The Two-Party Swindle - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/mg/the_twoparty_swindle/ <comment><USER2> There is a problem with the submitted essay that is a common problem with many essays on lesswrong: it writes about a matter that developed historically with insufficient examination of the history of the matter. Maybe the people submitting articles to lesswrong need to read more history more often.

The American two-party system is remarkable in how much the two parties do NOT insist on long-term ideological consistency. Each party shifts its positions and adds and subtracts party platform planks as new third parties introduce net points of view into political discourse. The parties are stable because their positions on issues are very unstable. If you compare the party platforms of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to those of a century ago, you will see on many issues a complete role reversal of the parties. Similarly, which party is more favored by southern voters or which party is more favored by black voters is far less stable than the general tendency that black voters and southern voters only occasionally favor the same party.

<comment><USER3> that was not a cornerstone of his argument in the least. I wouldn't even say it was a part of it at all.

<comment><USER2> How would you summarize his argument? Why did the title of the article refer to two parties?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article, as expected for an Eliezer Yudkowsky article.

One place where it leaves me hungry... what can we do about this very real problem? I understand that no single person can fix this all by themselves, but is there some kind of action that we can take, when the circumstances arise, that will help resolve this problem rather than help perpetuate it?

Edit: Additional note... this is one of the many reasons I like the Swiss system. We vote on issues separately from voting on people. This has its disadvantages, but at least it's direct democracy.

<comment><USER5> Direct democracy does not solve the problem, see California. The Swiss cantons work well because they are small. Direct democracy does not scale.

One of the best ideas for reform I've heard is the idea of unpredictable elections, a la Venice. See: [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/03/unpredictable- elect...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/03/unpredictable- elections.html)

<comment><USER6> California is not quite a direct democracy. They have ballot propositions, yes, but they also have a legislature almost as bad as the NY legislature, and their state workers are completely unaccountable.

Arnold: Until the budget is sorted out, all state workers get minimum wage.

State workers: You can't do that. Besides, our computer are too old to handle paying minimum wage.

[http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1132588.htm...](http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1132588.html)

<comment><USER5> Right, but the limited direct democracy they have does not seem to make better decisions than the legislature: [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/myth_of_the_rat_...](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/myth_of_the_rat_2.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same thing happens between the armies of nations. Nation A's army attacks the civilians and army of Nation B; Nation B's army attacks the civilians and army of Nation A. Even though they're fighting each other, the civilians on both sides are very similar to each other, and the war makes them all worse off through taxation and slaughter.

The armies are also very similar to each other, in values and in training, and very different from the civilian population. In fact, they probably trained together in joint exercises or at WHISC before the war.

If you slice the identities one way, the attacks by the armies on the civilians show that the armies are dangerous to the civilians, and therefore civilians should endeavor to eliminate armies, as did the people of the United States in the American Revolution, and as did the people of Costa Rica during the previous century. But of course the more common way to look at it is that the attacks by Nation A show the great necessity for the civilians of Nation B to support the army of Nation B, in order to deter and defend against attacks from Nation A, and vice versa.

So armies, as a class, whip up support for themselves by attacking and killing the civilians whose support they depend on.

And so today in Israel and Palestine, each nation has strong popular support for organized violence against civilians on the other side.

Of course, historically the connection between armies and governments is extremely close.

Is there a way out? Are the Costa Ricans in imminent danger of invasion due to their lack of armed forces? Having armed forces didn't seem to help the Salvadorans, the Guatemalans, or the Nicaraguans when the US funded terrorist campaigns against their people, didn't help the Panamanians or the Granadans when the US decided to invade them, and didn't help Guatemala when the United Fruit Company organized a coup. In fact, in most of those cases, the army acted against its own people.

But would Honduras have avoided the Football War if they had had no army? Or would they now be a province of El Salvador? Would Cuba be a territory of the US, like Puerto Rico? (And would Cubans be better off if they were?)

</comment><comment><USER8> This was better than I expected. Everyone here is already aware of the two- party swindle (I hope), but the author describes it in a fresh way. He also explains some of the reasons it happens, for people who know the swindle exists but don't understand why.

Also, he rather subtly points out that we haven't actually dispatched of the idea of people being _ruled_ by a separate class, contrary to what we're taught in school.

<comment><USER9> Even calling it a "swindle" is an example of this phenomenon. Why does it necessarily have to be "the political elite"/"the ruling class" versus "the disenfranchised populous"?

I'm sure a huge number of politicians are very frustrated by many of the policies of their party and would like to diverge from them to a greater or lesser extent. They are constrained too.

Why can we not see this as an emergent phenomenon of a complex system, with little overall direction?

<comment><USER10> That is how he presents it.

 _There doesn't have to be a conscious, collaborative effort by Your Politicians and Their Politicians to keep the Voters screaming at each other, so that they don't notice the increasing gap between the Voters and the Politicians. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy. It emerges from the interests of the individual politicians in getting you to identify with them instead of judging them._

He calls it a "swindle" because whatever reservations politicians have with their party, they all try to get you to identify with themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author seems to blame the two-party system and the class divide between politicians and voters for the fact that nobody is shrinking the size of the government.

I have a much simpler explanation for this phenomenon: no substantial body of voters _want_ smaller government.

The clique of libertarians who actually believe in "smaller government" and not simply "government taking less of my money in taxes and spending less on the things that I personally don't like" is substantial on the Web and among the intelligentsia, but not so much in the voting booth. Look at how poorly Ron Paul did in the Republican primaries.

<comment><USER12> Very few people want free markets. The rest just want the standard of living that only free markets can offer.

<comment><USER13> And the few people who want free markets aren't willing to pay for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ironically, the Founders didn't expect a role for political parties and most were concerned with their rise.

"There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the Spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true--and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose--and there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming, it should consume."

GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address to the people of the United States, Sep. 17, 1796

</comment><comment><USER15> At one point, I started making a list of all the decisions politicians could make and change about the way governments were run. I came up with over 100 items, very quickly. The Democrats and Republicans both didn't address and were in implicit agreement on some 95 of those 100 things, despite the fact that some of them are really ugly. For instance, the exclusive rights to the television broadcast spectrum are sold without auction for $100,000 per year to NBC, CBS, and ABC, and estimates have placed the worth of those rights over a billion dollars per year.

This made me sad.

<comment> barry-cotter Blog it. Then submit it.

<comment><USER16> To reddit...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is good -- Eliezer? How come it took so long for this to get on the board? Great article.

I thought this at first was a politics article, but for me, at least, it's a much more practical one. Let me explain.

Working with large corporations, I've found that this is not restricted to sports or politics. It happens between divisions, between business groups -- even between cliques of programmers on the same team. Politics is the ultimate generalization of the problem, but it's a much more practical and immediate matter.

I guess that's why I've never understood the fear of talking about politics on HN. Heck -- you guys do it all the time. Every time there's an Apple vs. Microsoft thread, or a Twitter vs. Blogging thread, or a functional programming vs. imperative programming thread -- this is the same thing. It's amazing people can't see it. You identify with a product, a brand, a group of people, and then suddenly it's _us versus them_. We have our experts, our slogans, our information sources. They have theirs. We can argue for years and never do more than talking past each other, because _we've never generalized the type of discussion we are having and worked at the meta level._

Where I think politics is more interesting is that _positions change month by month_. That means that political party X may support something this month and be against it the next month. In effect, it's a critical thinking test -- can you identify your own bias? Because if you were arguing for something last month and are arguing against the same thing this month, you might be identifying more with a group that ideas. _It's much easier to spot this when the positions keep changing_ , which makes a discussion of politics useful for detecting personal bias.

BTW, it's also a quick test for thinking about other things too. If you're meeting with a new person and they seem stuck on some political party thing, you can bet they're going to be group-identifying with a lot of other things as well. Different people have different levels of the need-to-identify. We all know the worst ones: the people with bumper stickers all over their car, various flag pins or whatever on their clothes, a rabid sports fan and a sticking-to-a-political-party-no-matter-what attitude.

Solutions to the two-party swindle? Term limits (to prevent camping out in office) Expiration limits for laws (to prevent get-what-you-can-now-attitude). Some sort of push for a multi-party system.

Oddly enough, in the US at least the thought was that it would end up being a dynamic system with small groups taking various positions and coalitions changing over time. Instead that's not how it worked out.

Solutions to the group-identification problem? Simple. Learn to talk about tough topics with each other.

<comment><USER18> Ah, a thought-provoking comment.

> Solutions to the group-identification problem? Simple. Learn to talk about > tough topics with each other.

A fine idea. It gets tricky, however, because there is a difference between an _individual_ learning and a _group_ learning.

Say you and I learn to have a reasonable discussion. That's great, as long as we are alone in a room together. But put us in a crowd with an open mic, and even if 99% of the crowd are mostly reasonable people, the remaining 1% can still wreck the discussion. Especially because there is maybe another 5% that can easily get their emotions aroused by the loony 1%. That, I think, is why there is a fear of political discussion on HN.

Then, of course, there is the question of what to do about it. HN has made a start; it's clearly one of the calmer places to have a public discussion on the net. However, I rather doubt that opening up HN to political discussion would work well. Sad ....

<comment><USER17> Call me a believer in technology. I think this is a technical problem and not an insurmountable one.

I also think it's the most important social problem facing technologists today: how to dynamically and vigorously mix ideas on the internet without chaos.

<comment><USER19> I don't think it is that kind of a technical problem. These are like fundamental issues in human interaction. I don't think you can solve this problem by coming up with a clever online community or interesting way of visualizing data.

<comment><USER17> But isn't the entire premise of representative democracy is that you can have highly emotional factions and yet still have a productive conversation given the appropriate framework? Aren't there lots of examples of teams with highly divergent personalities and opinions that still manage to perform? In fact, aren't those some of the highest performing teams?

In Hollywood there's a concept called "creative tension". You can look at it as meaning "he's a jerk to work with" but there's a deeper meaning: from wildly divergent creative styles comes the best product. As long as you can set up the framework for productivity.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure that the entire premise of "representative democracy" is that you can have highly emotional factions and yet still ahve a productive conversation ... I'm not sure where that language derives.I think it's not that complicated: a representative democracy is simply democracy less a people's majority rule.

Part of the problem is the most people aren't very smart, certainly not smart enough to run a government or think about issues in sane or at least non- simplistic terms.

As far as teams that have divergent personalities but still manage to perform, it depends on what you mean. There's a lot of factors there.

My point was that there is probaby not some technology (at least non- invase/non-mind-altering) that can solve problems of "group-think" or "us vs them" or whatever kinds of problems. Even if you just look at how religion affects politics, with the fairly reasonable assumption that you aren't going to get rid of it, it seems hard to see how you would construct a technology to solve such problems. I don't know what that would mean, really.

<comment><USER17> Fascinating comment.

 _Part of the problem is the most people aren't very smart, certainly not smart enough to run a government or think about issues in sane or at least non-simplistic terms._

Then why do people have the ability to vote? That's my point: from simple people complex systems form and operate. To say that people are not smart enough to run their own affairs is quite interesting. I'm not sure how to reply to that.

But switching to the technology side, with the internet we already have some examples of voting and filtering in action. For instance, there are probably a thousand bad, emotional blog entries for each one that gets upvoted on HN. It's just a matter of appropriate filtering and selection criteria.

Let's suppose instead of voting items up or down we categorize them by how they emotionally affect the reader. Over time, the system could provide an appropriate mix of interesting, insightful, and sometimes maddening material for me to consume. My "tolerance level" would be determined by how emotionally I responded to certain stimulus. The system would keep things emotional, but not so much as to not have a cohesive discussion.

That's a broad outline of one solution. There are others.

<comment><USER5> _To say that people are not smart enough to run their own affairs is quite interesting. I'm not sure how to reply to that._

Say we converted social news sites into voting platforms. Would you rather be ruled be Hacker News or Digg?

Votes are power, not freedom. I believe the average person is smart enough to run his own affairs. I do not believe the average person is smart enough to _run my affairs_.

<comment><USER17> "I believe the average person is smart enough to run his own affairs. I do not believe the average person is smart enough to run my affairs."

Neither do I. And I don't believe it is a matter of smarts. I don't believe anybody should run my affairs, smart or not.

But that's a structural question: the limits of voting power. Can the majority force the minority into slavery? Can the majority overtax the minority? Etc. All great structural questions.

Or to put it in a non-political venue: should database designers have final say over persistence mechanisms on a team? Should teams vote to decide what they can accomplish by a milestone or should a few decide?

<comment><USER5> Within a territory, you'll always have one actor who is the ultimate arbiter - ie, the government. Ideally, that government would be a neutral judge who simply enforces common law, and not a meddlesome theocrat who tells me how to live. But what selection process is most likely to result in arbiter that pleases you? Selection by Hacker News, or selection by Digg?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> the missing piece of the essay is the question of whether "political entrepreneurs" should be considered legitimate.

Using group dynamics to achieve power is just a reality of human nature, as Elezier points out.

But Elezier jumps from this fat to assume that we should then be concerned about the unequal distribution of power between most people and the few political entrepreneurs (aka "power seekers").

It's hard to argue that all power seekers are bad, even if all do use group dynamics to gain and keep power.

So how to we determine which power seekers we consider legitimate?

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems the author carefully and intentinally avoid talking about religions. Why?

</comment><comment><USER21> Party Politics and Partisanship are evil. Less interested in what is good for the country and more interested in what will get them elected to POWER!

<comment><USER17> It's not just party politics though. It's the predilection of people to form up into groups and to identify with those groups even at the expense of logic and reason. Party politics is just what you get when you do it at a national level. It happens all the time all around you.</comment></comment>


Is there a K&R for SQL? - <AUTHOR>

Just as K&R is primarily about C, not programming or computer science in general, I'm interested in a tutorial on SQL that leaves relational <i>theory</i> to other texts. <comment><USER2> (disclamer: I have more than a decade experiences in doing SQL)

I would say Mr. Joe Celko's "SQL for smarties" (and basically anything he has written (look him up for references)....

I have had the opportunity to talk to mr. Celko, and he added (as I asked him what he thought was the best database-book) the "Manga Guide to Databases" (seriously!), I am reading it now (but I am only in the second chapter), and it seems very good...

If you need a good database which honors the standard behaviour closely and has super documentation (and very clean codebase), take a look at Postgresql. The fact that is is free and open source (bsd licensened) does not hurt at all :)

<comment><USER2> And please remember, you cannot "read" yourself to better knowledge. Download a sql server (postgres if you ask me) and play around...

The big leap is imho, the difference between procedural (do-this-do-that code like most programming languages) and declarative syntax (I want "xxxx" and I don't care how you get it) which is how SQL works... And thinking in sets...

<comment><USER3> Apart from postgres site, is there any good book with hands on practice exercises available on Postgres?

<comment><USER4> Celko's SQL Puzzles and Answers: [http://www.amazon.com/Puzzles-Answers- Kaufmann-Management-eb...](http://www.amazon.com/Puzzles-Answers-Kaufmann- Management-ebook/dp/B0014AG7S4/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Database: A Primer by C. J. Date, if you can find it

[http://www.amazon.com/Database-Primer-Micro-computer- books/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Database-Primer-Micro-computer- books/dp/0201113589)

</comment><comment><USER6> I found the book "The Definitive Guide to SQLite" to also be an excellent primer on SQL, especially for small application developers. It doesn't cover the variants used in big databases, but handles the basics quite well, along with giving lots of insight into SQLite's specific implementation.</comment>


Where can you drive a Tesla and have Zero Emissions? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K4gNhy_AN8Eg4Ov3z7pF_dgON1oObkHQ8Px5I73Hvc/edit#gid=313249954 <comment><USER2> Awesome sheet! The top countries under ' Non Fossil Percent' are quite surprising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. After I already posted the link I found a way to make it better: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K4gNhy_AN8Eg4Ov3z7p...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K4gNhy_AN8Eg4Ov3z7pF_dgON1oObkHQ8Px5I73Hvc/pubhtml#)

Posted it again here, but no reaction so far.

Edit: I made it because of the following discussion btw.:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429708)</comment></comment>


1 in 4 Hackers is an FBI informer.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/06/us-hackers-fbi-informer?mobile-redirect=false

<comment><USER2> I suppose it would be asking too much to ask for some explanation of how Corley arrived at his "one in four" estimation? And when is a "hacker" a hacker, anyway?</comment>


The Ad Agency of the Future - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/print-edition/agency-future/303798/ <comment><USER2> Quite a bizzarre article. First it starts out trying to discuss change in 'mission' from traditional advertising to relationship engagements and CRM across multiple devices - okay that makes sense...then 6 paragraphs about how there will be fewer employees? Automation to reduce administrative overhead? Where is this going?

> _" No longer is advertising necessarily the best manifestation of > creativity," he said. "Now, [marketers] are looking toward the lens of > innovation and effectiveness in terms of brand-experience creation, and > these new entrants who are becoming very formidable very swiftly."_

Oh, jibberish. Right. Oh well, to each their own.

<comment><USER3> I work in the industry in the industry and I working to change the industry (fixing it from one angle). So I'm going to try to summarize what's going on since Adage manages to be both high level enough but not detail enough at the same time.

Despite all the technology that potentially available to drive marketing / advertising the large agencies have not really changed their own organizations to match this. Sure they've done a bunch of tech acquisitions but you can take a look at how poorly those were done. So today most agencies are still built to handle the model where clients pay fixed percentage on media and then hourly for the people driving it.

Hence agencies were built as a large shops of people, primary fresh out collage grads (lots of jokes about 24 year old media planers) with a few senior people on top.

Clearly technology has changed what's possible esp. in search, programatic (exchange) & automated execution (traditional). This has happen mostly online but the technology has been pushing into meat space where it's possible to do much more specific targeting on cable and folks are working on brining this all to other media. And now technology is making it possible to bring offline conversion datasets to the execution / planning process.

So agencies now need to become less people organizations with lots of people that produce forecast, media plans & reports by hand (happens all the time).

Agencies talk about focusing more on outcomes for the clients. It's a pitch that a lot of folks at the CMO office, obviously it sounds good. But they don't really have means of doing this, and if they do not a scale (automated) as that's not the model they are built for.

Obviously, I'm glossing over lots of details. Think of the money ball analogy... but the agencies in the situation that they right now are full of scouts, and they need to full of quants.

A lot of large clients are waking up to this fact have some of the more forward thinking companies have started taking some pieces in house. In many cases they have their own data about consumers that they can leverage, that already exists in their 4 walls. This leaves a opportunity to a lot of smaller, more specialized shops to come in and offer parts of what the agency offers. One shop can focus on media planing (using market data, real automated analysis) another company can focus on online-offline conversions.

I'm awaiting the day that companies start hiring behavioral economist as their CMO.

<comment><USER2> All that mention of technology and advertising and not touching on Acxiom - not even getting close with a 10 foot pole - kind of undercuts the notion that the article can speak with any authority regarding technology and advertising. I mean, this is just one person's experience from mid-market and Fortune-level experience, but it's a pretty noteworthy oversight. Agencies might still be in the advertising business, but if you want to lead off with tech in advertising, the gigantic elephant in the room is usually a good place to start.

The company that went from clipping newspaper bits to tracking with scary precision is at the forefront of this 'field' and it is, for lack of a better perspective on my end, creepy as all get out and rather dark-stain on the concept of advertising as anything other than trickery and brainwashing.

<comment><USER3> Well, I was responding to the point of the parent and the article. If there's an article on targeting data I might comment if I have something to add.

There's lot of other companies outside of Acxiom that do targeting tracking (it's a large field). Additionally lot of large marketer have their own first party data that they track from notice, engagement, conversion, lifetime etc...

Finally, I feel like the data targeting companies have been so successful in marketing their capabilities that the whole world believes they will be able to unleash Skynet. Reality is much messier, data is much messier and capabilities are much more limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is right on point about automation and intelligent systems. At Cortex ([http://www.meetcortex.com/](http://www.meetcortex.com/)), we are building tools that help remove some of the pain with marking on social media, where you have to; create large amounts of content, publish content in effective way, and report/measure performance. Moreover, we are giving content creators better understanding on what works; colors, keywords, hashtags and what objects in the image -- so they can be better at their job.</comment>


JSFiddle adds gittip button - <AUTHOR> https://www.gittip.com/JSFiddle/

<comment><USER2> I'm not comfortable sharing specifics without their permission, but I will say that JSFiddle is the second-highest source of Gittip widget page views.

I'm especially honored because it's the only thing on their page that's not part of the app! :O

<http://jsfiddle.net/> <\- Makin' it easy for ya. ;^)

<comment><USER2> And for the record, here is their announcement about it (three days ago):

<https://twitter.com/jsfiddle/status/322010718566227968>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope to live in a future one day, where it's socially acceptable for talented scientists, artists, tinkerers, researchers, developers, people and groups of people whose work scales and benefits many thanks to technology/internet, to be completely funded via the likes of Gittip.

That way, they could fully focus 100% on their craft with the love and passion it deserves, without the drain of fixed-schedule 8 hour workdays. And they could afford to publish their work for free, fully open, without being forced to make it worse by applying DRM and selling on a per-copy basis.

I think we're slowly but surely getting there, and it makes me very happy. Cheers. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is a service I use daily, it is and extremely useful app. I am more that happy to support them, please consider donating to them!

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't get why gittip lets me donate "per week" but not a one-time thing. I don't do recurring donations, especially something as often as per week - could totally see myself forgetting about it before the next week.

<comment><USER2> Well, there's plenty of one-time options (PayPal, Kickstarter, Pledgie, ...). Gittip is differentiating on the recurring option.

The goal with Gittip is for people to make a living on it. Bills are recurring, so funding has to be as well. Yes it means that there is some short-term money left on the table, but it also means that the money that _is_ there is relatively stable and predictable over time. Gittip is designed to grow slowly and shrink slowly. The goal is for JSFiddle to be able to truly depend on it.

And the minimum tip amount is $0.25 per week, which is $13 per year: not that much. Note that the minimum charge is $10 (to minimize transaction fees). So if you only tip a quarter we'd charge you $10 every 37 weeks or so.

That said, I expect we'll mix in one-time payments in some form at some point. I've added a +1 for you here:

<https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/5></comment></comment>


Bill Keller - The Twitter Trap - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/magazine/the-twitter-trap.html

<comment><USER2> When Twitter was first out, I had a look at two philosophers known for concision. Quite a lot of the entries in Spinoza's _Ethics_ fit into 140 characters, particularly in the original Latin. Heraclitus was a bit harder to find, but I believe quite a lot of his sayings will also. Wittgenstein did not occur to me then; quite a few of the entries in the Tractatus are well under 140 characters, German or English.

I briefly considered writing a script to tweet snippets of Spinoza, but decided I had better things to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> somewhere between "damn kids, get off my lawn" and "things were better in my day"

i have noticed that whenever i speak about anything, anywhere, there's some guy who always gets up and asks "what if that's bad or wrong?"

this guy just happens to have access to a major bully pulpit.</comment>


Show HN: A home environment sensor from a Raspberry Pi and an e-paper device - <AUTHOR> http://www.visionect-epaper.com/blog/raspberry-pi-e-paper/

<comment><USER2> $330 for a wifi eink display? The server seems pretty neat though. I imagine there is a lot more complexity there than it seems at first glance.

<comment><USER3> I hack electronics as a hobby, and I'm am constantly amazed by the incredible prices of even the simplest screens. I can buy a Nexus 7 that includes a CPU, RAM, video card, SSD, wifi, a battery, and a 7" touchscreen for the same price I can buy a 5.6" non-touch screen at 720p [1]. And no, that doesn't include the battery or any of the tablet hardware. That's just the screen.

There's literally no reason why displays need to be as expensive as they are when a normal person wants to buy them, seeing as how Apple and Google et al have no problem sourcing them for much, much, MUCH less.

[1] [http://www.adafruit.com/products/1666](http://www.adafruit.com/products/1666)

<comment><USER4> Meanwhile, you could buy that Nexus 7 display for only $50 if you could figure out how to connect it to your project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kudos to the web folks at visionext-epaper! The site looks superb and functions perfectly for me despite the fact that I have not enabled javascript for the domain. I can not remember the last time I saw a site that looked and worked so well without requiring javascript.

</comment><comment><USER6> These Cubesensors look awesome. If you're even more into the DIY approach, check out AirPi[1].

[1] [http://airpi.es/](http://airpi.es/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know what kind of sensor can detect levels of pollen in a personal space? Are they available for purchase at a reasonable price?

<comment><USER8> A particulate sensor can be used to cheaply monitor the appropriate size range for pollen. Of course, it just senses light scattering, so other air polluting particulates of a similar size will be indistinguishable. Large particulates greater than 10 - 100 microns in diameter are likely to be pollen in an outdoor environment, but they can also be combustion related particulates. More information can be obtained from sensors that measure light polarization, which may allow one to differentiate pollen from other particulates of similar size.</comment></comment>


Mailbox Is Joining Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.mailboxapp.com/reservations/?p=1#to-grow-even-faster-mailbox-is-joining-dropbox <comment><USER2> GOD DAMNIT NOT AGAIN!

I really do hope that they progress on the path they started instead of just acquiring mailbox for the talent. I know they said that they would but thats what we heard about Sparrow when they were bought by Google and the results sucked.

Good luck to everyone on the mailbox team, I love your product, please don't kill it.

<comment><USER3> Did you not RTFA?

> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, > and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. > Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to > your Dropbox…"

<comment><USER4> To be frank, it's really hard to believe that. They're being acquired, it isn't up to them anymore what happens to Mailbox. They signed the keys away to Drew Houston and the management team at Dropbox. Mailbox dies the moment Drew decides to kill it.

<comment><USER5> it's not going anywhere :)

(actually, come work on it: <https://www.dropbox.com/jobs> :))

<comment><USER6> Slight aside...

Every time someone here responds when their name is mentioned, I think of this scene from "Annie Hall":

Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it!

Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you?

Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country!

Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!

Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!

Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...

[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]

Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!

Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!

Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!

(Sometimes it is here at Hacker News.)

<comment><USER7> Might as well share a link to the clip: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY?t=1m44s>

By the way, I'm Woody Allen.

<comment><USER8> > watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY?t=1m44s

Hmm, I don't think that feature works like that. Try watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY#t=1m44s

<comment><USER7> Right you are. Weird, '?t=' is straight from the share tab on the YouTube page.

<comment><USER9> You can use # or & but not ? because that denotes the start of the query string.

<comment><USER7> I'm aware, I copy pasted the link from YouTube without looking at it. Probably a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beyond all of the complicated integration/feature scenarios people are proposing, what shouldn't be forgotten is the fact that _email is the primary way most people send and receive files_. Combine that with mobile fast becoming the primary computing device for most people, and you have an extremely sensible acquisition.

<comment><USER11> Well said. Pretty easy way for all files you receive to immediately be in your Dropbox, and for Dropbox to either

a. launch an email service that runs off the space in your dropbox, or b. automatically create dropbox folders shared between all recipients of an attachment and automatically set permissions.

<comment><USER12> Step 0: get all of these people to use Dropbox as their email client

<comment><USER13> I', #538,902 on this waiting list so its working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wait. Did we just see a company who still has a waiting list get acquired? Well done.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I signed on at about 900k in front of me in the queue... now that company has been acquired and I've STILL got 180k people in front of me.

Good lord.

<comment><USER16> Haha I was thinking the same thing.. I had 700k when I got in line, still have 375k ahead..

Hopefully the acquisition by Dropbox speeds up the line, maybe?

<comment><USER17> I had to wait about a week to use it.

I used it once, realized it turns my inbox into a todo app, and uninstalled it.

<comment><USER16> Argh, I hope I'm not waiting in line for the same experience.. :-)

I'm still curious to see if I like it (I am an inbox-zero person), so I'll stick it out.. But yeah, I've been in line for 3 weeks now or so, I think...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the promise of the internet. Nimble upstarts competing on a level playing field with huge corporations. A decentralized market without physical agency. More owners and more competition.

Then I read about stuff like this.

<comment><USER19> Well, Dropbox itself is competing "on a level playing field with huge corporations". See: competition from Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, and so on. All companies with comparatively _huge_ amounts of resources.

<comment><USER20> After that forum post where the user claimed Dropbox had leaked their email to spammers, I have severe reservations about giving them the actual credentials to my email account, whether or not the allegations were correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A possible first step towards matching the broad ecosystem of their new chief competitors, Google Drive and Microsoft Skydrive. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them acquire an office app suite next.

<comment><USER22> Are there any viable competitors to Google Docs err Drive and MS Office? Office is the feature powerhouse and Drive is lean and fast service, I haven't seen anything that can be acquired around!

<comment><USER23> I don't find Drive to be particularly lean/fast -- it's been easier for me and my peers to work on content/formatting on Word than email it; Drive's lack of features is certainly not a proxy for being lightweight.

Drive's killer feature, though, is collaboration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "This means not only continuing to scale the service, but also including support for more email providers and mobile devices."

Please, _please_ let this mean that they plan on supporting EAS. Migrating to Google Apps for Business in not an option for me, and everyone and his brother is building fancy IMAP-only email clients, while I'm stuck with the default mail client on my iPhone. I love Mailbox's interface, but I barely get a chance to use it, as my primary email address that 99% of my email goes through is on Outlook.com-hosted email.

<comment> X-Istence The biggest problem with Exchange Active Sync is that to implement it you have to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft. For a lot of smaller developers that simply isn't an option, especially for something they are giving away for free or for a very low price.

Also, EAS is proprietary, whereas IMAP is open. Outlook.com should simply add IMAP support.

<comment><USER25> Check out Davmail -- <http://davmail.sourceforge.net/> \-- turns Exchange into standards.

<comment><USER26> Second that, although I never got anything but the mail to work (no contacts, cal, tasks) and since evolution is a piece of crap (at least the version that comes with FC 18) I had to use thunderbird which doesn't have cal. But it's still worth it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For everyone thinking Mailbox is getting Sparrowfied, there's good news:

 _To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox._

I'm so glad that Mailbox is going to stay alive. It has been just one month since I removed Sparrow and started using Mailbox mostly.

<comment><USER27> Was not the same thing said about Sparrow?

<comment><USER28> No, Google said Sparrow would remain available but not be updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a _very_ clever move by Dropbox.

<comment><USER30> why? do you see huge overlap between file syncing/storage and mobile email?

<comment><USER29> If you look at their foray into photos and the way they talk about their service now, Dropbox is becoming a lifestyle brand focused on your personal data.

Meanwhile, the mobile e-mail client that the Mailbox team built is so cool that it convinced about a million people to let Mailbox store a full copy of their e-mail archive ... in 10 weeks.

That kind of strategic value means it's smart for them to swoop the product and team up RIGHT NOW, even if they had to pay a premium to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel like any communications app, especially e-mail related, that's trying to label itself as "modern" needs to include some support for crypto as a requirement. I hope the Dropbox people push for things like that from Mailbox, given their past security problems.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Not sure if the acquisition makes strategic sense for Dropbox

I do - Dropbox isn't and doesn't want to be just a dumb, syncable file store. First your photos, now your email.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's hilariously easy to skip the line and gain access to the "velvet room" as it is described in this application's plist file. You can even do this entirely on a non-jailbroken device. Tokenless system based entirely on local authentication.

<comment><USER33> Checkout the preferences plist under the application folder on your local device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I hope this means that an Android app will be released too. Not that the gmail app is bad.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm glad it's not Google, Apple or Microsoft.

Here's to a stronger Dropbox and a long-life for Mailbox!

</comment><comment><USER36> "The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. "

Why not do a funding round?

<comment><USER37> As opposed to a funding round, this approach is advantageous:

Financially --

\- Cash out the existing (presumably closely-held) equity holders with 100% of deal proceeds.

"Existentially" --

Reduce execution risk by getting the team access to:

\- Existing battle-tested deployment infrastructure (& devops)

\- Existing pool of engineers that can be assigned to the project, and who are familiar with the infrastructure

\- HR, facilities, logistics, support, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Regardless the reasons they sell themselves. But I still think it's a good idea to join Dropbox since they are really open and they love to create good product instead of trying to get money.

I hope mailbox having the right place to continue growing as a good product.

Furthermore: I love the current startup markets, so many awesome products. But still there are bunch of craps which have new and fancy interfaces but nothing inside. Rather joining the big and create big thing together :)

</comment><comment><USER39> So... Google got Sparrow, Dropbox got Mailbox...

Now that leaves Apple and MS...

I have one hell of a startup app idea. Anybody out there good with objective-c?

<comment> mkr-hn I don't think Microsoft needs help making a mail application.

<comment><USER39> Maybe not. Their WP8 mail app is quite nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Congrats Gentry and team!! If you'd like Gmail + Dropbox attachment management now, just use Attachments.me iPhone app [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/attachments.me-for-gmail- ema...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/attachments.me-for-gmail- email/id446390783?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER41> Google killed sparrow because Gmail is better than sparrow Google din't kill YouTube because YouTube is better than Google videos. Facebook dint kill instagram.

So,I think Dropbox has just acquire mailbox not for killing it but to enter a different domain.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not sure if the acquisition makes strategic sense for Dropbox, but at least I have some confidence that Mailbox wouldn't simply disappear: Dropbox core product has a freemium model, and they are very successful company.

<comment><USER34> It makes sense if they want to compete with Gmail by integrating dropbox and mailbox; providing an alternative to Google Drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Getting a monopoly on the 'box'. Actually, I'd say a startup being acquired by a small company like Dropbox is a better outcome than a startup being consumed into the monolithic companies like Apple or Google.

</comment><comment><USER44> Mailbox, the app I've yet to use gets acquired.

How can an app like Mailbox make you mad? Here is how: I'm still waiting in the queue for over a month now to even try the app. Scarcity is the mental mind hack used to increase demand (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini>)...but for me personally its backfired. If Dropbox's resources can help here, I'm all for it. Good luck.

Also, a note to mailbox web designer, try adding more contrast to your text so I can actually read it.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Acquired before I've even got my invite! :) Still another 276,000 people in front of me. I really hope Dropbox keeps it around (and from the comments that seems to be the case).

</comment><comment><USER45> Android fans take note of how their app is iPhone only at the moment. This is important. In every flamewar people argue that Android is the same essentially as iPhone or better, but there are two HUGE gaps

1\. iOS gets new apps faster. In this case, Mailbox is iOS 2\. Accessories are harder to find for the large gamut of Android-running devices.

(being an Android fan, I have a self-interest in getting companies to release Android apps faster than they currently do)

</comment><comment><USER46> This is perfect, otherwise I would have to wait in line for another three months to get the app. I don't care who owns it if I can't even use the app.

</comment><comment><USER47> I use Mailbox. I like it to do the normal, read/archive thingy fast. But for serious mailing, Sparrow still wins. Aside this, it was clearly normal to see them acquired by other grande company.

Mailbox was free. No business model. Their own business model surely was acquisition. Did you thought they were last to the point of an IPO or charging for their service? Me not.

</comment><comment><USER48> For those who are interested in an alternative service check out Right Inbox. Lets you schedule emails in Gmail, allows tracking emails and setting reminders. <http://www.rightinbox.com/>

</comment><comment><USER49> I just read over the features offered by Mailbox, and I don't see anything that I'm not already getting from using Gmail with the Boomerang plugin. Can anyone who is using Mailbox explain its unique benefits?

<comment><USER49> I was genuinely asking for someone in the community to explain what makes the app unique. I wish that whoever down voted this would have explained his reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Am I the only one who thinks Dropbox isn't very good? I only seem to see positive comments, and that just doesn't make sense to me.

I'm a premium Dropbox user with multiple terabytes of storage. (We deal with large files that have to be shared among many users widely dispersed.) I've been using it for a while now. When dealing with large files, it's slow, clunky, and restrictive. You have to use the desktop client to upload files of any appreciable size, and then you get zero feedback on the file's progress. I just don't see how $3,500 a year for that is better than the cost of an old- school FTP server.

I'm curious if any of you are in a similar situation but have had a better experience.

<comment><USER51> It's not good for your use case apparently. Your use case isn't the same as most people's use case. Simple :)

<comment><USER50> Yeah, I was just kind of curious to hear what other premium users were experiencing. I assume anyone who goes premium has a need like mine. Oh well. Lesson learned: Don't talk smack about a Y Combinator company on Y Combinator. The proprietors have a magical downvote button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How can this ever be a good fit? MailBoxApp is a radical take on email while DropBox is gunning for the main stream.

</comment><comment><USER53> Off topic: messages "from the team" on the mailbox website looks like a pre- orchestrated marketing campaign :)

</comment><comment><USER54> So, do I get to jump the queue now?

</comment><comment><USER55> Acquihire? Not acquihire? Can't decide, this blog post is decidedly too party spirited.

<comment><USER56> not acquirehire. pretty clear

>>To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> What's going to happen to Orchestra? (The same company is behind Mailbox)

</comment><comment><USER58> Cloud storage provider wants to do more than cloud storage. WARNING.

</comment><comment><USER59> what's going to happen to orchestra? i actually use it all the time, almost as much as mailbox -- is this going over to dropbox or will it be _gasp_ deadpooled?

</comment><comment><USER60> Congratulations guys!

</comment><comment><USER61> Great news...

</comment><comment><USER62> How was Mailbox profitable?

<comment><USER63> Since when did that matter? ;)

<comment><USER62> I was just wondering. They have a well made product, nice website, but the app is free.

I can see how it would be a good thing between Dropbox's legs but how could it be profitable on its own?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> They sell themselves really quick.

</comment><comment><USER65> Sometimes I wish companies would just focus on what they do well instead of trying to expand forever, wedging themselves into every niche of your life and watering down the utility of their offerings.</comment>


Here is our PR plan, feel free to copy it - <AUTHOR> http://launchdiary.postagon.com/294c451f3

<comment><AUTHOR> If anybody have any questions, just ask and I'll answer.</comment>


Apply to 50 Schools? Why Not? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/12/why-are-colleges-so-selective/more-college-applications-means-rising-selectivity

<comment><USER2> That article is useless.</comment>


How to Complain About TSA's Invasive Screening Procedures - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/stand-against-tsa-invasive-security-procedures <comment><USER2> Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Awww.eff.org%2Fdeeplinks%2F2010%2F11%2Fstand- against-tsa-invasive-security-procedures&btnG=Search)

</comment><comment><USER3> The EFF seems down? <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.eff.org/>

I expect the EFF has a pretty reliable infrastructure considering their position on a lot of internet trends. Anyone have any speculation about this?</comment>


A Reverse Engineering Crash Course on X86 Assembly: Part 1 Intro to Registers - <AUTHOR> http://infoseclina.blogspot.com/2017/06/reverse-engineering-guide-on-x86.html <comment><USER2> Bit short even for an intro. And it doesn't mention the most important thing which is what physically a register is. Or that you can access parts of it. And how malware and obfuscated or optimized apps don't care about customary usage.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice article!</comment>


Trust Me, I'm Lying - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/trust-me-im-lying.html <comment><USER2> Ask yourself:

-is it true?

-is it useful?

If the answer is no to either question, just skip it

<comment><USER3> Presumably you're using those two questions to determine whether you should say aloud a thought in your head. The problem is that "is it useful?" is pretty much semantically the same as "should I say it?"

<comment><USER2> There are useful statements that should be avoided.

Some statements are true but not useful. Like telling your grandmother that she looks like an old hag. Some statements are useful but not true. Like pretending to be sick to avoid school. The damage from the latter can be more subtle but runs deeper.

Things that are both useful -and- true, those are worth saying.

It isn't always easy to tell what is useful, so it's best to rely on your intention. It's good enough to mean the best. When uncertain about usefulness, err on the side of being truthful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think in the modern business climate there is an emotion around wanting to do the right thing, and it could be something of a appealing idea to latch on to always being truthful, or radically honest. However, I think this is an easy way out, for several reasons, most notably that honesty is not the same as fact, and I would say facts are much more valuable than your honesty, and ideally have nothing to do with you personally.

When talking about opinions I think many people can't help but be absolutely honest when absolutely necessary, too, and this kind of honesty is different than say "tough love" or even at times "straightforwardness." This is the continuum of communication, I'm trying to speak to, and perhaps radical honesty is a part of it. But if everyone were radically honest or straight forward I just simply have to lie or be subtle or sarcastic or cynical or just be silent to get any attention, or at least that's how I feel I might react to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this posted on hackernews?

<comment><USER6> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Someone found it interesting?

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that link.

I'm just surprised that this article is near the top of the front page, next to Apple, John Carmack, Android ported to C#, and an OpenBSD release.

Seems to me that a few writer's articles always shoot to the top of this site, regardless of topic. No disrespect intended towards those authors.

<comment><USER6> I share your sentiments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: StackHut – Deploy your code without a server - <AUTHOR> http://stackhut.com

<comment><USER2> I still think that your description for the service is not very clear and needs more clarification. BTW: I have submitted you before here ;)</comment>


Node.js and Ethereum seed starter project - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CelsiusNetwork/EthereumNodeProxyViaAuth0 <comment><AUTHOR> Ethereum Node Proxy via Auth0 (ENPA) allows developers to use Ethereum Node in order to connect web3 or use RPC calls directly to Ethereum Node which is protected by Auth0 Authorization</comment>


About the security content of iOS 7.0.2 - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5957 Also reintroduces a greek keyboard option for passcode entry <comment><USER2> Largely off topic, but I wonder if there's something they can do about the CCC Touch ID hack in software. Anyone here know enough about how the hardware works to make a meaningful comment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Relevant : [https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2013/09/23/why-i-hacked- apples...](https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2013/09/23/why-i-hacked-apples- touchid-and-still-think-it-is-awesome/)

Quoting from this article,"Hacking TouchID relies upon a combination of skills, existing academic research and the patience of a Crime Scene Technician.

It is certainly not something your average street thief would be able to do, and even then, they would have to get lucky. Don't forget you only get five attempts before TouchID rejects all fingerprints requiring a PIN code to unlock it. However, let's be clear, TouchID is unlikely to withstand a targeted attack. A dedicated attacker with time and resources to observe his victim and collect data, is probably not going to see TouchID as much of a challenge. Luckily this isn't a threat that many of us face.

TouchID is not a "strong" security control. It is a "convenient" security control. Today just over 50 percent of users have a PIN on their smartphones, and the number one reason people give for not using the PIN is that it's inconvenient. TouchID is strong enough to protect users from casual or opportunistic attackers (with one concern I will cover later on) and it is substantially better than nothing."</comment></comment>


Foursquare Raises $35M More, Says It Has 45M Registered Users - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/foursquare-series0d/ <comment><USER2> Foursquare has served different purposes to-me over its evolution. Initially it was fun for the gamification aspect. I used it more than any other time. That eventually grew old, along with the privacy sacrificed in exchange for negligible returned value. Then, I used it to receive sponsored discounts. This was only an occasional use-case, but if you shopped at a store, and had your AMEX synced with Foursquare, you got a discount. AMEX seemed to take that concept over and now provides discounts for using your cards without needing to check-in, so that use-case disappeared. Now - I use it extremely rarely as a substitute for what something like Yelp does. I no-longer check-in, and rarely use the app. Some of my friends still religiously check-in ... and I guess it's neat to see those popup ... but I'm not sure how they monetize their 45 million registered users if their usage trend resembles anything similar to my own.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a reason behind them not mentioning the amount of active users.

<comment><USER4> A couple hundred thousand, maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surprised to see that it has now raised a total of $106 million.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare)

<comment><USER6> They've been around for almost 5 years now, so it's not too surprising. Not like they're a brand new startup.

<comment><USER7> They're also into mining some of the "data exhaust". Monetizing this turns them into something much bigger than a social checkin company.

Here's a presentation given at Data Driven New York. [http://vimeo.com/79911529](http://vimeo.com/79911529)

<comment><USER8> > They're also into mining some of the "data exhaust". Monetizing this turns > them into something much bigger than a social checkin company.

Location data changes very quickly: new places open and close, popularity waxes and wanes, and demographics of neighborhoods change unpredictably. Foursquare's location data is only as good as its freshness, so without a large pool of active users, there is no "data exhaust".

<comment><USER7> This is and, not or.

But it did sound like check in growth was tapering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly frustrated Foresquare user here. I'm a little confused about its usage and was wondering if some of the more avid users here could clarify a few things for me.

When I go to a restaurant, I have 3 separate actions that occur at 3 different times during my meal: 1 - Upon entering a restaurant, I want to "check in". 2 - When I get my meal, and it looks great, I want to post a photo. 3 - When I'm done eating, I want to leave a rating and a comment.

It seems that Foresquare's check-in is a one-time only action. I can't "update" my checkin in its various stages.

I don't use it as a social app as it's intended (since none of my friends use it here in Sydney). I use it as a tool to discover and rate restaurants.

<comment><USER10> You can update your check-in. If you simply check-in to the same location (but with a photo, comment, etc), it will automatically merge with and update your previous checkin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can 4sq help track where taxis are? Or even just friends or people on their way to meet you? That'd be killer. Combine that with cryptocoin payments and you'd have something that could compete with Uber or some taxi apps.

Would be good if it could predict meeting times.. how long for A,B,C to meet with D according to certain parameters (time of day, mode of transport)? .. C has lowest travel time. How long for A to get from point 1 to point 2? What's the probability of A being close to point 3 in the next week according to prior travel? How close? When is best time to go from A to B this week?

Also tracking fleets of cars/trucks.. create logistics apps, track travel times, optimal routes.

<comment><USER12> try an app called Twist

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know if they have made any real money yet?

Note - From this deck[1] it looks like their "mobile mass market mom" (female 25-54) could potentially be the breadwinner. I desperately want to start a company that serves this market - loads of disposable income, time, and actively social.

[1]-[http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-pitch-deck-reveals- exa...](http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-pitch-deck-reveals-exactly-how- foursquare-plans-to-make-money-2013-4)

<comment><USER14> They're starting to make moves to. They recently overhauled the app to make it a lot less fun and social, and it has more ads now and the focus seems to have changed form fun to a yelp alternative, as others have pointed out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> hooray! So happy to see them make it this far, great job guys! Every iteration has been getting better and better.

</comment><comment><USER16> any clue how many active users monthly?

</comment><comment><USER17> I've literally never heard of foursquare in real life. Nobody I know uses it or has used it.

<comment><USER18> Do you live in an urban area? Foursquare has been commonly talked about by the non-tech-savvy people I know for years now. I'd actually say moreso than any social service other than Twitter and Facebook, over the past 3-4 years.

<comment><USER19> I'm a 20 year old attending college in NYC. FourSquare is considered a running joke, like LinkedIn.

<comment><USER20> When you graduate, there's a possibility that LinkedIn may not still be considered a joke, for better or worse.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Commands like cp, mv, mkdir, etc. on multiple files and directories. - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/faaspw?i=1&p=1&q=author%3Amnazim&t[]=mnazim

<comment><USER2> > this nifty little feature in all unix filesystem related commands

Actually, it's a feature of the shell, not of the commands themselves. It surely works in bash and probably in zsh as well, but I'm not sure about (t)csh.</comment>


Ask HN: What does GPA indicate of a person? - <AUTHOR>

What does it say about a person with a 4.0 or GPA v. a person with a 2.5 GPA? <comment><USER2> All a GPA indicates is the average grades that person got. But that is not the same thing as ability, skills, motivation, passion, etc. Most classes aren't really that similar to the actual work in the industry either, so it's not even a good indicator of probability of work success.

If this is for a hiring type decision, I think what projects a person has done is more important than their GPA.

</comment><comment><USER3> GPA is useful when curated with the 'reputation' of a particular college or university. For example, "Person P scored 3.25 from XYZ college, which is more impressive than person Q who got 3.75 from ABC college". This reputation information is usually known to those who have interviewed several years worth of interns and entry-level hires.

It usually means that P from XYZ has the discipline to undergo the grind, so at the minimum one can expect some business value from that discipline. It doesn't say whether Q is incapable of the same discipline, just that P is a safer bet. Outlier E&OE.

<comment><USER4> You have no evidence for that, because there is no evidence for that.

Google tried to find indicators for success at Google. One quote from a NYT interview:

> One of the things we've seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.'s > are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no > correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there's a > slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript > and G.P.A.'s and test scores, but we don't anymore, unless you're just a few > years out of school. We found that they don't predict anything.

> What's interesting is the proportion of people without any college education > at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have > 14 percent of the team made up of people who've never gone to college.

>After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You're also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.

> Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial > environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they're > conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when > I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking > for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it's much more > interesting to solve problems where there isn't an obvious answer. You want > people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

Even in your own scenario, would you prefer someone who graduated with a 3.25 and triple majored in physics, business, and history, or would you prefer someone with a 3.75 who majored in business?

<comment><USER3> The person who went to a 'high reputation' college is more likely to have had better peers, and so more likely to have learned more by thermalization.

Also, software jobs are unique - one can be effective in a software job without knowing much about computer science. Jobs such as designing transistors or aircraft require strong basics, of the type that is usually acquired by undergraduate rigor. I doubt if a situation would exist where 14% of aero engineers at Boeing or Airbus never went to college.

<comment><USER4> The topic is about GPA, not choice of college.

Where is your evidence that "a 3.25 GPA from XYZ college, is more impressive than person Q who got 3.75 from ABC college"?

As we all know now from Moneyball, long-held views can be wildly ungrounded in reality, so why should I believe "those who have interviewed several years worth of interns and entry-level hires" are any better at judging competence than, say, professional baseball scouts in the pre-Moneyball era choosing someone based on how sexy his girlfriend looked?

Or any better than orchestras before the introduction of blind auditions in the 1970s/1980s. Before then, female musicians were 5% of the top orchestras. By 1997 (see 'Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians') they were 25%.

Or any better than the hiring practices where the only difference in a resume was a "white" name vs. a "black" name. The resumes with a black name required more attempts to get a callback (see [http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html) )

Unfounded unconscious bias pervades everything. Why should I assume that there's no unfounded bias in your observation, given that all attempts at quantifying what you believe to be true have failed to find a long-term predictor of success?

Also, there are plenty of jobs where one doesn't need to know much about the underlying science in order to be successful. Programming is not unique in that regard. One can be an excellent chef without knowing "rigorous" food chemistry, an excellent athlete without a degree in sports medicine or biology, an excellent writer without a degree in English, an excellent musician without knowing much about pressure waves, an excellent CEO without a business degree or training in economics.

<comment><USER3> One example i can speak to is analog chip design.

In a more civilized age, an analog hiring manager chose students based on some mysterious Force, mentored them - and they worked in that company for a long time, often on several generations of the same chip.

The scenario today is different. Hiring managers designing a chip product are in a prisoner's dilemma situation - they follow the 'hire from XYZ school' formula precisely because they don't want the risk of a "contrarian hire" to be found useless for the current chip tapeout.

The XYZ universities that have higher 'analog chip design reputation' also offer more immersion: star faculty, elective courses, exposure to tools and labs, sending project chip designs for fab in a foundry shuttle. An XYZ hire - even with lower GPA - can be put to productive use immediately, no learning curve with tools etc. The learning happened in school, talking with other students while doing projects.

Contrast with a student from ABC school that offers only one proforma analog course, has better grades but needs at least a quarter to ramp up. The short- term costs in this field of statistically proving the lack of a long-term correlation may be too high - no matter the quantitative evidence from other fields such as software.

<comment><USER4> I think I read a different interpretation of your original post than you suggested, but I think you have the wrong emphasis, to the point of distraction. You talked about the "'reputation' of a particular college or university" when you probably meant "'reputation' of a specific degree program for producing graduates with the training needed for a specialized field."

This is a much more constrained and much less actionable qualifier.

To express it in more words, I thought in your original statement you were saying something like "Harvard has a good overall reputation so a 3.25 from there is better than a 3.75 from a school with a (sufficiently) lower reputation, _all else being equal_."

Now you're saying something like "Missouri University of Science and Technology's EE program has a good reputation in vacuum power engineering, so someone with a 3.25 from that program is better than a 3.75 from the EE program at Harvard, _all else being equal_ , if you need someone with vacuum power engineering skills."

I assumed you implied an " _all else being equal_ ", because it's meaningless to say that someone with a music degree from Stanford is a great hire when you're looking for someone to work with x-ray crystallography, just because Stanford has a great biophysics program with lots of world-famous x-ray crystallography work being done there.

No, I think you should be saying "if you have two candidates, both with EE degrees and similar coursework, then the reputation of their corresponding EE programs should also be factor, and not just GPA."

But your scenario just now has the student from XYZ (the better school) also taking more courses in the specific field of interest, while the person from ABC only took a single pro-forma course.

So I'll invert it. Let's say that student X from college ABC, which has a second quartile ranking as an EE program, graduates with triple major in EE (with a focus in analog chip design), physics, and English, with a 3.75 GPA.

While student A from college XYZ (which has the best analog chip design training reputation in the world), graduates with an English degree with a 3.25 GPA, and a EE minor, with a single analog circuits class. (Student A came in thinking to be a EE grad, then in sophomore year switched to English.)

Who would you rather hire - the student with a higher GPA and with more training and interest, but from a lesser reputation program, or the student with a lower GPA and not much interest or training, but from the school with the higher reputation program?

BTW, the hiring manager is not in a 'prisoner's dilemma situation'. That requires two people who can make a choice, where the payoff matrix depends on both choices, but there's only one here. The scenario you describe is much closer to the FUD of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment."

<comment><USER3> The inverted scenario got me thinking. I would prefer to hire the triple major with interest and training, putting interest ahead of training.

And you're right - the hiring manager isn't a case of prisoner's dilemma. Thanks for calling that out.

I've learnt several new things from this discussion, especially the references to scientific studies of selection bias. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the absence of other data, approximately nothing.</comment>


I'll Give You My Encryption Key When You Pry It from My Cold, Dead Hands - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/3O2epws <comment><USER2> God bless America.</comment>


NYT: Designing a Faster, Simpler Workflow to Build and Share Analytical Insights - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/timesopen/faster-simpler-workflow-analytical-insights-ae6c7055e187 <comment><USER2> Ah! This is me! Happy to take questions here or via email (email@example.com).

<comment><AUTHOR> Any plans to open-source BQQL from the NYT? This looks like a really simple/lightweight DAG runner!

<comment><USER2> I'd love to, but no plans currently. It was originally a hack week project that just turned large scale. We're looking into broadening the scope a bit first: adding parent/child relationships so there's better query dependency support, and long run looking to tie into AirFlow so analysts are using this UI but really creating AirFlow jobs in the background.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple App Store's market share dropped to 59% at the end of Q1 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.research2guidance.com/apple%E2%80%99s-app-store-market-share-dropped-to-59-at-the-end-of-q1-2011/

<comment><USER2> Right, the number of app stores increased by 217% and so the one store (or two?) belonging to Apple lost share of the market. Not a very illuminating statistic.

I bet they are still selling more apps than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is just to drive page views. The website sells investment reports, it has a ticker across the page with fake recommendations.

<comment><USER4> I suspect more than 90% of the articles on HN are either to drive pageviews/sell someone something. Your first sentence and "The website sells [blank]" could apply to almost every website. But there is content to be discussed.</comment></comment>


European Parliament Calls for Investigation of Secret CIA Torture Sites - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/06/08/european-parliament-calls-for-investigation-of-secret-cia-torture-sites/ <comment><USER2> _The resolution named Lithuania, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom_

I wonder why the left out Romania. The former president even confirmed publicly that he allowed his country to host these sites:

[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/romania-president- admi...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/romania-president-admits- allowing-cia-site-150427140351035.html)

<comment><USER3> Also all the countries who knowingly let the rendition flights flt through them, including the UK and Ireland</comment></comment>


Puppet and Brain – Simple UE4 blueprint clone for kids to learn game programming - <AUTHOR> https://puppetandbrain.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a very focused platform for kids to learn coding for games.</comment>


Navigenics, 23andMe slammed in government report - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_15580695 <comment><USER2> _In one case, Navigenics called a donor's risk of prostate cancer above average, while 23andMe and deCODE considered his risk average and Pathway judged it to be below average, the report said._

 _In another instance, a donor had a family history of heart disease, the report said, "yet all four companies predicted that she was at average risk for having a heart attack."_

Both of these examples are incredibly weak evidence. You need statistics to find the accuracy of these products, not anecdotes. Anyway, your genes are a more accurate gauge of disease risk than family history. When a doctor asks about family history, they would prefer to take a look at your genome. It's easy to have a family history of heart attack while having an average risk yourself. If your ancestors had typical genes, but lived a different lifestyle that caused them to be more prone to heart attack, they'd have heart attacks. Hell, they could just be unlucky.

<comment><USER3> > Anyway, your genes are a more accurate gauge of disease risk than family > history. When a doctor asks about family history, they would prefer to take > a look at your genome.

This is not currently true, though in the far future it will be. Modern genetics has been slammed (unfairly, I think) for the fact that your genetics do not increase discrimination when compared to models including family history. In other words, for virtually every human disease, family history is a better predictor of risk than is your genetic profile. I stand to benefit personally and professionally when genetic risk overtakes family history, but it simply hasn't yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about Navigenics but 23andMe clearly states in multiple places on their website, that their service isn't a medical diagnosis and it may be prone to error.

As acangiano already posted, they obviously don't hold 'holistic' products to the same standard. I wonder what the government wants from them.

</comment><comment><USER5> > were blasted by investigators from the U.S. Government Accountability Office > for drawing unsupportable conclusions

> from the gene samples they analyzed and making health predictions that > didn't always jibe with their customers' actual medical conditions.

I wish they held doctors, and others practicing pseduo-medicine, to the same standards.

<comment><USER6> How are the doctors practicing pseudo-medicine?

<comment><USER7> Over here in China, as you might expect, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is quite popular. But after spending a year teaching in a TCM provincial level university, and talking to a number of the lecturers is it even real? A good few of the lecturers have been disciplined for complaining that TCM is for want of a better term "a load of crap".

If the people teaching & practicing it think it's snake oil what does that say about it.

And why is it called Traditional Chinese Medicine, why not just call it medicine if it works?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Response from 23andme:

[http://spittoon.23andme.com/2010/07/23/gao-studies- science-n...](http://spittoon.23andme.com/2010/07/23/gao-studies-science-non- scientifically/#more-6936)

<comment><USER9> Wow. That was remarkably polite given how unprofessional the original report was.

<comment><USER10> They don't have much of a choice but to defer. Political officials are notoriously vindictive. If 23andMe released a scathing response, it would be taken personally by some power hungry politico would make it his personal agenda to destroy the company.

The only industry I can think of that basically told government "Go fuck yourselves" was wall street. Even Big Oil panders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great, lets ban all information not approved by the state.</comment>


MySQL vs No/NewSQL (presentation slides) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/mattaslett/mysql-vs-nosql-and-newsql-survey-results-13073043

<comment><AUTHOR> As always, slides without the accompanying presentation lack some context, but there is interesting data within.

MySQL and its progeny are included, along with traditional and non-traditional alternatives.</comment>