Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For Link Schemes - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-has-officially-penalized-rap-genius-for-link-schemes-180777 <comment><USER2> Tried all of these just now:

      Justin Bieber All Bad Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Confident Lyric
      Justin Bieber Heartbreaker Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Memphis Lyrics
      Justin Bieber One Life Lyrics
      Justin Bieber All That Matters Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Hold Tight Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Pyd Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Change Me Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Recovery Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Bad Day Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Roller Coaster Lyrics
      Justin Bieber Lyrics

All of these just yesterday were in fact ranked in the upper 5 (very often #1 actually). Rapgenius results are now not even in top _10_.

Most surprisingly, even

      Justin Bieber Heartbreaker rap genius

will not show up on Google results. Wow, that was a swift and harsh response. The only surefire way to get to a RG site is by doing "*bieber site:rapgenius.com".

They were using a wide array of questionable SERP optimizing techniques ([http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap- genius](http://www.rocketmill.co.uk/hideous-seo-strategy-rap-genius) among others). One described here is very interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958883). Apparently that's an old one, but it's first I'm hearing of it. From all of this, to their rape jokes and everything else in-between, you can't say they didn't have something like this coming.

<comment><USER3> Quite frankly not showing me rapgenius results when that's one of the search terms is idiotic. I guess now I have to remember to go straight to their site whenever I'm looking up lyrics. I'm glad I at least know about them and I feel bad for the people that are now going to be trapped in craplyrics.com hell.

I understand and agree with google's desire to punish spammers but their effort should not have such a major impact on users who obviously know what they are looking for.

<comment><USER4> Just wow. I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other companies. I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now.

<comment><USER5> _> I think the intention was to make an example of Rap Genius for other companies._

Doubt they intended to penalize them quite this drastically. Its likely that they algorithm is just being overzealous some keywords being blacklisted. Quite similar to how the UK porn filters are filtering out Claire Perry, the most prominent campaigner for the filters[0].

 _> I honestly had no idea how severe these violations were until now_

The violations are pretty serious and have been for the better part of the last (half-)decade. RapGenius should have known better. For me the worst was when the pretty much said "But everyone else is doing it".

Too bad this will obliterate them.

Unintentionally though, going forward RapGenius will be the poster child for what happens to children on the naughty list.

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the- best-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the-best-story- yet-about-the-uks-online-porn-filters/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google giveth, and Google taketh away.

This looks like a -50 penalty. This is both good and bad for Rap Genius.

Good in that it will be temporary: specifically 30 days. This is better than a fundamental algorithm change like Panda or Penguin because there's no coming back from those.

The bad is that -50 penalties effectively destroy 90+ percent of your traffic. It's a very harsh lesson to be taught. You also don't want to have it happen again because the 2nd time is 60 days, and the 3rd time is permanent.

I don't think RapGenius will be doing something like this again.

From RG's perspective it's also frustrating because they'll see competitors do scammy things and get away with it. But that's the dual edged sword of such public personas. With RG getting called out so publicly Google had to do something about it. It's also good for Google that this penalty is getting a lot of publicity since it's proving an example to everyone else.

<comment><USER7> Where are you getting this number system from? I've never heard of it until now.

<comment><USER8> -50 is the number of results they were bumped down. If you search "rap genius" you'll find it on the 5th page.

<comment><USER7> Ahh... Thank you for the clarification. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite part of this is in the original blog post exposing the scheme, mahbodmoghadam, RapGenius co-founder/dude-bro in chief, immediately commented and said "Did you post it??? how about this: attach the HTML to THIS article and I'll tweet this out for you - that would be META!"

Like scoring an own goal, doing a victory dance, and then sprinting back out to score another. Just amazing. I wish I could find a violin tiny enough to appropriately express my sympathy for these clowns.

[http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack- exposed](http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed)

<comment><USER10> Mahbod's early growth strategies on Quora: [http://i.imgur.com/vsnk8V5.png](http://i.imgur.com/vsnk8V5.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree that Rap Genius should have been penalized here, but so should literally every other lyrics site on the net. I've done SEO in hyper competitive spaces in the past and honestly, the system is broken.

Google and Cutts love to preach this "Create value and quality content and you'll rank high" bullocks but it doesn't work like that. When you have a high number of well funded competitors who are all playing dirty, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to compete with them with white hat tactics. You either play hardball yourself and risk a ban or you play nice and get creamed in the SERPs.

It's really a rock | hard place situation in some niches.

Oh, and I just saw the founders made this statement:

"We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They've been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make, even on Christmas. We're working on it as fast as we can, and expect to be back on Google very soon."

WHAT? What makes these guys so special that they actually get _help_ from Google. I think that pisses me off more than anything. There are a ton of webmasters out there trying to do the right thing SEO wise who get banned or penalized but could never, ever, get personal help from Google. We don't even get the courtesy of knowing _why_ we've been banned most of the time. (Although to be fair this has gotten much better in GWT).

<comment><USER12> In some highly competitive spaces your competitors will spam links to your site which eventually leads to negative SEO. Which I don't think Google will admit exists but it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's not feel sorry for these guys just because they were part of YC. They were taking part in black-hat practices, which were _clearly_ in breach of Google's ToS. I expect this penalty to expire eventually, but let this be a lesson to anyone else thinking about doing the same.

<comment><USER14> My bigger issue is with the fact that they're able to "negotiate" with Matt Cutts and team while thousands of other sites don't have that bargaining power. Started a discussion on this here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6964169)

<comment><USER15> Why do you think they negotiated at all?

<comment><USER16> Agree, Is there any evidence this happened?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow.

This is the worst Christmas present possible. Well, Google had no choice and the apology was not a stellar one (not that it could have mattered).

If I recall correctly, Google once penalized Google Chrome for doing shady SEO [1]. Although it was not as brutal as this which sends them to the equivalent of Siberia.

My Questions.

1\. I normally search "<song name> rapgenius". Now, it is no longer on the first few pages. Is that not against Google's goal of giving the searcher what (s)he wants?

2\. Probably the only way for RapGenius to counter this would be to go heavy on AdWords. Is that not a bit conflicted on Google's side?

Hopefully this punishment will not be permanent. I would hope they have learned to tone things down sometimes.

This may be a lesson in disguise as they would be forced to think of how to survive without SEO. If they can survive now, they will be doubly badass when this penalty is lifted.

\--

Edited to include source

[1] [http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have- pag...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank- reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551)

<comment><USER18> > I normally search "<song name> rapgenius". Now, it is no longer on the first > few pages.

It's not an answer to whether Google is giving users what they want, but you can just create search engines in Chrome[0] for the sites you search frequently. Make sure you set a custom shortcut for it that's only one or two letters. When I want to search Rap Genius, I type 'rg ' (note the space) and I get this: [http://i.imgur.com/At9KxBr.png](http://i.imgur.com/At9KxBr.png)

I have this for at least 20 different sites, so I almost never use Google if I know what site I want to search, a prominent exception being if the site's search really sucks, like reddit. In those cases, I have custom search engines set up that will search Google without whatever I searched, plus "site:example.com" appended to it.

You can also hack this functionality to set up shortcuts for frequently visited sites ('hn' for Hacker News, 'gm' for Gmail, etc.) by creating a search engine without a '%s' (which is where whatever you search is substituted in). So I type 'hn', hit Enter, and it takes me to [http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com)

0: [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95653?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95653?hl=en)

<comment><USER19> As well as in firefox and opera (at least The Opera, not that crap they ship nowadays). And perhaps others.

Edit: That being said, searches on various sites often suck. My default search engine is Google's Feeling Lucky, so if I want to search and IMDb entry for example, I just type in `imdb <name of the movie>`. If I'd had imdb as a keyword for IMDb search, I'd go to the IMDb's search results and would have to click on the result. With feeling lucky search I end up on the entry directly. Same goes for Wikipedia and a few others. If I want to see Google results, I have a keyword for that - g.

<comment><USER18> > If I'd had imdb as a keyword for IMDb search, I'd go to the IMDb's search > results and would have to click on the result. With feeling lucky search I > end up on the entry directly.

Right, that's why I, if I were a frequent IMDb user, would have 'imdb' set up to do an I'm Feeling Lucky search with "site:imdb.com" suffixed to whatever I'd entered. Pretty much the same as suffixing 'imdb', but the "site:" syntax ensures that only IMDb results actually show up.

> Same goes for Wikipedia and a few others.

I actually find Wikipedia to be very good about sending me directly to the page of interest, without having to click through from a search results page. I use Wikipedia for movie info (rather than IMDb), and it works very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Excellent. They deserved some coal in their stockings.

>If you go to Google and search for [rap genius], rapgenius.com will not be found on the first page

That's pretty crazy. Whenever I put up an obscure site, I notice ranking on the domain happens almost immediately with no effort.

[edit] Holy shit, I didn't realize quite how awful this is. Very often, I search for "<song name> rapgenius" because I really enjoy the annotations; that's not even on the first page of results. Making it worse, the first page (even when searching for a song) contains stories about them making rape jokes and spamming. [https://www.google.com/search?q=today+was+a+good+day+rapgeni...](https://www.google.com/search?q=today+was+a+good+day+rapgenius)

<comment><USER21> 5th page for "rapgenius"

There are two lessons here: (1) don't do shady shit, (2) Google should only be one of many sources of traffic.

<comment><USER22> For lyrics sites, Google is the alpha and the omega. There are no other traffic sources for that niche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how many "legitimate" links a site like RapGenius gets. I've never seen anybody link to them, except maybe in social networks. Similar for the stackexchange sites. Sometimes people link to good questions from blogs, but a large portion of links are probably from other stackexchange sites, twitter, and Jeff Atwood's blog (which is a marvel of SEO and affilate marketing in itself).

For many of these high quality content silos (for lack of a better word), the PageRank paradigm seems pretty broken. People don't feel compelled to link to well-known sites precisely because they are well-ranked. And when they do, it is in form of viral posts in social networks, which is not really a great input to determine site quality.

I wouldn't be surprized if Google's real secret algorithm nowadays consists of millions of special cases maintained by thousands of poorly paid interns.

<comment><USER24> Are you saying SO questions high google rank is mainly a result of links from within the SE network?

<comment><USER23> No, but I guess e.g. physics.stackexchange.com or judaism.stackexchange.com benefits a lot from the SE internal links, and I guess for those smaller sites it _is_ the main source of page rank.

That is, if page rank still works like Google claims. I'm pretty convinced that there is a lot of manual curation going on. At least for popular terms and for the first page of results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The sad part is that RG was the most high quality lyrics site I've seen. Their revenue is going to take a huge dive, much more than their link scheming was hurting Google (or probably anyone else for that matter).

<comment><USER23> Its also sad thay they went about it in such a stupid, stupid way.

They could have built a nice "Link to your favorite lyrics" widget for people to include in their "homepages". Make the appearance customizable, jumble the HTML, and include some stock bla bla to make it "individual" and to appeal to google.

Then announce a competition. We'll showcase the best homepages that link to our lyrics in the most creative way. Maybe give away some silly prizes. Completely legal, nothing for Google to complain about, but gives you the same effect very cleverly.

Instead they did this brazen crap... makes them look very amateurish. Technically not very different, but the tone is completely different, and Google had no choice but to penalize it.

<comment><USER24> Where can I find the guidelines that specify what is legal under Google rules and what is not? As someone who isn't familiar with rules, it's not obvious to me what the technical difference is between what they did and what you're suggesting. On a gut level your suggestion seems less spammy, but I'd like to know what the actual rules are.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. It is natural for a website to want to get traffic. How can Google prove that RG's tactic was for SERPs and not just for the direct link traffic from blogs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't imagine that this is permanent. Rap Genius is actually one of the most high quality lyrics sites out there, not another spam farm. So removing them for good actually reduces the quality of Google's search results.

I do suspect that because of the attention this once case received, and since Matt Cutts was personally looking into the company's SEO tactics (talk about bad luck), they issued a public, but temporary, slap. That would serve as an eye opener to Rap Genius about how dangerously they're playing the SEO game and a warning to everyone else tuning in.

<comment><USER28> If the "slap" is too temporary then it backfires as a deterrent because such a slap would teach future companies that you might as well game the system and then accept your small, temporary punishment if you do happen to get caught, which you might not in the first place if you are more clever about doing it than the rapgenius guys were. There's really no point to Google making public spectacle of a penalty that might end up so temporary as to be toothless.

In any case, I find it hard to shed a tear for these guys, they either knew full well that they were flagrantly disobeying the Google rules or they are incredibly stupid. And unlike some others I'm not so surprised that their previously high ranking might have been gamed because they are one of a set of companies I know of that has huge mindshare with the HN/startup crowd, but virtually none with people I know who aren't part of that first group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We are all much better off now that azlyrics.com is back to its rightful place at the top of the lyric search results.

Rap Genius alleges that their competitors are using the same tactics. Will those sites also get the same scrutiny? Perhaps now would be a good time for a new lyric site run by some nice bland people to go on the offensive and rise to the top.

<comment><USER2> So, the only reason RG in the first place _was_ able to provide lyrics with no spam at no costs is because they were riding on VC money. Other lyrics sites have to make money _somehow_. But then you might say -- well, what does that matter to the audience? The answer is, usually the spam-free groovy train usually _does_ eventually come to an end. Sites _can_ go on for long periods of time serving straight up spam/ad-free content, but that always ends. Who knew what RG was intending to do after this ended? Would they have gone the Facebook route of datamining the hell out of Biebers fan to advertise them shit they don't need?

One last thing to keep in mind: Rapgenius was an unlicensed lyric site. They weren't playing ball on either side of the fence. Let's hope that a lyric site emerges that provides lyrics with at least acceptable, non-distracting ads, and serves licensed content. I really think merely going by this strategy will get you ranked high on Google.

<comment><USER22> I hate that lyrics have to be licensed for informational purposes. I think it's stupid.

<comment><USER30> writers (a.k.a the anonymous person who wrote your favorite songs) make their living writing those lyrics & deserve to be paid for their work

<comment><USER31> No one deserves to be paid simply for working. You might be the best X in the world but if the world doesn't value X then you don't get paid. Pay is earned by doing things people want to pay for, not simply by doing things. If people don't want to pay for music/lyrics then music/lyrics has no market value. You don't deserve anything.

<comment><USER32> Clearly there is value since there is demand. What you're saying essentially is that peoples right to pay what they want outweighs the creators right to set their own price for their creations. That's not the way the world works. Demand can dictate price to an extent in that the seller wants to maximize earnings but it doesn't dictate it absolutely.

These companies(RG, azlyrics, etc) are making money where their main product is the creative work of someone else. Damn straight that other person deserves a cut of the profits because without them there is no site.

<comment><USER31> > What you're saying essentially is that peoples right to pay what they want > outweighs the creators right to set their own price for their creations. > That's not the way the world works.

No, that's exactly how the world works for luxury items like music; demand drives, not supply. What the seller wants to charge means absolutely nothing if demand is elastic and consumers can simply stop buying. Demand sets the price, not the seller. Creators can set whatever price they like, and consumers can and will ignore them; if you want to sell something you have to set a price the market will actually bear.

> Damn straight that other person deserves a cut of the profits because > without them there is no site.

No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion that a person _deserves_ to be paid forever in secondary markets where people trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in the messed up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid. You as an artist do not deserve to be paid every time someone makes a copy of your art; period. If I paint a copy of a Picasso, I don't owe the Picasso family anything and the same should apply to any other creation. Copies are not theft and the artist doesn't _deserve_ anything.

<comment> shock-value > No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion > that a person deserves to be paid forever in secondary markets where people > trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in > the messed up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid.

Whether or not a person deserves to get paid forever for their work is irrelevant to this discussion... The point is that _someone_ is getting paid forever in this situation -- either the original songwriter or the owners of the lyrics site. I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be possible for a person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why the hell should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?

<comment><USER31> > I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be possible for a > person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why the hell > should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?

Ok, fair question. I didn't claim a person, be it first or third party, shouldn't be able to monetize anything; I said they don't _deserve_ it, not that they can't do it. I'm disputing the sense of entitlement displayed by the use of the word deserve. No one, whether the creator nor the third party, is entitled to consumers money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really hate how one search engine can make or break a site.

We live in the AOL dark ages and most don't even realize it.

<comment><USER34> Care to elaborate? RG clearly broke the rules and forced google's hand here. Google has to protect the integrity of their search results against such gaming, else a day might come when all of Google's search results are due to black-hat SEO and Google's brand itself would be worthless.

This would be the equivalent of Walmart/Safeway refusing to carry some company's products because of {false/mis}-representation.

<comment><USER35> The point is that Google sets the rules for the internet based on what makes their algorithm work - I.e. What is good for Google. Instead of improving their algorithm, they now manually punish sites for not obeying.

<comment><USER36> > The point is that Google sets the rules for the internet based on what makes > their algorithm work...

Google sets their own rules for their own product. They don't run the Internet.

These RapGenius guys consciously decided to try to game Google and lost. Boo hoo. Can't win every game you play.

<comment><USER37> In effect they do set rules for the Internet as a whole, though. For instance, if you're the owner of (say) a news website, Google don't want you to host text ads that contain live links because their entire search engine is based around the assumption that links are non-paid. So they penalized a number of major news sites for doing this, effectively forcing them to stop by taking away one of their main sources of traffic.

<comment><USER38> Sure, but, arguably, those rules are "correct". The fact that they run the leading search engine implies that they provide the best quality (or at least best perceived quality) search results. Those rules presumably contribute to that.

<comment><USER35> That's a circular argument. Google has only been able to punish rule breakers _since_ it became the leading search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to alexa their top 10 traffic sources are:

google.com - 35.7%; youtube.com - 4.4%; google.co.uk - 4.0%; facebook.com - 3.9%; google.de - 3.5%; google.ca - 3.1%; google.co.in - 2.6%; google.fr - 2.5%; google.com.tr - 1.5%; google.es - 1.1%;

Except for facebook all it top sources are Google owned(58.4%). This will truly be disasterous for their revenues.

Considering they rank 59th for "rap genius" and 51st for "rapgenius" on Google.

There are tons of lessons to be learned here. Don't depend on a single source for traffic and most of all don't excessively try gaming the system, the system usually catches up.

<comment><USER39> I think the true lesson is more a compound of those things: Don't depend on a single source for traffic and if you do don't try gaming that source. Relying on Google is likely a lyric industry standard.

<comment><USER40> the biggest lesson is don't brag about it in public!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This just makes Google less useful. RG had the best lyrics and annotations for lots of songs. Now Google sends me to barely-readable sites that only exist to show as many ads as possible per page, even if I include "rap genius" in the search.

<comment><USER42> You could always go direct to RG.

<comment><USER41> That's beside the point. Millions of people that search Google for lyrics every month getting sent to worse sites is a problem for Google, not for me.

<comment><USER43> The disappearance of 1 lyrics site(albeit a good one) from the face of Earth doesn't even come closing to putting a deny into Google's search quality. There are a million other sites out there. RapGenius is the one that has lost, not Google

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Honestly Rap Genius isn't that appealing of a site and the design is pretty terrible. It's incredibly difficult to read anything on the page (azlyrics is actually better at this).

I really hope someone new comes along and makes a better site with the same premise (annotating lyrics).

</comment><comment><USER45> Whilst this may be surprising to some people on HN, this happens all of the time to sites who build links in an unnatural way.

For instance, this has happened in the past to well known brands such as J.C Penney through NYTimes expose[1], Interflora[2] more recently and a lots of others.

An apology which RapGenius offered [3] doesn't fix this either.

Is it fair? Yes and No.

The only reason it isn't fair is that the site disappears from Google for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius]. My personal belief is that, devaluing the site for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius] actually devalues Google's quality. On the other side of the coin, if someone searches for [X rap genius] whilst they are under penalty its fair that they do not rank for that either. However, there are obvious reasons as to why the search quality team have decided to do this.

 _How RapGenius can fix it / How you can too if your site gets a penalty:_

First of all, RapGenius if they are doing any link building now they should pause it immediately until they're out of penalty.

Secondly, in their apology [3] said:

      "With limited tools (Open Site Explorer), we found some suspicious backlinks to some of our competitors"

They don't actually _need_ to use any other tool to get out of penalty beyond Google Webmaster Tools although, ideally they should clean up all the links beyond the ones Google has found (trust me, Google doesn't find them all within WMTs). Once you get out of a Google manual penalty and get hit by one again the search quality team takes a much closer look – you don't want that!

Anyway, they should download all the links in WMTs, OSE, Majestic etc (although it looks like they only have OSE[3] so they should just download them from WMTs and OSE) and then remove the duplicates.

Once they've done this, they should flag every single link which, they believe is causing the penalty.

After identifying all the links which are causing the penalty, they should create a Gmail to outreach to all of the sites to remove the links. They should outreach to all these sites and documents all the sites they've contacted, status – still live/nofollow/removed/requested payment/no response etc.

Having got some links removed/nofollowed etc, they should then disavow all the other sites that have requested payment or not given them response to the removal. Personally, the disavow(s) that are done by myself are usually done at the domain level although, there are reasons to do this at the URL level as well (Rap Genius needs to make the decision which one to disavow).

After submitting the disavow they, should submit a reconsideration request which outlines, the work they have done – from the spreadsheet – and also offer Google's Search Quality Team the login to the Gmail to show they've tried to get the links removed and that some people have asked for payment etc.

The Google Search Quality team will review the site then, they'll either flag more links to be removed or they'll get out of penalty – after which Rap Genius will start appearing for the BRAND term again and other results once the Google Algorithms trust the site again.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&)

[2] [http://searchengineland.com/google-says-no-comment-on-why- in...](http://searchengineland.com/google-says-no-comment-on-why-interflora- was-penalized-149308)

[3] [http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter- to...](http://news.rapgenius.com/Rap-genius-founders-open-letter-to-google- about-rap-genius-seo-lyrics)

<comment><USER46> " _The only reason it isn 't fair is that the site disappears from Google for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius]._"

How is that not fair? They were caught attempting to cheat google. Not only that, but cheat their competitors and us (the users). In most scenarios (criminal, sports, academic), being caught means it's game over. And that's exactly what happened here.

When you get caught stealing from a cash register or breaking into a house, they don't just make you put the stuff back and send you on your way. When you caught cheating in professional sports, you forfeit the entire game; in higher academia, kicked out of school.

If anything, I think google is too soft on people attempting to cheat them. When it's obvious and blatant, they need to lay down the law so hard that people won't even consider it next time. This will make the user experience better for everyone. A slap on the wrist tells people the risk is worth it and that means we will be served up potentially worse (less organic) search results.

<comment><USER47> Criminal, sports, and academic concerns are all governed by bodies that impose those sanctions. When Google imposes a sanction they are the judge, jury, and executioner.

Since Google offers a public service and is owned by public shareholders, this poses somewhat of a problem....especially when you consider their marketshare and whether or not such sanctions offers them a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER48> > Criminal, sports, and academic concerns are all governed by bodies that > impose those sanctions. When Google imposes a sanction they are the judge, > jury, and executioner.

Actually, in all of those cases, the judge and executioner (and, usually, the legislature making the rules) are all employees of the same organization. In some cases there is a separate jury as a finder of fact (e.g., in criminal cases in the US and countries similar legal systems), though in sports and academic cases there may well not be, depending on the particular rules of the particular organization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Current rankings:

#42 (was #1) - justin bieber memphis lyrics

#43 (was #1) - justin bieber all bad lyrics

#44 (was #2) - justin bieber hold tight lyrics

#45 (was #1) - justin bieber one life lyrics

#46 (was #4) - justin bieber bad day lyrics

#48 (was #7) - justin bieber lyrics

#54 (was #3) - justin bieber change me lyrics

#59 (was #2) - justin bieber pyd lyrics

#60 (was #1) - justin bieber confident lyrics

#63 (was #1) - justin bieber heartbreaker lyrics

#64 (was #5) - justin bieber roller coaster lyrics

#68 (was #2) - justin bieber all that matters lyrics

#68 (was #3) - justin bieber recovery lyrics

#50 - rap genius

source: serpscan.com

<comment><USER19> Can I ask why Justin Bieber in all the examples? Was this site somehow bieber- focused or bieber-promoted? I've never heard of it before this actually.

edit: Followed links to past stories and got my answer here [http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack- exposed](http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't understand how Rap Genius' hack was any worse than what Mixpanel does with its free plan.

[https://mixpanel.com/free/](https://mixpanel.com/free/)

Here, they are bribing customers to link to their site? Would this not be illegal too?

<comment><USER51> It's different: it's a recommendation of our product and it drives real clicks back to Mixpanel (excluding google). Powered by badges are extremely common and are more akin to an ad. The main difference is that Rapgenius' sole goal is to game Google, ours is not.

<comment><USER40> it's actually not - Matt Cutts specifically made a video about these exact type of "widget" links a few months ago. He recommended that they be no- followed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Google's revenue depends on providing the best results it can to searchers, within limits of result pollution they do themselves (clearly demarked advertising at present). If they allow cynical SEO then the results get worse for everyone and people will look for alternatives.

I'm glad they have a proactive slap-down policy. Let's not go back to the late 90s and the likes of altavista, when you might have got one hit in ten pages of spam, SEO link farms.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is absolutely rediculous, google is upholding it's rules but forgetting the POINT of the rules. The whole point is to make the most relevant results come up on google searches. The fact that rapgenius needs to "hack their way" to higher link relevancy seems like a internal google problem and penalizing them makes googles results LESS relevant. Tl;dr google's cutting off their nose in spite of their face.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's a pyrrhic victory. Now, the best lyrics site can't be found and Google itself is less useful for it.

At least [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=it+was+a+good+day+rapgenius](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=it+was+a+good+day+rapgenius) seems to work fine.

<comment><USER55> For what it's worth, they use Yahoo's search API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Certainly a harsh blow and a lesson learned, but not the lesson you think. The lesson is to not allow a third party "black box" to be the central traffic source for the monetization model of your business. Rapgenius understood this well and does have an excellent community on boarding strategy, but was still heavily reliant on google as a main pillar of its customer acquisition model.

I've lost one Alexa top 2000 site to a google penalty, and several smaller sites, saw this coming miles away.

I know exactly what they are going through, never forget the day when my JV partner called me at 4AM and told me the apocalypse scenario has happened. Even worst than the financial blow of losing a $30k a day advertising property, was the brutal realization of googling your brands name and seeing it not show up. Going in to analytics real time and seeing a sub 100 number for the first time in 6 months was quite an eery feeling as well.

Google did this to set an example, and they will be reinstated worst case in 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think this is a great lesson in the disparity between two things:

1\. Breaking rules

2\. Not being liked and breaking rules

<comment><USER58> 3 Not getting Caught

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think this could be a deathblow to Rap Genius.

I performed the following searches in an incognito tab and could not find rapgenius in the first two pages of results (I did not look beyond the first two pages):

"rap god eminem lyrics"

"machine gun funk rap lyrics"

"lose yourself eminem lyrics"

<comment><USER60> it looks like they might have stopped showing "rapgenius.com" in non site- specific results. Searching for "rap genius eminem lose yourself" doesn't give any results in the top 5 pages. The only time I can see results from them is by adding a "site:" modifier to the search.

I think you're right, that depending on how long this lasts, they could be in a world of hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Right in the middle of my yearly Christmas music shopping spree! I'm already not finding the lyrics I want to find.

Since what they do have to offer is about a million times better than any other lyrics site I'm pretty sure they will weather this. I mean, they have to. Their service is pretty excellent, I'm not even sure why there way any need to fuck around with Google.

</comment><comment><USER62> Just goes to show, invest in some real marketing, make something really valuable to someone rather than relying on 'growth hacks' that tend to explode in your face.

<comment><USER63> How does this show that? All this shows is that there is risk do doing growth hacks. It does nothing to show if these hacks are worth the risk. Rap Genius, is, after all, the most well known and successful site for rap lyrics as far as I know, so (ethics notwithstanding) unless this kills their business, it was a smart move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We always talk about not building a business on someone else's API... Funnily enough, you could almost say that applies here. Gone from any SERPS, entirely. Crazy. I dislike that Google has this much power sometimes :(

</comment><comment><USER64> Wow, that's a very stiff penalty if they're not even turning up for their own brand name. It will likely cost them millions. It's a clear warning to all sites out there to avoid similar tactics.

<comment><USER65> I feel for them. At the end of the day business is suffering. However, a high profile example of the consequences of using these myopic tactics is also good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Well Google does takes manual actions against link schemes. Google had taken action against its on Chrome browser in 2012. [http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have- pag...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank- reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551) check out for more info.

</comment><comment><USER67> There is something very important going on here. The reality is most search results are gamed & Google knows it. Everyone should be afraid of this happening to them.

Clearly what RapGenius did was wrong, very stupid and extremely short sighted. However, you're still going to find a good percentage of your search results today from rankings achieved with equally as shady strategies.

Google is too big & too powerful to play these kind of games and arbitrarily decide who gets penalized and who doesn't. Dare I say it but part of me feels like there is not enough bureaucracy in large penalty decisions considering their impact. There are literally millions of other sites doing the same thing and happily continuing their day.

</comment><comment><USER68> They seem to be using Quantcast and are directly measured. This should be interesting over the next week.

[https://www.quantcast.com/rapgenius.com](https://www.quantcast.com/rapgenius.com)

</comment><comment><USER69> Its very scary to build your business on being ranked high on Google. When you build your house on sand...

</comment><comment><USER70> Why did not they penalize their competitor websites which are using the same (even worse) tactics?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Why did not they penalize their competitor websites which are using the same (even worse) tactics?"

Source? Proof? RG was penalised because their method were made public and Google was made aware of it. If there is proof other sites are doing the same (I don't doubt they are but proof is needed) I'm sure Google will penalise them too.

<comment><USER70> As I remember, In the "apology" letter RG provided a list of resources that prove that other websites are doing the same thing.

<comment><USER71> What they provided wasn't exactly 'proof'. Without any conclusive ground they accused other lyrics sites. Linking to Open Site Explorer and saying they they think some links might be suspicious hardly counts as proof, IMO. Besides, now that the matter has been brought under Google's attention, they'll of course penalize the other lyric sites too, if any violation is found. But in case of RG, it was all out in the open and I think that's why action was quick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Question: From Google's perspective how exactly does Google lower the ranking for Rap Genius? I imagine they have some sort of 'naughty' list. Does Google just discount the rankings by some number they determine is fair? And is this effect permanent? If Rap Genius plays by the rules and still manages to have good SEO, will they eventually bubble back up to the top or are they officially doomed to lower rankings?

</comment><comment><USER73> Just did a quick "bieber heartbreaker lyrics" query and couldn't find them in the first 10 pages of results...

Outch, this is going to hurt them.

</comment><comment><USER74> As much as Rap Genius probably deserves it, this seems like it is treading dangerously close to Antitrust territory. Any lawyers on here?

</comment><comment><USER75> Offering money or return-links for links is shady, but it's not inherently illegal or anything.[1] Google doesn't own the internet.

I wonder if it's a worthwhile risk. While there are some high-profile busts, in general most sites probably don't get caught. Though it's probably harder to do effectively since Google improved their algorithms.

In the flower case [2], Google claimed the links hadn't helped the sites. Though Google couldn't have penalized all the Flower companies, since that would have made their results much worse.

[1] If you're paying someone to link to you, that needs to be disclosed, but that doesn't mean the link needs to be nofollow. Though I guess following that rule would make it very easy to be caught.

[2] [http://searchengineland.com/ny-times-covers-paid-link- scheme...](http://searchengineland.com/ny-times-covers-paid-link-schemes- first-j-c-penney-now-flowers-industry-76340)

</comment><comment><USER40> Rap Genius was given a "manual action" aka a penalty applied by an actual human because of the public outing that happened over the past few days, and the attention gained specifically by Matt Cutts.

Their overall link portfolio is not half as bad as their competition, however all this attention forced Google to take action being that they need to live up to their reputation as hard asses.

Let's face it, the algorithm might not pick up on these bartered links because they are a drop in the bucket of their overall link portfolio.

Really more than anything this is another PR stunt by Google's search quality team. They have been outing people on Twitter for the past month (backlinks.com I believe and another blackhat service) and want the general public to know that they mean business.

</comment><comment><USER76> Google practices the exact same dirty tactics it punishes smaller websites for. Note how they have a lot of ads all over their pages? If small websites do that, they get punished. Also, note how Google steals content from wikipedia and posts it next to search results? If small sites do that they get punished. Lastly, google is the world's largest reseller of links, except their links are "ok", for some obscure reason....you can pay google a large sum of money and see your link on billions of pages worldwide via link ads.

If you're not scared of google's double talk, blatant spying, abuse of monopolistic powers, then you either work for them or you are completely alienated.

</comment><comment><USER77> Man, that's a crazily passive-aggressive article... the author dances around it, couching his dislike (and fear) in slippery and vague language, but the clear impression one is left with is that he feels Google is "the enemy"... ><

</comment><comment><USER78> Google is seriously doing a disservice to its lyrics searching users by penalizing RG. RG offers (in my opinion) the best quality and the most information rich lyrics pages on the web, it doesn't compare to anything out there.

</comment><comment><USER79> These guys will never grow up

</comment><comment><USER80> End result: now we have to use those regular, shitty lyrics sites again, or dig through the results. Mmmmm, so much better. You can't even get there by specifying rap genius in your query! This blows.

</comment><comment><USER81> Might be fair, but their argument about all their competitors doing this is completely valid. If Google's going to penalize RapGenius, they should penalize the other lyrics websites as well.

</comment><comment><USER82> Can someone explain to me why Google is formalizing this against Rap Genius?

I really like their n-gram viewer of the New York Times wedding announcements. [http://blog.visual.ly/rap-genius-new-project- visualizes-30-y...](http://blog.visual.ly/rap-genius-new-project- visualizes-30-years-of-new-york-times-wedding-data/)

I would be interested in learning what they have to say about NLP (Natural Language Processing) since they deal with language which is quite vernacular.

</comment><comment><USER83> > Finally, it's probably an incredibly dumb business model to be doing a > lyrics site that hopes for Google traffic in a time when Google, like Bing, > is moving toward providing direct answers. Lyrics, to my understanding, > often have to be licensed. That makes them a candidate for Google to license > directly and provide as direct answers.

Controversy aside - This seemed like the most interesting part of the write-up to me.

</comment><comment><USER84> Opportunity to make the next big song annotation site before New Year's?

Seriously how hard could it be ... write a Node.js app that can handle 10k clients on one machine, and partition the data by the song being annotated. Don't even need $1 million dollars. YouTube hosts the videos, anyway.

Ah, but there is just one problem... song lyrics are copyrighted and a license to some database is like $20,000

Wish I knew a way around that.

<comment><USER85> The challenge is not technical. The challenge is community. RapGenius is a network effects driven site, so it's utility is driven by how many people use the site. Technology is table-stakes, but branding and marketing matter much more at this point.

RapGenius grew because their user experience was much better than their competition. This was the foundation for their branding & marketing. Their growth will be sustained by their content and (once these penalties are phased out) by users' ability to discover their unique content. The technology is merely an enabler for the community-generated content. New competitors must find ways around the community's cold-start problem.

Edit: typos

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> What's _really_ amusing is that after the penalty, most searches that include "rap genius" now have this result on the first page: How Rap Genius Won the SEO Game

[http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5812335/how-rap- geniu...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5812335/how-rap-genius-won- the-seo-game)

</comment><comment><USER87> I never heard of rapgenius before this, or never noticed what lyric site I was on since I treat lyric lookups almost like dictionary lookups.

As a result of this story, I now have heard of RG. So ironically, any press is good press, and despite the banning, and the public shaming in the media, it may very well be the equivalent of millions of dollars in free brand awareness.

</comment><comment><USER88> People are always gaming the search engines. Lyric websites are some of the absolute worst perpetrators of this. They care for absolutely nothing but ad impressions and their sites are a tortuous experience to behold. That being said, I'd still say it's a shame since for once, someone gaming the system actually had decent content to offer.

</comment><comment><USER89> Interestingly now on searching Rap Genius on google, articles about them getting penalised are coming on the first 3 pages.

</comment><comment><USER40> fyi I grapped a rank report from a few days ago from some of their popular kwds. Looks like they are down 4-6 pages on average:

[http://cdn.elite-strategies.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/r...](http://cdn.elite-strategies.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/rap-genius-penalty.png)

</comment><comment><USER90> I'm confused and concerned by Google's policy. I make a product. If I send out product to blogger with a review request (which would, of course, include a link to my site), am I running afoul of the guidelines? I don't even care that much about the Google juice as I do the coverage.

<comment><USER91> Simply asking someone to review your product is not an issue. Offering money to do so or offering to do things in exchange for the review (like promoting their site on social media or your site) is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> It's super lame that Google penalizes individual cases versus just fixing their algorithms across the board, because it means that other sites that employ similar techniques and aren't high-profile/useful enough to get posted about to HN are able to continue unimpeded.

<comment><USER64> No need to pick between the two. Google does both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I'm shocked to see that their previous fairly good ranking has been fraudulent all along.

<comment><USER22> I don't think it was. I think this is a huge penalty, not a correction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looks like ordinary visitors can't even find their site now: [https://twitter.com/fuckshivan/status/415879789522587648](https://twitter.com/fuckshivan/status/415879789522587648)

The power of Google.

</comment><comment><USER94> Let's not forget anyone that pays google in some way (adwords) bounces back from this almost immediately. Aka 6 months or less. Have known people only spending 10k per month that bounced back from penalization in 2-3 months.

</comment><comment><USER70> That just proves how google search algorithms become inaccurate. I agree, RapGenius did some shady things, BUT it still has a better content then other websites which are now ranked much higher.

</comment><comment><USER95> I'm not an expert in SEO but I bet 1/3 to 1/2 of the serious SEO organizations/individuals do the same thing or something very similar.

"Its not cheating unless you get caught"

</comment><comment><USER12> The funny thing about this is that rap genius is the most user friendly site and it should be out ranking all of the other spam lyric sites.

</comment><comment><USER96> what about others that are doing the same thing.

for example TINT

tintup.com

once you create a free account they have the following:

Dear valued Tint customer, Would you like to write a review about Tint? In exchange for your opinions/blog post, we are giving away 50% off FOREVER promo code for our Plus Plan. To learn more, click the button below:

screen shot: [http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c](http://imgur.com/wDnAJ4c)

</comment><comment><USER97> It's worth noting that Rap Genius was not penalized on Bing. (and Yahoo which uses Bing).

RG may want to consider a hedge bet on search engines.

</comment><comment><USER98> Damn, I tried searching up some rap lyrics that I knew worked a couple of days ago, no dice. How long does this penalisation last?

</comment><comment><USER99> If RapGenius is smart, they'll turn this into beef and get front page coverage on a bunch of newspapers and websites.

</comment><comment><USER100> You would think Google would be able to tell that a Justin Bieber link does not belong on an arbitrary twitter post

</comment><comment><USER101> How long will this last? Rap Genius is a fantastic asset to the world, I hope this isn't permanent.

</comment><comment><USER102> Try this:

[bieber heartbreaker lyrics rap genius] or even [bieber heartbreaker lyrics rapgenius.com]

</comment><comment><USER103> This is one of the things where there is no clear right or wrong.

</comment><comment><USER104> When you don't get Rapgenius when you search "Bieber Rapgenius," you know that Google is forgoing its mission of serving users and instead just flexing its big muscles for everyone to see.

</comment><comment><USER105> Couldn't resist [http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/44344545.jpg](http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/44344545.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER106> searching 2pac lyrics rap genius yields no rapgenius.com either. it shows all the competitor lyric sites but not rapgenius.

I have mixed feelings about this. How long until we see a game of he-said-she- said? Of course, socially engineered link building aimed at gaming the SERP is against the interest of consumers and google. However, now that we can see a competitor get taken out from google SERP by pointing their attention to a malicious technique, we should see more stories like this.

The problem I have with SERP is that while it's good at finding the most relevant site (still returns spammy sites so not perfect) most of the time, it's built around the advertisement model. It doesn't give you a snapshot of the cross section of the data you are looking at across all the domains out there so that you can't choose on your own which lyric is the most to your liking (it really doesn't matter because lyrics are same across different websites). So the question of who ranks first even though they have identical content shows some underlying inefficiencies caused by the Advertisement revenue model. The more there is, the more advertisement gets seen and clicked.

I feel that the search engine space with selling our attention to advertisements only creates more waste by others trying to get a share of the revenue by jumping into a profitable niche by creating an identical or similar content (article spinning etc). In turn, more competition would create people to use more Adwords or other advertising platforms. The end result is that consumer ends up with untrustworthy websites with content in the back of their priorities. Content should be judged by comparing it with other websites that offer the same content with an overview listing all the different domains showing that content. While displaying such cross domain contents, it should not bring advertisement as an incentive model.

</comment><comment><USER107> How is what Rap Genius any different than selling ad space, Googles core business? It seems to be that this was just an interpersonal request for an AD to link back to Rap Genius.

What is wrong with that anyway? Adwords and Adsense are just an affiliate program anyway.

I dont see much of a problem with it.</comment>


Show HN: Pynd a command line tool to search and explore Python projects - <AUTHOR> http://d0ugal.github.io/pynd/ <comment><AUTHOR> This project is very young, I'd really like feedback from people. Is this something you think you would find useful? What features would you like to see?

I have only been using it a little bit, but found it most useful on larger projects. I have spent lots of time grepping OpenStack repos. Hopefully this will make it easier for me.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks cool. I've considered doing something like this myself.</comment>


What You Get When 30 People Draw a World Map From Memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/what-you-get-when-30-people-draw-a-world-map-from-memory/282901/ <comment><USER2> I am tired of this perception around the world that americans do not know geography. I really wish someone would do this test in Europe or Asia, and compare the results. Are Americans terrible at geography, sure. But so is the rest of the world, believe it or not, there are ill-educated people everywhere.

<comment><USER3> > I am tired of this perception around the world that americans do not know > geography.

A lot of people, all over the world, suck at geography, but the degree of suckiness itself does make a difference.

I took a similar test back in high school. It was as part of a set of workshops, organised on the occasion of my country of origin joining the EU. I think I saw close to a hundred maps of the world drawn in a similar manner, by young high school students, with a fairly diverse educational background (it was a public school, and there is no income differentiation between them -- schools were financed solely based on the number of pupils).

There was plenty of eurocentrism in them, _but_ notably:

* NONE OF THEM MISSED FUCKING JAPAN. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU MISS JAPAN? Forget about Pearl Harbour and the bombs the US dropped there and all that -- but there's anime and tentacle porn and cyberpunk and Japanese cars.

* None of them missed Greenland. How the fuck do you miss Greenland? It's a huge fucking white spot straight near Canada, it's literally impossible to miss it. The only way you can miss Greenland is if you never fucking looked at a world map.

* None of them simply warped Asia and Africa. That's probably because of a peculiarity of language -- there is a strong distinction in my native tongue between the Asian continent and the peninsulae in the Middle East. Some students did miss one or two of the unspeakable number of seas in there, but the Arabian peninsula could clearly be seen as such, and it was distinct from the Indian subcontinent.

* None of them missed... Madagascar. How the fuck do you miss Madagascar? There's a movie with cute penguins made after it!

Notable omissions were the myriad of isles between Indonesia and Australia, the Behring strait was usually larger than it should have been (probably because it gets skewed in different manners under different map projections), the Carribean islands were all joined into a single, large Cuba and Kamchatka was absent in about a third of those maps. But honestly, none of them sucked that badly, those don't even look like Earth.

<comment><USER4> * Bering strait

<comment><USER3> Oops :). Yeah, no H in Vitus Bering's name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And here's what you get when Senator Al Franken draws the United states from memory.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-FYyuvrRk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-FYyuvrRk) (sped up)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDZmDGRk1k0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDZmDGRk1k0) (real time with commentary)

<comment><USER6> And here's what you get when Congressmen Hank Johnson asks if an island, Guam, will capsize and tip over if overly populated.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q)

<comment><USER7> He suffers from hepatic encephalopathy secondary to hepatitic C infection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >... Ziebell approached 29 strangers on the University of Michigan's campus, handed them a pen and half a sheet of paper, and asked them, on the spot, to draw a map of the world.

Meh. College students. For most people that age this kind of stuff just isn't that important.

<comment><USER9> It'd be interesting to replicate the experiment using lany people of different ages and in different countires.

I know that I'd suck at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apparently no one knows about New Zealand.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps the paper needed to be slightly wider on the right-hand side?

<comment><USER12> That's typical, always blaming the paper. The world needs to be skinnier, dammit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I was 13 my social sciences teacher got my class to draw the world map with the intent to do it again two years later with the theory that our drawings would have become more specified as we learnt more about the world.

Unfortunately, he lost the original drawings.

</comment><comment><USER14> as a control, I'd be interest to see how people do drawing the same map when they can see a reference map as they're drawing. perhaps people just suck at drawing? That is obviously true to some extent, but how much so?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm interested in how ocean width affects merging of landmasses- while the UK is missing as a distinct landmass, there's a lot of blurred overlap in the UK/scandinavia area - if some kind of averaging is used, the relatively close sea distances may be eliminated by people getting them in differing wrong locations. It also looks like something similar happened to Japan and India.

</comment><comment><USER16> This would be more interesting if they only polled people who could draw. Maybe ask them to draw a horse first, and if it's recognisable as a horse, then continue on with the world map.

</comment><comment><USER17> He would have been better off asking the 29 participants to vote on who drew the best map - I'm sure they would have voted for his one, which was more accurate than the averaged one.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this a Mercator projection? A big problem with how people think of maps is what projection it is. This would probably turn out very different if people drew on globes.

<comment><USER19> >This would probably turn out very different if people drew on globe

How would it turn out ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's quite interesting they are all drawing the same projection. The projection can really skew your sense of proportion.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think this has anything to do with poor geography skills.

Just ask a number of people to draw a normal bike and you get all sort of strange drawings, just look at this page: [http://bikedrawings.tumblr.com/](http://bikedrawings.tumblr.com/)

It's hard to visualize anything.

<comment><USER22> I saw a similar test a while back where people were asked to draw the handicap parking sign. A really simple shape that most people see several times a week if not every day. And many people couldn't even to that. Most people realized their drawing looked obviously wrong, but could not point to what was wrong. As you say, visualizing things, even simple things, is hard for most people.

</comment></comment><comment> V-2 How exactly were they approached? Were they told what the purpose is? These rough sketches could be a result of ignorance of course, but how do you know it's not that someone just couldn't be bothered... "Draw you a map? okay, whatever"

</comment><comment><USER23> I actually think these maps are pretty great for something that you asked people on a campus to sketch; they had no reason to do extraordinarily well, and many of them were probably rushing off somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER12> I mainly came here to see how long it would take for someone to link to the XKCD cartoon, because it's quicker than thinking of a keyword to find it myself.

<comment><USER12> OK, weird. Nobody else has linked to it as far as I can see. Right, it falls to me then, as the official designated representative of nobody in particular:

[http://xkcd.com/850/](http://xkcd.com/850/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Shockingly, non-USAsians get a case of teh butthurt. "Americans aren't aware of the shape/location/existence of my country! Grrr!"

It's a cool pre-college art project, though.</comment>


How Optimizely Onboards New Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.useronboard.com/how-optimizely-onboards-new-users/

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to answer any questions anyone might have!</comment>


A Unix Utility You Should Know About: Pipe Viewer - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/ <comment><USER2> I just learned about the --forest switch for ps. If you use it, you'll get a tree representing all of the parent and child processes running rather than just a straight up list.

<comment><USER3> \--forest? Seriously?

Metaphors are sometimes confusing. Call it what it is. "Reflection" should have been called "type information", for example, and "--forest" should have been called "--nested".

<comment><USER4> A process tree is known to almost everyone who uses Unix. A forest is, in my opinion, a good name for a collection of trees.

Reflection is the ability of something to introspect. The term "self- reflection" dates back to 1652[1], so why change it? "Type information" is inaccurate because reflection can mean more than just getting information about types, like interfacing with the runtime or getting information about the language implementation.

I don't think concepts should be misnamed at the expense of accuracy.

[1] <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/self-reflection>

<comment><USER3> _The term "self-reflection" dates back to 1652, so why change it?_

I'm saying it shouldn't have been used in the first place. It's an awkward, confusing metaphor. Programs aren't "reflecting", because "self-reflection" is something that only a sentient creature can perform. Programs currently have no concept of "self". I'd say "reflection" is less accurate than "type information", which covers at least 95% of use cases, if not more.

 _I don't think concepts should be misnamed at the expense of accuracy._

Neither do I. Also, all else being equal, less metaphors are better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ask hacker news: what other utilities do you know that others don't? :)

<comment><USER5> mmv (moves multiple files based on a simple pattern replacement language). Example:

        mmv "*.mp3" "old_#1.mp3"

prefixes all files in the current directory ending with .mp3 with 'old_'. Btw., the quotes around the arguments are necesssary because mmv uses some of the same metacharacters as the shell does.

Multiple substitutions are allowed, e.g.:

        $ mmv "*.*" "#1___#2"

renames blub.xyz to blub___xyz.

<comment><USER6> Anyone know where to find a source tarball that compiles under Leopard? All I've found is a bunch of precompiled Linux RPMs...

<comment><USER7> Update your MacPorts. It was just added:

<http://trac.macports.org/changeset/46335>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds useful but I don't like the fact that it's named "pv". I've always associated "pv" with physical volume and lvm... might be a little confusing.

<comment><USER9> You could create an alias for it, like

        alias eta='pv'

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I made a graphical wrapper a few years ago -- call it from a terminal, but if you have X it won't munge stderr.<http://akkartik.name/bash.html#pipeview>

</comment><comment><USER11> For more pipe tricks, check out bidilink:

<http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/bidilink/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there an equivalent utility for Windows?

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't windows have to have a usable shell first?

<comment><USER14> It does, it's called cygwin and it's the first thing you install after getting windows to boot.

<comment><USER15> Cygwin is a bloated piece of crap, especially if you run Vista/Server 200[3-8]. See my other comment about SUA.

<comment><USER16> How is cygwin worse (more bloated or 'crap') on Vista/Server than other Windows versions?

<comment><USER17> * It's redundant as there's posh out of the box, which has built in aliases for common Unix commands

* It reimplements common Windows services

* Doesn't separate content from presentation

* Doesn't integrate with other server software

* Lacks the reporting tools posh has - eg, sending a table to Excel.

<comment><USER14> Powershell is not a unix, just because it can do some of the same things and has aliases for some of the commands doesn't make it a drop in replacement. Cygwin is a drop in replacement that lets me run the same scripts I run on my Linux boxes, i.e. it is not redundant.

I'll take cygwin over powershell any and every day of the week.

<comment><USER17> I didn't state that Powershell was a Unix. Instead, I implied it's a superior way to control Windows from a command line, which it is.

Running Linux scripts is a double edged sword: you can use existing scripts, but they can't access the whole Windows API, are too long due to unnecessary regex work, and can't report as easily.

<comment><USER14> I don't want to control Windows from the command line, I want to control my own applications, access the file system, and run and manage services.

Of course powershell integrates with Windows better than cygwin, the power of cygwin is that it makes Windows a usable Unix, which is far more important to me than controlling Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes, pv(1) doesn't help. For example, `tar cf - foo | bzip2 -9v >foo.tar.bz2'. You don't know the size of the data that needs to pass down the pipe. But I sometimes find watching tar(1) open the files to read is handy; `strace -e trace=open $(pidof tar)'.

</comment><comment><USER19> anyone have an idea how this might work in tandem with dd, for example dd if=/dev/urandom of=1GB.bin bs=1M count=1024

<comment><USER20> Easy!

      dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M count=1024 | pv | dd of=1GB.bin

<comment><AUTHOR> or simpler:

        dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M count=1024 | pv > 1GB.bin</comment></comment></comment>


Immigration to increase the supply of programmers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/01/02/immigration-to-increase-the-supply-of-programmers/ <comment><USER2> I think the subtext of "I would hire thirty great programmers tomorrow!" is "I would hire thirty great programmers tomorrow! They just need to think 55 hours a week is a nice relaxing pace, have impeccable pedigrees, and be capable of spinning up within single-digit weeks. Also, we're looking for top-of-the- skill-curve at a combination of five technologies, two of which are fairly niche. For a variety of reasons we'd strongly prefer if they were located in one particular geographic area where we happen to be in vicious, frothy competition with a hundred firms trying to hire exactly this profile of people."

This happens to be very similar to the rough description that Wall Street is looking for in certain niches of programmers. I have not heard Wall Street loudly complaining about the impossibility of finding Haskell programmers who can code against FIX and also have PhDs in physics.

I rather strongly believe this is because Wall Street institutionally believes in market prices and, unlike Silicon Valley, is willing to tolerate the market telling them that the market clearing price for hiring this type of programmer times thirty is $200k base plus a $600k bonus as opposed to $120k base plus an equity grant with expected value in the $X0k range.

<comment><USER3> It seems highly improbable that cash-based Wall Street compensation packages could be offered by Silicon Valley startups. Maybe established companies could, but it would massively increase the fundraising requirements for early stage companies, with probably bad effects on the SV ecosystem.

Perhaps you can argue that startup equity grants should be higher. Would hiring issues be resolved if the average equity grant tripled? Would more talented people in the U.S. pursue Silicon Valley careers if they got 3% instead of 1% to be an early employee?

I can't prove it, but I'd conjecture it would only have a modest effect. The notion of "expected value" of equity is problematic. It's not like it's simply a 3X stronger offer. The bigger issue is whether the company will be worth anything at all.

<comment><USER4> > It seems highly improbable that cash-based Wall Street compensation packages > could be offered by Silicon Valley startups.

Maybe this would force VC companies to be more selective in who they fund, vs "fund 100 and hope for 1 to be the next google".

<comment><USER5> A first approximation would suggest doubling programming salaries would only change their strategies from "fund 100 and hope for 1 to be good" to "fund 50 and hope for 1 to be good". More selective, sure, but not game-changingly so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What the blog post is saying is essentially saying is that pg is crying about a broken market, when in fact the market is working perfectly, ie. people who could be great programmers would rather go to other higher paying professions because programmers' salaries don't pay as well. The OP basically says the CEO of the startup could get 30 great programmers if he just raised his salaries and benefits higher, which is what the market is telling him. For example, if that CEO paid his programmers $1M/yr, you don't think he would get 100 of the best programmers in the entire world? What he really is saying is that he wants great programmers at a lower cost, and that's basically what increasing immigration would do by increasing the supply.

I personally have no problems with increasing immigration via H1B, but the OP makes an interesting point about economic incentives that push people to occupations. There are a lot of very smart people who would make great programmers that are going into finance, medicine, law, etc, because of higher prestige and better pay. Increasing immigration will increase the number of programmers, but if it is increased to the point where it affects wages, then people who would be great programmers would likely go to other professions rather than having to compete against immigrants for a comparatively lower wage, so it might be self-defeating in the long run.

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

What's more is that deflating the cost of programmers makes it less sensible to make programming teams more efficient. If programmers were paid like doctors, you would start to see the tech equivalent of nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, and physicians' assistants.

In other words, if you were paying your best programmers $1M/yr, you would hire more personal assistants. And maybe there would be more demand for people who are (or can become) fluent in technology lingo, even if they can't write code themselves.

<comment><USER8> > If programmers were paid like doctors, you would start to see the tech > equivalent of nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, and physicians' > assistants.

What do you think business analysts, testers, non-developer IT specialists, etc., are?

<comment><USER7> Right, but programmers aren't organized like hospital staff, which is my point. And, probably related, test engineer doesn't have the same cachet (or prominent degree programs) that x-ray technician or nurse practitioner has.

Maybe some of this is because they don't make TV shows about programming. But it could also be at least partially about seeing programmers as commodities and cost centers (I need 3 senior Java engineers!) instead of seeing them as effectively the core of your business.

So, I guess I have two suspicions about increasing programmer wages, at least for certain categories of problems:

1\. It will incentivize laypeople to learn about how software development works, making technology business analyst seem less like mumbo jumbo and more like a good way to earn a living.

2\. It will incentivize organizations to restructure their processes to maximize the productivity of their highest paid employees. This will create more opportunities for the peole described in point 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about "raises to increase the supply of programmers" instead?

<comment><USER10> Exactly. I'm really confused about this situation of VCs having their cake, and eating it too. Why and when did we just stat accepting the assumption that these companies and VCs are entitled to as many "superstar" programmers as they want at the salaries that they want?

I've been arguing for 10 years that AMA needs to increase the supply of doctors in this country. I'm of the opinion we don't have a lot of doctors... if we had more, then in certain contexts healthcare would become a competitive field where the patient wins. That hasn't happened. And that's an area where we do definitely want change, because healthcare is a serious issue. Tech industry has not produced, in my opinion, anything extraordinarily remarkable that truly helps people in substantive ways. Indeed, the highlight of the industry is massive wealth by the VCs and founders by duping customers by way of exploiting their cognitive biases (or "advertising", if you would). If they were doing things in a clean way that actually benefited the customer without emptying his or her wallet, I would maybe be sympathetic to their cries for getting top talent. But after all of that colluding to suppress the wages of the very people they want more of? Wow, the balls that they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm an immigrant, served in USMC, after service had to pay and take a test to become a citizen (funny right? can die for the country but won't let me be a citizen).

I love my country(both), but when did immigration become something to benefit the corporations?

<comment><USER12> I'm a bit confused by your question ???

Immigration, at the root, has always been about economic necessity in North America. Why would it be any different now ?

<comment><USER11> Maybe I'm just naive. But I'd like to think that immigration is for a greater cause than for companies to make more money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if the qualities that make a drug dealer are economic, but the qualities that make a GREAT drug dealer may be a mix of environment and genes?

If you want the most amazing, ruthless, and efficient black market for drugs, you must have the largest possible number of drug dealers participating in the system, so the most talented and motivated drug dealers have the opportunity to be the best they can be.

The author of this post is missing some of Graham's core arguments, and it makes me want to go back and reread the original essay. Perhaps it is PG's fault for conflating concepts, as people seem to be raising valid points (startups should be able to hire great programmers if they would just pay more) while missing that the core thesis is undeniable: if there are more programmers participating, more greatness will emerge.

It is probably not even linear. If you track the history of martial arts proficiency, the ones that are in fashion seem to produce a higher overall average of ability, with the "greats" in that martial art always arising when many many people are participating in that art, and there is a rich ecosystem that supports learning and competition. i.e. Judo in the 1970s, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the early 2000s.

I see this anecdotally and in published research, where pockets of artists, writers, and musicians have created a wildly disproportionate amount of forward looking work when there are many of them in the same area creating all at once.

Even if startups paid more, it would not significantly increase the total number of great programmers. Google, Apple, and Facebook already DO pay "more" and I think these companies are in exactly the same boat as the startup in the essay - they would happily keep hiring as many great programmers as they can find.

If that is true, the number of jobs available to great programmers is not proved to be finite.

<comment><USER11> What makes a great programmer? And what does this great programmers do? We have had and still have a vast number of great programmers in US and churning our more and more, but what do they do? is it greatness that they seek? if so, why are more programmers involved in scientific research? I really want to agree with your views, but for now it seems that immigration is an issue for one market sector, and last time I looked, that market sector isn't out to change the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And why should we artificially restrict the supply of immigrants? It's not like it's a zero-sum game, something that Greenspun ought to realize.

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and- jobs...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/)

<comment><USER15> It is not zero-sum ? companies like Google, Facebook pick 1 out of 100 programmers, if there was 10 fold increase in programmers, they would start picking 1 out of 1000. Instead of complaining shortage of programmer it makes sense to build software development processes around "average" programmers rather than insisting on superstar programmers. How many other fields do that ? Have you read an ad about hiring only superstar plumber,pilot,electrician,nurse? Even if its true that your company will benefit from so called 10x programmers why not train people to be 10x or give degrees to people who are only 10x. Just increasing the pool of 1x while insisting on hiring 10x doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER16> Angie's List does explicitly that, showing you superstar plumbers, electricians, doctors, etc. If I am given the choice to hire a great plumber vs. an average plumber I would always hire a great plumber if I can afford him. Your argument that development processes should be built around average programmers is like saying open heart surgical procedures should be designed around average surgeons.

<comment><USER17> I don't know how to read your comment. I, for one, do believe that surgical procedures should be designed for the average surgeon.

You want the procedures to be built around superstars?

If I were building a software company that I wanted to survive and thrive long term, I would definitely try to cater to BOTH the superstar and more average programmers. Both have their place.

<comment><USER16> I think I might have to specify what I mean by average. I read average as competent. Sure there are software processes that a competent programmer can work with but to say all processes should be designed for just competent programmers,as the commentator suggested, is unreasonable in my opinion. I do see your point though about designing processes around just superstars. That's not viable either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe what we really need is an increase in VC's?

Possibly grant resident status to anyone (with lot of money of course... after all, it's only the exceptional we are talking about here) who wants to fund and run a VC company? Because there are lots of great programmers who simply can't get funding.

I wonder how PG would feel about that?

<comment><USER19> You can get a GC in the US if you can prove that you have $1 million invested in the US. Yes, its as simple as that. More rich people not moving is probably because if you're rich, you already have a good lifestyle.

<comment><USER20> I think it can be as low as $250k if invested in certain areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> HN has recently had multiple extensive threads about PG's immigration essay and the questions raised by it. In such cases, we demote follow-up posts as duplicates unless they contain significant new information.

Please note that this criterion depends neither on what the particular topic is, nor the opinions people express, nor who they agree or disagree with. It has to do with avoiding repetition.

The reason for this practice is that without it, the same vociferous discussions would recur on the front page every day, and that would fail to gratify intellectual curiosity.

<comment><USER22> _fail to gratify intellectual curiosity_

At stake here are the 2 functions that HN serves: 1. a front page for the HN readership, and 2. an electronic town-hall.

Consider that the town-hall service to the community is how HN got where it did today.

It's one thing to rein in repetitious bunkum, it's quite another for the Chair to say, "bah, I find this so boring" if you allow me caricaturizing license.

<comment><USER21> The only part of this that I really disagree with is the "At stake here". That suggests that there's some danger of destroying one of those things, as if we're unaware of or don't value it. But of course we do. There's no question of suppressing discussion or of thwarting the community from talking about something that it cares about. The issue is one of balance, and it's a purely pragmatic one. If someone can suggest a better way, we're all ears.

<comment><USER22> The "At stake here" borrows from judicial writing, where disinterested parties offer an analysis that would cut the gordion knot of obscuring details. It's short for, "This is really what the debate is about, isn't it?"

From your comment, I gather that HN moderators feel a bit high-strung over the faintest accusation of censorship.

At stake here, I suppose, is PG's reputation, which I'm generally indifferent about. An upstanding citizen of the tech community he is, nothing less, nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure if I want to see any particular country progress as much as I want to see tech and the world at large progress. I also agree with the fact that when a lot of people skilled in one particular domain gather at one place, amazing things happen!! But would a small area 100% full of programmers be better or worse than something like SV? At what point does the innovative progress being produced by a city start to plateau? 25% full of high earning programmers, 50% full of high earning programmers, 75% full of high earning programmers?

The point that I'm trying to make is that, without a lot of empirical evidence, I think it would be a much better idea to try and create more such centers across the world. Thus, for those focusing strictly on tech progress (as opposed to American progress) it might be a better idea to let the US immigration laws be the way they are, while encouraging VCs to travel a bit more (even to other American cities, for starters) and helping the amazing culture travel to other cities. I can't understand why we focus on one particular country instead of combined innovation of the world!

The future doesn't lie in Silicon Valley being 100% full of programmers from across the world. It is just not big enough!! The future lies in a 1000 silicon valleys having a certain threshold of programmers. Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am all for letting talented people in. Clearly, everybody would benefit if the really talented programmers from all over the world could work where the eco-system is set up for them. However, tech companies generally complain about a general shortage of programmers. And I don't buy it because a shortage would manifest itself through large real wage increases and we don't see those. I also suspect talented programmers overseas are already working for us - remotely.

</comment><comment><USER25> I guarantee you, open your doors to remote programmers, and you will get more top-quality prospects than you can possibly hire.

You're restricting your hiring pool to people who are willing to live in a small, overpriced, and absurdly overrated city.

It's a wonderful place, don't get me wrong. But expecting every single great programmer in the world to live in that one tiny city is just ridiculous. By Paul Graham's own arguments, they wouldn't all be able to fit.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hypothetically, let's say every YC startup was to double the starting salaries for programmers they hired.

So if they are paying $120K-$150K/year, they start paying $240K-$300K/year. At that salary, programmers are getting paid on par with lawyers, doctors, and bankers.

To pay this much, assume every startup needs to raise double or triple the amount of capital. The $1 million angel round becomes a $3 million VC round. For the VCs, the $100 million doesn't cut it and they start wanting the $300 million or $1 billion exits to justify the volume of seeds to exits.

The net effect is that the entire sector will need to de-leverage the risks they are currently taking. Entire business models that are currently considered fundable become completely impractical. VCs no longer spread the risk among many startups and start to rely on fewer, safer bets.

Maybe in general, the whole sector would feel a little healthier instead of this constant up and down every few years. But in the short term, it would result in a lot of pain for the major players in SF and Silicon Valley today.

<comment><USER27> I'm really sad that John Doerr won't make another billion dollars.

Oh wait, no I'm not. You see, it won't change a thing. In the current low- interest-rate environment _there is nowhere else for the money to go_. VCs and startups could pay engineers fairly (i.e. at the price at which the market clears) without breaking a sweat. They just don't, out of naked greed. Except now they're running out of people naive enough to exploit, hence wanting to bring in more people, people who are indentured by their visa status.

<comment><USER22> _startups could pay engineers fairly .... They just don 't, out of naked greed._

Also that idle hands are the devil's workshop.

There's a fiduciary duty to channel disruption where it is due, while at the same time stabilizing the polity elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Philip Greenspun forgot to mention that if immigration restrictions persist, then potential immigrants who cannot enter the US due to immigration restrictions would make less than they would do in the US.

Is that discrimination against potential immigrants fair?

</comment><comment><USER29> Philip Greenspun is notorious for being intentionally provocative in his online essays, but here he makes a thoughtful contribution to the literature by picking apart one of the weakest points in Paul Graham's recent essay. The essay by pg appears to assume that programmers are born and not made and they are born in equal rates by population in all parts of the world. Greenspun correctly challenges that kind of naive genetic determinism and suggests that people around the world, in many occupations, respond to incentives, so that people who are within reach of incentives to become better programmers will tend to become better programmers, while people not offered incentives to become better programmers will choose other career trade-offs.

Our fellow participant in this discussion davidw makes the good point that immigration in general is good for countries in general. So my basic policy predisposition is for the United States to have very open borders to immigration, and to impose few requirements on immigration. (All of my ancestors came to North America under rules like that, after all.) My wife was readily able to immigrate to the United States under the "immediate relative" category of immigrants after we had been married for more than a year overseas. My oldest son has sometimes considered moving away from the United States to settle in another country (he has looked specifically at some other countries), and what he has found is that his programming skills help open doors to permanent residence and settling in other countries to immigrate, but especially so for people with college degrees rather than on-the-job training in programming.

It is still the case today that the United States is by far the most desired country to settle in for immigrants from all around the world.[1] And a lot of people achieve that desire. I know first-generation immigrants from India, China, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Ghana, Haiti, Australia, Pakistan, Turkey, the Philippines, Romania, Poland, Somalia, Argentina, Ecuador, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, and a variety of other countries here in Minnesota, where the climate is anything but inviting. My inclination is to welcome even more immigrants than the United States welcomes now (for one thing, that improves the variety of local ethnic restaurants and grocery stores) but the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of the world than any other country on earth, so I can understand why my fellow voters might not think that the United States has a shortage of immigrants. To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay.

[1] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide- drea...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream- life.aspx)

<comment><USER14> > the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of > the world than any other country on earth

In terms of absolute numbers, yes. In terms of percentages, no:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migrat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign- bo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign- born_population)

> To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and > tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay.

I agree with that. To that end, if you have any comments on my own article, please feel free to email them to me. All the muddle-headed thinking I read about immigration the last time around prompted me to write it as a place to collect my own arguments.

<comment><USER29> The other countries with higher intake (as a percentage of national population) of migrants or of foreign-born persons, as you can see from the Wikipedia links you have kindly shared, are mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. For countries accepting permanent residents with a path to citizenship, the United States still ranks plenty high on a percentage basis, and the absolute numbers are much of what generates population growth in the United States these days. I'll have to take a look at your article and ponder it awhile. We need perspective like yours (American living abroad) a lot more on Hacker News. Thanks for your reply.

<comment><USER14> > mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or > guest workers.

Yes, there are certainly plenty of those (and there are some arguments in favor of that, too: [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce- global-...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120179/how-reduce-global- income-inequality-open-immigration-policies) )

But there are also others, like Sweden, Canada, Norway, Australia and Spain (and even Italy) that are broadly similar to the US - and in most cases offer much more in terms of government benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Off topic, but the second comment from Jason is pure gold. He's calling Philip Greenspun (of Greenspun's tenth law fame), a "Harvard Lawyer of unknown programming provenance". I can see how blog hostnames can confuse people, but maybe google the author for context ?

Besides, he's fighting the strawman of training, where Greenspun talked about economic incentives.

<comment><USER27> I posted a comment to that effect a few minutes ago :-)

<comment><USER27> Hmm, which is now been deleted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What we need is a new 'SAT' tailored to find top notch coders

<comment> UK-AL Top notch programmers come from curiosity, building a fair few complicated projects and a little bitter experience so you know how to avoid problems and be realistic

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "People are born with an innate calling to drug dealing,"

What the hell is this author talking about? While the he's a pretty accomplished individual, he lost me with his shitty analogies based on false premises.

<comment><USER33> That, and the included garbage at the bottom about child support, was pretty pathetic.</comment></comment>


Web 2.0 Funding Jumps 88% in '07, Facebook Accounts for 22% - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketingvox.com/web-20-funding-jumps-88-in-07-facebook-accounts-for-22-037498/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure how interesting this number is: I'd hope to see it go down as more start-ups can be self funding.</comment>


The 50$ Android PC - <AUTHOR> http://apc.io/

<comment><USER2> "the purpose of a computer is to connect to the Internet."

That's either horribly badly worded (the purpose of _this_ computer is to connect to the internet, perhaps?) or demonstrates a phenomenally narrow view of the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would I purchase something like this over, say, a beagle board or raspberry pi? Is the bundled Android OS the only USP?</comment>


Hacking reverse vending machine - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
I am new to the hacking branch. I am looking for new objects to develop my skills on. I recently found the reverse vending machines very interesting to hack. Has anyone tried to do it? I know that they are connected to wi-fi connection. Have you tried to hack them via the network connection? I STRICTLY want to emphasize that this is for educational purposes. I would not exploit future venture but want to rather develop my skills on small and relatively easy targets. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomra
Thank you for your responses in advance.
Regards Neacel <comment><USER2> >created: 49 minutes ago

>educational purposes

Hmmm</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension that shows a random definition when you open a new tab - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ezekg/chrome-new-tab-vocab <comment><AUTHOR> I created this because I wanted an extension that didn't have any extra bells and whistles, and one that looked decent. Thought I'd share since it may be valuable to others.</comment>