Underestimating the power of Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer <comment><USER2>
      It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it
      would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department
      received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking
      its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House.
      The missive left nothing to the imagination. "In light of
      the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to
      terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on
      the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and
      that the campaign has been terminated." It was signed,
      "Team Amazon."

This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism.

So long as journalists' jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1].

If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn't rely on corporate largess.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter- oborne-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne- telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers)

<comment><USER3> You're right - journalism has a broken and outdated business model. Amazon has a modern and effective one. To fix the problem, you need to fix this dynamic.

I get a lot the crypto hate you see around here, there are some real problems in the space right now. But facilitating micropayments for online content is extremely low hanging fruit with the tech, especially if the US tax exemption for txs under $600 goes through and browser integration happens.

Brave Browser / Basic Attention Token is one of the few groups in ICO-mania- land that is trying to solve a real problem, and they're focused on this one. It's led by Brendan Eich, former Mozilla CEO and original Netscape dev. Worth checking out if you are in publishing.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, Brave is incompatible with the current business model of journalism, and I don't know if journalism can survive a war on multiple fronts - that is, a war on its pocketbook from the consumer side, and a war on its integrity from the government side.

<comment><USER5> It is? How so? As far as I can tell, sites don't need to change their business model at all; they can just start collecting payments from Brave in addition to their ad revenue from non-Brave users.

> Once a user enables Brave Payments, the Brave browser automatically and > anonymously keeps track of the publisher sites each user visits. The more > times that a user visits a site, the larger the proportion of the user's > monthly contribution is "ear-marked" for that publisher. These funds grow as > new micropayments are added. When contributions for a publisher exceed > $100.00 USD, an email is sent to both the webmaster of the site and the > registered domain owner from your WHOIS information. The email explains how > to verify the ownership of your website with Brave Software.

(See [https://brave.com/publishers/](https://brave.com/publishers/))

I really like this implementation, because it avoids the chicken-egg problem that other solutions like Google Contributor have by not requiring the publisher's cooperation in order to work properly. Visitors on Brave don't see ads, period. Publishers can choose to collect money from Brave users if they want, but that doesn't change the experience from the user's point of view.

<comment><USER4> Brave blocks ads. If a user isn't using Brave Payments, then there is no replacement for that lost ad revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem here isn't Amazon, but the business model that TNR chose for itself, and the implications of that.

This covers a period in TNR's history when Chris Hughes (formerly of Facebook) was in charge, and essentially wanted to turn the site into a 'vertically integrated digital media company' (native advertising / clickbait factory).

It shouldn't be a surprise that this had deleterious consequences for journalistic integrity and allowed advertisers to apply undue pressure.

Foer (the author of this piece) didn't want to go along with that, and he and almost the entire staff resigned in protest. Hughes ended up putting the magazine up for sale, and Foer was brought back in under the new editor.

Oh, and Foer's new book is now available on Amazon.

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Thre...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Threat/dp/1101981113/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1505739592&sr=8-2&keywords=world+without+mind)

<comment><USER7> Why does the term "vertically integrated digital media company" make me picture someone trying to stack bags full of trash on top of each other, seeing how high they can go before it collapses?

<comment><USER8> Why does that sound exactly like what most online media do nowadays?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting followup from The New Yorker on the implosion of TNR: [https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse- new...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic)

I wish I could say the turn of events shocked me, but it all just seems so predictable.

<comment><USER10> "There's the peacetime C.E.O. and the wartime C.E.O. Not to be overly dramatic about it, but this is sort of a war. This is a wartime period. That just means that we need to change a lot of things. We need to just break shit. Sorry to say, we've got to break shit and embrace being uncomfortable sometimes. And it's scary. It's definitely a scary thing to do. But it's also fun: you know, lean up against the wall and break it."

Does these kind of words work with people older than 20? I once had a CTO that also started with these shitty things on the first meeting and he was fired less than 3 months later, as people sabotaged him and his work. Almost nobody gets excited when someone tells you that your professional life is going to change drastically, come on!!

When behaviors are entrenched, you have to be diplomatic, smart and cautious..

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazon pulling advertising is scary but not entirely beyond the pale. I find the idea that authors are afraid to criticize Amazon to be much more worrisome: these days, writing a book is an important source of income for politicians, academics and many other import leaders. If none of these people are free to criticize one of the largest and most powerful business organizations in the country (and that business is an arbiter of what they choose to sell more broadly), that's a huge loss for democracy.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's rather silly to think you can publish an outright hostile and disparaging article about a big advertiser and not lose them.

The fact that you are forced to choose between making money and speaking the truth, shows your business model is broken (if you are the CEO or shareholders) or that you've really made crap life and career choices if you are an employee (or self employed).

<comment><USER13> Not really. I've seen plenty of cases where there's, for example, an article about how McDonald's food is full of salt and calories and is bad for you snd yet on the next page you'll find an ad for McDonald's. To actually be as vindictive as Amazon apparently was is quite extreme.

<comment><USER14> News outlets have account managers that wouldn't let scheduling conflicts happen. Commercial placements are carefully considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is that (it seems to me) whenever the discussion of Google's possible use of manipulating its search results for its own benefit there's a vocal response from all corners but Amazon gets a pass when then manipulate their results to similar ends. To my mind both are equally atrocious.

<comment><USER16> I am softer towards Amazon because they are a customer-oriented company. Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it does.

<comment><USER17> > Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it > does.

And yet, both companies, under the veneer of PR, does not give any shits about anyone except their own bottom line. Amazon just has better PR than google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this highlights a big difference between media and tech (or at least big tech companies). In tech, leaking is a cardinal sin. Foer chose to send information about a customer pulling an ad campaign to a friend, who then "excitedly" forwarded it to the New York Times. Foer was using internal company information as a weapon in a personal crusade.

<comment><USER9> You call it leaking, I'd say it's whistleblowing in abusive practices meant to stifle criticism. Same as the red flags raised about Uber's cultural environment can hardly be considered "leaks".

<comment><USER19> Don't bite the hand that feeds you, especially if you are not someone in charge.

<comment><USER20> So never reveal abusive practises ever if it's by someone who employs you?

<comment><USER18> Amazon didn't employ him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was shocked that they seem to have got away with bundling a video service almost nobody wanted with a loyalty program for their near monopoly on online goods.

<comment><USER22> The bundling continues, they have now also bundled in "twitch prime" including a free subscription each month.

The old twitch prime ('turbo') no longer exists.

Am I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative.

If it heads down that route then it'll take something drastic to break it up. It took the internet to break up cable tv bundling.

<comment><USER23> > m I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries > me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon > Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price > isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative.

Rest assured, that is precisely their goal:

"Our goal with Amazon Prime, make no mistake, is to make sure that if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible," \- Jeff Bezos

src: [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says- it...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-its- irresponsible-not-to-be-part-of-prime-2016-5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Unfortunately, I had already forwarded Amazon's note to a friend"

Dude ... really?

</comment><comment><USER25> The New Republic was a hobby business for some rich guys. It lost money for most of its life. That made it vulnerable.

It was sadder seeing the San Jose Mercury News go down. It was an excellent newspaper with a large, effective reporting staff, and profitable. It was sold to the parent organization of the Contra Costa Times, which is one step above an advertising throwaway. Today's Mercury News is one step above an advertising throwaway.

</comment><comment><USER26> With the American election debacle and not being around during Nixon, I have realized the outsized role press has to play. Blogs, citizen journalism do not do it. You need dedicated sharp investigative journalism without fear Of retribution either from the owner or from the government. It actually becomes important if say Bezos plans to run for president and in fact becomes the president.

</comment><comment><USER27> I didn't understand the segue from author's meeting with Vitra to the main story about Amazon.

<comment><USER28> His previous boss Chris Hughes (the owner) wanted to turn a profit -- but didn't have expertise to do it.

Therefore, CH brought in Guy Vidra with a directive to make profits.

Criticizing Amazon about the Hachette negotiations triggers Amazon to pull advertising dollars. This conflicts with making profits. (Which points back to why Vidra was brought in: make the magazine profitable.)

<comment><USER29> Has anyone ever made a profit with The New Republic? It seems unlikely to me.

<comment><USER30> >The one year we turned a profit, we celebrated with a pizza party that pushed us back into the red.

Literally the 3rd line of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does no one else notice the collusion to suppress calls for anti-trust action against Amazon, Google and Facebook?

These companies have all been actively suppressing any information that would force a review on this issue.

They've effectively closed off the internet, none of these services let consumers follow links off site now and it's made a major difference in the ability to compete.

<comment><USER32> Do you have any specific examples of that happening?

<comment><USER33> Yes, have you seen this article? [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly- underestimate...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly- underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When Google does the same with Open Markets they are denounced as evil. Amazon? The response is comparatively muted.

Just another example of "the power of Jeff Bezos," or hypocrisy and inconsistent standards?

</comment><comment><USER35> The whole bit about New Republic's reorg seems really strangely out of place to me

<comment><USER36> Indeed: although it's part of his upcoming book, they could have excerpted better so as to integrate or give structure to that unfinished part of the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> " _Neither side struck me as worthy of huge sympathy. But then the battlefront encroached uncomfortably close to home. I watched as Amazon punished Hachette's writers in its effort to make the publisher feel pain. Books, the products of years of passionate labor, were prevented from reaching the market. Amazon used its bully's arm to delay their shipments or direct readers to older books on similar subjects, as well as a raft of other vengeful tactics._ "

I see Foer decided which side needed sympathy. There was another side to that story after all.

And I take it Foer was fired from the New Republic?

</comment><comment><USER38> For those of you that think this isn't business as usual, I highly recommend Manufacturing Consent which shows how corporate media narrows the range of political discussion through methods like this one.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't care much about Amazon playing hardball with TNR - car companies have been doing this for ages. The fact that he owns WaPo is a much bigger deal.

</comment><comment><USER40> Since I enjoyed using this bookmarklet on this site, I thought I'd recommend it to others as well:

[https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

</comment><comment><USER41> That's odd, I already submitted this one. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016)

I thought HN handled duplicates by redirecting to the existing submission and automatically upvoting it?

<comment><USER41> Yikes, I guess I should be ashamed of myself for even asking...

<comment><USER42> One on occasion I saw a second posting of the same article as me from a few minutes apart - commenting on the other one being confused was for some reason taken as some sort of attack on the other person to post it rather than my wondering what the software had done and attracted anger and downvotes in equal measure.

People confuse me sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ironically (?) the book is on Amazon & there is some dark humour in the fact that Amazon will probably end up contributing significant in sales to this book. I bet Bezos has a evil smile on his face.

</comment><comment><USER43> Other possible titles:

"I didn't understand that the world's second richest person and publicly the world's most powerful person, who is extremely competitive, quick, intelligent, with little patience, who also controls the majority of the world's publication/data/hosting/streaming (BTW- Netflix and Hulu _run_ on Amazon, so don't give me that Prime ain't everything argument) could affect me."

"I significantly underestimated the heat of the sun when I touched it."

"I've basically been a hermit for the past 20 years."

<comment><USER44> "All those comments on HN on WaPo articles about how they're owned by Jeff Bezos and won't say bad things about Amazon anymore might have some merit."

<comment><USER45> Another rich guy owning a media outlet, another media outlet owned by a rich guy..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anyone have a mirror of this text that isn't behind a walled garden?

<comment><USER47> Out of interest, what do you mean by walled garden in this case?

<comment><USER48> When I open the page it requires me to have a linkedin account and login.

<comment><USER49> It's insane, I can't make sense of how it works, here's a rundown of a quick test we did:

I have no LinkedIn account. I cannot view the article (nor anything else) on macOS in Safari and Firefox, neither normal nor private mode, and it has been so for months, possibly years. I can view the article in both normal and incognito modes on Chrome.

Coworker 1 is on Arch, has a LinkedIn account but has never logged in on his machine on any browser. With Firefox he can only browse a couple times before the wall kicks in, until he throws cookies away (manually or with private mode). About 15 min later, he is locked out and cannot see the page, even in private mode. Clearing every single bit of data from his Firefox profile does nothing at making the page accessible again. Still, Chrome displays the wepbage fine in both modes.

Coworker 2 is on macOS. Using Chrome he can see the page in normal mode (he had previously logged in). He cannot view the page at all in Incognito, ever.

We all share the same IPv4 but have IPv6 enabled.

It has to be some wickedly twisted heuristic possibly involving some evercookie.

<comment><USER50> Maybe a bit of browser fingerprinting going on? [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> He doesn't have the power to make a nice UI.

</comment><comment><USER52> Can we please stop posting links to articles that require registration to read?

<comment><USER43> Massively annoying advertising with crappy content, or you can pay for it as a service- your choice.

<comment><USER53> I'm not sure if LinkedIn requires payment, the giant doorslam popup only offered registration/login…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This article is poorly written and the title is pure click bait.

<comment><USER55> The article is an excerpt of a book, but still nonetheless I am wondering why you would say it was poorly written?

<comment><USER56> I wonder if that book will be for sale on Amazon? And, sadly, if not, will anyone know it exists?

<comment><USER57> [https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Threat...](https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Threat/dp/1101981113)

Doing well, too...has a Bestseller icon.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How North Korean hackers became the world's greatest bank robbers - <AUTHOR> https://gpinvestigations.pri.org/how-north-korean-hackers-became-the-worlds-greatest-bank-robbers-492a323732a6 <comment><USER2> It always amazes me how they get their 'digital soldiers' to such a level of expertise. I've spent my entire life in front of a computer, in absolute perfect conditions (internet, education, smart friends) and did everything and anything, from writing assembly code for microchips to deploying self-scaling Amazon SaaS-products, from learning to write cracks for Windows apps to studying anything from Max Headroom to the Morris worm -- and yet, here I am, absolutely incapable of reliably securing a god-damn Wordpress site.

I was always under the impression that there isn't much of an alternative when looking for highly-qualified tech-people, other than trying to find those who 'walked the walk', who've spent a giant junk of their life in front of the keyboard, hacking away. I can't, for the life of me, imagine how kids in North Korea are able to spend anywhere near the time required to become a state- level hacker. Where does all this information come from? Who breaks this into junks, who teaches them or provides the level of pre-processing required to ramp up that quickly? It can't be Youtube videos, can it? I know they mention a university, but the general reporting on North Korea has blurred my imagination enough to still imagine them as poor farmers and 70s-military- style troopers. It's puzzling.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever been hungry? in your entire life? and I dont mean for fun/diet. Information is not a problem(study published exploits etc), all you need is proper motivation.

<comment><USER4> You can't hack 10 hours a day for 10 years while being hungry, afraid and without passion.

Hacking is not just learning information, it's nuturring a certain mindset, including creativity.

Besides, they only have a few people with internet, so i can't see the infrastructure they use either.

I really put my money on hired guns here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is quite a lot of speculation. Why steal dollars when you've been printing them? They show a photo of students at an elite school to make you think you're looking at a hacker boiler room. It's difficult to trust anything the PRK government says, but almost all external reporting is also incredibly suspect. I file these sorts of articles under "entertainment".

<comment><USER6> I attended a symposium on North Korea's cyberattacks and organized cybercrime in Seoul a few months ago. One of the guest speakers was a Bangladeshi economics professor, heavily networked into the country's financial institutions, talking about the banking system hack. I had dinner with him and the organizers later that night. They're pretty serious about it all.

I didn't read the linked article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, umm... "North Korean" hackers....

</comment><comment><USER8> "That's what the thieves went after in February 2016: nearly $1 billion, sitting in a Fed-run account"

Has the Fed ever given consideration to not connecting their banking computer directly to the Internet?</comment>


Probiotics are mostly useless and can actually hurt you - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2178860-probiotics-are-mostly-useless-and-can-actually-hurt-you/ <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17927802).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Probiotic bacteria readily colonised the gut of everyone in the second group > after antibiotics had cleared the way. However, the researchers were > surprised to find that this prevented the return of the person's normal > microbiome for up to six months. "The probiotics very potently and > persistently prevented the original microbiome returning to its original > situation," says Elinav. "This was very surprising and alarming to us. This > adverse effect has not been described to date."

That was the part I found interesting.

<comment><USER3> Disrupting the gut microbiome can be a desirable outcome. There is a link between the biome and mental health[0], with experiments even transplanting faeces to introduce "healthier" flora.[1]

Shrinks are sometimes prescribing probiotics for anxiety conditions.

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641835/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641835/)

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/reading-between- the-...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/reading-between-the- headlines/201309/gut-bacteria-transplant-new-treatment-anxiety)

<comment><USER4> I think you meant to say psychologists.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you were getting at with this correction, but at least in most states in the US, psychologists don't prescribe -- they're not MDs. I suppose probiotics are available over the counter so psychologists could recommend that a patient take them, but if it's "prescribing" in the sense of "writing a prescription," psychiatrists would be the ones to do it.

<comment><USER4> I was meaning shrink is derogatory for a mental health professional.

<comment><USER3> Shrink is not derogatory, it's colloquial. Eg "I'm going to see my shrink today". Like calling a general practitioner "doc", as opposed to quack.

I use it because I can never remember the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, what a headline. We're completely at the beginning of our understanding of the gut biome – it seems outrageous to claim that it can 'actually hurt you' when, in fact, we have no idea what's going on.

For me, the biggest question is – how healthy was a person's biome _before_ the antibiotics? Research seems to indicate that the quality and health of a given person's gut bacteria is highly variable. What's to say that the colonization of the new bacteria is 'bad', just because it's 'different' than before?

The answer is, we don't know. Way too early to say.

<comment><USER7> > it seems outrageous to claim that it can 'actually hurt you' when, in fact, > we have no idea what's going on.

Uhm, wait isn't that exactly how the lack of knowledge actually works?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure I understand your question. My point was that this study doesn't seem to support the claim that probiotics are potentially harmful, or useless. I question the conclusions they've drawn, and find it problematic that the headline borders on prescriptive without compelling evidence to support the claims. Good science welcomes intense criticism and skepticism.

<comment><USER7> Can doesn't mean does. The fact that we don't know that they are harmful means that they could be. Maybe we are disagreeing on the meaning of "can" here?

<comment><USER6> I see. Well yea, 'could' is significantly different than 'can'. The latter implies probiotics have the capacity to be harmful. The former says, 'hey, we don't know – maybe they're harmful?'. "Useless and can actually hurt you" isn't really supported by the evidence. More accurate would be, "probiotics role is still a mystery, requires further study."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This research needs to be conducted in conjunction with the effects of prebiotics (ie certain fibrous foods). From what I understand, populating your gut with bacteria but failing to provide those bacteria with the right food is likely to fail.

<comment><USER9> "Probiotic bacteria readily colonised the gut of everyone in the second group after antibiotics had cleared the way."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The opposite effect was observed with the patients given a dose of their own > pre-antibiotic microbiome via FMT. Their native gut microbiome returned to > normal within days.

Maybe in the future people have 'shit banks' similar to blood banks. You make a deposit before you take antibiotics. Then you take a transplant after using the antibiotics.

It seems like FMT can be done in pill form as well. You eat a capsule that travels past stomach before it dissolves.

<comment><USER11> On the T here in Boston there is an ad that asks for donating your poop!

After a simple Google search, I was able to find something indeed quite similar to what you thought up: [https://www.openbiome.org/](https://www.openbiome.org/) \-- a "stool" bank is close enough I'd say :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a very interesting article. I came to a similiar conclusion after trying to repopulate my gut after cipro.

Probiotics were making me sicker so I tried single strains trying to find the right one. Months of this I decided to stop everything and in short order things started to improve.

Most strains in the gut are not available in probiotic form and food is the best/only way to repopulate those strains (aside from fme).

</comment><comment><USER13> Among other potential caveats, it's worth keeping in mind that this study is of probiotic _supplements_ and not of foods containing probiotics. Seems reminiscent of the studies on antioxidants concluding they are useless and/or harmful while studying isolated high-dose supplementation.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm seeing the information where probiotics can significantly delay antibiotic recovery to a normal gut state, but how long does the process take without additional probiotics?

Also the probiotics are rabidly repopulating the gut... would it potentially be better for _some_ gut repopulation to happen faster at the expense of a longer recovery otherwise?

Are these questions that require follow-up research?

</comment><comment><USER15> The research is on a small sample however. The interesting part it that measuring at the output end is not the same as measuring in the gut.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I take away from this article is that once antibiotics disturb the gut biome, restoring it to the original condition is nontrivial.

<comment><USER17> And here I thought that was the whole point.

If your microbiome is in such great shape, then why would you be taking probiotics?

<comment><USER16> Say that your microbiome was in fine shape before you went on antibiotics for some completely unrelated reason, such as to address an infected finger. Yes, you would want your old microbiome back.

Well, from this study we see that probiotics aren't a way to cancel out that side effect of antibiotics. To my mind that suggests refocusing on the microbiome-disturbing effects of antibiotics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Taking probiotics with fiber was a complete game changer for me, and greatly the benefited my health, both digestive and other reasons.

<comment><USER19> My wife has been giving me probiotics for years, and I assume it helps, but starting fiber abotu a year ago made a big difference for me. Psyllium husk FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The original study might be great, but the article's interpretation is full of FUD</comment>


Show HN: Tool for testing sites and apps on slow connections - <AUTHOR> https://www.httpdebugger.com/netthrottler.html <comment><USER2> Chrome has this built in, FWIW, and of course you can always use the standard tools to achieve this on Linux.

<comment><USER3> _You can always use the standard tools to achieve this on Linux._

Add 200ms of network delay under Linux:

        sudo tc qdisc add dev eth0 root netem delay 200

This guy at least provided a usable user interface.

<comment><USER4> fwiw: when you're done messing around with a `tc qdisc add`; it's probably a good idea to do a `tc qdisc del`. . . :)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I know that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I can't test this as I don't have a Windows machine, but from the screenshot it seems only concerned with bandwidth. For my personal situation, latency is the real killer.

I've got a gigabit fibre connection but am way down South in New Zealand, and interact with a Perforce server that's in California for my day job. When one does an operation in Perforce, like the equivalent of a 'git pull', there seems to be at least a couple round-trips between the client and the server, for each file. There are some tasks take a few seconds for folks in the California office, where for me those are easily several minutes to several dozen minutes. It's convenient when the weather is nice or the fire needs feeding :).

<comment><USER6> The joys of using VCS designed for LANs. Clearcase has the same problem.

<comment><USER7> Years ago I worked somewhere where we had to use Visual Source Safe, on a Mac (OS9), over a sub-1MBit DSL. Doing anything would take hours to days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mods, is this sort of spam blast an acceptable behavior on HN now - [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pkhach](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pkhach) ?

It could've been a decent Show HN discussion, but as it stands this is nothing more than an ad for a commercial software.

<comment><USER9> It's a bit over the line. The FAQ says a small number of reposts is ok if a topic hasn't had significant attention yet: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Now that this has, the reposts should stop.

<comment><USER10> It's always felt as if HN members not only should, but as a rule do, submit links they've found of interest or value. If a member merely and repeatedly submits their own commercial project(s), it feels out of alignment with the spirit of the site.

More explicit rules or code (like limiting the frequency of submissions from a given member to the same domain name, etc) may not be necessary, as the voting system generally seems to work quite well. Or perhaps such code is already in place? which would help explain the high quality content on HN.

As ever, thank you Dan (and Scott) for maintaining this wonderful resource.

<comment><USER9> There are a lot of users who come to HN just to submit their own stuff, aren't participating in the community, but don't realize that they're breaking any norms either. We tend not to treat them as spammers unless they really overdo it. Often we explain to them that (a) using HN just for promotion is something the community doesn't like, and which we eventually penalize or even ban accounts for; (b) if they want to post to HN it would be better to fully join the community and submit a variety of things they personally find intellectually interesting, and (c) if they do that, it's fine to occasionally include their own stuff.

Most people respond to that explanation pretty well and HN has even gained a few excellent submitters that way. So we've learned to treat this class of users with a lighter touch than outright spammers, who mostly leave quite different fingerprints.

(p.s. thanks for the kind words!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No need for a tool, I can just go and stay in a Hilton.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're on iOS or macOS there's Network Link Conditioner which does the same thing.

<comment><USER13> To install, download the Additional Tools for Xcode {{xcode version}}. And in the download DMG "Hardware/Network Link Conditioner.prefpane"

[https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?=additional%20too...](https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?=additional%20tools)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you need lower level emulation, with packet loss etc. Clumbsy is is great, and QA departments can get up to speed quickly on it too. It's also free.

[https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/](https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm looking for something I could put between two docker images to test for problems that arise from slow API connections.

I have go code (open source, but not written by me), I suspect to have timeouts in certain situations and I would like change the code to be failure tolerant.

Anyone has a tip?

<comment><USER16> I used tc on a Linux VM between two hosts to simulate loss, latency and bandwidth limits. Two interfaces, I think TC only works in one direction per interface so you have to enable it on both interfaces to get delay in both directions.

See [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate- delayed-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate-delayed-and- dropped-packets-on-linux)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why not just use Firefox dev tools?

F12 > click 'Responsive Design Mode' > then click 'Throttling', the options are 2G, 3G, 4G, DSL, Wi-fi.

I guess if you need throttling for something other than a web page, you need something other than a web browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

Yes, you can use built-in dev tool for your browser.

But if you are creating your own application (C++, .NET, JAVA) then you need an external tool like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Help me out here because I've been caught between what this website is telling me and what I think is true.

What does "portability" mean?

It says "FREE portable download" but it's a .exe. So windows only?

<comment><USER19> Portable as in it doesn't need to be installed, it runs the program as soon as you start the exe.

Portable is different than cross platform.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, that's a definition of "portable" only used among windows users, as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be nice if developers could also test their stuff on old computers. Many websites are completely unusable on older mobile devices for example, and not because of network issues.

</comment><comment><USER21> You can probably accomplish this with Linux's tc command.

<comment><USER16> In my experience tc is only designed to work in one direction, so I had to use a separate VM, place that machine between the test host and the rest of the network, then enable TC on both interfaces.

<comment><USER22> My understanding us that typically you'd create a minimal router out of a minimal server distro installation (either physical or virtual) and make a couple of scripts to automate standard settings.

Source: At some point I was part of a team that used a setup like this for testing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any recommendations for doing something similar during load testing (e.g. Jmeter)?

<comment><USER24> At Loadmill we use thousands of real user devices from around the world to simulate the load.

This way you can simulate the complexity of different devices, geo-locations, and network connectivity levels in your tests.

Disclaimer, I'm one of the founders of Loadmill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How does this work? What mechanism does it use?</comment>


Leash Debugger: a WiFi-enabled JTAG debug adapter - <AUTHOR> http://www.mindtribe.com/2015/12/leash-debugger-a-wifi-enabled-jtag-debug-adapter/ <comment><USER2> More on Github: [https://github.com/Mindtribe/Leash- Debugger](https://github.com/Mindtribe/Leash-Debugger)

I'm all for design aesthetics, but even with my reading glasses, the link underlining was so subtle I googled the github because the content caused such cognitive dissonance...it seemed like there should be more, but the post seemed empty.

Shades of white may be high art, but it's not a good web scheme. Show off what's worth showing off. It's a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The debug adapter and target may be anywhere in the world, as long as a network connection can be made to it._

Have they considered all the security implications of doing this?

It's ironic that they talk about multiple layers of complexity being a problem, then introduce their product which adds _even more_.

 _This time was mostly spent on battling different FTDI USB drivers and modifying the OpenOCD scripts_

USB-serial devices are well known to be somewhat flaky at times. The solution is a $10 real serial port card.

<comment><USER4> This is strange. From what I've heard and my experience, a quality USB<>UART chip from FTDI is _the_ way to get a reliable serial connection. I've used mine to talk to a Dreamcast at 1.5 mbaud. FTDI is the one with the good drivers (both closed and open). Controllers like the PL2303 are nothing but pain. Of course, if you get counterfeit ICs (and they are common), you will probably have a bad experience. Buy carefully.

<comment><USER5> The good drivers that brick clone chips on purpose? [http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update- ftd...](http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers- are-killing-fake-chips/)

<comment><USER6> This has been fixed: [http://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/unbricking-a-counterfeit- ftdi...](http://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/unbricking-a-counterfeit-ftdi-chip/).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alan Turing and the Programmable Universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/scaruffi/alan-turing-and-the-programmable-universe

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see him explaining <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect> or how Gary Kasparov was beaten (well tied at first) by a computer. I mean did Gary got really dumber in span of a year or so?

I think the reason people somewhat erroneously try to 'robotize' people is the fact that they want consistency even if the quality is poorer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I disagree entirely. The author conflates "making technology easier to use" with "making people dumber". He decries the invention of the typewriter because it ended calligraphy, and the printing press because we no longer have to memorize books. In other words, he is a luddite.

He then makes the classic mistake of conflating "intelligence" with "consciousness", completely ignoring Turing's main insight: that consciousness is not testable in human nor machine, and thus, if it acts human, we have no reason to deny it consciousness.

<comment><USER4> I think you misunderstood (or didn't really read) the whole thing.

I don't think he's conflating "tech easier" with "people dumber", but rather bringing up an interesting way of thinking about the issue.

Also, he isn't conflating intelligence with consciousness -- his whole point about the Turing test is that he thinks people "don't get it" -- that it's not really proving anything (and he uses the logical device of saying "what if the judge of the test is dumb").

Here's the text of slide #80, for example: •The real test is consciousness, not intelligence •An "intelligent" machine is not necessarily conscious •Conversely: a machine does not need to be too intelligent in order to be conscious (many people are not intelligent)

<comment><USER5> The whole presentation is superficial, I think that if we suddenly lobotomize whole population, the man made machines would not suddenly become smarter and more intelligent but physically would stay the same. Yes in some time after hypotetical dumbening of people, the new form of machines would dumben down too (because man would create worse and worse machines.), proving they are not really autonomously intelligent but its intelligence was tied with human intelligence. on 1:1 relation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of that because the education system limits itself being a path to getting money to buy a fish, instead of teaching teaching someone to build a fishing rod.

No ease of use, or access to knowledge will fulfill the 'aha moments' and the gut feelings of building a new bridge between you and the world. But it's something hard to see at first and it easily fades.

<comment><USER7> There are so many levels of abstraction between us and the physical world. We learn to be domesticated animals, not to survive in the wild (or even close to it). This abstraction is growing in complexity as time goes on. Ie, the distance between us and the chaos of the physical world is growing larger. This reflects the current level of technology. As of right now, we are living in a kind of ordered, programmable mini-universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to point out that things like "Rules to hike into wilderness" are mostly and American phenomena and not loved that wildly by the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't RTFA but "programmable universe" makes me think of this: [http://www.geekosystem.com/dwarf-fortress-turing-machine- com...](http://www.geekosystem.com/dwarf-fortress-turing-machine-computer/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Ludicrous author!

</comment><comment><USER11> The pop band Devo have been pointing out since the 1970's that people seem to be getting dumber as technology advances.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was absolutely fantastic. Feels like a convergence between Siri and Google is imminent</comment>


We Built a Facial Recognition Machine for $60 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/16/opinion/facial-recognition-new-york-city.html <comment><USER2> As much as this technology is powerful, you can't make it "illegal" to take photos of a public park, and then bring them home and do whatever you want with them at home. That would just be absurd. Banning the software online only isn't really an option, because the knowledge on how the software works is already public. Anyone could rewrite the code on their own (Esp because 300 line neural nets, no libraries used, are still pretty dam good at facial recognition). The real privacy should absolutely be on the data side. There should not be public databases of profiles. If you have a big insta profile or you are a big youtuber, then yeah, you'll be public even through you're not a celebrity. That was choice. Random people should be private. No mugshots should be freely available, and photos of social media profiles should be obscured by default. Or, alternatively, we accept that this is the way things are.

<comment><USER3> Policing the data should be the way forward. Just like I cannot take your PII and publish it without your consent, it should go also with your dataset of faces. The only trouble I see is what constitutes a face for facial recognition vs a face that is in the background of my Instagram photo?

Take this photo I took of the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo [1], there are a few faces in that photograph that are quiet prominent. I'm protected in the US because it is in a public place, but in the future would I need to manually blur out the faces of those who do not sign a model release?

1: [https://megapickles.photo/2018/06/03/dumbo-washington- street...](https://megapickles.photo/2018/06/03/dumbo-washington-street/)

<comment><USER4> Can you really not take PII and publish it without consent? Let's say you found it somewhere publicly or in some other fashion where a user has not agreed to a privacy policy. I'm not saying you should do that or that it's morally right, but are there actually legal protections against that outside of Europe?

<comment><USER5> Not that I know of. As long as what you publish isn't defamatory, there is no law against publishing pii.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The whole article seems to be a marketing post.

I completely agree that you could build a face recognition system in 60$ or less, however the image match described in the post is unlikely to be the real system results, I've been studying image recognition for a year now and it is almost impossible to train a model without having thousands of images classified somehow (usually by hands). One of the biggest problems in AI is that NN cannot match an object in 2 images if it was taken from different perspective unless R. Madonna was hanging out there for 9 hours to be filmed from different angles to collect enough of photos from camera (not taking into account different image resolutions and camera quality)

Thanks for the article, however, the myth is BUSTED :D

<comment><USER7> > One of the biggest problems in AI is that NN cannot match an object in 2 > images if it was taken from different perspective

I think you've missed the last 5-ish years of NN development. Some of the latest Face2Vec stuff can handle different perspectives pretty well by either building a system that can predict 3D representations of the face from one shot[0] or by just training on two different perspectives of the same face and having the system output the same vector (I've read some work on this but Google is failing me at finding a reference).

If _you_ can recognize people from different angles, computers will eventually be able to do it better than you. Probably already.

[0][https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.10714.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.10714.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Bingo. 1) Train an algorithm that given any angle view of a human head, produce a 3D reconstruction of said head. (Depending upon the amount of face visible, the accuracy of the reconstruction increases. 2) Train an algorithm that given a human head geometry, it identifies any deformation due to facial expression and neutralizes that expression. 3) Trivial algorithm: given a human head geometry not facing the camera, rotate that head such that it is facing the camera. 4) render the human head geometry without expression, facing the camera, using the video image source as the texture map for said head. 5) Perform FR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The use of the word "legal" in the title seems charged to me. (EDIT: The edited HN title is better now, thanks).

Especially given, from the article:

> In the United States, there are no federal laws that restrict the use of > facial recognition.

<comment><USER10> Unless I'm terribly mistaken, laws generally only describe what's illegal. We don't write laws to tell you what you can do, we write them to tell you what you can't.

So if there's no laws saying you can't do it, it's legal.

<comment><USER11> rgoulter isn't saying that the title is wrong, he's saying that it's unncessarily charged. By explicitly specifying that this technique for face recognition is legal, it suggests that _other_ techniques are illegal and so something bad (but legal) might have been achieved. But in fact, none of this is illegal; the headline is just clickbait.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, I see your point.

But, I'd argue the use of "legal" was to make a real point: We assume this isn't legally possible today, and the article is showing how it is. So I'm not saying you're wrong, simply that I disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What exactly does an "illegal" facial recognition machine look like?

<comment><USER13> I think it would need to intrinsically commit another crime in the course of operation.

Like some sort of horrific machine which obtains shape information by head crushing and then stating if the now crushed head was recognized. Needless to say there is no reason to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This would be illegal in the EU under the GDPR which would require positive consent from the individuals monitored (simply walking into a space would not be enough). However, individual countries are allowed to alter this aspect of the Regulation themselves, so effectively countries may now "opt in" to the use of facial recognition in more settings. Quite different from the opt out relationship of the US States.

Source: [https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c0714997-42b1...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c0714997-42b1-4436-a1ba-5436ecdaaf56)

<comment><USER3> So how does that work when I'm in a park taking pictures to share on my public Instagram? Do I need to get a model release from each person that walks into my frame? What defines monitoring?

<comment><USER15> Article 2: "This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data [...] by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity".

The recital associated with that explains it: "This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity. Personal or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the context of such activities. However, this Regulation applies to controllers or processors which provide the means for processing personal data for such personal or household activities."

It sounds like GDPR wouldn't require you to get a release...but it might require Instagram to require you to get a release.

<comment><USER3> So that means if I plan to sell prints of my photos, I would have to get releases even though I didn't want a person in my shot, but the nature of it being a touristy place, people are inevitably in the shot. Take this photo for instance[1].

1: [https://megapickles.photo/2018/06/03/dumbo-washington- street...](https://megapickles.photo/2018/06/03/dumbo-washington-street/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How long until we see this as a monetized SaaS? (ed note: that's Stalking as a Service)</comment>


Transplant jaw made by 3D printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16907104

<comment><USER2> Time to pirate a jaw

<comment><USER3> for anyone that missed the reference - [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328506.400-pirate- fi...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328506.400-pirate-filesharing- goes-3d.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How one can disagree with BLM organisation? - <AUTHOR> BLM on its pages has a lot of stances that one can disagree with.
But because of its name, it's pretty much impossible to state the disagreement without being called racist.<p>How can we overcome that? https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/ <comment><USER2> Controversial opinion here: you can't. If you do, you'll just lose. The movement is based on being offended, on feelings and identity politics, not reason. I event doubt to write this because I'll probably be called names instead of being reasoned with.

<comment><USER3> Can you give us some concrete examples of this movement being based on "being offended, on feelings and identity politics?" What about this movement, _specifically_ , seems wrong to you?

Throwing negative labels like "identity politics" around kind of denies that the whole problem is that we as a nation are treating one set of people unfairly because of their identity. So yes, it's "identity politics."

I hope I come across as reasoning. I'm not going to throw names your way. As respectfully as I can be toward you and your ideas, I am not seeing a lot of substance to your argument. The argument seems "controversial opinion here, I don't like this, and I won't explain why."

<comment><USER2> It is identity politics when a set of people asks for privileges based on the colour of their skin. It wasn't so long ago that the civil rights movement wanted to abolish classification based on race, now they demand it so that their race gets more privileges, in a sort of pay back. Now you have people behind these identity-based movements demanding things like quotas, X% of people at Big Corp. should be black, Y% should be women, a co-founder of Reddit resigns from board so that a black person replaces him. Qualifications needed: colour of their skin?

There will be no end to these problems until we recognise the problem is not in the colour of the skin. It's not one set of people, it's not even multiple sets of people (women/black people/latinos), it's not about heterogeneous sets of people (mixed-race). The problem is only within individuals, and their individual actions. If a black person kills another black person, that's bad. If a white person kills a black person, that's also bad. If a man kills a woman, that's bad. If a woman kills a man, that's bad. It looks like this is a difficult thing to accept nowadays.

Also I'm sorry if I haven't addressed all your points, I'm afraid I am busy and didn't have more time to develop this comment further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do you need to disagree with BLM? The defunding the police stuff is impossible and stupid (though reform is necessary ASAP) but it's clear to me, as a white guy, that 1. Black lives are worth protecting and 2. My life as a white guy will be better if black people were treated with dignity and respect at an institutional level. 3. BLM is the movement going forward from here so why not support it?

If you think that your life will be worse if the demands or whatever of BLM are met then you really need to be honest with yourself and others about who you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> For one thing I don't believe disrupting nuclear family model is a thing that will do any good, ironically especially for black families.

It is possible I am wrong, but as much as I informed myself, for this moment, my opinion is just different from the one proposed by BLM.

> If you think that your life will be worse if the demands or whatever of BLM > are met then you really need to be honest with yourself and others about who > you are.

And that is what I am talking about. It seems to me that you think that all BLM demands are universally good - and if I don't fully agree with them I must be somehow a bad person. I refuse to believe that they have monopoly for morality and truth.

<comment><USER4> If the nuclear family model were sustainable and prone to growth then how did we get here?

Middle-class is an important economic segment of the population but it really seems like protecting the middle class was always more important than growing the middle class.

Economics and statistics are hard and I'm forgiving for the protestors making some illogical demands which may feel right but would have unforeseen consequences. But there must be a compromise here. We all can't just continue to pretend that things are great and BLM wants to disrupt that just cause.

I'm almost 40 and progress has been agonizingly slow. I argue that the counterpoints which I hear or read against BLM are really just good old fashioned conservatism masquerading as logical rigour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why are you looking to "overcome" an organization you don't agree with?

I can't stop the Federalist Society from existing just because I disagree with their views.

From what I can tell, BLM is doing nothing illegal: it's not encouraging or hate or violence.

Personally, I don't see anything extreme about the "what we believe" page. I would agree with most if not all of it. If you don't like that, and if you don't like that, legitimately, a lot of people actually do agree with those beliefs, there's nothing you can do about it.

Pieces of advice from me:

1\. If you are going to point out that the BLM organization is unfavorable to you, you should clearly separate the organization from the phrase. Black lives do indeed matter and many people who use the phrase aren't necessarily part of the organization. I hope that idea is rather obvious. You can't change the fact that this organization's name and branding is extremely effective like that.

2\. Have well-informed reasons on why the organization itself is problematic. This post in particular doesn't have any information besides a link and a statement that you don't like it. So what exactly has the organization done wrong in your view? Are they corrupt or shady in some way or do you just disagree with their ideals? If you are well reasoned _and empathetic_ you won't be accused of being racist. If you're being contrarian just because something makes you uncomfortable that's a sign that maybe your own argument is mostly based on bias.

3\. Evaluate if it's even worth your time and energy just to disagree with someone else. What does that get you? Meeting on common ground is how people communicate successfully, nobody got anywhere by telling the other person they're wrong.

4\. I would encourage you to re-evaluate what freedom and liberty mean to you if your aim is to defeat other people's ideologies for the sake of dislike or disagreement alone. People have the right to believe in the ideology of the BLM organization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I never said I want to "overcome" an organization. English is not my first language and if it sounded that way - it wasn't meant to.

What I think is worth 'overcoming' is a sentiment that if one disagrees with the goals of blacklivesmatter organisation it shouldn't mean he/she is racist, insensitive etc.

I work for a company from USA and I have been 'outed' for not sharing black lives matter hashtag and whatnot, I don't feel I can safely say that I disagree with some points - I talked to handful of people privately and I met with literal outrage. I think this is really problematic.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps that's because all the points on the "what we believe" page are about inclusion, community, and equal treatment.

Truthfully, I don't spot any logical way to disagree with those stated views without the reasoning being "I don't like that kind of person."

I can only assume that you did a lot more than "not sharing" at work. In fact you said so - you went out of your way to talk to people in private just to disagree. People don't like that kind of thing, doesn't matter what the subject matter is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not just go with the flow? Who knows, maybe you might enjoy a racialist society where everything is decided on the whim of the trending minority group. I'm not white, so it's kind of funny seeing white people kiss or clean the feet of black people because they're guilty of another person's injustice done onto someone else other than the ones having their feet worshipped.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's simply counterproductive and one can make a good case it's actually racist :|</comment></comment>


The Dumbest Thing I've Heard Warren Buffet Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/05/the-dumbest-thing-ive-heard-warren-buffet-say.html <comment><USER2> I think I know what Warren Buffet was trying to say. There has been an equity premium in the capital markets for a long, long time. Stocks have tended to return more than most other asset classes even after adjusting for risk. That equity premium remained in place for so long because most investors didn't even realize that it was there; essentially they thought that stocks would be more risky than they really turned out to be.

Now that the equity premium is more widely recognized and understood, traders have mostly arbitraged it away. So if present trends continue for the next 92 years then stocks may not return much more than bonds, real estate, commodities, etc. (At least not after you adjust for the actual risk.)

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

<comment><USER3> I work in finance. This is well put. :)

<comment><USER4> hey, can you email me?

<comment><USER3> I need your email address...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had exactly the same reaction when I got to that part of the letter. I think you can take any trend and extrapolate it into incredulity -- Buffett's career is certainly evidence of this.

<comment><USER6> This "1900 to 2000" trend people are extrapolating from is a myth. Stocks, as a broad category, have historically not been a great investment. Almost all the gain in that period happened in the last 20 years. If you break equity returns down into all possible 40 year periods returns were lousy.

This is taking the index numbers at face value. Better assessments of returns using good inflation numbers and incorporating tax liabilities make the picture much worse. <http://www.itulip.com/realdow.htm>

Finally, the real sample size goes back much farther than 1900. We have good equity price data back into the 18th century. 80% market crashes were common. Overall returns were not good.

Stocks were cheap in 1980. Then they soared in price for 20 years. Now people are slow to realize that period was exceptional. Investing is about "buy low, sell high" not "stick your money in stocks." Stocks are high. The smart money bought commodities in the early 70s, changed to bonds in the early 80s, changed to stocks in the early 90s, and changed back to commodities in the early 2000s. That smart investor has absolutely crushed an equity fixated investor. This isn't rocket science, either. It's not that hard to review asset classes once a decade and figure out what's very cheap and what's expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> So then what do you think the _smart investor_ should put their money in now?

<comment><USER7> I don't know what an investor should do--I just watch the money move. Money will always flow somewhere, because it has to.

Where will it flow next? Probably wherever it isn't this time.

Right now commodities (a.k.a. "stuff") is getting the attention, as some have predicted for years (someone's always predicting something for years, until it comes true).

Recently: Tech -> Housing -> Stuff -> ?

A problem for people with money to worry about. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at this thread, I think it would be very useful to link comments on news.yc to disqus (so they show up on the blog post). I'm sure the disqus guys can do that.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, on a related note... Google has grown really fast over 5 or so years. Say, 12,385% for the sake of argument. What do you think the chances of this experiencing that PERCENTAGE growth over the next 5 years?

I think his point is-- high percentage growth is easy for small things. It gets harder for big things. Growth curves tend to flatten out.

<comment><USER10> Growth curves for _a single company_ flatten out because a single company can never be larger than the entire market (and in practice never even close to that large). If Google were to grow indefinitely it will eventually become 100% of the economy, swallowing all other companies and employing everyone, but even at that point it would still grow, but only at the rate the entire economy grows.

Growth for _the entire economy_ is only limited by our abilities to innovate and find resources (both material and human resources). There is no inherent ceiling. The ceiling on a single company (which makes it's growth rate fall off) is imposed when it saturates it's market and can't enter any new markets, the economy as a whole is fueled by the seemingly endless wants of humanity. In essence, there is always a new market for the economy to enter: the next human desire.

In short, the only way there could be a ceiling on the entire economy is if humans stopped wanting new things. Economic growth is supply constrained (supply of resources and innovation), not demand constrained.

<comment><USER11> >... find resources (both material and human resources). There is no inherent ceiling.

Well, you just stated your ceiling. Material and human resources are both finite. Positive thinking cannot just make that go away.

<comment><USER10> I guess I should have clarified that I meant there was no inherent ceiling on the _size_ of the economy (other than the amount of mass and energy in the known Universe, although I hope we'll figure out something else to do before we consume all that), but yes, the growth rate in any given year is limited by resources available and human innovation. Sorry for the ambiguity.

I guess my point is that the reason high percentage growth is easy for small companies is because they can rapidly expand to fill an existing market that is much bigger than the company. The reason it is hard for big companies is because of market saturation.

The economy as a whole doesn't work that way. It just relentlessly grows with our ability to acquire resources and never-ending human desires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The point wasn't that 2 million is a huge number, but that 5.3% is just as huge. The millions are the eye-catching part, but this looks like an odd way of saying a risk-adjusted 5% return is insane, and 10% (the target for a '90s-era portfolio) is not twice but ten times as insane, in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER13> Who says you have to invest in Dow Jones' market during the 21st century? I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to get a 5.3% return in a more emerging market like, say, India or China.

<comment><AUTHOR> An investor who wants the most return with the lowest risk will have a balanced portfolio across many asset classes, which would include both the Dow stocks and India and China in some fashion. That being said, the Dow companies already get a significant % of their earnings abroad. And this % is increasing.

<comment><USER13> Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the original author. Warren's logic is circular and seems to be preying on people's inability to conceive of very large numbers. I'd fully expect DJIA to continue growing at roughly the same pace this century as the last.

Even if it doesn't, though, everyone knows that the trick to successful investment is to buy low and sell high. There are still plenty of opportunities to buy low - even with limited risk - in large emerging economies. The U.S. may become a low-risk capital preservation stock and China will become the higher-risk investment stock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It could easily happen, but only if things get very, very bad. <http://mises.org/story/2532>

</comment><comment><USER4> Einstein did say compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there are two sides to what Warren Buffett is saying. One side is nonsense, I agree - that he can make a prediction like that based on early trends. The other side, however, which is what I think he actually meant, is that, in fact, predicting from trends is not nearly what it's cracked up to be, and that there is no real guarantee of continued healthy returns from US equities, or even long-term returns to capital that are comparable to the low double-digit returns of the 20th Century. That's a legitimate point.

<comment><USER16> It is utterly reasonable to argue that past returns are no guarantee of future returns, but if that is the argument he meant to make, he did it exceedingly poorly.

<comment><USER15> I think he was trying to spin it in a folksy way, but ended up dumbing it down to the point that it came across as a weak argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Vizzini: BRK.A at $133,000 a share, Inconceivable!

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could it be that he's fibbing, knowing that his words will affect the market in some way or another?

</comment><comment><USER19> "Beware the glib helper who fills your head with fantasies while he fills his pockets with fees."

Timeless WB wisdom.

</comment><comment><USER20> everyone says dumb things. warren buffet says less dumb things than the average person by several orders of magnitude.

I'm willing to forgive him the occasional brain fart.</comment>


Google Research Blog: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken [2006] - <AUTHOR> http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html <comment><USER2> Not just binary search. Anything that involves addition of signed integers could overflow.

<comment><USER3> Including, as I found to my embarassment recently, my license key generation logic.

Turns out that the maximum for a Java integer happens in the middle of the numerical representations of the values that I thought were valid license keys. "Whoops!"

(Happily, it turns out that all the keys actually assigned to customers were accepted by the broken version of the checker, too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bug is an example of a problem associated with inductive inference. Relying on induction is tempting, and in most cases sufficient. However, this case proves that one should always be aware of the potential fallacy that is inherent in induction.

<comment><USER5> or at least be aware that one is doing modulo arithmetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      int mid = low + ((high - low) / 2);

is going to overflow if high and low have different signs. The correct version that works for any high and low is:

      int mid = sign(high) != sign(low) ?
        (high + low) / 2 : low + (high - low) / 2;

<comment><USER7> True, but Java uses signed int's so the former should still work.

<comment><USER6> That's the problem, if one int is negative and the other is positive, (high - low) may overflow.

<comment><USER8> In this particular context, however, that should be just fine: low is clearly initialized to zero, and then only set to the value of this expression +1. As such, barring other bugs, low can never be negative.

Your point is valid, though, and worth bearing in mind in other circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think a static checker such as Coverity would probably find this bug.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else seeing Anonymous flyers posted today? - <AUTHOR>

I was walking around southwest Portland today and every telephone pole had a flyer from Anonymous ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/turoczy/5996008552/ ) posted on it.<p>I'm wondering if this is an isolated incident, only happening in PDX, or if others have encountered these flyers? <comment><AUTHOR> There's a thread over on reddit tracking Portland sightings now.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/j58hl/anyone_else_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/j58hl/anyone_else_seeing_anonymous_flyers_posted_around/)

I've also heard from someone in Spokane.

</comment><comment><USER2> I am in West End Dallas and there is one on my hotel. Different text but same website.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen one of a different design in a small town in Ohio since earlier this week. Interesting.</comment>


Conway's Game of Life – Trying It on Images - <AUTHOR> http://zx.rs/2/Conway%27s-Game-of-Life---Trying-it-on-images/? <comment><USER2> Cool idea. I just made a quick implementation for those who want to use it/see it live:

[https://github.com/thearn/game-of- life/blob/master/image.py](https://github.com/thearn/game-of- life/blob/master/image.py)

I'll make a quick .gif, if folks are interested.

<comment><USER3> A gif would be nice, or simply some result jpgs, if you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The only other thing I'll state is that Life is a Turing-complete machine, > so with right initial states it can "do" any computer algorithm.

This only hints at the more important part: only a Turing-complete language can implement Life. Thus, an implementation of Life in a particular language is proof that that language is Turing-complete.

<comment><USER5> true, but strangely I've never realized that before, thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting concept, but some video of the results is missing.

<comment><USER7> >That's basically it. The effects this simple game produces can truly be magnificent.

Especially with a teaser like this.

<comment><USER8> A JS implementation (especially where we could drag and drop our own examples) would be especially neat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author has a repo on GitHub: [https://github.com/anbud/PxlSort](https://github.com/anbud/PxlSort)

(The link was hidden midway through the article and it was very non-obvious that it was a link)

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, why not treat the RGB image as 3 games of life? One fore each channel.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can also create automata with video by treating it as a three dimensional world. I did a bit of messing around with this a few months ago[1] and created some examples. The only one I can still find that is interesting is probably this one: [http://gfycat.com/SelfreliantUnequaledAmericanindianhorse](http://gfycat.com/SelfreliantUnequaledAmericanindianhorse) (Forgive the source material.)

Of course it's hard to look at all of a video at once, so you only see slices of the actual world...

[1] [https://github.com/Wollw/Video-Automata](https://github.com/Wollw/Video- Automata)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's an example I made in plnkr.co: [http://embed.plnkr.co/y1a3DWh1P8tTTUamsWbE/preview](http://embed.plnkr.co/y1a3DWh1P8tTTUamsWbE/preview)

It begins by filling in the canvas with random colors.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in how artists use these systems, McCabe's Bone Music is a good start: [https://vimeo.com/17329897](https://vimeo.com/17329897).</comment>


Show HN: RxJS Diagrams – A React library for visualising Rx operators - <AUTHOR> http://rxjs-diagrams.com/ <comment><USER2> there's also [http://rxmarbles.com](http://rxmarbles.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually meant to be a revamp / successor. It is written in React to increase reusability and it's built with (and for) RxJS 5. So it's an overall overhaul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thank you! I've been looking for something like this

</comment><comment><USER4> Great work, exactly what I need for some Rx tutorials

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Keep the company or start a new one? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, we have a startup that has been running for 3 years and went to 2 pivots. We now have a business model that works, we have been steadily growing our revenue at 50% / months for the last 8-10months. We raised money early on and used that money to go through the different phases and through the pivots as well.
We are now running out of cash (1month left at the bank), but given our growth rate and low expenses (only 4 small salaries), we will breakeven in about 4-5 months. Assuming no investor wants to put back some money (given how long it took us to growth and find a business model that works, I can understand), but we (the cofounders) don't want to give up the company. So are thinking of not getting salaries for a month of two, but then shall we bankrupt the company because of that? And investors will lose their % in the company.
Or how do you suggest we go about it? Any input is much appreciated. <comment><USER2> I am not an entrepreneur (I don't even play one on TV), but I've been in a fair few startups. The way I've seen it work is:

You are dead in the water. In a month you can't meet payroll. But you have revenue growth and potentially data to show that you will eventually break even. You need bridging financing. Go to your investors and ask for it.

They may think that your growth potential is not enough. That's totally fair and is their choice. So what they are going to want to do at that point is write down the loss. So you aren't really hurting anybody by bankrupting the company.

If you are intent on continuing beyond that point, make sure that you get agreement from all your investors that they don't mind. Likely they won't. If they _do_ mind, press them for that bridging financing. They can't have it both ways.

After you have washed yourself clean of the original investors, you may actually be lucky enough to find new investors for your new company. As long as the gap between the previous company and the new company is not too long, you might be able to keep your staff (but make sure to properly terminate them so that they have reasonable choices).

The very first startup I worked in, the founders were miracle workers. They ran the company into the ground, eating up something like $20 million. Their investors gave up and wrote off their loss and the founders found another $2 million from someone else. They ran that company into the ground. Then they got agreements from the staff to work at a new company doing similar work (a complete rewrite!) for a cut in the action (something like $100k each as a signing bonus). I think they got $10 million for that. They ran _that_ company in the ground, but by that time had such an impressive reputation for raising money that they could easily get money for new startups.

It sounds insane that you could run the same company into the ground 3 times (spending tens of millions of dollars... much of it as their own salaries) and come away with a good reputation. But remember that as an entrepreneur _you_ are as much of a product as your company. As long as you are seen as a mover and shaker and as long as it looks like you are taking appropriate risks, you will simply just make yourself look good by keeping the deals rolling.

But of course, whatever you do, make sure you have a good lawyer. Pay special attention to what they say because it is incredibly important to get the legal side of it right.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, very inspiring story. I didn't know that's something others actually had done.</comment></comment>


YouPorn sued for sniffing browser history - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20024696-264.html?tag=topTechnologyNews;topTechContentWrap

<comment><USER2> Why is this illegal?

Why would this method of learning about your browser history be illegal, while the ways Google/DoubleClick/Comscore/etc track you across >80% of all webpages are not?

They all involve nothing but HTTP and JavaScript, and none of them involve giving permission first...

<comment><USER3> Of course the fact that they have been sued does not mean they did anything illegal (or even anything wrong). It just means that a couple of people in California scraped the money together to instruct a lawyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone wondering what javascript is involved, it's simply dynamically creating an <a> tag to said third-party site and doing a getComputedStyle on it to see if it's a certain color. The color can be set via your own CSS with a and a:visited.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just out of curiosity, what kind of embarrassing data could they pull out of my browser history? I guess I should be scared they might find out about all of the porn I've been watching. Oh wait... nevermind.

<comment><USER6> I think it's just market research for them. That doesn't mean that it's not a privacy issue.

On the other hand, I agree that there are worse things to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was "addressed" by the Mozilla folk back in March [1] in a blog post, a fix will be deployed with Firefox 4, which will be long overdue by then, in my opinion.

[1] [http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the- css...](http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/03/31/plugging-the-css-history- leak/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think anybody would be too surprised to see a porn site using this sniffing trick, but some other sites listed are quite surprising to me: charter.net, namepros.com, morningstar.com, straightdope.com, twincities.com.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm left wondering if both Wired.com and PerezHilton.com are going to be subjected to the same sort of lawsuit.

Related: <http://techme.me/ANFk> ("YouPorn, Perez Hilton Exploit Bug to Obtain Your Browsing History")

<comment><USER9> At the risk of sounding like a corporate apologist since I write for Wired.com, Wired.com did NOT use the javascript history hack. It was noted in the report for using Tynt.com, which notices which portions of a story a reader copies and pastes and inserts a link back to the story. Wired.com has since stopped using the service, in no small part because it annoyed the writers, but it never, to my knowledge and to the report's findings, secretly captured users' browser histories. You can read the full report's findings at the following link: <http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/users/lerner/papers/ccs10-jsc.pdf>.

<comment><USER8> Hey. Just a suggestion, but maybe it would have been better from a PR standpoint to come clean with your viewers in a blog post.

Explain how it happened without your knowledge. Explain how Wired won't let it ever happen again. Etc. Etc.

Readers love the transparency :)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure there's really anything to report back. Tynt is fairly widely used, and is really nothing more than a piece of javascript that watches copy and paste and inserts a link back to the original story into the paste buffer. It's annoying, but there's no profiling going on and is far less of a tracking system than say Google Analytics. It's just more annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> firefox users:

about:config

layout.css.visited_links_enabled -> false

problem solved.

<comment><USER11> That is not necessarily sufficient, because there are many, many variations on this attack.

For example, suppose my target site has an asset at a well known URL, such as:

<http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/srpr/logo1w.png>

I could execute Javascript on your machine to load that in a standard IMG tag, in a div with display: none set on it. I could then, via a variety of fairly unobtrusive methods, time how long it takes your browser to load that image.

If you have been to Google recently, that image will be cached, and your browser will load it almost instantaneously. If you have not been to Google recently, that image will not be in your cache, and my Javascript will _trivially_ be able to tell the difference between "presence of a network request going through the Internet" and "absence of said request."

You don't even really need the asset if you want to be tricky about it. (I can time your DNS cache, too, it just takes a little more work.)

<comment><USER12> I was thinking recently about how a similar technique could be used on DropBox. Government employee uploads "sensitive" data and sees that no actual data is transfered. They now have a person of interest in a leak or possession case.

<comment><USER13> That requires the data the government employee has to be byte-for-byte identical to the one already in dropbox, which is unlikely for an unintended leak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Firefox add-on that prevents this (come FF 4, of course, and there won't be any need for it):

<http://www.safehistory.com/>

<comment><USER15> Looks like someone implemented this for Chromium as well: <http://codereview.chromium.org/1591027/show>

I'm not sure if it is main Chrome builds yet or not. Anyone know the status of this?

<comment><USER16> This bug report claims that it was fixed in Chrome 6, over the summer: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=40312>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What do they use the data for?

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing they can see what fraction of their visitors also visiting their competitor's site.

I'm not sure what else they can gather but I'd imagine that if you can pick up on what "videos/pages/articles" those visitors are visiting, you can seed your own site with similar content to further entice them to use your site as a primary resource and decrease the chance they will visit the competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> i wonder why cars.com and edmunds.com?

a) either they all were by the same people

b) there's a referral stuffing attack?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how people would react if Wikileaks engaged in this practice.</comment>


Google Campus Security Singled Out Black, Latinx Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-09/google-campus-security-singled-out-black-latinx-employees <comment><USER2> Very important context below.

This policy was implemented poorly, and it was ended suddenly, without calling attention to the harms caused, and while giving extra column inches for why Google felt it was necessary to outsource security tasks to staff which was apparently not appropriately trained to handle security responsibilities[1]. A person's body and their skin tone has nothing to do with their hypothetical threat level, regardless of the context.

> Pichai said Google had been researching changes to its campus security > policy over the past year, but the protests likely prompted faster action. > The company had been increasing workplace security since April 2018, when > three employees were shot at the Silicon Valley headquarters of its YouTube > video unit.

> The insistence on checking employee IDs was meant to discourage "tailgaters" > -- people who followed others into Google buildings without swiping badges > to enter. But in practice, Black and Latinx employees were stopped and told > "Let me see your badge," even after they proved they had the right to enter > the office by swiping in, one of the people said.

[1] [https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company- announcements/...](https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company- announcements/commitments-racial-equity/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google security is massively biased. I used to collect recycling on their campus and security rarely said anything, yet constantly went after non whites in the same parking lot as me.</comment>


Facebook without the News Feed - <AUTHOR> http://maxfriedrich.de/post/86417669824 <comment><USER2> What I'd like is facebook without any algorithmic 'intelligence' behind the feed.

I'd really like to keep up on the minutiae of life that people casually post to facebook. I'd particularly like to see posts from people who don't post very often or who I don't interact with very often. But AFAICT there's no way to stop it prioritising, filtering, hiding, reordering as it sees fit. And that's with it set to display "Most Recent" instead of top stories.

I don't 'like' anything, or have hundreds of pages spamming my feed. I have a number of friends somewhere between 50 and 100, most of whom don't post that much, that often. I'd just like the unedited feed of what they post, but apparently that's not possible.

<comment><USER3> I second this. I knew facebook filtered the feed pretty heavily but I had no idea how bad it was until recently.

A few weeks ago I met up with some old friends and learned that a mutual friend was getting married. We're friends on facebook and she has been posting about her wedding day regularly and yet I had absolutely no idea it was happening because facebook decided for me that she was unimportant.

They really need a way to turn this aggressive filtering off. I use facebook specifically to keep in touch with wayward friends, I don't need a feed full of BS updates from people I speak with regularly.

<comment><USER4> I made a site with the goal of showing just important information about friends, but all of it: getnotably.com. Check it out and let me know if it solves your problem!

<comment><USER5> although that sums um what i want, it's just a program for a mobile phone but i don't use a mobile phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the main problem is that centralized social networking sites like Facebook decide for you what to present, what filters to apply, and you're lucky if they throw you a bone and let you set your own privacy. And then you hope that they will in fact honor it. If the NSA wants wholesale spying on thousands of facebook users, it can go ahead and do it.

What we need is a decentralized social platform. Not something like diaspora* but a basic social layer on which developers can write apps and where each person can host their own account where they wish, install their own apps and plugins, and present things their way.

Think Redmine vs some Project Management As A Service. You can have it for free and only pay for hosting, install any plugins, and customize it to your heart's content. And the NSA can't break into everyone's project management at once. They have to target someone first.

Something like this: [http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com)

<comment><USER7> Another big draw would be to not publicize your friends or the number of friends you have. This encourages quantity over quality, but it's obvious why social networks desire higher numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't mind the news feed, though I do not like whatever algorithms decide what to show me.

The main reason I rarely use Facebook is because it's so bloated. On the left side I've got a bunch of "games" that I've never played, or have no recollection of playing, but Facebook thinks they're important enough to dedicate part of the front page to them.

And I'm really sick of seeing updates in my news feed about other people playing games. The top post in my news feed right now is "Friend X and Friend Y gave a life in Candy Crush Saga." It actually takes up a fair amount of space because it's got a big picture of a heart with the flavor text "A life to be used in the sweetest facebook game ever."

<comment><USER9> You can hide those stories. Click the 'v' and select "I don't want to see this" or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting because I actually have the exact opposite setup. I _only_ wanted to see the news feed, not anything on either side. I added these custom filters to AdBlock+:

      ##*#leftCol
      ##*#rightCol

And it's just want I wanted

</comment><comment><USER11> You could use your favorite chat client to connect to facebook chat, because this is all that is left. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER12> Events as well. That's all I use Facebook these days, along with chat.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Cool idea. Seems like a useful tool for people who find themselves getting sucked in and wasting time but still need FB for communication.

>> "People tend to create albums of mediocre photos on Facebook while they only post their best on Instagram."

Really? I love Instagram but I guess I'm not seeing what you're seeing. When a friend of mine is out for the night they might post one ok photo on Instagram. When I look at Facebook I can see the full story of that night. Unless you're an excellent photographer with good subject matter one photo doesn't tell much of a story IMO.

</comment><comment><USER13> You can easily always have an empty news feed without any custom CSS or userscripts by simply unfollowing all your friends (unfollwing is not the same as unfriending and can always be reverted with a single click).

<comment><USER14> I did this, I had ~300 friends and each time I checked Facebook I would unfollow every single person on the feed. Within 3 days I had no more posts and the news feed. I also did this with Reddit. It has slightly helped with "changing the channels" between digg, facebook, reddit and hacker news during finals a few weeks ago but being off for the summer I am reverting back to it and becoming less productive. If other people have this problem I would recommend the chrome extension concentrate.

<comment><USER15> i did exactly this a few months back and don't miss it one bit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can also use Adblock to block simple CSS rules like these

[https://adblockplus.org/en/filters#elemhide](https://adblockplus.org/en/filters#elemhide)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am using facebook like this for at least half a year with the News Feed Eradicator plugin. I don't really care about other people posts or jokes for the 2214 time. Sometimes I check it on my phone on the bus and it really just reinforces my decision to hide. And the best is that it's eradicates the possibility of mindless-endless scrolling. Overall, recommended. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Try [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook- messenger/id4546384...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook- messenger/id454638411?mt=8) or [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.o...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca)

<comment><USER19> And if you're not using mobile: [https://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php](https://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Awesome work !! Facebook sure is distracting! For the same reason, being on a mac, I added facebook message account to iMessage. No more going to facebook now :) Here is how to do it [http://www.mactrast.com/2013/11/setup-facebook- chat-messages...](http://www.mactrast.com/2013/11/setup-facebook-chat- messages-ichat/)

</comment><comment><USER21> KillNewsFeed for Chrome is an extension that does this. I've been using it lately and I like it a lot. I'm going to fork it and also kill my trending box.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news- feed/hjo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news- feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm so glad sombody finally did it. I've been dreaming about something like this a while ago.

Improvments would be to create a kind of a control dashboard of what you want to see. maybe remove only pictures and videos ? subscribe to a specific list of friends, etc..

</comment><comment><USER23> I believe this is why facebook is breaking up into separate apps. I agree, the newsfeed isn't important to me and mostly distracting and time wasting.

But, I like the Messenger (chat and email-esqe) and Events/Calendar, and Group communications.

Something for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had this _exact same_ idea yesterday.

I loathe Facebook altogether and did not miss it one iota when I quit for 3 months earlier this year. I had to go back to it, however, when I caved and added Facebook login to my chrome extension project.

Thanks for the new tool.

</comment><comment><USER25> actually, a shortcut to the message queue ([https://www.facebook.com/messages/](https://www.facebook.com/messages/)) has the same effect to me...

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel the same way - deleting the Facebook app from my phone and just keeping the Facebook Messenger app turned out to be a very good decision.

</comment><comment><USER27> you can use this chrome extension [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha?hl=en)

to implement this css code [http://stylebot.me/styles/5808](http://stylebot.me/styles/5808)

</comment><comment><USER28> That works great with Stylish on Firefox, thanks !

I remember a time when the content of the news feed was almost relevant and interesting...

</comment><comment><USER29> If you just wanna chat, try astro: [http://astroim.com/](http://astroim.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> if all you need is the chat you can use any pretty much every XMPP client, Pidgin for example.

<comment><USER31> You can't access group chats that way, unfortunately.

<comment><USER32> You can keep it to a mix of XMPP client on Desktop and FB Messenger on Mobile (for group messaging).

You literally never have to visit Facebook.com proper, ever again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Might be a good idea to create Greasemonkey script to hide Facebook news feed.

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel like this totally defeats the purpose of facebook and he should just switch to email... but I'm glad he was able to hack at it to get it how he likes.

<comment><USER35> I wish this was possible, but ~80% of my friends are reachable almost exclusively through facebook. I too use facebook only for the chat because of this.</comment></comment>


New Billmonk Feature: Debt Shuffling - <AUTHOR> http://billmonk.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/debt-shuffling/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised this wasn't a feature right out of the gate. The uncool part is the potentially large checks certain people may have to bear in order to make things work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was just testing this out with my housemates. There's three of us, so this eliminated one check but causes me to write a huge check that I don't have the money for. Interesting nonetheless.</comment></comment>