Ask HN: How do B2C "free-tilities" like evite make money? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a B2C utility which addresses a frequent consumer pain point, should be fun to use, but at the end of the day is just that...a fun utility but not something you would pay a monthly / one time fee to use.
I'm curious what the business model for companies like evite is. Is it just "build it and they will come...and click on ads"? Is it direct-sale of ads?
I expect the traffic and interactions on the utility to result in very targeted ads, but the idea of relying on adwords alone doesn't appeal to me very much. I could white-label the utility or underlying algorthm and sell it that way, but that's quite a departure from the current approach and would take me straight into B2B territory.
Thoughts? Advice? <comment><USER2> Much of their advertising is very much larger CPMs as part of agency buys across IAC's entire network. Certain "party" brands such as Bacardi target Evite on a regular basis given their obvious alignment with the audience. The direct sales team there takes them to task on the rates in comparo with a Adwords. Big G pays out only 25% of ad revenue to content partners (and that is weighted more towards their higher converting brands than lower publishers). Direct sell + high CPM works relatively well with a large network, affinity group of sites or a niche vertical master brand.

Advice (roughly 10 yrs in media/content) would be to completely own a niche or vertical with a strong brand and loyal spend-oriented audience. This can be through traditional media, aggregation, gaming or utility. Adwords will never truly support a product of this scale of effort, which is probably why its utility, benefit and opinion for publishers ranges near the bottom of the toilet. Push relationships...with your product...with your users...with your customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the case of evite, yes they rely on advertising, but remember they are owned by IAC (also ASK.com) which allows them to cross-sell, and they do have their own ad sales team.

In your case, I don't think I'd follow their path. They suck, and there are other better products, but evite has momentum from '98. It would help if you'd be more specific about your utility, where you are located, and where your target market is located because these factors are major when considering monetization strategies.</comment>


FigDev 2019: a development comp where you could win $5k for a new app - <AUTHOR> https://figshare.com/blog/FigDev_2019/476 <comment><AUTHOR> Are you a developer? Are you a fan of open science? You could win USD $5,000 for developing an app or integration that works with Figshare!

We're running an app development competition throughout March and April to develop new apps and integrations for our new app store, available at [https://knowledge.figshare.com/apps](https://knowledge.figshare.com/apps).

All apps developed during the competition will be added to the app store. Figshare's API is available at [https://docs.figshare.com](https://docs.figshare.com). If you have any questions, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com.

Terms and conditions for the competition are available at [https://knowledge.figshare.com/articles/item/figdev-terms- an...](https://knowledge.figshare.com/articles/item/figdev-terms-and- conditions).</comment>


Google's new privacy policy and TOS - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-policies-and-terms.html

<comment><USER2> I saw a talk at defcon by a former google employee named Brian Kennish, author of disconnect.me. He said that google has 3 data sources in particular that, if tied together, would be very worrisome. Those were:

Google Analytics - Every time you visit a page with this javascript, google obviously receives a get request from your IP address

+1 Button - Similar to what facebook is doing, hits for the +1 button, whether you click it or not, are another GET request to google

Your google account - if logged in, they obviously have a ton of information about you.

If I recall correctly, he said that the idea of tying these together came up frequently, but has always been shot down as too invasive. At the time, he said he believed they had no plans to ever do this when he left the company. Doing this would be easy, and would tie nearly all of your browsing activity to your google account. That, to me, is evil.

This update sounds suspiciously like they have gone ahead with this idea. If so, I don't understand how people are ok with this.

<comment><USER3> The purposes for the update are way more simple and common sensical than that.

Until this change, pretty much every product had it's own privacy policy. I think there were something like 70-ish different policies. For both users and people within the company having so many slightly different privacy policies is a complete mess.

As a user, trying to keep straight in your head the subtle difference between gmail's policy and search's policy and the policies for photos, google+, blogger, etc. is probably impossible for most people. It gets even harder when products start interacting in interesting ways. For example, if you share a picture from a Picasa album to G+ contacts, which then generate message in gmail with pointers (or copies) of the picture, which privacy policy applies? If you're in gmail and you chat with someone from you circles, which policy applies?

(Note - I'm not at all interested in debate about whether people like the features I used as examples. I am simply using examples off the topic of my head to try to show some of the problems inherent with having per-product privacy policies when the lines between products is blurring)

The goal is that, by having a single and comprehensive privacy policy that applies to all Google products, it will be easier for users to understand exactly what promises Google is making and not making. It also makes it easier for engineers (like me) that are creating and improving products.

<comment><USER2> Will data from these 3 sources, or any subset, be correlated in any way (or are they already)?

1\. Requests for the +1 button (not clicks)

2\. Google analytics

3\. Google accounts

<comment><USER3> I'm not in a position to make any promises about future policy decisions. So I'm not not comfortable trying to speculate about future plans. I can say that I believe in the character of the current leadership, but beyond that...

As to whether it is done currently? The simple answer is I don't know. I haven't heard anything that would make me think it is, but I don't work close enough to those areas that I necessarily would.

I would be _surprised_ if the things you list are combined in an meaningful way (obviously, if you use analytics, there is a link between your account and your analytics data, the same way there is if you use docs or picasa - but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're asking about :-) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disregarding all the other discussions going around about Google, I think this is a great approach to get the user to know the TOS, I hope many more companies follow this path.

In fact, now that I think of it, it is the first time I have fully read a TOS agreement (as a user), I thought it was simple and clear, though IANAL and I'm not sure about the legal implications.

<comment><USER5> Devoid of the proper context, it's amusing to think about your post in terms of the uncertain legal implications of users actually reading and understanding the TOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of late, I've paid attention to how many letters I must type into "google" before it generates an auto-completed phrase I'm searching for.

I am profoundly impressed by how little typing is required. It certainly feels like communicating with an artificial intelligence.

This feels like value created on a giant scale.

My father was one of the first computer programmers: starting sometime around the late 50's, he wrote code in a language called octal, using vacuum tubes and wires. One of his first projects was to write a routine to calculate square roots.

Fifty years later, a computer knows that when I type "toc", I'm probably looking for the "Tournament of Champions Squash Tournament" presently being held in Grand Central Station. Remarkable.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been seeing this new development being characterized as Google's "evil" moment, but I'm not convinced. I thought it was more evil when they changed account creation last week to require both a Gmail and G+ account. That's bad for users. This doesn't seem that way to me.

<comment><USER8> How can you characterize Google's effort to make their privacy policy and terms of use more simple and clear as "evil?"

<comment><USER9> I think the "evil moment" is more about the new "Search Plus Your World". Every big social site that doesn't let Google index (and therefore, display) their content has called SPYW "evil", in that it "pollutes" Google Search results with content from Google+, Youtube, and other Google sites, instead of using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (who, as mentioned above, do not let Google see their content). The whole thing reeks of "You can't see my data, Google, but I DEMAND to be in your search results anyways".

The new privacy policy is only incidental, and, as nknight mentions here [1], it is probably motivated by government regulation as much as it is Google's focus on integration.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3507707>

<comment><USER10> > ... instead of using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (who, as mentioned > above, do not let Google see their content)

Oh come on. A quick Google search shows three billion results from Twitter.com, and nearly eight billion from Facebook.com.

<comment><USER11> How many days worth of tweets do you think 3 billion is? Answer: about a fortnight's worth.

[http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day- are-t...](http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day-are-there-on- Twitter)

<comment><USER10> Do you really want individual tweets showing up in Google's main search results? Google doesn't seem to individually index Google+ posts, either - there's only 15 million search results for "site:plus.google.com".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services"

Google, you were nice enough to provide a toggle button to turn off the personal search feature. Now, could you be nice enough to provide an option to opt-out of this combined-information utopia of yours? I don't want to participate in this combined information experiment.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is so much talk about SPYW and its evil implications. If google just adds a new tab , saying social search , wont that solve the problems. And if twitter wants to share its tweets , fine , lets get twitter on board as well. And I dont think facebook will let google access its data , and it might still say its evil.

<comment><USER14> probably, no one would use it

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The TOS is short, but the arguably more important Privacy Policy for Google products is still huge: <http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>

<comment><USER16> You're actually linking to the old policy, the new one is here and will go into effect in March: <http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/preview/>

It's actually longer than the "existing" policy, but covers a lot more of Google's services under one umbrella.

In any case, a TOS is basically governed by ordinary contract law, which allows for a much more generalized, principles-based document.

Privacy policies are increasingly governed by regulatory requirements, and those requirements are increasingly demanding a fair bit of specificity, so you're seeing an inevitable and likely permanent state of affairs.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the correction.

The length of the new privacy policy still seems to counter the assertion that this is something people will find easy to read.

<comment><USER7> Well - there's "easy to read" as in Goodnight Moon, and there's "easy to read" as in a layman can get the gist in 15 minutes.

<comment><USER17> Why shouldn't a privacy policy should be as easy as "Goodnight Moon" ?

<comment><USER18> Why did you use 12 words in your post instead of a single one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't be the only person who assumed Google already shared data between it's properties, right? I don't go into the grocery store and assume what I buy in produce is hidden from what I buy in the deli.

In fact, I want this. I use Google services for their convenience and function. If the things I share on Google+ or the videos I view on youtube alter the ads I see, it probably makes them far more relevant. And it's honestly about 1 time in 500 I don't get what I was looking for in the top 10 results in a regular search, even when logged in.

<comment><USER20> > I don't go into the grocery store and assume what I buy in produce is hidden > from what I buy in the deli.

You probably don't talk to the shop assistant in produce about your medical problems and then ask the deli staff about life insurance.

You probably don't book a four night away break in produce and then meet a friend (who happens to be a divorce lawyer) in the deli, where the staff know all about what he does for a living.

You probably don't discuss homosexual relationships in produce and then call your boss, Colonel Gaybasher, from the deli's payphone.

One of the most valuable things about privacy is that it lets us compartmentalise our lives. That helps people we know by not inflicting parts of our lives they don't care about on them. It also helps us, by allowing us to explore and develop one aspect of our lives with people we trust to help us, without allowing others who we don't trust to know about it or interfere with the rest of our lives as a result. One specific example of the latter idea is that maintaining privacy means someone who is trying to assess us doesn't get incomplete information that they consider relevant and then jump to conclusions based on getting the wrong idea.

The likes of Google and Facebook are now so ubiquitous that the complete destruction of that privacy for millions of people is a profit-seeking executive's sneeze away from happening. It's bad enough that they rely on this sort of perma-snooping on their own users on their own sites for their own advertising. It's downright creepy that they are abusing the nature of the Internet and the ignorance of most people about that nature to spy on people visiting other sites as well.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What not-programming-related YouTube channels are you watching? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/user/React](https://www.youtube.com/user/React)

They give kids, teenagers and elders things to see how they react. Oculus Rift, old NES, computers, cameras. Pretty entertaining.</comment>


Show HN: Itsy-bitsy static site generator - <AUTHOR> http://itsy-bitsy.org/

<comment><USER2> I've built pagewerk which takes files from one directory and wraps a jinja2 template around. No configuration needed. [https://github.com/thomersch/pagewerk](https://github.com/thomersch/pagewerk)</comment>


Does "dead" status on HackerNews means suppression of the freedom of speech? - <AUTHOR> Think about it, if news are not good and no one votes they will drop anyway, and after one hour or so no one will vote for them.
Censorship by definition is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information.
But, if first user who has admin rights decided to mark something as "dead" basically he acts same as people in Stasi Germany, filtering the continent for "greater good".
[Update] Additionally, why is sharing other people things considered ok but sharing your own things consider bad and banned?
[Update 2] I would gladly answer but I am getting message I am submitting too fast
Example:
For instance for the following account [grisanik] everything from that story [10790985], has marked as "dead", it is distopian/utopian story about two futures.
https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/grisanik.json?print=pretty
Why is that story considered as spam? On that site there is no adverts?
Tell me what is considered as on topic I just read the story about gang rape. How is that on topic with Hack news?
>>>> Comment
"You are saying HN is not ok to say I made this what do you think about it? and then I made something else what do you think about that?" But it is ok with U1 "Elon Musk ..." U2 "Elon Musk ..." U3 "Elon Musk ..."
I know that Elon Musk is awesome I do not to read about him here I can go to his official site.
What is that you people make? That is what interest me... But again maybe I am wrong ... <comment><USER2> Censorship by definition is "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security", with the clear understanding that attempting to bypass it by publishing elsewhere will be likewise censored and likely punished.

Routine maintaining of order & interest on a private site is NOT censorship; you are welcome to publish your content & links elsewhere, and HN admins (and users flagging objectionable content) will not come after you to erase such publication or punish you for publishing it anyway.

Stasi would _kill_ you for persisting in publishing prohibited content. PG et al won't.

<comment><AUTHOR> But this is the thing, other sites have similar idea of "censorship", you cannot post your own things. So, if people are centred on specific sites, where can you post?

Maybe they will not kill you physically but surely they will kill your electronic life.

Also question is following if people gather on private site are those sites private or public?

<comment><USER2> Their site, their property, their business.

There are plenty of sites where you can post pretty much whatever you want. HN likely frowns on self-promotion, as it would fast turn an informative news site into a bunch of "look at me!" content few are interested in.

Publicly-accessible privately-owned sites are still private, just like stores "open to the public" \- you're welcome to come in and participate as the business sees fit, but promoting yourself (unless that's the point of the site) is usually frowned on and not leaving when requested is punishable trespassing.

No, they're not "killing your electronic life". Go to networksolutions.com (or wherever), register your own domain, and publish whatever you want (a few generally-accepted legal limitations aside, like libel or obscenity or state secrets). Promote it thru advertising, Twitter, Facebook, etc insofar as you're not violating their standards for objectionable/deniable content.

Freedom of the press does _not_ mean freedom to use someone else's press as you see fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> (I'm not a mod or admin, so I'm not sure about this stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong.)

1) Hacker News has a variety of methods for marking submissions or comments as dead. Not all of these require moderator intervention. Many submissions are marked dead by spam filters. Or they're killed by user flags. Some comments are caught in spam filters, or the user has been caught in a hellban. Or sometimes users flag the comment (I think this is marked differently as "flagged" rather than "dead").

2) Users with a small amount of karma can "Vouch" for dead items. This will bring them back to live status, and might trigger the mods to look to see if the account was mistakenly killed.

3) Even if the account was correctly hellbanned users could vote to un-kill individual comments. Although abuse of the vouch feature leads to loss of the button.

4) Can you point to anything that you think was incorrectly killed? Plenty of stuff which is critical of HN or YCombinator or YCombinator companies is posted and not killed. Mods have said, many times, that they do not intervene in killing those threads.

5) YCombinator companies are held to the same community standards as everyone else. A YCombinator company that used sock-puppets to vote up their submissions would get banned.

6) Sharing your own things is fine. There's even a section of the site dedicated to sharing your stuff: Show HN. And the rules ask people to engage in constructive criticism, and avoid undue negativity. It's a problem if the only thing you submit is from your own site. But it's a problem if a user only submits from one site even if it's not their stuff. Some people take every opportunity to mention their stuff in comments. "Oh hey, just wanted to say my site EXAMPLE.COM does this, try it out, let me know what you think". Sometimes that's okay if it's directly relevant to the parent comment. And HN is seems to be reasonably tolerant of it. But you have to be honest ("This is my site" is okay, "hey, have you seen this site?" is less okay) and you have to not over do it.

But, like I say, I'm just a user so maybe I've got this all wrong.

<comment><USER4> Could you define "hellbanned" for me? I've seen that term several times, but I don't know what it actually means.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried googling it? The Wikipedia entry seems to cover it pretty well.

<comment><USER4> Well, no, I didn't, because I assumed it was an HN-specific term.

To whoever downvoted CarolineW: She didn't answer my question, but she pointed me to the answer, which I thought was good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In answer to your update:

        [Update] Additionally, why is sharing other
        people things considered ok but sharing your
        own things consider bad and banned?

In general, it's not. Maybe the stuff you're submitting is simply not regarded as on-topic for HN.

As I've said elsewhere, give us some examples, and we can give you some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not involved with HN or YC in any way, I'm just a cranky old man.

Your definition of censorship ignores that you have no basic right to publish using facilities you don't own.

Also, considering we can opt in to seeing the dead items, they aren't even censored by your loose definition of the term, they are just inconvenient to access.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you think your submissions are being killed unfairly, there is a contact link at the bottom of the page where you can discuss it with the staff. Be sure to mention your actual account to them and not the one you appear to have created just to make vague complaints.

</comment><comment><USER5> Firstly, the faq says not to ask this kind of question here, but to email them. Have you done that?

Secondly, many things on HN are automated, the volume of work would be too large otherwise. Consider, you submit item after item, getting no comments and no upvotes. I'm not surprised an automated system would mark it as probable spam, especially since you've never commented on anything else. You have been behaving just as a spammer would.

Which takes me back to the first point: have you asked the mods? Complaining here just makes you look bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's nothing to do with admins - it's ordinary users flagging items as not being appropriate for HN. They might even be interesting, it's just that some things are not on-topic.

For example - spam really doesn't belong, and should be flagged. When that happens, the item is killed and is marked as [dead].

Do you have any specific item in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, specific thing is that if you share only own things you will be suspended completly.

So, my additional question to this, are we unintentionally crating a structure/trend of followers instead of leaders? By encuraging people to follow instead to create?

<comment><USER8> > Yes, specific thing is that if you share only own things you will be > suspended completly.

Er, that's spam and most websites would ban you for doing that, not just HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you ok with that?

Why are pepole ok with sharing other people things, but it is not ok to share your own things?

<comment><USER2> There's a difference between "hey, I found something y'all might find interesting" vs "hey, I wrote something and I'm trying to promote it".

<comment><USER3> And HN is fine with "Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

HN is not fine with

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

"Hey, I made something and I'm trying to promote it".

[repeat]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Freedom of speech means you are free to express your opinions. Freedom of speech does _not_ mean a private, third party is obligated to provide you with a forum to express your opinions. You have an almost _infinite_ opportunity to express yourself on the internet; get over yourself.

I've been hellbanned apparently, which ever so slightly annoys me considering it was for stuff that "cooler" posters don't have an eye batted at, but I don't pretend HN owes me anything.

<comment><USER10> > _I 've been hellbanned apparently_

No, by definition that's banning someone without telling them, and we told you: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545474).

Pretty much the only accounts that we ban without telling them are brand new ones that are spamming or trolling. If a user has any real history here, we tell them that they're banned, and there's a standing invitation for anyone who sincerely intends to improve their behavior on the site to email us and get unbanned. There's also now a mechanism—as other users have explained in this thread—for comments by banned users to get restored by the community on a case-by-case basis.

We're thinking of abolishing shadow-banning altogether and making a big announcement that we've done so, because there's still a lot of misunderstanding around this, and we barely do it anyway. But I don't like to make any big change without first letting it simmer a long time. It's simmering.</comment></comment>


The Defense Department has produced the first tools for catching deepfakes - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611726/the-defense-department-has-produced-the-first-tools-for-catching-deepfakes/ <comment><USER2> The buried lede here being that the US Defense Department is spending on & developing cutting edge AI technologies.

What do they have that they're _not_ telling the public about?</comment>


Waymo One: The next step on our self-driving journey - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/waymo/waymo-one-the-next-step-on-our-self-driving-journey-6d0c075b0e9b <comment> a-wu I can't wait for wheelchair accessible vehicles to be equipped with this technology. It looks like they're using Chrysler Pacificas which already have wheelchair ramp conversions from VMI and Braun. Since the self driving equipment seems to be on the top of the vehicle, it seems trivial to mount it on a converted Pacifica. As a quadriplegic who doesn't drive (yet), the possibilities with this excite me greatly.

<comment><USER2> > It looks like they're using Chrysler Pacificas which already have wheelchair > ramp conversions from VMI and Braun.

How common is this for other makes/models? If it is rare, I wonder if it influenced Google's choice of vehicle?

<comment><USER3> Rear entry is probably going to have physical fitment issues depending on the amount of space in the chassis to work with. Minivans are pretty homogeneous now (it's not the late 80s anymore) so this isn't really an issue but I bet there's a model or two out there that are simply a no-go because some component that can't practically be relocated is in the way.

Side entry is going to be able to fit a wider range of vehicles because the installation is less invasive so you can support more vehicles for cheaper (kind of like how a static webpage can be viewed on basically anything but a fancy web app has a narrower range of browsers).

You can get a rear entry kit for pretty much every minivan that's on the market. You can get a side entry kit for that and more. I didn't bother checking but I know I've seen side entry but never rear entry kits on full size vans (also it makes sense that you can't put a rear entry kit on a full size van because there's a frame in the way).

Fundamentally you're limited by head room. You can't have people smashing their faces into the top of the door opening.

Google's choice was probably not influenced by the availability wheelchair van conversion kits.

<comment><USER4> The electronics for the self-driving are apparently in the trunk (the cars have a sticker on the back that says rear storage is not available) so a rear entry is not likely to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice.

IMHO, to do less would be reckless showboating that could do unimaginable damage to the AV industry, as well as end up endangering lives.

In the tech industry, we don't like to wait, we like moving fast, taking risks, shipping MVPs, learning by shipping, etc. And for the next great Camera filter app, perhaps that makes sense, but not for cars, planes, or medical equipment.

<comment><USER6> "Keeping the safety drivers in the beginning, scaling up, and getting a year or more worth of actual real world use, before slowly scaling back the drivers is what I'd call a very responsible choice."

A whole year! Truly sage-like wisdom from the MoveFastBreakThings generation of technical development.

It is simultaneously comical, exasperating and sad to watch this tragedy unfold.

We will slowly build our own, modern Deuteronomy - instead of forbidding the consumption of shellfish or stipulating gifts for former slaves, ours will talk about agency and skin-in-the-game and aligned incentives ...

Meanwhile, there will be a multi year (decade ?) period of experimentation where we will all be terrified as we drive at highway speeds and another vehicle approaches that road at a right-angle. Currently, _I know_ what that vehicle will do, because all other choices lead to death-of-driver.

But in this near (and short lived) future, that other vehicle _could do anything_.

<comment><USER7> That's funny, a month ago my car was totaled by a guy who fell asleep and blew through a red light. That happened at a right angle but only at 30mph. Since then I've been concerned at every intersection about what the other cars will do.

I'm not sure how much of it can be blamed on cell phone use, but I swear that human drivers have been getting substantially worse over the last few years (at least in the Bay Area). It seems like every single week I avoid a major accident from somebody doing something stupid or not paying attention. And I don't even drive that much!

So while Waymo continues improving, it appears that the bar for them to be better than human drivers also keeps getting lowered.

<comment><USER8> I think so much of it is just a scale issue. I grew up in a mid-sized suburb in the Northwest just a couple decades ago. Most road were only 2, or maximum 4 lanes. The idea of driving around without your headlights on in the dark would be unfathomable. And if you did, you'd get honked at, flashed, and presumably at some point within 5 or 10 minutes, a police officer would see you and stop you.

That area's gotten bigger, and I moved to the Bay Area, which is bigger still. 2 decades on, It's not even worth COUNTING the number of vehicles without headlights on in the dark or rain. I never thought I'd be one to complain about too few police, but I see at least 10-20x as many vehicles with no headlights as I see cops (for example). Much of my commuting is on the freeway, and CHP are few and far between but also police aren't so common on surface streets either. And when they are there, they don't bother pulling anyone over for "small potatoes" stuff like this. I don't know if they're waiting for the next violent crime, or what, but it would be nice if they did a little "broken windows" policing.

Why don't they bother? I don't know. Probably because everyone's busy, everyone has a sob story, their stupid new car with its light-up instruments on 24x7 makes it LOOK like the headlights are on, the daytime running lights make you THINK the headlights are on, are you really going to give a ticket to someone just trying to pick up their kid from school?

I wish the answer was YES, but it just feels like everyone's stopped knowing or caring. When you don't own the same vehicle for 15 years, you have no idea how the controls on this week's lease work, there are too many cars on the road, the problem has gotten too big, tech has taken over too much of it.. everything just feels out of control.

<comment><USER9> IIRC the #1 reason people get pulled over for drunk driving is because they don't have their headlights on, the police for sure are on the lookout for that.

In Arizona you pretty much have to make the cops do their job unless they think they can get you for a DUI then they'll pull you over for the slightest infraction. The things I've seen people do when there's a cop right next to me at an intersection and not get stopped is mind boggling.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the problem is, in the winter, no headlights during the early evening hours, no big deal. 3am, they're out for blood if you don't have your lights on, for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The link at the bottom of that article is pointing to another Medium post with details of the launch: [https://medium.com/waymo/riding-with-waymo-one- today-9ac8164...](https://medium.com/waymo/riding-with-waymo-one- today-9ac8164c5c0e)

Notably, "At the start, Waymo-trained drivers will be riding along to supervise our vehicles for riders' comfort and convenience."

Edit: Re-reading my comment, it sounds negative, so I want to acknowledge that I think this is a big deal. No matter how "soft" this launch, it's still a historic moment.

<comment><USER11> Mark these words, "At the start", because we'll be hearing them for the next 10 years until Waymo closes up shop. That they are going to market with drivers in the car means that the business has pivoted from "can we do driverless taxi" to "can we make money as uber-but-with-employees".

The next announcement from Waymo will be that they are cutting staff "mostly from R&D". The announcement after that will be that they are opening up the Waymo app for anyone to be a driver. The announcement after that will be that they are closing up shop or being sold to Uber.

<comment><USER12> Mark these words. In 10 years time we'll still be hearing the same comments about Waymo & their competitors because there still will be certain combinations of passenger, route & conditions that Waymo will refuse to take without a safety driver along.

But since Waymo will handle the vast majority of rides we'll just tune out those comments.

Handling all rides & conditions is a very hard problem and it'll take decades to solve.

But scaling from "a few" to "most" is a much easier problem and one that I have confidence that Waymo will achieve. And "most" can be very useful & profitable.

<comment><USER13> I assume we're talking about city driving. I'm not sure about the USA, but being in Europe, the average speed my car says I go is 28.5 km/h. Do you think we could not solve traffic for 10 years if we slowed cars down to 30 km/h? With assumption being that a city-wide driverless system would easily 'swim' through the city without encountering red lights or slowdowns due to unpredictiveness of other drivers. We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much.

<comment><USER12> I'm a big fan of Sweden's Project Zero, one leg of which is setting and enforcing a speed limit of 30 km/h on any road or street without fully separated pedestrian & cycle infrastructure. I don't know if self-driving will help accomplish this everywhere, but I'd be ecstatic if it did.

> We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not > be harmful too much.

instead of "harmful too much" you can simply use "fatal". 30km/h is a pretty magic value: below that speed pedestrian collisions are very rarely fatal. Serious perhaps, but not fatal. Above that speed they are often fatal.

<comment><USER14> About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.

<comment><USER15> The average human cannot sprint that fast. I'd peg the average person sprinting closer to half that (obviously there's a lot of variance, but I think only the top 1% of athletes could run 30 kph even for 5 seconds). For a frame of reference, try to run at the top speed of a treadmill (most max out at 15 mph, and most people can't go that fast - at least not at the gym).

<comment><USER16> The fastest athletes can max out at nearly 45 kph when given a running start.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed)

But I'm not sure that the average human could even run 100m these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One feature I like is the LCD displays for passengers, which (supposedly) show what the Waymo car is "thinking".

So if the car stops unexpectedly, the display might show, "waiting for a crossing pedestrian". Ideally with a simple map diagram of what's around the vehicle.

<comment><USER18> This is both really cool, and really smart strategically.

I'm sure the Waymo folks know that one of the largest barriers to success for automated vehicles is public perception and fear. Each time a rider rides in one of these, they get a beautifully rendered window into the car's brain, which helps build the trust needed to sell the technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Waymo One is rolling out in the Metro Phoenix area first. Over time, we > hope to expand to new places and more people._

You can sign up to express interest using the form at the bottom of this page[1] (asks for your gmail address, zip code and type of phone).

P.S. Why is the mobile experience on Medium so frustratingly bad? Between the permanent heading plus the "please download our app" heading I find it maddening. I also find the UX around reading comments to be unnecessarily confusing.

1\. [https://waymo.com](https://waymo.com)

<comment><USER20> Don't worry, Medium on desktop is equally bad. Two persistent banners bottom and top plus a "pardon the interruption" popup. I really wish companies wouldn't use Medium as their blogging platform.

<comment><USER21> The web annoyances ultralist really helps :)

[https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances](https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know this is a heated debate, but it's interesting to see the divergent approaches that are being taken to achieve self driving. In one corner, it's lidar-based, equipping vehicles produced by other companies, organically and incrementally growing the navigation technology.

In the other, it's video-based with now 100s of thousands of vehicles feeding data to a massive neural net.

Each has very well thought-out arguments for the approach they are taking, and I expect that both would ultimately 'work' by reducing the inherent risks of taking a car ride by a substantial amount (90%?). I think the winner will be the one who gets to that milestone soonest.

It's entertaining to watch.

<comment><USER23> Curious; If you train a neural net to drive a car with X number of samples, and the car does something erratic, how do you determine which data item introduced the erratic behavior and how do you go about untraining that behavior?

<comment><USER24> Gradient descent is done in batches and over the aggregate collection of the training data so it's pretty lossy. Usually the error is more of the fault of the learned model itself, and then the culprit is attributed to neuron "mis"-activations post-hoc. Often, problems take the form of generalization error instead. And yes, all of these problems are still quite unsolved, which is why we don't have end-to-end neural network-based self-driving cars, we just have rule based systems with a perception framework that just uses convnets for vision.

<comment><USER25> I think there's this popular perception that you just stream in lots of data from road vehicles and the driving just gets better over time--rather than continuing to discover individual edge cases more or less manually and updating rules based on those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _" At first, Waymo-trained drivers will supervise our Waymo One vehicles."_

That's about where they've been for years now - almost autonomous, with a safety driver. Back in November, Waymo started sending some cars out without a safety driver. But they backed off on that.[1]

I'm disappointed. I thought Waymo was ready to launch a real self-driving system. But no, not yet.

[1] [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-cars-play- it-...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-cars-play-it-safer- after-incidents-and-driver-fatigue)

<comment><USER12> According to the article on the verge, they are testing and will continue testing without human drivers via the Early Rider program.

<comment><USER27> Arstechnica[1] asked about it and Waymo did not deny:

> In fact, last week the Information's Amir Efrati reported that Waymo may > actually have moved backward recently.

> "Within the past month or so, due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet > company put so-called safety drivers back behind the wheel of its most > advanced prototypes, ending a year-long period in which those people > generally sat in the passenger or back seat," Efrati wrote.

> We asked Waymo about this, and a spokesperson dismissed the report as > nothing new, saying that the company regularly changes the mix of cars with > and without safety drivers.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/waymos-ambitious- plans-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/waymos-ambitious-plans-for- high-speed-taxis-could-be-holding-it-back/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Fares are based on time and distance, and customers can expect fares to be roughly on par with what you'd pay for an Uber or Lyft trip—perhaps even a bit lower. The above Waymo-provided screenshot shows a customer booking this trip, which is 4.6 miles long and takes about 12 minutes. Waymo charges $7.32 for the trip. I punched the same route into Lyft and Uber aps on Tuesday afternoon and got quotes of $8.29 and $9.38, respectively."

<comment><USER29> And there's absolutely no pressure to tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised to see, after what happened to Uber — the failure of their safety driver to stay engaged enough to stop the car before striking a pedestrian — that a safety driver who will be mostly disengaged from the driving experience is still thought to add an appropriate safety margin?

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised to see them use a location for the article's main photo that's right down the street from where Uber's robocar hit that lady. The bridge in the background is the actual street where it happened and the accident site is not very far from there, couple hundred meters maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm confused as to what they're actually launching here. If i'm reading correctly, their existing service which was branded as an "early rider" program has been renamed to "waymo one", but the service hasn't actually changed at all and is still limited to the same region and to existing users of the early rider program?

<comment><USER32> Maybe they will start charging money?

<comment><USER31> ah, that's probably it. it does seem like they're charging now, i didn't realize they weren't before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> They announced a change of brand a month ago. I guess adding "One" at the end of the existing name counts, and I like the implication that they want to communicate clearly on phases of the project but… Was it worth announcing a brand change? I feel like I'm missing something.

<comment><USER12> They promised a public launch by the end of the year, and they're delivering on their promise even if there are no substantive changes.

<comment><USER34> It isn't public, randos in Chandler can't download the app and take a ride, they need to be approved as members of the easy rider program. Waymo has lifted their NDAs, so now they can talk openly about their experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It is interesting that the main photo on that article seems to be taken about 200 yards from where the Uber accident happened in Tempe, AZ.

</comment><comment><USER33> We still do not have much clarity on the price point. The screenshot (see gniv's link) shows that a 24-min ride could cost around $8, with an apparent 20% rebate.

I suspect that they won't try to under-cut Uber too dramatically but the long- term costs are bound to be much lower if you don't need to pay a driver. That illustrative price seems to match this. They certainly have copied Uber's focus on identifying the best pick-up and drop-off based on many factors, notably road setup. I'm less sure about child seats: their copy and photo seem to imply that there are infant raisers. However, it would be unusual to have those in every car. I'm not seeing a way to indicate that you want one in the interface, and presumably, that's a request per journey, not an account permanent status.

People have suggested advertising but I'm not seeing any of it in the screenshot, nor do I expect to see it any time soon, until their model has imposed itself.

<comment><USER36> I expect the funding model for self driving taxis will be like validated parking. You ride free (or reduced) if you spend $x at whatever business, shopping mall, etc.

<comment><USER37> Why though? Even in places with cheap labor (so cheap drivers), they still don't have things like that, taxis are just cheaper.

<comment><USER36> Because if I'm Safeway and I can get elderly people to come to my business (for shopping, prescriptions, etc.) they won't be shopping somewhere else. The business gains/retains the clientele by providing the driving service.

<comment><USER37> Just fund a minibus from the retirement home. I think many people do that already?

Ok, so it's an interesting idea to use personal transit, but it could be done already without self driving vehicles, it might be economical. But it would be pretty niche.

<comment><USER36> It's just a thought, not a business plan :)

<comment><USER38> I think you're bang on - but it needn't be limited to driverless cars.

Honestly, I'm surprised it's not something that Google have already built heavily into Maps. People often search for what they want (e.g. burger, pizza) - this would be an obvious time to offer deals or discounts to drive customers to particular businesses. You then expand to compete with particular retailers - someone searches for Nike specifically, they get offers from the nearby Adidas store.

This is not really any different to what happens with Google searches, where advertisers can buy keywords related to their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I hope they roll this out in Miami soon. Miami has some of the laxest AV regulations in the country. Also would happily pay to not drive in this mess every day.

<comment><USER40> As excited as I am for self driving, it makes me sad that I get car/motion sick. I can't exploit self driving to do laptop work, reading, gaming, etc without getting sick - all I can do is sleep basically lol.

It will be bittersweet in a self driving car realizing that since I don't have to pay attention, I can do so much more with my time!.. and then promptly stare out the window for an hour.

<comment><USER41> Is it the motion or seeing movement out of your peripheral vision?

<comment><USER42> As someone who has experienced both, it is the sudden unexpected movements that cause motion sickness. And if I am tired, my mind cannot coordinate between the movement I see to the movement I feel.

And now I realize that in the first case, it is a personality issue where if I am stubborn/stiff/unyielding, I will get annoyed at unexpected movements. I find this to be true also with my wife :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Super excited to try it soon. I've been watching them test their vehicles around our office in Tempe all year. Hoping to take one to lunch one day.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have read a little bit about this topic at [https://www.lemberglaw.com/self- driving-autonomous-car-accid...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving- autonomous-car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/). I think it's interesting to talk about this future tech. However, I personally won't risk myself to ride inside one of these prototype. It needs to be 99% safe before I would by one of it.

</comment><comment><USER45> What zip codes is the trial / beta accepting?

I'm in AZ often enough that I'd love to try it out for purely experiential reasons.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is the NDA preventing pictures, video, or even discussion of the service in effect for paying customers?

</comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone know if each of these has a remote operator as, I believe, the ones in CA do?

</comment><comment><USER48> RIP Uber.</comment>


Will Facebook Kill the US Dollar? - <AUTHOR> http://www.banking4tomorrow.com/?p=763

<comment><USER2> TLDR: With 500 million people using them, Facebook Credits could become a viable alternative currency to the dollar, yuan, etc. Especially if FB starts entering deals that allow FB currency to be used to purchase real world goods and services, say at Walmart, and/or deals that allow FB users to send each other 'moneygrams' or other payments worldwide using FB currency. Proof of concept has already happened with at least one popular virtual currency in China.

Lotta speculation, but very interesting to anyone interested in how money works, or international economics.</comment>


Ephemeral Undo - <AUTHOR> http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2015/07/31/ephemeral_undo/

<comment><USER2> I don't know this blog, so I may be missing the point, but it seems like there's not much here: "undo on mobile has never been good. Here's another approach which doesn't work— _because I have trained myself to prevent its working_." Aside from suggesting preventing the ephemeral 'undo' buttons (it's a nice term!) from being so easily dismissed—which would surely create its own suite of irritations—there doesn't seem to be much that's constructive here; and surely an ephemeral 'undo' as a first iteration is better than no such functionality at all!

(That said, as a vimmer, I am used to excellent undo functionality; and I am also frustrated by the failure of undo, and other basic navigation, in most mobile applications, so carefully geared towards the non-proficient user that they grind off all the corners on which a proficient user can hang his or her proficiency.)</comment>


"Strong Opinions, Weakly Held" - <AUTHOR> http://www.saffo.com/journal/entry.php?id=898

<comment><AUTHOR> Key quotes:

"The point of forecasting is not to attempt illusory certainty, but to identify the full range of possible outcomes."

"I will force myself to make a tentative forecast based on the information available, and then systematically tear it apart, using the insights gained to guide my search for further indicators and information. Iterate the process a few times, and it is surprising how quickly one can get to a useful forecast. Since the mid-1980s, my mantra for this process is 'strong opinions, weakly held.'"

"It sensitizes one to the weak signals of changes coming over the horizon and keeps the hapless forecaster from becoming so attached to their model that reality intrudes too late to make a difference."</comment>


How can I send text messages (SMS) to a list without coding? - alexander-g I'm wondering if there is a product like SendGrid or MailChimp that would let me upload a list of contacts and then send them an SMS marketing campaign? <comment><AUTHOR> Amazon SNS enables you to send messages or notifications directly to users with SMS text messages to over 200 countries, mobile push on Apple, Android, and other platforms or email (SMTP).

[https://aws.amazon.com/sns/](https://aws.amazon.com/sns/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd recommend Twilio, it was trivial to build lambda stuff integrating to Twilio with AWS and Azure as well if you have it. I did some stuff with traffic updates etc with no knowledge of cloud platforms. You also just use the Twilio UI on their site.

</comment><comment><USER3> As much as I hate to promote my ex-boss' products, I'll make an exception here. Yetitext ([https://www.yetitext.com](https://www.yetitext.com)) may be what you're looking for. I knew the coworker who developed the whole service for close to a decade, so it's one of the better services the company offers. The support team is fantastic which is what really makes Yetitex stand out, very few companies invest in support these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're truly looking for no-code, check out:

      - ClickSendSMS (https://www.clicksend.com)
      - EZTexting (https://www.eztexting.com)

They also have Zapier integrations so you can do more no-code stuff.

Also, Zapier itself has a outgoing SMS offering (cannot receive sms messages) in case that's helpful as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> smsapi google it [https://www.smsapi.com/en](https://www.smsapi.com/en)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Twilio API connected to a Google Spreadsheet and run through Google Apps Scripts works very well for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey!

I'd recommend SimpleTexting and Textedly if you're not looking for a no-code solution. Amazon SNS and Twilio (as you know) are not.

Both folks I listed have campaigns like MailChimp (my former employer).

I also run an SMS startup (Parrotmob). Let me know if you need more guidance.

</comment><comment><USER8> Check out Klaviyo, they have an SMS product made for eCommerce marketers.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://burstsms.com](https://burstsms.com), no coding required.

</comment><comment><USER10> Check out [https://www.arist.co/](https://www.arist.co/)

</comment><comment><USER11> You mentioned SendGrid. We are now part of Twilio. Twilio is to voice and sms as SendGrid is to email.

<comment> alexander-g Yeah I know, we do use Sendgrid at both botmakers.net and tarta.ai now.

Sendgrid allows me to create campaigns and send them to an email list, I'm looking to do exactly the same for SMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> smsapi, messagebird, twilio, i've used all three and they all work great.</comment>


The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki Misled the World About Navigating the Pacific (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-voyage-kon-tiki-misled-world-about-navigating-pacific-180952478/ <comment><USER2> I have not read much of Heyerdahl's work, but I did read Kon-Tiki several times.

The article may be right to dismiss Heyerdahl as wrong, but its depiction of his approach is not in line with what he wrote himself in Kon-Tiki.

The article says:

> He made his bias particularly clear by designing his Kon Tiki raft to be > unsteerable.

which makes it sound like a conscious decision to use the expedition to mislead.

In fact, Heyerdahl says clearly that he and his crew were trying to preserve their project's integrity by keeping the design of the ship as close as possible to the original South American rafts he studied, even to the point of preserving elements professional sailors said would sink the raft.

They did eventually discover that some pieces on the raft whose purpose they didn't understand at first could be used for marginal steerage (though not for sailing into the wind or current, certainly), so the article is factually wrong that he did not include any steering mechanisms.

He might have been entirely wrong about where the Polynesians came from, but I think the article paints him as more dishonest than he was.

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth I didn't read the article as portraying Heyerdahl as dishonest, just wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lost me at "Navigation is as much an art—and a spiritual practice—as it is a science."

I'm a pilot and I've done coastal and ocean yacht navigation including coastal at night in a new country. No art or spiritual practice. Bearings for coastal nav, celestial angles if you want latitude at sea, accurate time source if you also want longitude and the option to automate it all with GPS.

Next time you're boarding a commercial flight, go ask the pilot which deity he summoned to select his IFR route. He'll tell you the frequency.

<comment><USER5> You're correct. It's not magic. Papa Mau had an encyclopedic knowledge of the sea. He knew the birds, the fish, the constellations, the currents. At high noon on an overcast day Papa Mau could tell where they were by the way the water moved the boat.

This is a massive amount of information passed on through oral tradition. It takes a long time and if you ever visit, you'll often hear people call Papa Mau the last navigator, because he was the last human to be taught this kind of navigation from early childhood. Papa Mau passed before he could finish training the next generation.

This tradition is very important to the nations of the pacific. I don't have time to properly explain why right now. I have a meeting I need to get to.

<comment><USER6> >At high noon on an overcast day Papa Mau could tell where they were by the way the water moved the boat.

Sounds like a job for a neural network. Train it with video of the water as input and coordinates as output.

<comment><USER7> It was, in fact, the job of a neural network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The winds in the South Pacific predominately blow east to west. Since Polynesian voyaging canoes have a very limited ability to sail into the wind, it seemed impossible for them to have colonized Polynesia from west to east. This appeared to be a pretty strong argument for a colonization of Polynesia from South America, since South American voyagers (either intentional or accidental) would be sailing with the predominate winds, not against them.

However, it turns out that during El Niño years the direction of the winds can change so they are blowing from west to east, making it much easier to sail east across the South Pacific.[1]

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl didn't know about this possibility.

[1] Anomalous Westerlies, El Niño, and the Colonization of Polynesia - [https://www.jstor.org/stable/677659?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/677659?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) (I can't find the full text of the paper online, but I think this is the one I remember.)

<comment><USER9> They sailed west to east on purpose, because it made it easier to get home if they didn't make landfall.

The canoes they used were not tacked, they were shunted, which made it much easier to said into the wind.

To get back home, they memorized a bunch of zenith stars for their home latitude, went north or south till they put those stars at zenith and then just let the wind carry them home.

Non instrument navigation to Hawaii, for example, involves overshooting the island chain by going a bit too far east, putting Hokulea (Arcturus) at the zenith then sailing west till you make landfall.

<comment><USER8> I don't think shunting buys that much. The crab claw sail is still limited in how close it can sail to the wind. It's always going to be easier sailing when the wind is favorable. And it turns out that in some parts of some years, the winds are more favorable for sailing east in the South Pacific. Of course sooner or later the prevailing winds will return, and then it will be easier to get home.

<comment><USER9> IIRC shunting meant that they could keep the outrigger down wind at all times, which is supposedly more efficient than sailing an outrigger canoe 'the wrong way' half the time.

<comment><USER8> I had to look "shunting" up -- I'd heard of it before but then forgotten.

The big oceangoing voyaging canoes like Hokule'a are double canoes so they are symmetric, unlike outrigger canoes. There still might be an advantage to shunting depending on what kind of sail the canoe is using. According to Wikipedia, some types of lateen sails (of which the crab claw sail is a variant[1]) suffer from a "bad tack" due to the position of the mast[2], which shunting would address.

I don't think hokule'a is shunted, but I'm not actually clear on that. Hokule'a isn't a perfect replica anyway since it's built of modern materials.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_claw_sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_claw_sail)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen) (look for "bad tack")

<comment><USER9> Hokulea is not shunted, but it _is_ a decent replica of a double hulled Polynesian ocean canoe.[1]

The craft that were shunted were the smaller outrigger canoes.

[1] When it is rigged with lateen sails. It often is rigged with a Bermuda sail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When Nainoa Thompson was learning/re-inventing Polynesian navigation one of the techniques he used was too spend time at a planetarium where he could learn what the skies looked like at different latitudes.[1]

[1] [http://archive.hokulea.com/index/founder_and_teachers/will_k...](http://archive.hokulea.com/index/founder_and_teachers/will_kyselka.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Missing from the article is the recent DNA evidence linking Polynesian peoples to the aboriginal inhabitants of Taiwan ... Making the west to east theory even more likely ... Essentially the Polynesians spread across the Pacific above the equator, the travelled back south of it, finally discovering New Zealand around 900AD (probably the last inhabitable land discovered by any humans)

<comment><USER11> this article from a while back provides a nice summary of current thinking (there's a bunch of waffle at the top of the aritcle before getting into the guts of it about midway through ) [https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/asia/67390585/nu...](https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/asia/67390585/null)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was certainly contact between the polynesians and native americans. The Chumash got their tomolo design after contact with ancient polynesians who sailed to the channel islands. Before that contact they used reed based boats to travel between the channel islands, after that contact and the adoption of polynesian style sewn boats they were able to radically increase the scale of their commercial activities by being able to transport far more goods than with the older boat design.

</comment><comment><USER13> > On one voyage where he was not the master navigator, Mau woke out of a dead > sleep and told the steersman that the canoe was off course, just by the feel > of the swells hitting the hulls of the canoe.

That is an astonishing level of mastery.

</comment><comment><USER14> There was a part in Kon-Tiki where Heyerdahl says that after a month or so out in the ocean, they realized that it was easy to navigate between islands. First sail north or south to the latitude of your destination. Then sail east or west, maintaining the latitude to the destination. If you were confident about your position and heading, you could mix N/S and E/W motion to get there faster.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is totally true.

See the book Vaka Moana for the real story.

Polynesians populated the pacific islands from west to east.

They probably are the best navigators on the planet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow.

This story is worth reading all the way to the end, where some of the traditional navigation techniques are briefly described. It's mind-blowing.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you want to learn more about Polynesian voyaging, the book Vaka Moana is a great introduction to the various technologies. Navigation, boat-building, colonization, etc. It's a bit pricy at $70 but you can also find it in a lot of libraries.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/vaka-moana-voyages-of-the- anc...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/vaka-moana-voyages-of-the-ancestors- the-discovery-and-settlement-of-the- pacific/oclc/929920261&referer=brief_results)

</comment><comment><USER17> The issue (can Polynesian navigators navigate by stars and swells) was actually settled and documented in 1967. See [http://naturedocumentaries.org/14031/master-navigators- pacif...](http://naturedocumentaries.org/14031/master-navigators-pacific/)

Curiously, all it took was going to Polynesia, and asking them. Something 18th and 19th-century 'scientists' could not imagine doing I guess.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is not seaweed on the "wooden carving" in one of the photos, but lā'ī, maile and other lei plants from the land/forest.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is not seaweed on the "wooden carving" in one of the photos, but lā'ī, maile and other lei plants from the land/forest.</comment>


Interacting with a long-running child process in Python - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2017/interacting-with-a-long-running-child-process-in-python/ <comment><USER2> Python is an excellent glue language. It's surprising to me how difficult or non-intuitive it is to be able to interact with long running processes... especially with this nice new asyncio.

I'd like to be able to launch a long-running subprocess and iterate over every line of output in a coroutine. It seems this is not possible to do correctly without 50 lines of code. I know it's not as simple as it sounds (or people wouldn't still be using Tcl based Expect scripts eveywhere)... but it's still some complexity that could be hidden away in a library somewhere.</comment>


Ask HN: Who all use YouTube only for music not the Video? - <AUTHOR>

I'm planning to build a app with Youtube api which streams only the audio to reduce the usage of bandwidth. Will it be helpful? <comment><USER2> I used to listen to last.fm "radio" which starting 2013 switched to just streaming one Youtube video after the next. Example [http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Deepcentral/similarartists](http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Deepcentral/similarartists)

I've let it run in some browser tab in the background and there doesn't seem to be any time limit how long it can run. Bandwidth-wise it doesn't make sense at all. Owned by CBS Interactive so it's legit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd personally use it... even playlists, but... is it legal? Did you read the ToS?

<comment><USER4> I could see it going either way.

Blind users can't see the video either way, so it could be positioned as an app to aid accessibility.

On the other hand, YouTube makes money from visual ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> definitely, me looking at chromecast here.</comment>


Show HN: PowerMockup - A Wireframing Add-in for PowerPoint - <AUTHOR> http://www.powermockup.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> There are dozens of mockup/wireframe tools out there, so why did I decide to add another one to the pile? First, it was a fun diversion from my main project and second, I believe that using PowerPoint for mockup design has some significant benefits:

\- It encourages managers, clients and other "non-techies" to take part in the design process. PowerPoint is what they know and love and allows them to be an integral part of the development process.

\- It's easy to embed mockups into Word documents (it's even possible to edit mockups from within Word).

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER2> It's a great idea. When compared to balsamiq's Flash version, PowerPoint seems even a better choice. All mockups end up printed anyway, and it is the managers who need them the most.</comment>


DIY Home Automation? - <AUTHOR>

Do you have a Home Automation system and if yes, did you create it yourself? I want to hack my home in a way that it's completely secure and at the same time I can remotely control it without paying thousands. There are a couple of projects in Kickstarter related to this and I wonder how far can we get in making our homes both secured and at the same time smarter.<p>Thanks for sharing! <comment><USER2> I am working on something, as well. I currently use a Linux server centrally and an Arduino for prototyping the various sensors I want.

One thing I'm starting on right now are door sensors. Anyone found/devised a small, battery-based wireless door sensor? Ideally, I'd like a year or more battery life.

I can't run wires to every door in the house, so I'm thinking of some small wireless sensor with a reed switch that sits in power off mode when the door is shut, but flips on when the door is open and wirelessly (Xbee?)sends a UID to the central controller.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been working on a DIY Arduino based system for the past year or so. There are a ton of great links out there from people who have done projects with varying degrees of difficulty. What do you want to automate first? Do you have any microcontroller experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino and even a Netduino and I've done a lot of stuff with them but still nothing that useful when it comes to real Home Automation. For example I'd love to open up the garage door from my phone, switch on the heating from work and so on... but I wonder what should I start from in order to get this running at home and should I go for it on my own in a DIY way or just go and see if I can buy something that is already in the market? I really don't wont to spend my nights in compiling low level C/C++ for arm microcontrollers... You've been working on your Arduino system for an year... why do you think it takes so much time? What does it do?</comment></comment>


Is it wrong to note 100m winners are always black?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14679657 <comment><USER3> This seems to confuse two different issues and in doing so leads to the wrong conclusion.

The author seems to conclude it's wrong to think race is responsible for so many 100m winners being black because the assumption is erroneous. But only through making and testing that erroneous assumption (as the author did) are we able to determine it has nothing to do with skin color and more to do with a specific geographical heritage. So I disagree with the author on that point.

He then tries to tie that to a study that shows "black names" on resumes are 50% less likely to get call backs from potential employers. But those employers who discriminate are making an assumption they've clearly not tested (that people are worse employees based on their skin color)

So the real issue here is people who don't test their conclusions and there's nothing wrong with drawing an initial conclusion as long as you test it against actual facts.

<comment><USER4> I'm trying to understand the relevance of the point you're making. While your point is true, it seems largely technical and irrelevant to real world actions. It's not like your average person will out and do a test to see if their biases have a real world basis. The more practical takeaway is that we should attempt to not form these biases in the first place.

<comment><USER3> A bias is defined as a conclusion that is held unfairly. The only way to determine if a conclusion is held unfairly is to evaluate it and evaluating a conclusion requires drawing that conclusion in the first place.

The relevance is the author is saying "Don't draw race based conclusions because they are unfair by definition". But if you prevent yourself from drawing the conclusion you can't evaluate it.

Put in more human terms: People who are afraid of being called racist can't be intellectually honest.

Also, just to make the point, racism tends to flourish when people who aren't racist avoid such questions. Right now the most potent rallying point for racists is "The government doesn't want you to know white people are superior". This claim seems to hold weight to people because most scientists are afraid to do race based studies. So by not disproving the racists assumption we actually strengthen it.

<comment><USER4> There's a distinction between drawing a conclusion (and thus acting on it) and noticing a possible trend that can be investigated further. One is asking a question, one is answering it. If you draw the conclusion you've already assumed an answer. This is where the danger is. People who form biases are assuming the answer without the supporting evidence.

To address your second point: As a natural scientist (as in endlessly curious) I often wonder about genetic differences in racist and how they effect outward traits. From a public policy perspective, I totally understand why most scientists and government officials wouldn't touch those questions with a 10 foot pole. There is just far more potential for negative consequences than positives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a poorly written/reasoned article.

Draw a set of circles. The big one is all humans. The little one is 100m finalists.

Outside the finalists, you're drawing two concentric circles. The smaller of the two is Nandi. The larger is sub-Saharan Africans, or what much of the world refers to as "black".

First: yes, all 100m winners are "black". More specifically, they're among the better Nandi runners. But as we're noting, Nandis are a proper subset of sub- Saharan Africans, or blacks. So ... yes, the first inference ("100m winners are black") is accurate, just not complete.

The other interesting thing to note is this: humanity originated in Africa, and migrated from there to the rest of the planet in successive waves. _Genetic diversity within Africa is greater than in the rest of the planet._ For the most part / as a general rule. You'll find this is typically true of origin / diaspora populations, human, animal, vegetable, or even technological.

So: yes, there's considerable genetic variation among various populations. There's more in Africa. And, at least based on empirical evidence, if you want to be a good sprint runner, it's a considerable benefit to have ancestry that traces to a specific valley in Kenya.

As to considering all "Blacks" to be genetically uniform or similar: no, that's not valid.

The other discussions of the article are largely red herrings.

<comment><USER6> A quibble: Nandi runners from Kenya are distance runners, not 100m sprinters.

<comment><USER5> Fair point. I didn't fact-check the article, but was thinking earlier "hrm ... aren't Kenyans known more for distance running than sprinting?".

Despite specific characteristics, my point about genetic diversity within African populations as a whole should stand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author draws the wrong conclusions from the CV experiment. He claims that it shows a bias against black candidates; in reality, what it shows is a bias against "black" _names_.

Names are really powerful. The same is true of email addresses; how many people here can honestly say that they would treat an email from firstname.lastname@example.com the same way as they treat an email from firstname.lastname@example.com?

<comment><USER8> There's something about the CV experiment that makes _no_ sense to me:

      The researchers also found that although high-quality
      "white" candidates were preferred to low-quality "white"
      candidates, the relative quality of "black" CVs made no
      difference whatsoever. It was as if employers saw three
      categories - high-quality white, low-quality white and
      black candidates.

We know that the "black" candidates got some responses, and we know that the "black" CVs did have differences in quality.

So on what basis were the employers choosing the black candidates on the occasions that they did choose a black candidate? Randomly?

It's a big anomaly in the experiment I think, and should be explained somehow.

<comment><USER9> I am sure each employer thought they were choosing the best person for the job, not weighing the benefits of a black person vs a white person. The point is that when all these decisions are summed up a bias emerges. The author of this argument is arguing that our tendency to incorrectly clump people into groups is the reason for this bias.

<comment><USER8> I think you misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about blacks vs whites. I asking why this experiment doesn't show any difference between high-quality and low-quality _black_ candidates.

Using the names suggested by the article, suppose Tyrone is a high-quality black candidate and Latoya is a low-quality black candidate. The experiment shows that employers--when they do choose a "black" candidate--will choose Tyrone and Latoya equally often.

The employer supposedly has no preference for the better CV among the black applicants.

Does that make any sense to you?

It makes me suspicious of the whole experiment.

<comment><USER9> Yes, they were saying the employers classified all black applicants as the same and didn't notice the difference in their actual quality.

Because they had a black name that is the first and _only_ label they get.

<comment><USER8> That explanation doesn't make sense to me.

The employers were not merely classifying people into groups, they wanted to actually hire someone.

If in the employer's mind, all black applicants were bad, the employer would hire a white applicant, or wouldn't hire anyone, or would keep looking.

But that's not what happened. Sometimes the employer called one of the black applicants for an interview. Even if the employer thought that all the black applicants were bad, the logical thing to do would be to go through the CVs again to try to discern some differences in the pool of black applicants before you waste time on an interview.

But the experiment says that the employers found all black applicants to be _equally_ bad.

Then my question is: On what basis did the employer pick the black applicant to call for an interview?

It's as if the employer is saying, "We prefer to interview the best white applicants. Sometimes we interview a black applicant, but in those cases good or bad doesn't matter -- we'll interview a _random_ black applicant."

It doesn't add up. Either the experiment is flawed or there is a subtle explanation for this anomaly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a fine and thoughtful article, but I'm not sure that I see the logical fallacy.

 _Assuming that this success is driven by genes rather than environment, there is a rather obvious inference to make - black people are naturally better sprinters than white people._

 _But here's the thing. This inference is not merely false - it is logically flawed._

If we assume that sprinting performance is genetic (and realizing that there are lots of other factors), and we assume that the best 100m sprinters are consistently black (realizing that "black" may or may not be a clearly defined genetic category), is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters?

Logically, so long as the prevalence of winners is greater than the percentage of the population defined as black, I would think it has to follow. The winning sprinters are also strong, lean, and young. Would it be a fallacy to say that "strong, lean and young runners make better sprinters"?

The obvious fallacy is to conclude that _all_ blacks are better sprinters. But it feels like the article goes far beyond this, and wants to redefine "better" as incompatible with "more likely to excel". And pointing out that Americans and Jamaicans tend to excel seems to run counter to the part where he asks us to assume that the success is driven by genes.

Hmm. His book "Bounce" sounds interesting, though. I've requested it from the library. And oddly, I found 4 year old version of essentially the same article (minus the reference to resumes, adding reference to "yellow" domination at table tennis, and advertising a different book) here: [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_co...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2189194.ece)

<comment><USER11> _...is it really a fallacy to say that black people are better sprinters?_

Yes. Data on the Olympics gives very little information on whether the average black person is a better sprinter than the average white person.

It is not, however, a fallacy to say that it is highly likely that the next _top_ sprinter will be black. (If anyone disagrees with this claim, I'm willing to offer good odds on the race of the next Olympic sprinter medalists.)

Honestly, I'm finding the author's exposition to be rather confused. He seems to conflate two logically distinct propositions ("the best $x come from group $Y" and "a random $y in $Y has a higher probability of outperforming a random $z in $Z") for reasons I can't fathom.

<comment><USER10> I agree with you on "very little information", but I wouldn't want to make the jump to "fallacy". It would be a fallacy to presume that the between-group difference is anything approaching the within-group difference, but I'd guess that the effect is there. Instinctively, I wouldn't be surprised if genetics played at least a 1% role. Would you? What if instead of "black", you pointed to a particular gene?

The alternative would be to presume that the variance of sprinting ability with the black population is greater than that of the white. I'd want to see some reason that this is true before presuming it. This also gets us back to the furor regarding Lawrence Summers dismissal from Harvard, which does imply that there some things that are simply "wrong to note".

<comment><USER11> It would not surprise me at all if genetics plays a large role. The only point I'm making is about inferring information about the mean/median of a distribution by observing only it's far tails.

In fact, I'd speculate that across the US population, black sprinting ability is probably lower than that of whites. Black women are disproportionately overweight/obese and are likely to lower the average for blacks. Looking solely at olympic level data points would never reveal this.

(As far as I'm aware, this latter effect is minimally related to genetics.)

<comment><USER10> _The only point I'm making is about inferring information about the mean/median of a distribution by observing only it's far tails._

That's the same point I'm making, but I come to the opposite conclusion. I think that in the absence of contradictory information one should prefer simple inferences to complex ones (Occam rephrased). Thus I'd look first to the mean, then to the variance, and only then consider that only one of the groups has a multi-modal distribution.

I do think our "overcompensation" for race affects our conclusions here (mine included). If one were to find that the winners shared some other trait other than skin color, I don't think there would be nearly the same desire to find alternative explanations. But this doesn't mean that these alternatives are not useful to consider, and quite possibly correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The truth is rather different. There is far more genetic variation within racial groups (around 85%) than there is between racial groups (just 15%). Indeed, surface appearance is often a highly misleading way of assessing the genetic distance between populations."

This doesn't prove what he thinks it proves.

This is the exact same argument: There is more variation within male heights than there is between the male & female average height. This is true - <USER2> difference between the average male height and female height is only a few inches, and it is quite a bit smaller than an interval which covers 90% of men. But, this has nothing to do with his point. The height difference between males and females is still relevant to us, even though the in-group variation for males & females is also high.

tl;dr: male height variation is much bigger than the gap between male & female heights, yet we still think the male-female height gap is a real & meaningful phenomenon.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewont...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_diversity:_Lewontins_fallacy_\(scientific_paper\))

</comment><comment><USER13> It appears, based on the interesting submitted article, that it would be more informative to report about 100 meter dash winners where they trained, and who their coaches were. Much the same could be said about marathon winners, who tend to train in a different part of the world.

After edit: the kind first reply to my comment here mentions a possible study design for looking at what might influence athletic success among athletes from one place or another. A "genetically sensitive" design for such a study would have to consider quite a few other issues, not least actual individual genes, which have been surprisingly neglected in genetic research over the years. (Rather than actually looking at genes of each individual in a study, which continues to be a generally expensive and occasionally error-prone enterprise, most previous genetic studies of human behavioral characteristics have been based on proxy assemblages of genes, by studying closely related family members, or in the best cases monozygotic twins.)

Readers who haven't seen this pair of links before, which I share fairly often here on HN because they are by world famous human behavioral geneticists, may be surprised by what they learn from reading about what twin studies can and cannot say about genetic influences on human behavior.

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20\(2008\).pdf)

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20\(2009\).pdf)

Meanwhile other readers have commented, and tying in what I've written (and linked to) above to what several comments here say, a common fallacy comes from assuming that "race" (as socially defined in one place or another) has anything much at all to do with what genes one would find in a particular individual. Serious geneticists are actually some of the leading scientists in suggesting that in medicine, law, and education we should pay less attention to "race" than formerly, to avoid inherent cognitive biases in explaining individual differences.

<comment><USER14> This series of articles[1] goes into some depth in explaining why certain countries (and ethnicities) dominate various sports - this includes an in- depth discussion of why Kenyans are so good at distance running. The author focuses on genetics, location, support, training, incentives, culture, etc. of various combinations of these sports and the countries that seem to dominate them.

It's not yet complete and is quite lengthy, but it's one of the most fascinating things I've read in some time. While the title seems to make the article focuses solely on Olympic Weightlifting, but the main focus is much more general, and is about uncovering recurring patterns between countries who dominate various sports.

[1] [http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/why-the-us- sucks-a...](http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/why-the-us-sucks-at- olympic-lifting-part-1.html)

<comment><USER15> Olympic Weightlifting is an interesting case. Some of the qualities that predict weightlifting success -- high fast-twitch fibre ratio, for example -- predict success in plenty of other sports.

Whether a country excels at Weightlifting seems in large part to be a function of whether there is a more popular sport in that country. So in the Carribean potential lifters become sprinters, in the USA they become NFL players, in Australia rugby and AFL players and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author mentions that most successful sprinters have been Jamaican or American rather than African. Many American professional sports leagues have a greater percentage of black players than white players. Both of these facts lead me to believe that the black people in the Americas have a genetic advantage due to filtering out of weaker individuals through the trials brought on by slavery.

Consider- many modern American and Jamaican blacks are descendants of slaves. To arrive in the Americas those slaves had to survive a horrendous journey across the Atlantic in a slave ship (a far more physically challenging experience than the one experienced by the average European colonist on his trip across the ocean). They then had to survive the physical challenges associated with being a slave. The net result is that descendants of these slaves have a genetic profile that was passed down from the strongest survivors, making them physically stronger than either African blacks or non- black Americans.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't disagree with his conclusion, but the article is just a puff piece with a link to his book at the end, in which he "...debunks many cherished myths" including "that we are restricted by our genetic make-up".

"Our tendency to generalise rests on a deeper fallacy - the idea that 'black' refers to a genetic type. We put people of dark skin in a box labelled black and assume that a trait shared by some is shared by all." I'm no geneticist, but I wonder then how the author would explain the seemingly racist drug BiDil, which is more effective for African Americans?

A more difficult question to answer - that can't be explained away with extreme examples - would be why the regular professional sports (e.g. NFL, NBA) have a disproportionate number (compared to population) of black players. May have nothing to do with genetics at all, but would be much more interesting to read about than this article.

<comment><USER18> Re BiDil - note that African Americans are a small, not very genetically diverse, subpopulation of black people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used to be curious about why it seemed like most baseball pitchers and quarterbacks (though certainly not all!) are white. What could it be, genetically, socially or culturally that would make white people have better arms?

I stopped asking because people thought it was racist. It always baffled me.

<comment><USER20> They probably thought it was racist because the thing that makes a great quarterback (for example) isn't just an incredible arm. There are many more factors that go into it, and I'd wager the reason so many black quarterbacks get weeded out at the collegiate level is because their superior physical prowess is better utilized in other positions that rely more on speed, power, explosiveness, etc.

I mean, you've got a guy like Peyton Manning for example. He's not an athletic guy relative to other NFL players, but historically he has this incredible hand-eye coordination and mind for the strategy of the game. No one was going to look at Manning and say, "Hey you know, you have a great arm and are frighteningly smart at this game, but we could use your slow clumsy ass at running back."

To me quarterbacks and pitchers specialize into that position because oftentimes their other physical gifts don't even come close to their arms. In other words, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of black QBs out there in high school football teams who have the potential to be just as great as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, etc., but coaches are going to want the speed and power elsewhere.

<comment><USER21> > black quarterbacks get weeded out at the collegiate level is because their > superior physical prowess

I thought this article was pointing out how racial prejudice around 'athleticism and blacks' was out right false. So then you justify a separate athletic ability using race again...

<comment><USER22> > I thought this article was pointing out how racial prejudice around > 'athleticism and blacks' was out right false.

That's what the article wants to do, but it doesn't succeed. We know that elite "black" athletes are the best. Maybe the average black athlete is worse than the average white, but there's no evidence of that presented. It could be that blacks have a larger standard deviation, or it could be that blacks have a higher mean. The author couldn't be bothered to actually try and answer that question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a young black boy, growing up, in the Caribbean, I always came dead last in my races. _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER24> On a side note, this also shows how ineffective resumes are at connecting employees and employers. If you repeated the same experiment with github accounts, perhaps less bias would show up.

<comment><USER25> I wish I believed that geeks were above generalizing based on names, but I have no doubt if your github user name was "Tyrone" or "RapDaddy", you could run into similar issues.

I do think you would have less discrimination that way, though. I bet you could accomplish similar things if resumes focused less on names and more on accomplishments.

<comment><USER24> And also, with github, you are looking at actual code produced instead of making assumptions about the quality of code produced based on bullet points. Closer to facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This phenomenon has nothing to do with being black but everything to do with genetics. The defining characteristics of world class sprinters is not the fact that they're black but is rather attributed to either genes passed down from their ancestors or their own genetic mutations. My theory is that if we traced the family trees of top sprinters we'd find that many are descendants of slaves who were bred to be bigger, faster and stronger.

<comment><USER4> I think this is a stretch. I don't think there was enough selective pressure to really cause that much of a change in gene distribution in such a short period. Furthermore, unless the mutations for being "bigger, faster" were novel to the slave population, there is no reason to think that any breeding practices would have had any meaningful influence. What is more likely is that genes for excelling at sprinting probably came from the same area of Africa.

<comment><USER26> I certainly don't believe that any "bigger, faster" mutations are novel to the slave population as they can occur within any group of people. But through breeding these mutations are likely to be more prevalent in the target population. This explains why the 400m race can be dominated by blacks but Jeremy Wariner (white guy) can still be the fastest. If that were true you would see similar numbers of sprinters from West Africa.

If your last point were true we would see world class sprinters coming out of one of the West African nations. I can't think of any.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Putting labels on people or stereotyping is never an effective way to measure their skill or the importance of their accomplishment. It seems that either one of these gives us the ability to quickly make a "informed" decision about someone without having to dive deeply in the matter. This doesn't make it right, and in my experience leads you to make incorrect assumptions more often than not.

</comment><comment><USER28> A relevant article:

<http://www.newstatesman.com/200009180009>

</comment><comment><USER29> The following Malcolm Gladwell article from 1997 is exactly on this topic: <http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm>

Not everyone loves Gladwell's writing, but I found the article interesting and thought-provoking.

</comment><comment><USER30> irrespective of the article's content, that's a poor title: of course there's nothing wrong to simply note it.</comment>


Sexy clones of classic Unix tools  - <AUTHOR> http://sysadminry.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/sexy-clones-of-classic-unix-tools/ <comment><USER2> I learned something new, "most" is more than less, which is more than more! ;)

But, they didn't mention dstat which is a great performance monitoring tool that integrates sar/vmstat/mpstat functionality and more.

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 for nano. Nano + syntax highlighting = best light-weight coding tool I've found for C/C++ work.

</comment><comment><USER4> +1 for ack. It's a great tool.

</comment><comment><USER5> no tail?</comment>


Small b2b startup Looking for a sales manager - <AUTHOR>

I run a small b2b business in Dublin, Ireland, and am looking for a part time sales & marketing manager. How should I go about finding the right person? <comment><USER2> You can post to HN on 1st November.

Is it a remote position or only locally available?

<comment><AUTHOR> What is on HN the 1st of November? Position is local as meeting business owners is necessary.

<comment><USER3> He is probably referring to the monthly "Who is hiring?" And "seeking freelancer?" Threads posted in /ask</comment></comment></comment>