adventure \- Conscientiousness - associated with organization and industriousness \- Extraversion - associated with positive and outgoing attitudes toward other people \- Agreeableness - associated with compassion and cooperation toward other people \- Emotional Range - associated with a sensitivity to negative emotions

For more information on systematic associations between personality and individual differences in word use, please refer to studies like Tal Yarkoni, "Personality in 100,000 words: A Large scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers", 2010

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It worked from the UK IP for me, but not from the US one. Anyway - <USER2> 502 after request.

<comment><USER24> I bet Watson now thinks you like UKIP. And now me, so meta.

<comment><USER23> I cheated it from Russia. UKIP is not my political fav.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting, I analyzed myself and patio11.

any insight on the tech stack and how it was implemented?

<comment><USER26> It would be interesting to see the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll throw it on Github right away. I basically just used IBMs Node sample code which had it all there I just hooked it up to the HN api :p. [https://www.ng.bluemix.net/docs/#starters/nodejs/index.html#...](https://www.ng.bluemix.net/docs/#starters/nodejs/index.html#downloadapp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 100% Challenge?

Not sure what that means... but maybe this post is contributing to it?

</comment><comment><USER28> _Conscientiousness 23%_

Ouch! How did it know?

Some are completely off, with plenty of 1% cop-outs but a few — spot on. What's the methodology? What does the need for practicality mean for example?

</comment><comment><USER29> I would be curious to see if some of these characteristics are correlated with higher average karma/total karma.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm.

        404 Not Found:
          Requested route ('hn.mybluemix.net')
            does not exist.

<comment><USER24> Shall we rename slashdot effect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how well it detects sarcasm?

</comment><comment><USER31> I analyzed my HN posts with the Watson API on an Oculus Rift and the singularity happened.</comment>


ZS3 - Amazon S3 from Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.xach.com/lisp/zs3/

<comment><USER2> I clicked on it, read some of the docs, and thought "cool, this will make it easier for me to use S3 in my CL code". It looks like seriously good stuff, and having written CL-SQS I know it isn't obvious.

And then I remembered that I'm learning Clojure and in Clojure I can just load an existing Java library and use it :-)

<comment><USER3> CL-SQS looks cool. If you're using Drakma, you're already pulling in one or more portable string-to-octets conversion routine (via flexi-streams or babel), so there's no real need to use SBCL- or AllegroCL-specific routines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's just me, but every time I see a new common lisp library and I try and get ASDF to give it to me, at least 3 dependencies are inexplicably broken and refuse to work.

I was excited about this, but a fresh install of SBCL on Mac OS X 10.5 simply couldn't complete.

<comment><USER3> Sorry to hear that. As a test, I just did a from-scratch ASDF-Install of ZS3 (Drakma has updated since the last ZS3 release) and everything just worked. I'm using Linux.

What broke for you? Maybe it's something I can help fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The tutorial that the article points to is a good beginner's survey on meta- stuff that every project should at least consider before ignoring.

As far as ASDF goes, the downloads and dependencies don't give me any problems, it is the loading after install. I keep having to construct sym- links by hand!?</comment>


CEO Marissa Mayer Treated Yahoo Like a Think Tank, Not a Sinking Ship - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/08/01/488246171/ceo-marissa-mayer-treated-yahoo-like-a-think-tank-not-a-sinking-ship <comment><USER3> Something of a hit piece - just for starts, she didn't know (then) whether she was joining Verizon 'cause it ain't her call, she didn't know what if any terms would be offered. WTH.

As for her not treating Yahoo as a sinking business, and gambling... well, that's exactly what the shareholders wanted. They didn't want the McKinsey approach, milking the remaining profit while hollowing out the company (and hoping some idiot would buy the husk without due diligence, just before bankruptcy.) They could easily have had that, if that was their desire. It wasn't. They wanted to gamble and win back their mojo. The results were predictable.

A better yahoo mail wouldn't have saved the company either, by the way - <USER2> might have been a surviving business, but again, that's not what the over- optimistic shareholders wanted. Yahoo had no secret sauce left. The shareholders wanted to find another secret sauce, and or (re)create a network effect (which is where media might have fit in.) Media didn't work 'cause they stuffed it with dark pattern ads, not 'cause they spent money on the wrong faces, IMHO. I'm still looking for a good portal, there - google news doesn't thrill me.</comment>


ISIS "Jihadi Technical College" Developing Driverless Car Bombs - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/story/1617197/exclusive-inside-is-terror-weapons-lab <comment><USER2> Downvote me to death, but I cannot understand how someone can be so smart to study science and still believe in ancient religions...

<comment><USER3> Preface: I'm completely opposed to terrorism and the wider Muslim faith from which it grows.

That said... You're making the assumption that God isn't real. I know this assumption to be incorrect. This assumption has some support that makes it appear more right than it is, for a lot of reasons. For example: Its regular practice for parents to lie to their children about Santa Claus existing and then for those children to later find out that in fact Santa Claus does not exist. It's also regular practice for people to make idols out of men when they shouldn't. Nowadays there is a tendency to have a lot of very clever people not believe. (This was foretold in scripture by Jesus Christ.( Don't be wise in your own conceit and think that lack of religion produces cleverness. Plenty of scientists throughout history have been religious. Moreover, a lot of the tools that clever people tend to use nowadays like probability theory were originally discovered by people who were religious. Take Bayes as an example of that.

I suggest you read the Gospels about Jesus Christ and actively try to believe that God is both real and a rewarder of those who seek him.

And if it feels like you're being asked to be an idiot please check out Proverbs. I don't think anyone can read through that and at the end of it feel that religion and understanding are opposed.

And unfortunately the stuff about a Devil that deceives the world is also accurate. So if you do end up doing that make sure not to forget the good news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Basically they watched a few episodes of Myth Busters episodes

<comment><USER5>
        We need to ban myth busters -- Hillary

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some really good jokes in here somewhere...

"ISIS [x] - The power of 10x jihad thinking"

</comment><comment><USER7> what the fuck? This is so inefficient.. lets spend all this time making a self driving car and then blow it to smithereens. You're better off strapping it to a remote control car.

Terrorists are idiots..

<comment><USER8> I have zero information about the challenges involved, but a remote control vehicle is presumably subject to control channel jamming in a way an autonomous vehicle isn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What type of login system should I implement for my site? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am creating a indie appstore. I am wondering what is the best type of login system should I use in order to create a good UX. I am thinking of using a passwordless system where a temporary link is sent to your email instead of having a fixed password. Any advice on a good login system? <comment><USER2> I am planning on doing the same. Development of Mozilla Persona ([http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/persona/)) has continued, despite Mozilla's lack of funded developers. I looked at it a year ago and the list of open bugs was a bit scary. But it looks much better now.

OAuth 2 is a mess. I would not try to use it without a good library. Thankfully, major websites are moving away from it and onto proprietary APIs that are much cleaner. But nowadays all Facebook really wants to give you is an id that is specific to your app. To get an email address, you have to get permission from Facebook first. Even then, it is not guaranteed that the end user will give it to you. They could have registered using their phone, for example. Having an email address is obviously very valuable.

Stripe payments require an email address. I'm sure other billing systems do, too. So an option is to just grab it when they pay for it. But you still need an email authentication system like Persona on top.

If there are other easy to use systems (for end users and developers) out there like Persona, I would love to hear about them, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably just stick to having the authentication via main social sites - Facebook, Twitter, Google. And most likely include GitHub for the hackers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I went with Persona, which was very easy to implement, and didn't require me to store passwords for users.

</comment><comment><USER4> Creyes123 - your comments are all dead. Can't see an obvious reason why...

<comment><USER5> Agreed, his comments seem thoughtful and balanced.

<comment><USER2> For the curious, I just got this reply from HN staff:

"That account triggered a spam filter when it posted from a banned site. I've unbanned that site, unbanned your account, and restored all your comments, so the problem is fixed now.

The site was banned because the first few submissions from it looked a lot like spam. Later submissions were legit, though, so this was a mistake at our end. I'm sorry about that.

Thanks for letting us know about the problem, and please write if there's anything else we can help with."</comment></comment></comment>