Hn Downvote notes - <AUTHOR> I propose a "reason for down vote" feature to be added to hn.
It should be optional.
The reason won't be part of the discussion thread. A small button close to the comment can link to the for the down vote.
Why add this?
People who get down voted (esp noobs to the community) have no idea why they were. As a result can't figure out how to change our avoid such in the future.
Also trigger happy down voters might get to think carefully about WHY before they do.
Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, bullying...
This would be better for not just community but for the internet as a whole. <comment><USER2> I disagree completely.

Any "feature" that encourages people to spend more energy thinking about the reasons for being down voted is just promoting whinging and self-absorbed discontent. (Which, a: no one wants to see, and b: is bad for the people going through it!)

I do feel that down votes should not be used for disagreement, but the practical matter of fact is that they are and will be, both because pg endorses the idea, and because people are people. If they have a negative response to reading something, and a down arrow is convenient, it will be used.

Downvotes are not punishment. They just mean someone didn't like what you wrote, but couldn't be arsed to respond. Maybe what you wrote didn't deserve a response, maybe they were confused, maybe the topic is incredibly important to you but not to them. Who cares? We're adults, ja?

As an alternative, I wouldn't be disappointed if the threshold for greying out was reduced to -3 or so. And full death at -10?

And for new users who might not know why they're being downvoted, how about a link to the rules next to any comment of yours that is score-negative? HN already puts an orange star next to your comments, so the pages are dynamic at least to that extent.

Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility. I upvote any greyed comment that is respectful, coherent, and relevant.

<comment><USER3> > Personally, I use downvotes exclusively for hostility

IMO, noobs might think HN community is hostile & leave. Not many noobs would ask for reason, if they feel intimidated - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179609)

<comment><USER4> _> IMO, noobs might think HN community is hostile & leave._

I believe the parent was referring to downvoting comments that are hostile in tone, not using downvoting as an outlet for his own hostility.

<comment><USER5> Tone policing is a form of hostility, too.

<comment><USER2> Well, yes, then I am intolerant of aggressive behaviour and take action to suppress it and its spread.

The simple logic is that hostility obscures the writer's meaning, invites reactive hostility, and pollutes the conversation. I can see no reason to promote it.

Slow down, try again without invective, be civil. It works better.

We are not the powerless disenfranchised citizens of a dictatorial state with no other means of expression. Some of us might be, actually, but not in this setting.

<comment><USER5> Tone policing disenfranchises minority views, period. Doesn't matter whether the context is social justice or database performance; Unless the tone is beyond well-known bounds (e.g. is abusive, flippant, way off-topic, etc.) I don't think it is generally constructive.

Edit: I think we're talking past each other on where "tone policing" becomes regular old moderation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather than something complex like this can we get the down and up vote arrows separated? Something simple like putting the arrows on opposite sides of the user's name would be fine. This will stop fat fingered people like me from accidentally down voting a post when I am reading on a mobile device.

<comment><USER7> This is only a problem because you can't modify your vote. On Reddit, you can change your vote any time before the thread is archived.

<comment><USER6> It is a problem even if you could modify your vote as a lot of the time I am not sure if I have up voted or down voted a post.

I love HN and its low fi design, but this is the one thing that I think takes away from the community spirt here. Intent should always be clear.

<comment><USER8> You could tell from which arrow got disabled by your vote.

<comment><USER9> But both arrows disappear when you vote.

[edit] Or are you suggesting a way in which the site could be modified to reflect your vote? In that case yeah, I think that would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The trick to avoiding downvotes is avoid to commenting on touchy unpopular topics. What is touchy, well you will know that once you get a few downvotes. Such topics brooke no argument.

Well it has the intended effect of people self-censoring and ensuring homogeneous thinking within HN.

Many downvotes are just when people disagree with a view instead of the post not advancing the discussion.

Anytime I see a downvoted post, I upvote it unless it is really beyond the pale. I suggest those who don't like the irrational downvoting to do the same.

One solution to discourage downvoting for disagreeing is that that downvoting to take effect only after say 3 downvotes have accrued. That means atleast 3 people thought a post didn't advance the discussion.

PS : this is a throwaway, learnt from past experiences

<comment><USER11> A few days ago I posted about some feature X a company was building for product Y of another company.

One of the first comments was from someone who was excited that this feature was available or at least will be usable in foreseeable time. He got downvoted a gray fast. And one reply said in a very short form that there is no X for Y.

I said to him that the title of the post was "X for Y" and got downvoted to -3 points.

And why all this? Because 1 other person tricked people into thinking that the project was abandoned. Nobody checked if he was right. I myself apologized to the other readers.

When I checked the project's mailing list I was surprised. The project was alive with the founder of the company helping users to download and install X. It's still in early development and a bit complicated. You need the right version of everything at this moment. And you need to have an account to access some parts of Y needed to compile.

I asked the one who said the project is abandoned why he believes this despite an active mailing list. He made something up that wasn't topic in April or May on the mailing list. And said this was a sign of an abandoned project.

Until then the whole post vanished from the front page and nobody cared anymore.

Why should anybody care for the reasons you get downvoted when you can't change anything about if for most of the time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the more pertinent question is: why do we downvote?

If the answer is to signal to others that the comment is not worth reading (by greying it out, dropping it down in the rankings and eventually preventing people from reading it at all) then the reason is sort of immaterial.

On the other hand, if the goal is to adjust behaviour I feel like a downvote (including a downvote-with-reason) is needlessly punitive. Consider the dubious value of a bad-performance-review-with-pay-cut as a behaviour adjustment tool.

While there might have been a time when you could politely correct someone's behaviour in the comments, as HN grows it starts to feel less like a quiet word and more like calling someone out on stage. For that reason I'm very reluctant to do it.

It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary, but if there is I would definitely use it.

Maybe you could let the recipient of a private comment make it public? And it's not possible to reply to a private comment otherwise? That would be a way of enforcing a certain don't-say-anything-you-wouldn't-want-repeated niceness in private comments, and also prevent them from turning into a mechanism for shadow discussion that takes away from the main comment thread.

Anyway, I definitely agree there is something missing in the HN toolkit for this kind of problem and I hope we can find a way to improve it.

<comment><USER13> >It would be good if there was some way to privately reply to a comment. (Essentially your proposal minus the necessity of downvoting). I'm not sure if there's any way to do that without it being a vector for abuse or disrupting public commentary

I have my email address in my HN profile. I take it you wouldn't do that because you believe it makes you too vulnerable to abuse?

Will you please help me understand what you mean by "disrupting public commentary"? Maybe give an example.

<comment><USER12> Ah. I meant more that if I was a troll and I had the ability to comment privately, I could say nasty things to you in my private comment and nobody else would be able to see them (except admins, I suppose, who would quickly become overloaded).

It's a good point that I could email feedback privately. I think that would be a difficult thing to establish in the general case because it's not expected behaviour, which makes it seem more significant (oh my god, this guy disliked my comment so much that he decided to email me about it?). It would also be more effort, and some people (especially newbies, I would think), don't include contact details in their profile.

By disrupting public commentary I mean that the established norm on HN is that, mostly, if you have something to say you say it to the group. If it was possible to comment privately perhaps it would detract from that group discussion because people are shy or would rather their comment not be subject to scrutiny. The end result could be a tragic migration of the interesting conversations in HN comments from public to private. That's the "shadow discussion" problem I mentioned later.

That's the particular reason I suggested making private comments impossible to reply to, so they don't become an alternate competing venue for discussion. I think the recipient being able to make the comment public would also help act as a balance against shy commenters making perfectly good public comments private.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for your reply.

I was unable to figure out a way to send you a private message.

There's a link in your profile to a personal web site, but I could not find any contact info on it.

There's a link to your account on Keybase, but 5 minutes of exploration of the Keybase service did not reveal a way to use Keybase to send you a message.

So, I'm curious as to whether it is your intention that a random HN reader such as myself cannot figure out how to send you a private message or whether I'm missing something obvious, or something.

<comment><USER12> Maybe not obvious - I must have just forgotten to add it!

You can email me at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you consistently have no idea why you got downvoted, then HN might not be the place for you. Learn quickly to adapt, start lurking more, or find another community without high standards for replies. If you don't read the community guidelines [1] and then complain about negative karma you are to be avoided.

If I did not get downvoted for my very first flame-y, half-assed or dumb replies, then I would have continued making them.

Wickedness and cruelty is forcing low standards upon a community and sucking away all the fun.

With downvoting comes a little responsibility: to not only reward good posts, but lower the visibility of posts that do not contribute to the quality or enjoy-ability of HN. That is why you need 500 upvotes to get downvote functionality.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER15> That is great in theory, but in practice you get a lot of flack if you like Javascript or think Universal Basic Income is a bad idea. You get this flack regardless of the quality of your arguments.

Hn definitely has a hivemind.

<comment><USER16> It's very similar to Reddit in a lot of ways. Say _one_ negative thing about the government and you can expect a lot of downvotes.

<comment><USER17> Wait what? Just to check: Are you saying that people on HN can't say anything bad about the US government without risking a lot of downvotes?

<comment><USER16> Yes. It's not the case every single time. I've been upvoted for negative comments about the government but I have to be much more indirect about it. If I'm blatant about it, I get downvoted to hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Almost anyone with a logged in account can upvote comments. There is a karma threshold to downvoting. Thus, an unfairly downvoted post is not a failure of the downvote system but a failure of everyone else to provide corrective upvotes.

<comment><USER18> This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem.

But the entire concept of startup culture actively embraces the hive- mentality/cool-kids-know-best mindset so I doubt the actual problem will ever be fixed.

But sure, keep posting the same stockholm-esque defensive comments.

<comment><USER17> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007027)

> Strictly speaking a vote does affect someone's karma. But it doesn't cause > their karma to be net decreased as a result of posting a comment unless you > downvote the comment below 1, which most people don't do lightly. I think of > the up and downvoting as a collaboration to determine how much additional > karma someone should get for posting a new comment.

> This is a band-aid solution to a widely acknowledged problem.

It's an easy solution, and the only solution currently available. The fact it doesn't work just proves me right: the problem isn't just with people downvoting comments for disagreement; the problem involves other people not upvoting unfairly downvoted comments.

<comment><USER18> > The fact it doesn't work just proves me right

I didn't say your "solution" won't work, I said it's a bandaid.

Maybe it wasn't clear what I meant by "bandaid solution". Let me explain a literal example:

I once cut my knuckle __very __badly with a cheap mandolin slicer. I didn 't realise at the time, but there was basically a chunk of my finger - about the size of a very large pea - missing, and because my knuckle was bent at the time it was __deep __. Because the blade was so ridiculously sharp, it wasn 't really very painful, and due to the blood I couldn't see how deep it actually was, so I put a band-aid on it and didn't think about it.

Three days later a doctor had to use silver nitrate to cauterise the wound, as it immediately started bleeding profusely whenever the pressure from the bandaid was removed.

That is what I mean by "bandaid solution" \- you're not solving the problem, merely covering up the issue and trying to ignore it.

Upvoting any and all non-offensive comments simply to counter any possible errant down votes defeats the purpose of having votes at all - I then have to choose between keeping the conversation open and honest, and "supporting" comments I actively agree with.

As a side-note, I strongly suggest against using a cheap mandolin __OR __having a wound cauterised with silver nitrate. I 've had entire toenails removed, and part of the nailbed scraped away (it's as horrible as it sounds) as a child, and that hurt less than the cauterisation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Slashdot was/is good in this regard. You don't upvote and downvote, you give a reason, like "Interesting", "Troll", "Offtopic", "Funny".

<comment><USER20> Slashdot had (it's pretty dead now, I guess) meta-moderation, which worked very well. I.e. you could vote on whether a particular rating and reason were appropriate in your opinion or not (with my 4-figure user-ID I often got 15 meta-moderation points to "spend" this way).

<comment><USER6> You are showing your age when reminiscing about having a 4 digit slashdot ID :)

<comment><USER21> "Flashing" your age ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like downvoted comments. I always pick up a couple of them when reading the comments to get a view of the people who think outside the norm. Sometimes they are genuinely stupid, but sometimes you get very interesting remarks on things which the "established norm" dislikes.

<comment><USER23> This is something very similar to the Seniority in government system.

The one who been there longer has more power, even they do not have brilliant idea nor ability to perform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't have issues with the vote system. I always understand why users up/downvote me and they usually describe at great length their point of view.

On the other hand, _Reddit_ has an awful downvote culture.

For example [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526798) I stand by my point, but I can see why a few users thought of my comment as inappropriate.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have never been baffled by a down vote. I've been surprised that something was downvoted. When I am surprised, I try to figure out why and what contributed to it that was in my control and what wasn't.

Usually, I get downvoted for xkcd 360 style wrestling the pig in mud. Sometimes I'm just factually wrong. Sometimes I'm just being a mean or stupid or just expressing a binary opinion...though those are less and less common, I think.

The long term solution has been trying to improve my writing, so that it better communicates my intent. The work of figuring out the reason for Downvotes is a feature not a bug...the exercise [literally and metaphorically] makes my writing stronger.

As for new users, I think The current system is useful for HN as a business unit. HN is part of YC. It's helpful to its selection process. Karma is a bit of a proxy for product market fit. Upvotes and Downvotes and novotes signal the reaction to some offering, taking risk and analyzing rewards and adjusting to feedback are all valuable habits, and if a down vote is going to wreck a person's day, a VC not returning your calls regarding the previously mentioned offer sheet as the startup burns through its last bag of ramen may not be the right career move.

The long play requires persistence and pivoting and perspective.

</comment><comment><USER26> You want to censor yourself based on down vote reasons?

Even if sometimes it seems strange to receive a down vote there are many people with different opinions and even if they told you the reason it won't help you much, other than entering a time consuming debate I don't see what else you can do.

[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?

<comment><USER27> _> Down votes increased because hn got bigger, and it only means someone disagrees with you, why do you see it as a punishment?_

And I thought disagreement was the worst reason for downvoting. I thought that you should downvote comments for low quality, when they add nothing but flame potential to the discussion.

Downvotes let a comment fade to grey until it is invisible. Is it so hard to see why someone would see this as punishment?

Why would I want to make counter-arguments vanish? A discussion where all visible comments promote the same opinion would be a boring, useless discussion. Actually, I tend to upvote opinions that I reject if they are outlined in a valuable manner. It is in my best interest to know the best points for all sides.

And OP, as I understand it, wants to make this more visible to downvoters: that disagreement isn't actually in the canonical list of downvote reasons.

<comment><USER28> As a long-time HN user I completely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that pg specifically stated that it's perfectly fine to use downvotes for disagreement (if I find the comment where he said that I'll edit my post and put a link to it). So, while I don't think that downvotes should be used for disagreement, if the person that created this site says that it's ok, then I guess it's ok.

 _EDIT_ : Ah, here it is: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think probably not a good idea.

I don't particularly enjoy being down voted but it is interesting to try to figure out why a comment was down voted.

In real life, our friends might not tell us if, for example, our little political rant is boring. We do get that feedback on HN.

One thing that really irritates me however is when someone takes the time to respond to one of my comments and gets down voted. For me a big motivation for commenting is to see what responses I get. So, I like the current system, but perhaps down voting is overly used.

</comment><comment><USER30> It doesn't matter. A downvote is not a personal affront, and you should certainly not ask for an explanation every time. Most are just noise and tend to even out after a while.

</comment><comment><USER20> YMMV, but my impression is that downvotes are usually obvious and expected, either bad style/inflammatory or unpopular opinions in the given context (i.e. any criticism of e.g. Perl in a Perl-related discussion where many fans of the language are present).

Requiring a comment is probably less effort than all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor (many more than the number of downvotes I pass around...), but it'll lead to unnecessary meta-discussions ("he downvoted me because of foo but he's wrong because ...").

<comment><USER31> > all the captchas I have to solve because of Tor

Do you see those when posting from your current account? If so, I'm not sure we have this right. There are hurdles on new accounts to impede spammers and trolls, but we don't mean to make things harder for established users.

If you wouldn't mind, sending details of what you're experiencing to firstname.lastname@example.com would be helpful. We'll look into it and maybe adjust how this works.

<comment><USER20> > _Do you see those when posting from your current account?_

Yes, I do reload HN quite often (always logged in with this account) and believe I have seen 5+ captchas or so today already.

Thanks for the offer to report details, I'll try to keep track of what exactly happens tomorrow.

<comment><USER31> Cool. A screenshot would be great, if that's convenient.

Sorry we've been inconveniencing you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I completely agree, but I feel it should be mandatory. (I've proposed this same "explain why" mechanism for downvotes a few times in the past.)

Currently downvoting has unbalanced incentives. You need a fairly high level of karma to use the feature, which suggests that it's considered a privilege. Yet, once you have it, there's no responsibility attached to the privilege.

This can make downvoting kind of sophomoric: "I was unreasonably downvoted when I was a newbie, now it's payback time!"

<comment><USER33> You're assuming that HN isn't keeping track of how often you downvote (or any patterns). Without knowing the set up, it's difficult to infer much. Of course, revealing that info might lead to gaming the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Usually the reason why posts are being downvoted are pretty clear. But, those aren't always good reasons, because we're dealing with a group of people who have a very strong tendency to be know-it-alls (myself certainly not excepted). The vast bulk of my downvotes so far came from a thread where I pointed out a few obvious flaws (massive civil and potentially criminal liability) with the prevailing conspiracy theory about how the leaked _Game of Thrones_ episodes were leaked by HBO themselves, as part of their secret plan to get people _not_ to use HBO Go. I'm not especially bitter about it, but I do find myself self-censoring more often to avoid arguing with groupthink.

</comment><comment><USER35> While the idea of "downvote requires a posted reason" is no doubt the best idea, if it proves too radical a change from a technical or behavioral reason, at least radically raise the karma need to downvote. Say so that only the top K number of accounts by age or karma can do so where K is _not_ a percentage. Because honestly the number of down-voting-for-poorly-thought-out-postings is now mightily outweighed by down-voting-becuse-I-dont-agree.

So much so that to be honest I now take downvotes as a badge of honor ironically.

<comment><USER17> I currently have 27800 karma. What makes you think I'm not an idiot with the downvote button?

<comment><USER35> Subjectively the problem seemed less bad in the past so I'm thinking that limiting to the donwvote permissions to longer term users will reduce the problem.

Very obviously requiring comments for downvotes is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was just thinking about this the other day. I think it'd be useful if you could specify DH{0,1,2} as reasons for downvoting ([http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)), as these are essentially useless comments that add nothing to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER37> It could be nice to have a popup menu where you can choose from the main reasons why a comment can be downvoted according to the rules, pointing to the relative FAQ entry. "Ad hominem" "Off topic" "Spammy" \- this would help the newcomers and would probably be used more than having to type a reason.

</comment><comment><USER38> When I started participating on HN, the general consensus for downvoting was for posts that were off-topic, poorly written, trollish, vile, etc. Never downvote to disagree.

Disagree by writing a thoughtful, reasoned response. Dissect the points that matter, ask for clarification, provide your own clarification.

<comment><USER17> People were having this conversation before you joined HN under this account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683#up_658691)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why not leave the reason as a comment instead? I don't really see a need for a new feature.

<comment><USER39> If someone upvotes your negative comment, the complete thread goes up a bit. Thats the opposite, that your want with a downvote.

<comment><USER33> What you're describing isn't clear. I assume you meant to say "If someone _comments_ on your negative comment ..." otherwise it appears you're describing how upvotes are generally expected to work.

I expect HNs algos could spot such a comment thread quite easily (thereby avoiding what you've described). That doesn't require a new user feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Isn't "not" upvoting same as "downvoting"?

I mean on HN the frequency of people who click on a link, if not at all worth would be less than 50-60.

Not sure how the HN algorithm works but am pretty sure it does well.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, you don't really want to know why you are getting downvoted. Every time I got an explanation on Reddit it was annoying and more aggravating than just some stupid downvotes.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't think the problem is with down votes per se, but in the total balance of votes. It doesn't matter if you receive 100 negative votes if you received 1000 positive votes. It doesn't matter if you received 1000 positive votes if you received 10000 negative votes.

The question is if there are special biases for voters, like if almost nobody logs in to up vote, but people will log in to down vote. That will make some people feel like the site is capriciously punishing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find the often-preachy-and-self-absorbed explanations of why someone was downvoted really obnoxious. People here aren't stupid, we usually have a pretty good idea of when we're saying something controversial and/or why someone might downvote it. And some of the explanations I've seen, just wow... Explaining to someone that saying "thanks" is meaningless and adds nothing to the discussion is just a slap in the face.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd love to know why a few of my comments have been few voted lately, for example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517067) \- which wasn't wrong!

Or this one, on systemd: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951637)

</comment><comment><USER43> That would be really nice. It could prevent accidental downvotes, when implemented in a certain way.

</comment><comment><USER44> If you are a net positive contributor to HN, then the one or two negative votes a week from negative people should not outweigh the positive votes from everyone else. Don't be fixated on the raw value.

</comment><comment><USER45> I agree. Many a times the link is duplicate and people downvote, but the OP gets no indication. In fact, when for a link I request people to add reason for flagging a post, my comment is downvoted.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think we need a flag link for comments.

\- You down-vote a wrong citation, false truth, someone who is flaming...

\- You flag spammy links and such.

On the other hand, maybe we should increase the threshold for

\- down-votes to 1,000 or 5,000

\- flagging to 100 or 500

<comment><USER31> There is a flag link for comments. Click on a comment's timestamp to go to its item page, and (assuming you have a small amount of karma, I think 30) you'll see it.

<comment><USER46> Then I don't have it?

<comment><USER31> You should. If you don't see it, email firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll help you out.

One thing, though, is that you can't flag a direct reply to your own comment. Same rule as for downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Personally, I don't down vote - I only up vote articles/comments that are worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

</comment><comment><USER49> This is a good idea, but I would go one step further - giving a reason should be _required_ for downvoting, but not for upvoting. Praise is always more effective communication than criticism. Especially as more members join this community steps must be made to prevent the toxic downvote-to-express- kneejerk-disagreement culture that pervades Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hackernews is a great community in spite of the horrible mess that is the HN app. There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced and built by and for the community.

<comment><USER17> > There is no reason that the HN codebase isn't open sourced

I think mods mentioned some pretty aggressive voting rings (from surprising, disappointing, places. _The Atlantic_ did this. I stopped posting any links from them when I found out.) But there is a lot of vote ringing on HN.

Would being open source affect vote ring detection?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is this really a problem that needs a solution?

</comment><comment><USER8> Years back down-votes were rare on HN. It was relatively easy to infer why a comment was down-voted. Now you mostly can't tell, just wonder why.

<comment><USER17> No they weren't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057275)

Brushfire says, 1946 days ago:

> I agree - Thanks for acknowledging it.

> I've seen a lot more down voting of well-reasoned comments and arguments > just because of disagreement, and I've seen a lot more snide, unhelpful, > almost belligerent comments across the board.

> I cant speak for others, but its good to know you are working on it, as I > dont want to find another place.

<comment><USER8> I remember that. I've been here longer. It has been a long down-slope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> hackernews.stackexchange.com

<comment><USER53> Be carefull, onliners are usually dowvoted here. ( _I_ usually donwvote dummy oneliners, but _I_ didn't downvote this.) (Luckily your comment is black again.)

I guess I agree with you, but I' difficult to know without a longer explanation. I'll write _my_ longer explanation:

If HN does this, it will look like [http://hackernews.stackexchange.com](http://hackernews.stackexchange.com) .When I visit stackoverflow, I notice that there are many comments just to explain upvotes and downvotes. I think that it adds too much noise and moderation to the discussion. I prefer the HN style, were the meta discussion is as small as possible, so it's easier to follow the main discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > _Punishment without reason in real life is known as wickedness, cruelty, > bullying..._

I had some issue with this point. Getting a downvote might sting a little bit, but to equate it to getting bullied is taking it too far. I got bullied plenty growing up (as I'm sure many other people here have) and to equate a meaningless downvote - someone disagreeing with you - with something as traumatizing as being bullied is insulting.

Someone disagreeing with your opinion is nowhere near the same as being bullied, or being oppressed. I've experienced cruelty directed at me. It's nothing like a semi anonymous person on the internet pressing a button.

<comment><USER55> I don't think he was equating the two. Just comparing them.

Many of us have experienced cruelty. That doesn't mean anything less severe than what we've experienced is not cruel (although I wouldn't describe getting downvoted without reason to be cruel I understand where OP is coming from).

<comment><USER44> If he wasn't equating the two, he wouldn't have put them in the same post lie that. No, technically he didn't say it out loud, but that was the intention of the proximity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> My idea: charge karma for a downvote: 1 down vote = lose one karma point UNLESS they reply to the person they downvoted.

</comment><comment><USER57> Notes won't change anything. There's a culture of comment suppression here that goes all the way up. If you've been downvoted it means that you failed to match somebody's expectation of what you should be writing. Now you're toxic and you need to be punished for the common good. Be glad you weren't also hellbanned. Yet.</comment>


Service Meant to Monitor Inmates' Calls Could Track You, Too - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/technology/cellphone-tracking-law-enforcement.html <comment><USER2> This is a huge deal. It smells a lot to me like Cambridge Analytica, but even worst.

>The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show.

<comment><USER3> > A system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location > data from major cellphone carriers...

Wait, _what_? Carriers are selling personally identifiable location information? I knew they were selling aggregate data, but how are they legally selling location numbers tied to actual phone numbers?

I dug into my carrier's privacy policy, and it looks like this is true. They say you'll be asked for consent before it happens, but what mechanism does the carrier even have to request that consent? I've certainly never seen an opt-in prompt for anything like that before, but according to my carrier's site, there are at least two companies that are accessing or have accessed my location data through my carrier. That is _not_ okay.

If an app or service I use wants access to my location, they can go through my phone's location services API, which requires my affirmative consent. It is completely unacceptable that they can bypass me and get it directly from my carrier.

<comment><USER4> > how are they legally selling location numbers

 _shrug_ It's America, there's no general concept of privacy in law. It's not considered to be your data, it's their data. I'd be rather more surprised if this is legally happening in the EU.

(I would not be surprised to discover that most EU carriers are compromised by some quasi-private intelligence service organisation like Cambridge Analytica/SCL group, illegally selling location data or derived results.)

<comment><USER5> I think the 4th Amendment is about the general concept of privacy, and it is definitely the law.

<comment><USER4> No, not at all; it only refers to _search and seizure_ carried out by the government. Whereas the 1st amendment is usually interpreted to mean that, once you've given data to a third party, they are free to publish it. In this situation the phone location data belongs to the phone company.

ECHR Article 8 contains a genuine right to privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related:

"For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe" (2014) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for- sale-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for-sale-systems- that-can-secretly-track-where-cellphone-users-go-around-the- globe/2014/08/24/f0700e8a-f003-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html)

Signalling System No. 7: Protocol security vulnerabilities [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7#Protoc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7#Protocol_security_vulnerabilities)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you have T-Mobile, I recommend logging into your account and going to Profile > Privacy and Notifications > Advertising & Insights and disabling everything. Obviously, as a consumer I don't know exactly how this data is being collected, but if the the carriers are sharing individual level data, this is hopefully the opt-out.

EDIT: This is the text from one of the settings: With your consent, T-Mobile, affiliates, and ad providers use your web browsing and app usage data along with advertising identifiers to deliver relevant mobile advertising and to learn more about your preferences. Advertising identifiers used can include Android and iOS Advertising IDs, browser mobile cookies, and device identifiers.

<comment><USER8> Verizon has multiple information sharing settings you can disable as well. Log into your account and go to "My Profile" > "Privacy Settings".

<comment><USER9> My setting have all been disabled for years.

That didn't stop locationsmart.com from just now locating me down to a few hundred meters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.eff.org/files/2018/05/11/wyden-securus- location-...](https://www.eff.org/files/2018/05/11/wyden-securus-location- tracking-letter-to-fcc-1.pdf)

Senator's letter to the FCC on this topic.

<comment><USER11> I'm sure Ajit Pai will get right on it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, he really seems like he's the kind of guy to champion individual rights at the expense of police power and corporate moneymaking interests. Not.~

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This exploits design flaws in the SS7 & MAP protocols that power mobile networks worldwide. Cooperation from the carriers isn't even required.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is horrible, but you just can't expect privacy in your use of anything electronic in the US. They will track you if they can in any conceivable way. We should advocate for a gpdr like law in the us. It will take years to get there, we don't even have net neutrality, but we need that. Every step of the way there will be people claiming that we can't have protection of privacy because that would be bad for business.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like the ICE license plate tracker that is for tracking license plates across the US for immigration monitoring, just so happens to nag everyone in it...[1]

> _The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained > agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, > according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the > agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real- > time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil > libertarians_.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice- immigration-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration- customs-license-plate-recognition-contract-vigilant-solutions)

<comment><USER15> >just so happens to nag everyone in it...

Thank you for your concern. We are closing this ticket as "not a bug".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am a victim of possibly "lawful" surveillance and tracking. The law is a very thickle thing of the business courts today. Right and wrong regarding to the court has a very loose connection to the constitution and morality. If I've learned anything about the law is that people will do anything they can get away with legally. It's a scary world out there, and it's just going to get more scary.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't see any way to opt out of this on my Project Fi (Google) account...

<comment><USER18> I opted out by moving to Europe.

<comment><USER19> The trouble is that Europe isn't great either: many European countries recognise the rights to free speech & arms-bearing in limited ways, and their governments don't necessarily do a great job with respect to privacy, either. And many have criminal-court systems which are worse than the U.S. & U.K. jury-based systems.

Sadly, there's no one perfect state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Securus received the data from a mobile marketing company called > 3Cinteractive .... In turn, 3Cinteractive got its data from LocationSmart, a > firm known as a location aggregator, according to documents from those > companies. LocationSmart buys access to the data from all the major American > carriers, it says.

Someone with a little money to burn should subscribe to 3Cinteractive or LocationSmart's service and use the data to _spam the whole country with texts with the location info telling the recipient they 're being tracked._ That ought to rile people up and help end whatever practices enable this kind of tracking.

<comment><USER21> I am guessing they make you sign a contract saying you won't disclose "their" data to third parties. So you would really need a lot of money.

<comment><USER20> Or the willingness to do it, concede the lawsuit, then declare bankruptcy.

<comment><USER21> Judgements from intentionally torts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

<comment><USER20> But wouldn't it be a breach of contract and not a tort? There may be other torts involved, but I was only considering the issue you brought up with breaking their contract terms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


React.parts – A catalog of React Native components - <AUTHOR> http://react.parts

<comment><AUTHOR> React Native is still quite nascent (it was only announced last week at F8) but there's quite a bit of attention around it. We thought a catalog of Native components would be a welcome addition to community resources.

If you have feedback on what you'd like to see on the site, we'd be happy to hear about it. One of the things we're considering already is including all React (not just Native) components. Thanks everyone!

<comment><USER2> It seems there's an overlap with your site and the React Components site which pretty much does the same thing and has been around for a while. It scrapes all packages published on npm with the "react-component" keyword. Not sure how many components are available on that site but npm's website returns 7531 results when searching "react-component".

[0] [http://react-components.com](http://react-components.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, crap. To be honest, we didn't know React Components existed, even if our goal is to (for now) catalog only React Native.

We do have a few ideas about how to catalog mainline React components too (which in the end means we too will end up either querying npm or taking submissions directly from the community). Thanks for bringing this to our attention, though. We obviously don't want to step on anyone's toes :-)

<comment><USER3> I think a curated list of React Native components would be great...Please dont stop!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is fantastic...great initiative!

I would love to see this in Product Hunt format...where people can at least hold a discussion, report bugs, request features, etc.

<comment><USER5> That's some great feedback. Our initial idea was inspired by Ruby Toolbox, and evolving from there, your suggestions make complete sense.

We thought of many more features touching the component usage, and discussion will be a fulcral piece to break the barrier between the maintainers and the users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a good start. Awesome stuff, keep it up :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome, thanks for this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a similar list of React components for the web?

<comment><USER9> FYI, we now support web components :) The list is not as exhaustive as other catalogs because we're validating each component we find before adding it.

[http://react.parts/web](http://react.parts/web)</comment></comment>


Alex Russell: Class Warfare in TC39 - <AUTHOR> http://infrequently.org/2012/04/class-warfare

<comment><USER2> This is a good read even if you don't have a dog in the fight - maybe even _especially_ if you don't, because it's easier to evaluate the arguments objectively, and see how they apply to your world.

An observation: JavaScript and Java are arguing over adding complementary features.

<comment><USER3> But what arguments? His answer to "why classes at all" is that higher-level languages are good because they reduce complexity. OK. But then he takes for granted that his class-based approach is what does this. That's not an argument, that's assuming your conclusion.

The rest of the post says that because a committee has been arguing for 10 years, we're overdue for just adding _something_. That hardly follows. Sometimes adding "something" for the sake of it fucks things up. First do no harm?

Personally I'm glad that "luddites" have blocked these attempts to "fix" arguably the most important language in the world by making it be more like Java. As the OP points out, while the committee has been arguing, "JS has gone from being important to being critical to the construction of large systems", i.e. succeeding massively.

(Not that I don't empathize with how frustrating it must be to have a committee block what you think are all the good ideas.)

<comment><USER4> Hi gruseom:

I'm the author of the original post.

There seems to be some serious (willful?) misunderstanding here about what is being proposed. Instead of adding something foreign, the class syntax that we've nearly got settled is sugar for what we usually write in JS, albiet under a dozen or so different patterns and library conventions. See: [http://infrequently.org/2011/09/why-class-doesnt-mean- what-y...](http://infrequently.org/2011/09/why-class-doesnt-mean-what-you- think-it-means/)

I'm also not suggesting that length of debate necessitates action. The near- consensus on the committee for adding classes isn't my doing; I'm merely arguing that it's worth doing a smaller thing and debating what extensions to make in due time. And if you look at what's being added (again, I'm not sure you have a grasp on it in any way), it's clear that we _are_ doing no harm with Max/Min classes.

Invoking Java to describe what's being proposed is purely a slur. Indeed, the arguments which I'm attempting to talk down are the ones which would drag a class proposal _more_ towards Java (not less).

What's frustrating, in the end, is to see someone so obviously smart making such spurious arguments. Please read up before engaging further: [http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:maximally_mi...](http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:maximally_minimal_classes)

Regards

<comment><USER3> I hear your annoyance. I hope it's only that my comment seemed that way because we're coming from very different perspectives.

By "more like Java" I just meant adding classes at all. I'm uninterested in that way of programming - not out of ignorance, I did it for years and I think it's a gigantic cargo cult. That JS somehow escaped it is, in my view, a small miracle. That we have JS at all is a miracle. For all its flaws, it's a small, hackable, dynamic language that retained enough magic from its Lisp/Self inspirations to spawn a new galaxy of creativity. I don't believe that if it had been done more "properly" we'd be better off today. Great inventions often live on the improper side of the proper/improper divide. JS succeeded on the web while its "proper" cousin, the one designed for "programming in the large", the one organized around "good" practices (including classes), failed. I think that fact is deep and mysterious and the most important thing is not to mess with it.

So while you say it's clear that you'd be doing no harm, that's far from clear to me. I read the links you provided and still think that.

But I acknowledge there are degrees here, and if you're mostly trying to prevent JS from turning into Java, thanks. I confess, though, that when you say the _near_ consensus, my sympathies immediately leap to whoever the holdout is :)

Not trying to persuade you; just trying to unpack what I said enough to not seem thoughtlessly rude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Not only should we write off the luddites, we should consider every step towards lower complexity good and steps towards complexity and slower understanding to be bad and actively harmful.

Fine. Here is a program written in my new JS proposal:

      everything;

That's it. Just one line. It does everything. Of course, "everything" means exactly this one kind of app that I have decided is good enough for everyone. We're all writing Facebook apps, after all. If someone is going to complain that "everything" isn't flexible enough to do what they want, well we can just write-off those luddites because they want to be able to write "everything( more detail)", which is obviously more complex.

Reduced complexity must be balanced against reduced expressivity. "Well, way to take it to the extreme, Jamie. Classes are hardly so radical, and you don't have to use them".

Ok, well we'll just delete all C compilers from our systems, and use C++ compilers, right?

>But then why any language feature at all? Why isn't assembler good enough for everyone? Or C? Or C++?

Why isnt C++ good enough for C programmers? Or assembler programmers?

If I don't like C++ I can program in C. While in theory I can write run plain old C through a C++ compiler, the reality is that some things are different. Most importantly, the thought being put in by the compiler developers to solve language problems were being spent solving C++ problems, not C problems.

Why does this matter? Question: are browsers going to support two different languages? JS and JS++? No?

So now imagine that we were proposing deleting every C compiler and only allowing C++. Would there be a shitstorm? Quite.

Here are two much more relevant questions:

1\. why are people writing Scala, or Clojure?

2\. How does the JVM's class-only system make certain Scala constructs non- optimal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm against the class keyword for a couple of reasons:

1) Prototypical inheritance is different from classical inheritance. If we add the class keyword with either have to make it work like most classical languages work (Python, Java, C#, Ruby) or we confuse new JS developers with keywords that look familiar but work differently.

2) The argument is that "you don't have to use it", which is fine, but in reality we know that browser vendors will optimize the hell out of the class keyword and we'll be forced to use it for that reason alone.

<comment><USER4> #1 is just FUD. JavaScript is JavaScript. Class in JS is a shorthand for function and functions prototypically delegate. That you're not writing in Java/Python/C#/Ruby should be pretty obvious.

#2 doesn't bear much relationship to reality. There will be near zero correlation between "class" and performance. What can (and today, does) change the performance of objects is having their shape change markedly after construction. V8, for instance, already includes heuristics to know when a class is "done" being constructed, allowing it to apply most of the typed- language tricks in the bag for objects which are entirely unfrozen. In current code, it's actually a _de-optimizer_ to call Object.freeze() and there's no reason to think you'll get anything faster for using "class" than by writing code which doesn't change its shape very much.

You will, however, finally be able to read and share code more easily.

<comment><USER6> > That you're not writing in Java/Python/C#/Ruby should be pretty obvious.

I don't think it's obvious at all that the keyword "class" is going to be fundamentally different from whatever OO language you are coming from. Isn't this the single biggest reason why many developers have difficulty learning JavaScript?

> There will be near zero correlation between "class" and performance.

There already is performance differences between constructor functions and Object.create (in terms of initialization, that is).

<comment><USER4> Object.create() creates no closure. You've already paid for in the context in which you're .create()-ing. In any case, performance optimization is what happens when something becomes common enough to work its way into benchmarks. And calling out a delta now that's probably not your bottleneck seems...um...less than useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Never in my life I have read so much rambling in one place. I can summarize the whole article in one tweet(removing some nonsense along the way): "The ECMAScript standard should make it easy to use 'classical' inheritance because that's what kids learn in school."

This should have been just a tweet, not a gargantuan article, that just talks about the same thing over and over.

If you want to write in a classical style, you can do it today, if you want all your favorite class features, you could just write an abstraction that does it all. If you are obsessed with doing it with syntax just use CoffeeScript or something like that, heck you could just use GWT and just write the whole thing in Java and not even care about JS.

The committee doesn't have a standard for class yet because it's really a hard problem, they can easily turn JS into the next PHP if they get it wrong.

Something is needed to make classical people happy, but not the expense of language integrity.

> Don't add classes and the world at large thinks of JS as a joke and a toy

This is both ignorant and moronic, C must be a toy and a joke then also the author probably failed to notice that both C# and Java are adding lambdas, and other nice functional features.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would love to see class syntax in JS. Until then, this is the system I use:

      var MyClass = classdef(SuperClass, MixIn, AnotherMixIn, {
        constructor: function() {
          ...
        },
        publicFunc: function() {
          ...
        },
        _privateFunc: function() {
          ...
        }
      });

Where the 'classdef' function takes an optional superclass, an optional set of mixins (their properties will be copied to the class's prototype), and an object defining the class. The function itself is fairly easy to write, and allows you to define classes quickly, without having to retype MyClass.prototype.blah all the time.

Some other implementations that I've seen add the ability to refer to super(), or to say MyClass.extend(...).

<comment><USER6> We've all been writing a hundred varieties of this same thing for years which is why Alex is championing this "one correct way" so we can all move on to arguing about something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Modified quotation: "Where there's a new fad in [anything], odds are high that it is being touted as a solution to some aggregate behavior which causes a reasonable local decision to become globally sub-optimal"</comment>


XDate: A Modern JavaScript Date Library - <AUTHOR> http://arshaw.com/xdate/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just released this today, and I intend to bundle it into FullCalendar (<http://arshaw.com/fullcalendar/>) in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER2> Similar but different - I wrote a lightweight js lib for parsing and formatting dates - <https://github.com/zaius/jdate></comment>


Ke Jie will likely play AlphaGo before year's end - <AUTHOR> http://english.cri.cn/12394/2016/06/05/4203s929934.htm <comment><USER2> Context: [http://www.goratings.org/](http://www.goratings.org/)

An interesting thing about that rating site is that it uses Whole-History Rating, a system developed by Remi Coulom which takes the entire match history into account.

After the Sedol vs. AlphaGo games, you could reasonably ask if Sedol was on top of his game, or if his losses were in part a product of a declining rating of his own. WHR effectively considers this possibility, and the similar possibility in all matches - you could say the long-term impact of a match doesn't stabilize after both participants have played a few more games.

AlphaGo has been steadily climbing in this rating. Sedol doesn't appear to be in decline, in fact he had an 8-win streak right after the AlphaGo matches (ended by Gu Li just recently).

</comment><comment><USER3> This will be interesting. After it's first game win against Lee Sedol, Ke was very confident he could beat Alphago, but the later games against Lee revealed further unexpected strengths in Alphago's capabilities. I think everyone, including Ke Jie know that eventually Alphago will be unbeatable so I think it's important and useful to have a match soon when Alphago's game is still improving but potentially close to human level. I think a match at this stage would be much more revealing about how AI systems like this develop and improve than a game say in a few years time when the computer player just steamrolls to victory every game.

</comment><comment><USER4> Per AlphaGo, this isn't official though.

"contrary to internet rumours, we've not decided yet what to do next with #AlphaGo, once we have, there will be an official announcement here"

[https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712](https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712)

</comment><comment><USER5> Will he learn from the matches against Lee Sedol? Will Alpha Go become even more advanced (ie, have more hardware added)?

<comment><USER6> Considering he's beaten Lee Sedol and Gu Li, who knows how this will play out.

But no doubt he'll talk to Sedol about his take away from playing AlphaGo, especially since part of playing against any computer is reverse engineering its decision tree.

<comment><USER7> There were some games with Gu Li? Could you point me to them? I can't seem to find them.

<comment><USER8> Gu Li and Ke Jie played each other (in a jubango -- a ten game series -- in 2014: an excellent series of games!). AlphaGo did not play Gu Li unfortunately.

<comment><USER9> The jubango was between Gu Li and Lee Sedol. Not Gu Li and Ke Jie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google probably will have many times the ASICs compared to what it had against Lee Sedol, and there have been lots of new tricks in the past few months with convolutional networks that increased learning speed and accuracy of the learned model. It would be a huge win for Ke Jie even if he could win only 1 game.</comment>


Long player - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/05/long_player.php <comment><USER3> news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first comment along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all on it to know whether to click on the link or not. Yes, this is already on the Feature Requests page. I'm just letting off steam.

<comment><AUTHOR> _'... news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first comment along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all on it to know whether to click on the link or not ...'_

To expect the submitter to do this is ideal, but not scalable. (I know I've tried to add comments in articles as I've posted them, but gave up because of the number I submit. I do read them but now comment sparingly.) There is a real problem with generating volumes of information quickly. If you want speed, there is a limit on the amount of _meta_ information a user can reasonably generate. If you want usefulness, this requires more time on behalf of users submitting.

Newspapers have this problem and solved it by training news editors to create _catchy titles_ that neatly summarises the entire article in a small sentence - maybe even a few words. But not everyone writing articles on the web is trained in Journalistic techniques, let alone people who read this site. There is also the other problem when re-phrasing or changing titles of articles. Mutilating them into something un-recognisable from the original.

This is where the software has to work harder. By supplying users with the tools to classify, sort and value the submissions with tags, comments, summaries (already have ranking). I'm thinking here of delicious where tagging has allowed users to sort quickly by tag, then if they want to add more data themselves (descriptions, summary). The other way is to gather meta data from the source document (tags, microformats) where possible (un-likely as it takes time to process documents to generate useful things like summaries - <USER2> longer for meta data like microformats). Now the question is, _could_ "pg with news.yc create some tools to help users or process new submissions extracting meta-data"?

<comment><USER3> If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is news.yc. I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in submissions, who cares?

Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't mandate putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they should make the effort though else their submission might not compare well against those that do.

And if a submitter thinks "Oh, this article isn't really good enough to spend my time on summarising" then that's a good test of whether they should inflict it on the rest of us in the first place.

Rant over. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> _'... Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't mandate putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they should make the effort ...'_

I've tried now to add title + (summary) on the submissions resulting in a _more_ descriptive subject line. It actually works at the expense of size & a bit of time. So I have to agree with this bit and have changed my approach.

 _'... If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is news.yc. I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in submissions, who cares? ...'_

This is already automated by users in the _news_ link ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/news> ) and for the best articles in the _best_ link ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/best> ) As for me I'd rather more articles submitted & gain the benefit of the long tail of submissions (lots), let the brains filter submissions (users) and see the resultant niches of information pop up instead of just the _hits_ ~ <http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/07/how_finely_can_.html>

_'... Rant over ...'_

It was a good one, because it made me think about this & in the process solved a few problems I was working on :)

<comment><USER3> The _news_ and _best_ links don't help avoid the long tail. _best_ is too static; it rarely changes. And <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> presents too much dross. Dross which is hard to for my brain to filter because each item has too little info so I end up having to visit every thread and then often each linked external article.

(Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... (Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.) ..."_

Believe me it makes a difference & really solves the _crappy title_ problem. But it can be improved. I haven't used the the rss feed much ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> ) but doing so I found that there is a cut- off on the browser I use (Firefox = toolbars = bookmarks ) toolbar cuts the text off at 40 characters. So If the title contains the most accurate info in the first 40 characters it even works in the RSS feeds (reader) with readers truncating the rest of the message. The other problem I noticed with the RSS feed is the transporting you to the direct link, not the news.yc feed which as the original link in the title. So rule of thumb: good title in 40 char <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/587744795/>

<comment><USER3> It's unfortunate that some RSS readers limit the amount of displayed text, e.g. Firefox's menu items.

As for the RSS linking to the external article, the feed has both that URL and a "comments" URL. Some RSS readers appear not to show or give access to the comments URL, others do. For those that give both, I choose the comments one first to get more of a clue as to whether anyone bothered to comment.

There are posts elsewhere about some RSS readers ignoring the comments URL and what if anything can be done.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Weekend/Side Project 101: Inspiration - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/j1qzy/would_the_college_students20somethings_of_reddit/ Within in hour this guy comes up with an idea, posts it to Reddit for feedback, and launches. Has no prior experience with website development. Maybe it will never get off the ground and maybe it will fail, but the effort is admirable.<p>What idea have you been sitting on? <comment><USER2> I think it is great that they're working on an idea, but having just watched Patrick's BOS talk on marketing I wonder if they have the right target.

[http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/03/hello-ladies- patr...](http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/03/hello-ladies-patrick- mckenzie-markets-to-minorities-at-business-of-software-2010.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: Reddit cookbook, "Good but cheap recipes for a college student"

[http://download693.mediafire.com/o3wchulvrofg/ynlygozezyz/re...](http://download693.mediafire.com/o3wchulvrofg/ynlygozezyz/redditfoodpdf.pdf)

<comment><USER4> This would be a perfect hit YouTube channel. Imagine the guy he links to with the rice instructions ( [http://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/cwt9t/fine_you_wanted_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/cwt9t/fine_you_wanted_more_submissions_heres_a/c0vv1nl) ) popping of for a special segment, yelling at the camera like a drill sergeant. You'd never forget how to cook rice after that.

<comment><USER4> I got confused about the thread topic (too many tabs) and mis-replied. This comment refers to the original submission and not the parent PDF link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now that's how you do idea proofing.

<comment><USER6> Reddit is a great community to get feedback and support from. I took a similar approach for a project I had in mind and the response was astounding. I made some mockups, posted them in the proper subreddit right before bed at 3AM, and woke up at 9AM expecting a small handful of comments, but instead was amazed that the number was closer to 70. Because of that thread, I've found a very talented partner for the project and we're getting close to launch date.

Here's the thread: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/i04lm/who_would_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/i04lm/who_would_be_interested_in_using_this_blueprint/)</comment></comment>


The open-source node libraries powering Cloud9 - <AUTHOR> http://c9.io/site/blog/2012/07/the-open-source-node-libraries-powering-cloud9/

<comment><USER2> Architect is an interesting concept. I had thought about doing something similar using EventEmitter as a kind of "plugin bus" between different parts of the app. Has anyone who has used something like this for complex sites comment on implementation strategies and how they grow with age?

<comment><USER3> The neat thing about architect is that some plugins provide "services" or named APIs and other plugins consume such named APIs. It's interface oriented programming. The service names are simple short strings and that's why architect has a feature to alias services should name conflicts arise.

Using pure events works too (as does dnode and smith), but for large projects they tend to get hairy. Architect separates concerns into defined interfaces provided by configurable plugin instances. It keeps things clean and configurable.

<comment><USER2> (This question is a bit difficult for me to phrase, so pardon me if this sentence is awkward) Can you give me an example of how this plugin architecture saved you from an awkward happenstance? For instance, what did this level of abstraction actually buy you in specific? What did you vary (for lack of a better term) that the consumer didn't have to worry about, as opposed to if you had built it in a traditional tightly coupled manner?

I am trying to understand how this abstraction comes into play in day to day work as apps are put together.

Thanks again for your insightful reply

<comment><USER3> Cloud9 is a very large application. We have many developers working around the clock in different time zones constantly.

The main thing that helps us work together is clearly defining the interfaces between different modules or pieces of the system and keeping things encapsulated.

For example, I work on the VFS interface that other parts of the system use to access workspaces. If I follow semver, then I can push bugfixes without breaking other's code. If I have to change my interface, then I bump the minor version.

Granted, normal npm modules already provide a lot of this. They have semantic versions and the module name is the name to the API interface. We use vanilla npm modules as well. Architect is a layer on top of this.

The real strength of architect over just plain npm dependencies is the config file. You build your architect application as a JSON (or JS) config file that tells the system what plugins to load and what parameters to provide to each. Since the plugins are decoupled and never touch eachother except through defined architect services, it's easy to see if a dependency is missing. You can replace a dependency with some other module that implements the same interface. This makes manual and automated testing much easier. If I want to test my new feature in isolation, I configure a minimal version of the app and add in my plugin. Then I can add more and more plugins as I test to make sure it integrates with everything. I can switch between config profiles with a single flag.

Also having opposing timezones makes it impossible to make real progress on tightly coupled systems. San Francisco is drinking morning coffee when Amsterdam is going home, I'm in between in Red Lick, Texas.

Architect is just a tool that helps in some cases. The important rule is to decouple modules using some tool (vanilla npm, architect, or something else) and then take interfaces seriously. This makes testing sane, distributed development efficient, and large programs possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The hazards of nerd supremacy: The case of Wikileaks (by Jaron Lanier) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-hazards-of-nerd-supremacy-the-case-of-wikileaks/68217

<comment><USER2> I feel slightly stupider for having read it.

He constructs, at great length, a random array of straw men and then carries through by failing to demolish them.

To put it another way, the article completely mischaracterises the arguments of everyone he doesn't disagree with and then fails to defeat the arguments he has constructed.

This wouldn't be so bad if the article was shorter.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The single-page version of the article is [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2010/12/the- haza...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2010/12/the-hazards-of- nerd-supremacy-the-case-of-wikileaks/68217/)

(My apologies for not linking to it in the first place)</comment>


Contents of the Voyager Golden Record - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record

<comment><AUTHOR> The content is quite fascinating. Unfortunately the information in the article is quite sparse. Shouldn't all the content be available in the public domain?</comment>


Ask HN: What DRM Free really means? - <AUTHOR>

I've bought several e-books online, and O'Reilly for example claims that my e-books are 100% mine.
Here's my source:
http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do
"They're Your Books
Unlike most other retailers, ebooks from shop.oreilly.com are not restricted. You can freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them."
So does that mean that I can share my e-books on my website for free? or will I be breaking the law?
I know that I should ask a lawyer, but I don't know any lawyer specialized in intellectual property and Digital Rights Management.
I also sent an e-mail to O'Reilly, no response. <comment> martin-adams Their site says the following:

\---

They're Your Books. Unlike most other retailers, ebooks from shop.oreilly.com are not restricted. You can freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them.

\---

Source: [http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do)

The following link might provide more clarity: [http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/e_books_and_site_l...](http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/e_books_and_site_license)

It appears that when you purchase a DRM free book, you are purchasing a single entity. Therefore you can only loan, resell or donate it once. It doesn't give you distribution rights, just the rights to loan, resell or donate your since license.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I thought, I've actually been thinking to allow the e-book to be downloaded only once a day and since it's a digital file, the person who downloaded the file has 24 hours to delete it from their system.

Obviously there's no way to know that the file has been deleted, just as there's no way to know if a real book has been photocopied.

But I'm just sharing an e-book once per day, just as if I were lending a real book to thousands of people once at a time.

<comment><USER2> I am not going to call you names or tell you that you are wrong or other blah blah.

But think of one thing, you bought something and the owner of that gives you all these freedoms and trust.

Instead of taking responsibility yourself and only lending it once or giving away once, you not only breaking the trust given to you but also place the burden of trust onto other people by telling them that they must erase the item within 24 hours, basicly blaming them by proxy for your untrustworthy behaviour.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I weren't taking responsibility myself, I wouldn't be asking this question, don't you think?

Precisely because I DO NOT want to break the trust (nor the law) is the reason that I'm asking the question.

<comment><USER2> Don't shout at me, I am only answering because you asked the question, and don't think that I am lecturing you, because personaly I don't really care if you break that trust or not. That is your resposibility and not mine, I am telling you only the moral implication of your hypothesis of sharing the work that is trusted to you with n people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not shouting, I'm highlighting the fact that it's not my intention to break anybody's trust.

Morality has little to no place in DRM laws.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Queen of Darts - <AUTHOR> https://victoryjournal.com/stories/queen-of-darts/ <comment><USER2> Do men hold any sort of competitive advantage over women in darts (physical or otherwise)?

Do professional mixed competitions exist (where women actively face men in competition)?

<comment><USER3> I understand that on average there are differences in eye structure that make women better at color differentiation and men better at hand eye coordination, but I've never checked with a real source on that

<comment><USER4> Almost certainly, the bigger factor is that the league darts, is totally dominated by large groups of partially-inebriated, sometimes hostile, men. A woman who sets off to become good enough at darts to play and win at the tournament level has to spend time in league darts learning strategy. During her time in league dart she will spend some time beating guys who react poorly to the thought of "losing to a girl".</comment></comment></comment>


NVIDIA Launches New Flagship Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 580 Reviewed - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-580-A-New-Flagship-Emerges/

<comment><USER2> Forgetting all of the things this card can _do_ , just the idea of 192.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth is enough to boggle _my_ mind. For reference, the Voodoo 2, top of the pack 12 years ago, offered just 2.2GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a good room heater. 244W TDP! tl;dr: Outperforms other graphics cards in most benchmarks. The dual core ATI HD something is ahead in some cases though.

<comment><USER4> But if you look at their measured power draw, it actually takes less power than the 480 (which has a TDP of 220W or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When are video cards going to come with their own external power supplies? It's crazy to buy 800+ watt power supplies for a few hundred dollars when the video card manufacturers could include their own power transformer in the box.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of the last of the Voodoo cards <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5#Models>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Graphics cards are about to hit a wall, just like CPUs did a few years ago.

Power consumption is so high they're almost at a dead end. They won't be able to increase performance any more.

<comment><USER8> They'll need to flip to 22nm from 40nm technology to buy some more time. They also have the option of creating a larger number of slower running shaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Combine this with a nice functional language like F# and you're ready to do some serious processing.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/satnam_singh/archive/2010/10/14/f-bl...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/satnam_singh/archive/2010/10/14/f-black- scholes-running-on-gpis-and-sse3-multicore-processors-using-accelerator.aspx)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While it's impressive to see how well the new GeForce does against AMD's latest 5870 and 6870 cards, word is AMD has another top end GPU set to release this quarter. Should get interesting!</comment>


Tovala (YC W16), a smart oven that aims to perfectly cook meals in 30 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/08/meet-tovala-a-smart-oven-that-aims-to-perfectly-cook-ready-made-meals-in-under-30-minutes/ <comment><USER2> Summary: it's a $400 solder reflow oven for food. Eg it's a computer controlled toaster oven with a heat profile that comes from a bar code on top of the food you buy from the service.

Stouffers aluminum tray meals + computer control.

Wondering how they're going to solve the food quality / price / stability issue.

<comment><USER3> Solder reflow recipes are a good idea! Although, in good conscience, I would not suggest using the oven for food after that.

Meals are delivered, fresh and uncooked, a la ingredient delivery services. In our case, they're already prepared and just need scanned and put in the oven. Modified atmosphere packaging helps with shelf life and stability.

(disclosure: I'm the CTO of Tovala)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks like we are heading towards the ink jet printers scenario. The oven refuses to cook the food if it detects that the user is trying to use non- approved ingredients. The ingredients will have an edible RFID tag embedded in it for security and ID.

/sarcasm

<comment><USER5> That's real. See Keurig 2.0 and its DRM technology. The good news is the market has avoided it, and the regular K-cups (non-DRM) have won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Had a number of their dishes as a beta tester. They have nice quality ingredients. The Chicken Pozole was my favorite.

They mentioned that commercial kitchens use this type of tech. I wonder how many restaurants in SF cook their food this way? Maybe this is the next sous vide or at that price point, it could be your next microwave replacement.

<comment><USER7> Apple Bees would be my guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm skeptical they can maintain quality and healthiness at scale. I mean, there's a reason why companies like Aramark and Sodexho have such crappy food; it's just really hard to manage supply at that kind of scale. Aside from that, if their food is frozen or dehydrated, you pretty much destroy the healthy parts of the food. At that point, might as well just stick with the microwavable TV dinners.

</comment><comment><USER9> As with all products of this kind: what problem does it solve that isn't adequately addressed by existing technology? Is it really that much better than a microwave?

(It's entertaining to find archive advertising material from the 70s/80s when microwaves were still brand new and the manufacturer could make all sorts of claims about what you could cook in them.)

</comment><comment><USER10> In order for their business model to work, it means they have some control over the oven, and it's not fully open. So does it mean that the app expose only a part of the capabilities of the oven, or less accuracies, while people who buy premade meals, get to have the full benefit ?

<comment><USER3> You have complete control over your oven through the app. You can control each and every cooking element individually. We do have some logic in there to make sure you don't accidentally pull too much power. Other than that, it's all yours.

We want you to cook your own meals with it. It's great for that.

The delivery service is for folks who do not want to spend time shopping, preparing, cooking, and cleaning. The smarts basically enable us to put a chef in your kitchen, without actually putting a chef in your kitchen.

<comment><USER11> Do these ovens rely on some cloud infrastructure? Will they still work without it?

Also, do you have some pricing information available for the delivery service? I dig the idea, and the fact that you're part of YC gives me hope that this is something you'll actually execute on, but I'd like to know what prices I'm looking at before committing $250+ to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still like the idea of the June "intelligent" Oven.

[https://juneoven.com](https://juneoven.com)

<comment><USER13> Except it costs an order of magnitude more.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I grow my IT training business - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm a freelance trainer specializing in high end subjects such as Devops, Agile Software, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies and Python application development.
I've been going through third party training companies to generate business but I'm finding that the amount of paying work being generated is erratic and not as plentiful as I would have expected.  I'm looking for alternate ways to generate training revenue.
A quick background on me.  I've been in the IT field for 25 years and have taught at major financial institutions such as Morgan, Stanley, Citibank and the New York Stock Exchange.  I've been training for over 15 years and have worked all over the world.
If anybody has any suggestions on how to grow my business, I would be grateful to hear them.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Great question. Hoping to break into HR type workshop market here in Shanghai in the next 18 months. Bring on the trailheads!</comment>


On fexprs and defmacro (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.brinckerhoff.org/scraps/joe-marshall-on-FEXPRS-and-DEFMACRO.txt <comment><USER2> Related:

Special Forms in Lisp: Fexprs vs. Macros (1980) [http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Special- Forms.html](http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Special-Forms.html)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for linking this. It is a wonderful and vital reminder that the incredible tools we have received today did not magically spring forth from the godhead but were the product of years of experimentation, argument, and implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another related link: [http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/04/scheme- wi...](http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/04/scheme-without- special-forms.html) fun article with implementation included</comment>


OpenSolaris is dead; and Solaris is officially irrelevant.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/opensolaris_is_dead/

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal view is that Solaris is now, like Oracle's database products, officially irrelevant to the future. While they will continue to be purchased for large sums of money by people who must, like COBOL, they will not shape anyone's idea of the future. ZFS had a huge impact on file system development, but I suspect no such future innovation is in store for Solaris.

<comment><USER2> I will always have a soft spot for Solaris because, in the 90s I wrote and maintained threaded server code- Solaris had the most performant and least problematic threading implementation that we ran on at the time. Really though, why would anyone use Solaris now? It doesn't have any real strengths over the now much improved free un*x variants. Most of the 'crown jewels', dtrace, zfs etc are available some place else.</comment></comment>


Node.js and Go application: Optimizing for speed and scalability (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.poptip.com/post/36017972164/nov-12-poptip-performance-report

<comment><USER2> That grey font on dark background is almost impossible to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks -- will fix</comment></comment>


Yangtze River Port and Logistics: On-The-Ground Research Shows Assets Fabricated - <AUTHOR> https://hindenburgresearch.com/yangtze-river-port-logistics-total-zero-on-the-ground-research-shows-assets-appear-to-be-largely-fabricated/ <comment><USER2> In 2006, during my second of many trips to China, I had the chance to have dinner with a banker in Beijing. A quintessential 洋鬼子, I was stunned to learn at the time that many of the loans being underwritten were based on valueless collateral and I expected the correction and liquidation of the century to occur any day. Almost 13 years later and I am still waiting for the correction. I know its coming, and I know it will be epic, but I can't tell you when. I view recent disappearances in China and various crackdowns on dissent as indicators the time is near.

<comment><USER3> which disappearances ?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/lu- guang-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/lu-guang- photographer-missing-china.html)

"For five weeks, the world has had no idea where Lu Guang is."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The company's response to this report: [https://www.ajot.com/news/yangtze- river-port-and-logistics-l...](https://www.ajot.com/news/yangtze-river-port- and-logistics-limited-refutes-hindenburg-researchs-report)

It's very vague and to me it doesn't inspire any confidence at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Stories like these are going to become increasingly common. Chinese companies are completely opaque and the SEC cannot easily audit Chinese companies. It's easy to rip off Western investors as the power structures lean towards Chinese citizens, always. Their entire business structure is built with the Chinese first and everyone else second.

SEC statement: [https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-vital- ro...](https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-vital-role-audit- quality-and-regulatory-access-audit-and-other)

<comment><USER7> Is there any special treatment to allow Chinese companies doing this? If not, I'm afraid this kind of fraud would apply to many business across the globe. Proper conclusion drawn from this incident is that loophole revealed in such case should be fixed to protect investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Chinese feverishly discover and exploit every scammable niche imaginable, both illegal and legit. This appears to be key to their success. This scam will tank, but the mentality and culture that produces it drives the entire country forward at break-neck speed.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't attribute to a population what can only be attributed to one individual, the company chairman. Does the Enron scandal prove all Americans are scammers for profit gain and will manipulate their values like Anderson's auditors? No it only proves that there exists some in American society.

<comment><USER10> I agree with your point but the Enron example contradicts it. One of the biggest lessons of Enron was that nearly every part of our financial system was complicit in the corruption.

There were all those things like Glisan's scheme to sell Enron assets to Osprey- all the credit rating agencies rated Osprey, and all the major institutional banks invested. I don't remember the names of the other shell company refinance schemes, but there were multiple.

Then there was the bragging in financial press how Enron could raise money using innovative financial vehicles that didn't issue stock or take debt in a way that had to be reported to the street.

Thats bad enough but the leasing shell game that was a part of that couldn't have worked without leasing the tankers to the banks.

Anyway, I think the majority of people are honest and hard working, but whole industries can definitely be corrupt and depraved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the many reasons I'd never invest in a Chinese company HQ'ed over there.

<comment><USER12> Worked out for Yahoo and Softbank and their Alibaba investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The incredibly tight range over which this stock has traded, on low volumes, over the last 4 months is pretty suspicious.

<comment><USER14> yeah it sort of dropped from $13.xx to $10.xx up to $11.xx for a long time and now down to $8.xx and I suspect going lower.

There was another trend between 2015 and 2017 where it also was tight trading.

This was actually the reason why I bought stock was because I could buy when it went low, sell when it went up and turn around and buy again and again on the lows. Rinse and repeat this cycle. It worked pretty well until now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the whole premise of the China Hustle: [https://www.thechinahustlefilm.com/](https://www.thechinahustlefilm.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)

</comment><comment><USER17> So what's stopping someone from shorting YRIV?

<comment><USER18> Before? Nothing. Now? If you can find anyone who will let you enough shares to short in a meaningful way, you can do it. But you need someone betting the other way, which is not going to be that popular once the article is public.

<comment><USER17> Dammit. Could have sold them for ~ $8.75 when this came out. It is $4 now. :-/

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/YRIV?ltr=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/YRIV?ltr=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Damn I own stock in them.

<comment><USER19> Out of curiosity...why? As part of an index fund or directly?

<comment><USER20> Vanguard is going to have to start conducting independent audits.

<comment><USER21> Why? The whole point of indexing is not to do that. Feel free to move your money to an active fund that tries to catch out companies with lies on financial statements.

<comment><USER22> Or perhaps an indexing that does.

<comment><USER21> That would be active management

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would not be surprised if mortgages from Puerto Rico held by the US Treasury or on the balance sheet of banks were for homes that do not exist either. The government of Puerto Rico is known to be corrupt and has changed the measured distance of many roads on the island at least 2 times in the last ten years. This correlates with when the US treasury window was open to MBS paper exchanges at par value.

<comment><USER24> I know you're being downvoted for being off-topic, but I'd like to know more about this:

 _The government of Puerto Rico... has changed the measured distance of many roads on the island at least 2 times in the last ten years._

I ask as someone who has to sometimes locate addresses on maps of Puerto Rico, and occasionally has problems doing it.

<comment><USER23> Every public road in Puerto Rico is kilometre marked as highways in the US are mile marked. Addresses to property are then designated by the km sign they are nearest too. From what I can tell with my limited Spanish ability, the legal address of the property is based on this as well. The government here decided to remeasure and mark these roads twice in the last ten years, effectively creating an entire new set of legal addresses for many roads that cross the entire island.

<comment><USER24> And how is that corrupt? Renumbering happens a lot. Even a big city like Chicago was renumbered twice.

<comment><USER23> The simple act itself is not corrupt. Illinois' budget is also in a financial hardship, from what I have read. In my own reasoning to answer the question of, what is behind making a change to legal addresses like that. The only answer I have come up with based on the opinions I have heard of corruption in the government, is that it would be nessecary to fabricate entire MBS or parts of MBS, that then could have been sold to the treasury at par value. The address changes happened while they were accepting the 4 trillion plus, in mortgage backed securities that they now hold.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good places for short coding term gigs? - <AUTHOR>

There seem now to be a lot of decent places for full-time jobs and even bigger projects (SO, Hackerjobs etc) but I'm more looking for something shorter term to fill the gap between bigger projects. A fix here, some new feature there, a mockup etc. My skills range from PHP dev to mobile & design, so anything in those areas.
The likes of oDesk/Freelancer etc have proved fruitless given the workload to likely compensation ratio. Fiverr is also out, as I'd like a bit more than a fiver (greedy?!).
Is there anything out there? And not restricted to the US?
Flip, right now, I'd even take a chunk out for commission if someone can point me right way! :) <comment><USER2> Elance and Odesk can actually pay pretty well. I regularly find jobs which I know exactly what's required but are quoted really high by people who don't really know what they are bidding on. I think what happens is that one bidder comes up with a number pulled out of thin air and then the rest of the bidders use that as a starting point and just bid a little lower. In this case I just bid the average of the top bids and then I'm usually able to get the job because I know the problem so well. A job under $500 is still a good one if you are able to knock it out quick and hit $100 / hour. The problem with this is that it takes more time to find the diamonds in the rough.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my friends (here in the UK) uses [http://www.peopleperhour.com/](http://www.peopleperhour.com/) and has had a lot of success (despite his constant whining about how some clients are hard to nail down specs with). It seems like it might tick the non-US and non- slave-rates boxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I just came off a frustrating weekend of PPH! Should've mentioned that above. 2 different bids interested, both then tried pushing bid down and disappeared, re-listing at half the price later (re-listing 4 additional times in one case). It could get better but right now I'm not confident!

<comment><USER3> I suspect it's worth another try. My friend has had similar complaints but ultimately has made good money and gotten good reviews from it. I believe one of the clients turned into a more permanent thing recently so he doesn't use it so much now. I'll see if I can get him to post his comments on here later, perhaps.</comment></comment></comment>