Bitcoin phishing attempt - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/uYThB3qh

<comment><USER2> I'm invincible to these schemes, I play Eve Online. Go into a random trade hub and you get people shouting SEND ME E-MONEY AND I'LL DOUBLE IT!

They link to a 'public' API showing that player's financial transactions over time, giving 'proof' that what he claims is legit. And for low quantities, it works too - to build trust, of course. But when the scammed sends over a large quantity of money, the scammer will add that to the 'API page' and claim the user's trying to scam him or there's supposedly a technical problem, or something.

In this case, the scammer could improve by linking to a 'transaction log' online, and by offering to double someone's small amounts of bitcoin. With the current rates, that'd have to be like 0.01 BTC ($7). Those would be used to lure people in, going OMG IT WORKS, until they transfer, say, 10 BTC, after which the scammer simply doesn't return the money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone elaborate on how this could even work? If someone asked me to give them a dollar and I'd get 3 dollars back in one hour, I'd want to know what they are doing with my dollar. I assume the subtext is "we have some guaranteed way to arbitrage bit coins at a 300% return - send us your money and we'll give you at least that much back". I realize it's a scam. I just don't understand how the scam could work.

<comment><USER4> It could very well be money laundering.

Send a legit bitcoin and they send you back 3 stolen bitcoins from one of the mt.gox hacks.

<comment><USER5> At the current exchange rate, they would be losing ~$1400 USD to 'clean' $700. Nobody launders money at such a drastic loss.

Given that they say their minimum 'deposit' is 1 BTC, even finding a handful of extremely gullible marks will be quite lucrative for them. That's all the motive necessary. It goes without saying that no one who sends BTC to this address is going to see anything back.

<comment><USER6> >At the current exchange rate, they would be losing ~$1400 USD to 'clean' $700.

This is valid at any exchange rate, not just the current one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How can any bitcoin miner be that naive?

As you can see for now none fell for that (assuming they have one address for all "investments"): [https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9...](https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9HuC2Uf)

<comment><USER8> Yes, the intersection of the 'able to send bitcoin somewhere' and 'dumb enough to fall for this' populations is probably zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excuse me for being pedantic but how is this a "phishing" attempt?

<comment><USER10> I thought phishing meant fishing for usernames and passwords. This just seems like a run of the mill stupid scam attempt that happens to say Bitcoin instead of dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This happens all the time, it's nothing special. Normally targeting known btc users, using emails from leaked DBs (eg. gox)

</comment><comment><USER12> Bitcoin needs to make it much further into the non-techie markets before this yields enough to make it worthwhile. Of course if this con is run by a pro, they'll actually profile each mark and return the amount promised during the first round, hoping for a much bigger score on the second round.

</comment><comment><USER13> Heh: [https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9...](https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9HuC2Uf)

No transactions found for this address, it has probably not been used on the network yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> I also got this email and noticed it's from a bogus mail server:

Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning email@example.com does not designate 184.108.40.206 as permitted sender)

Wonder why Google's spam filtering didn't catch it...

<comment><USER15> Did the email you got contain the same "investment address"?

<comment><USER14> Yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1 BTC is a really high minimum investment. Maybe they'd have a better chance of scamming people if they started a bit lower.

<comment><USER17> They might be A/B testing it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious if the emails other people got have the same bitcoin address or if they used unique addresses per email.

<comment><USER18> Judging by the blockchain info [0] they are either using unique addresses or the scam isn't very successful.

[0] [https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9...](https://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9HuC2Uf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got it as well, I wonder how they chose their targets?

<comment><USER20> Did they use the same Bitcoin address as in the pastebin?

It seems like no one paid them anything yet [1], but they might be using a unique address per email.

[1] [http://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9H...](http://blockchain.info/address/18PyfH1AqV2DbEweh6USf1HYg7D9HuC2Uf)</comment></comment>


Calculated Bets: how a CS prof developed a winning sports gambling system - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/jaialai/

<comment><USER2> To offer a balance, there's some negative feedback on amazon UK:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Calculated-Bets-Computers- Gambling-M...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Calculated-Bets-Computers-Gambling- Mathematical/dp/0521009626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272162240&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER3> I found this book at the local public library back in 2008.

Skiena writes about how he became a profitable jai alai bettor with some historical data. It's an interesting book if you don't know much about gambling or modeling.

</comment><comment><USER4> So I haven't read it, but if it works, why is he sharing it?

I had a prof in grad school ([http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/faculty_staff/a...](http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/faculty_staff/academic_professors/708.htm)) who worked out an arbitrage system for horse racing. Other than publishing a few obscure papers, he kept it to himself. Because it wouldn't actually work if he shared it to a mass market.

Just asking, before I go and read the page in depth.

<comment><USER5> Gee, it's almost as if some people are motivated by things besides money...

<comment><USER4> If that was true, he'd have the entire book on the website, instead of excerpts.

<comment><USER5> That's a fair point. OTOH a lot of people who take the trouble to write a book would like to see it in print, and almost all publishers forbid you from releasing the manuscript in alternate forms once it has been published. Also, for somebody with his skill set, there are many shorter paths to riches than writing MAA monographs.

If you just read even the preface to this book ( [http://books.google.com/books?id=UvWGgaE4ZA8C&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=UvWGgaE4ZA8C&lpg=PP1&dq=calculated%20bets&pg=PR11#v=onepage&q&f=false) ), it is obvious that his motivation for writing it has everything to do with a lifelong fascination with mathematical modeling and sincere desire to share that with others, and nothing to do with making money from gambling returns. The gambling was merely meant to put his model to the test in a way that penalized failure.

It's all right there in the book. But hey, why consult the text when we can all sit around grousing online about what his intentions _might_ have been?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whether parimutuel bets or your more traditional sports bookie, betting is basically like any other market. If you can predict it's outcome better than the rest of the market - you can beat it.

As someone else once told me, betting on sports is just like playing the stock market, except the market is smaller, with far fewer variables, and therefore easier to predict.

It's just like people who have stock trading systems in some market that are unbeatable - they very well may be true - but only for a limited time, as their trades themselves affect the market.

Arbitrage is another thing - on one hand, it may seem dishonest - it's looking for no-loose opportunities and taking advantage of them - on the other hand, an efficient arbitrage system keeps markets fair and moving. (In a perfect market, there would be no room for arbitrage.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I read this book ages ago. It's not a "how-to" manual, as some people here seem to think. It's a mathematical adventure, how his childhood lucky bet set him on a particular obsession to see if such betting was amenable to mathematical analysis and prediction. I'll leave it up to you math experts to criticize the math in the book itself, but it was a really fun read even for someone like me, who can only do basic arithmetic. I guess that makes it sound like I'm easily impressed, but this is my way of saying it's also a good way to _advocate_ the usefulness of math to people who don't see its real-world practical aspects.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah, the same Steve Skiena (I think) of Algorithm Design Manual, the best algo book imho.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow I had this professor in Stony Brook... I think my first computer science class, too, if memory serves me correctly, it's been a while.

Gotta check this book out. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://techguyinmidtown.com/2010/04/29/calculated-bets-by- st...](http://techguyinmidtown.com/2010/04/29/calculated-bets-by-steven- skiena/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for posting - it only took about 2 minutes on the site before I clicked through and bought it on Amazon!

<comment><USER10> Same here. Insta-downloaded to my Kindle, and I'm reading it already.</comment></comment>


The Making Of "Homer At The Bat," The Episode That Conquered Prime Time (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://deadspin.com/5886723/the-making-of-homer-at-the-bat-the-episode-that-conquered-prime-time-20-years-ago-tonight <comment><USER2> So strange.. I just watched this yesterday (Making sure my DVD's are ripped ok before they decay).

How does it hold up 25 years later? Mr. Burns wants the best player (his childhood baseball stars), but smithers notes, they might not be the best choice now.. the "modern" players that are assembled aren't so modern anymore. Its a fun episode and holds up ok. Wade Boggs arguing with Barney cracks me up.

The baseball players voice acting is decent, with some standouts.

The credits have a custom song, thats pretty good too.

<comment><USER3> > The baseball players voice acting is decent, with some standouts.

I will always remember how badly good Ken Griffey, Jr's voice acting was. There was a blooper reel that made the rounds on the tubes but Fox seems to have nerfed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every time I'm at the barber's and they ask if I want my sideburns trimmed I can't not think of and laugh at that bit in this episode. As far as I know, I don't ever have any significant sideburns to speak of and that episode really called into question my understanding of what exactly a sideburn is.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love these old write ups on classic Simpsons episodes. The first 7-8 seasons or so are pure magic and we'll miss John Swartzwelder always.

<comment><USER6> It's funny, I think 7-11 are the peak. Everyone has a different range.

<comment><USER7> ( _Jonathan Frink voice_ ) If there are more than 784 people assigning ranges, then your argument is contradicted by the pigeonhole principle.

<comment><USER8> How do you figure?

Assuming ranges are A-B, where A <= B (you could like one season) and A, B are in [1, 28] then there should be just 406 ranges (28 that start at season 1, 27 at 2, etc...).

<comment><USER7> D'oh! I just squared 28 instead of getting the 28th triangle number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have trouble believing that the Mattingly's problem with sideburns in the episode wasn't influenced by his hair problem with the Yankees. Maybe he recorded is lines before that happened, but I have to believe they at least re-arranged the lines to emphasize the issue more after that happened (like maybe it was originally more of a throwaway line and they decided to make it the reason he couldn't play)...

</comment><comment><USER10> Baseball and the Simpsons. Thank you kind person for the perfect combination of topics to drive away the world-is-on-fire news a little bit today. :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Whether or not keeping them is financially worthwhile I'm still holding on to my baseball card collection for sentimental purposes. Got cards for every one mentioned in that episode.

The closing song is fantastic too by the way.

<comment><USER12> It's amazing how long I've heard this song, and I still remember what it sounds like and sing along to the lyrics!

<comment><USER13> It's scary how often this happens to me. Including mentally mocking "daaarryl daaarryl" whenever I meet someone with the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> except the promos at the time for the episode ruined the ending as they showed what happened the only time Homer got up to bat.

<comment><USER15> Do people really watch the Simpsons for the plot?

<comment><USER16> We did up until it all went downhill. Circa 2001, they went from hand-drawn to digital animation so the quality of the writing took a back seat to getting quick jokes on the air in a few weeks instead of months. Hand-drawn required more money and time for the animators in Asia (maybe South Korea?). And why waste all that money on bad writing? Same goes for using the old punch-card systems.

<comment><USER17> True enough: everything went to hell when they started putting the original Homer's writing down on animal skins.

<comment><USER18> I think things went downhill when they introduced Seymour Skinner as an imposter[1]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principal_and_the_Pauper](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principal_and_the_Pauper)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I think I'm good at quickly identifying dev talent.  How to prove it? - <AUTHOR> I'm prompted to ask this from this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4paeff/what_does_socalled_top_talent_actually_look_like/d4jf9df
Now, I've only been involved in hiring decisions a few times but I feel I've been able to identify someone's level of experience and capability pretty quickly (in about an hour).
I would be interested in testing this out more to see if it's something I can do.  Is this something that would be valuable to companies?  How could I go about proving it to myself and then selling this service if I am capable? <comment><USER2> You become a recruiter.

Identifying dev talent is one (very important!) part of the job for dev managers, but not enough on its own to be successful.

The only pure application of that skill would be as a recruiter.

That said, you're almost certainly wrong. I can't find the quote/citation right now, but distinctly remember that over a decade of data at Google showed that only one person at the company was really individually exceptional at predicting performance as an interviewer (and he was a special niche case).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, how do I become a recruiter?

Yes, I'm fully aware that I could be misguided but would be interested in dipping my toe in the water to at least try.

Is it something that's possible to do part-time on the side?

<comment><USER3> Recruiting is probably not an appropriate career to leverage this skill - identifying talent is mainly the job of the hiring manager/team to determine.

A recruiter's primary job is to find the talent and convince he/she to consider the opportunity. Sure, your ability to screen upfront is helpful in saving your employer time, but the job is far more sales-based.

to play the numbers game & bounce back every morning in the face of constant rejection and indifference. That, above all, will ensure your success as a recruiter.

To learn recruiting, like any new job, it's smartest to make a full-time committment. Once you've mastered it, you can definitely work any schedule you'd like!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > How could I go about proving it to myself...

Much the same way Devs store projects on GitHub-- start building up your portfolio of talent profiles and notes on individuals that you interview & assess. It's a practiced art-- you become exponentially better the more people you evaluate. Also, understand that people do change and grow as they progress throughout their careers. Take the long view and be sure to follow up periodically.

The best executive leaders create a talent pipeline, typically meet & informally interview 2-3 people a month. Incidentally, this builds-up an amazing network of true contacts, which is to say NOT Linkedin contacts. The best primer on this process is Bradford Smart's Topgrading > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/915182.Topgrading](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/915182.Topgrading)

> then selling this service if I am capable?

Connecting with buyers, in this case Hiring Executives falls into the specialty function of Sales & Business Development. Professional Services firms are always chomping at the bit for rainmakers. If you're serious about this path, take a development course like Miller Heiman > [https://www.mhiglobal.com/](https://www.mhiglobal.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Identifying talent is not enough. You also need to know how to sell and close this talent. I say this as an engineering manager at a top tech company who got into hiring largely due to feeling like I could identify talent.

Selling and closing is a whole different ball game. You have to be a good story teller, a good listener, and you have to be geniune. You have to be relentless and unwilling to take no for an answer.

Whether you go into recruiting full time, move to management, or just be the engineer everyone uses to sell candidates, practice and hone your selling skills.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can try it on me, I'd volunteer. Never been employed as a programmer but I'm curious to know if anyone would hire me, and if so what kind of employer would that be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure if you want we could have a call. Just email me to setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of the comments I've read here assumes these two things are equal:

1\. A good programmer 2\. A good team member

They are not.

How to spot someone that fits in your team is much harder than to spot someone with talent.

Also, as someone pointed out you need to keep track of both hits and misses to assess your skill. I would guess it's easier to track someone if they're successful as opposed to someone who either is not successful or not successful publicly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Prove it to whom?

If you want to exploit the talent, I don't think becoming a recruiter is the best way to go (contra the other advice).

I am not a recruiter, but I don't think their challenge is (necessarily) identifying dev talent. They have to

1\. Convince dev talent to sign up for the company 2\. Convince the company that they can find dev talent 3\. Look through a lot of dev talent

It's more like a broker. They have to find a particular talent/price mix that keeps bother parties happy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ah hour?!! That is NOT quick. Even Junior developers could identify strong talent if they sat with them for an hour and just talked.

Get it down to 10 minutes, and that would be quick!

</comment><comment><USER10> As to proving it to yourself - start tracking who you (don't) hire, and the outcomes. You can do this as an employee.

</comment><comment><USER11> You could become a headhunter for recruiters and get paid for successful finds.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is trivial and any person can do it.

<comment><USER13> Actually, I'd say that identifying GREAT talent and NO talent is trivial. When a person is "ok, not great but not terrible, never going to be a rockstar but maybe good enough"... that's the tricky one.

I know everyone wants to only hire the best, but sometimes you don't have that luxury and you just need a hack to write some CSS.

<comment><USER14> Except how great a person is may very well have to do with the team you are putting them on.

So say you work on a team for 3 years and know everyone well. You should help the team hire new people with your "skill". You know how the team acts, and you can tell how the person will fit.

But say as a recruiter with 50 clients.. you won't know all 50 teams as well, so your accuracy has to go down, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome DevTools could do that? - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and-tricks/ <comment><USER2> Going to make a top level comment about the slide tools.

I just used the Chrome Web Inspector (!) to look at the JS libraries, search for the credited authors of the obviously named file and found this:

[https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJ...](https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJYLy)

Which leads to this:

<http://code.google.com/p/io-2012-slides/>

Which has this code: <http://code.google.com/p/io-2012-slides/source/browse/>

And this dog food demo: <http://io-2012-slides.googlecode.com/git/template.html>

Looks great for doing a talk about code. Has a few features for highlighting code, handling links etc

<comment><USER3> Sweet, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WARNING: This presentation seems to crash Firefox for me. Had to view it in Chrome. Anyway...

"Disable cache to (re)gain some sanity" because Chrome continues to cache things it shouldn't, including _the contents of file:// URLs_ and in some cases, even content with headers that specify it shouldn't be cached.

mumble grumble

Cool to see some of these features finally documented, though. I had no idea you could drag-drop elements to reorder them.

For those looking to try out the (useful!) Heap Snapshot tool, please be aware that it has a bad habit of crashing tabs. It tends to happen the most when a tab is already using a lot of memory, but sometimes it just happens. So don't do it on a tab that contains any state you might want to hang onto.

One cool feature they don't mention: You can edit code in the script debugger and then hit ctrl+s to update it live in the running page. It's pretty useful for experimenting or for adding tracing points to existing code.

<comment><USER5> What release channel of Firefox are you running? I had no problems in Aurora.

<comment><USER4> Aurora 17.0a2 (2012-10-02). I assume it's probably GPU acceleration related.

<comment><USER6> Running _Aurora_ and warning that it crashes "Firefox" is a bit alarmist.

Worked fine for me with whatever the latest Firefox Beta is (from ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This just goes to show how far we've come, and oh how far we still have to go. For the hackers who live and breathe by these tools, I salute you.

Some products absolutely depend on pushing the envelope of 'what is possible in the browser'. These trailblazers ultimately spend incredible amounts of effort achieving their desired effect, which a year later will be nicely packaged in an MIT-licensed, open source JS lib you can call with a single line of code.

But one look at my feature roadmap tells me exactly when I'll have the time to analyze HAR files, tweak how often I flush packets, stare at paint rectangles, or write some Chrome devtool plugins -- that would be... NEVER.

<comment><USER8> And that may be just fine for your product. Having said that, I'm a big proponent of treading speed as a feature - evaluate it, quantify it, and prioritize it as such. Then, you may have the time to use these tools :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's something that I believe, should be included in dev tools: Click on a node, and see all event handlers that are attached to that node (and those attached using jQuery).

Does anyone know if this is possible using Dev Tools? There is a bookmarklet Visual Event2 (<http://www.sprymedia.co.uk/article/Visual+Event+2>) that does this, sort of; but it is still lacking.

<comment><USER10> It's possible, but not trivial. Especially when the developer is using 100% event delegation, you have to run that node against all the potential selectors of parent elements...

<comment><USER11> This is the main issue with trying to catalogue event handlers. Backbone.js, and savvy jQuery developers won't use bind for any sort of dynamic pages, because it's too hard to track handlers and make sure they're rebound properly as the DOM updates. The best solution is to use .on, which generally (argument specific) will set up a listener on a PARENT element of the selector you've put in.

.live() .delegate() and (usually) .on() will leave the handler on a parent node, making sniffing out all active handlers an expensive DOM-walking task.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but there is still a node that has an event listener on, and it is quite possible to display that in developer tools. Opera Dragonfly already does this, for example. What's not possible is for the browser to know that the event handler on element A only has any effect if the event occurs on descendant elements B and C, for example.

Given this limitation, the only problem with displaying event handlers is that developers who don't understand the underlying event model of the platform might not grasp the correspondence between the high-level abstractions in their library-using code and the low level DOM behaviour. Clearly any such developers will become more effective once they know a little more about the platform they are working on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're confused by the _total lack of UI_ , try the arrow keys (facepalm?).

<comment><USER14> Spacebar and arrow keys control the slides, just like in every spreadsheet application, ever.

<comment><USER15> I think you meant presentation (as in powerpoint) not spreadsheet (as in excel).

<comment><USER14> Yep, whoops :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Crap, there's a lot of useful stuff in there.

The paint rectangles thing is amazing. I didn't know browsers even expose this data.

The Audit API looks really useful too. I'm now thinking of standardizing on Chrome as the development browser for our team (most devs prefer it anyway) so we can share custom development tool add-ons.

<comment><USER17> Firefox also has a way to expose invalidation rectangles:

<http://www.junglecode.net/?p=110>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone explain TCP Preconnect? My Google-fu has failed me - I understand that DNS prefetching is when Chrome notices that there are links to other domains so it resolves the IP addresses of those domains ahead of time so that their pages will load slightly faster if the user clicks on them. But I'm not clear about TCP preconnecting; are they literally downloading the contents of those pages in advance? Or are they merely opening a connection to the server in case you click on the link so that they'll be able to send the HTTP request slightly faster?

Can someone explain TCP Preconnect? My Google-fu has failed me - I understand that DNS prefetching is when Chrome notices that there are links to other domains so it resolves the IP addresses of those domains ahead of time so that their pages will load slightly faster if the user clicks on them. But I'm not clear about TCP preconnecting; are they literally downloading the contents of those pages in advance? Or are they merely opening a connection to the server in case you click on the link so that they'll be able to send the HTTP request slightly faster?

EDIT: I eventually found a link to <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=42694> which indicates that Chrome does indeed open connections to servers and doesn't immediately send an HTTP request, leaving those connections open in case we do need to send HTTP requests.

<comment><USER8> I have a writeup on some of the chrome network internals here: [http://www.igvita.com/2012/06/04/chrome-networking-dns- prefe...](http://www.igvita.com/2012/06/04/chrome-networking-dns-prefetch-and- tcp-preconnect/)

As you found in the code above.. the idea is simply to complete the TCP handshake and keep the connection idle until the request is ready to be dispatched. Doing so allows Chrome to shave off one RTT (TCP handshake) of latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The UI for this is terrible. The bullet points are incredibly brief to the point I'm confused about the information it is telling me. How do it actually see the information in the "Sources" pane? It is an overlay but there is no description of how to see it...

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER20> Yes, I think you missed the live event where this was used as a deck to go along with a presenter -- which, of course, is notably absent here. I'm fairly certain that those abbreviated bullet points were extrapolated on when the presentation was given live.

</comment></comment><comment> tech-no-logical site doesn't work in opera (either regular or opera new).

      Uncaught exception: TypeError: Cannot convert 'document.body' to object
      Error thrown at line 38, column 375 in <anonymous function>() in http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and-tricks/js/slide-deck.js:
        Modernizr.load({test:!!document.body.classList&&!!document.body.dataset,nope:['js/polyfills/classList.min.js','js/polyfills/dataset.min.js'],complete:function(){window.slidedeck=new SlideDeck();}});
      called from line 38, column 181 in http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and-tricks/js/slide-deck.js:
        (function(){Modernizr.load({test:!!document.body.classList&&!!document.body.dataset,nope:['js/polyfills/classList.min.js','js/polyfills/dataset.min.js'],complete:function(){window.slidedeck=new SlideDeck();}});})()

</comment><comment><USER21> Remote debugging is so useful: [http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools- tips-and-tricks/#...](http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and- tricks/#28). It is painful to try and make and test changes on mobile devices without developer tools.

I wonder when this will be available for iOS.

<comment><USER22> It's pretty amazing from Safari to plugged in iPhone in iOS6 using the new remote debugging. I have to mention coda2 & diet coda airpreview for iPad specific live debugging too, and Adobe's new edge inspect works well too (I've been using all three today for a responsive iOS site)

[http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/iphone-5-ios-6-html5-develope...](http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/iphone-5-ios-6-html5-developers) (see last point) <http://teamsoell.com/andy/dietcoda> <http://html.adobe.com/edge/inspect/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For some reason even after multiple tries over the years I have never been able to get "Break on subtree modifications" and similar to work reliably. I think I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. Anybody else have had issues with this?

</comment><comment><USER24> While not the presentation for these exact Tips'n'tricks slides, the google guys cover most of this in the following video:

[http://confreaks.com/videos/886-railsconf2012-let-s-make- the...](http://confreaks.com/videos/886-railsconf2012-let-s-make-the-web- faster-tips-from-trenches-google)

(The Chrome Dev tools stuff kicks in about 20 minute)

<comment><USER25> The Velocity 2012 videos are being added to the following page, the video to back the talk should be up in a day or three: [http://velocityconf.com/velocityeu2012/public/schedule/proce...](http://velocityconf.com/velocityeu2012/public/schedule/proceedings)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I posted a tutorial about Chrome Dev Tools recently, it's a bit long though [http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/chrome- dev-...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/chrome-dev-tools- markup-and-style/)

<comment><USER27> Thanks. That's great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Dumb question here ... is there a visual tool to create browser-based slides like this or people just pretty much hand code each slide? I know there are libs out there like impress.js.

<comment><USER2> [https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJ...](https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJYLy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For people who are not familiar with Devtools

"A Re-introduction to the Chrome Developer Tools" by Paul Irish

[http://paulirish.com/2011/a-re-introduction-to-the-chrome- de...](http://paulirish.com/2011/a-re-introduction-to-the-chrome-developer- tools/)

"7 MINUTE VIDEOS: JAVASCRIPT CONSOLE PROTIPS & NEWISH DOM APIS" by Paul Irish

[http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/09/7-minute-videos- Javasc...](http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/09/7-minute-videos-Javascript- Console-Protips-newish-DOM-APIs)

</comment><comment><USER30> Great resource, adding on top of other hard-to-find resources that others had pointed out before. (Nice use of a presentation in the browser too.)

</comment><comment><USER31> Can someone explain me this, please:

-Break on subtree modifications - delete me

Thanks!

<comment><USER31> Ok, I understood this,

1- Right click on the element

2- Select "Break On..."

3- For this example, check "Node Removal"

4- Click 'delete me' :)

5- Use the call stack to see where the removal comes from.

Useful link: Google IO session about this: [http://danesparza.net/2011/06/a-re-introduction-to-the- chrom...](http://danesparza.net/2011/06/a-re-introduction-to-the-chrome-dev- tools/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> On slide 27 [1] it's shown that I can customize colors of Elements pane. It's possible to customize Sources panel? Would be cool to have solarized theme here.

[1] [http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and- tricks/#...](http://www.igvita.com/slides/2012/devtools-tips-and-tricks/#27)

<comment><USER8> Yup, I believe there are CSS selectors for that as well. The best way to play with it is to checkout the devtools source and take a look at the default structure: [https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/co...](https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/contributing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is _exactly_ what I've been looking for - I'm really interested in helping a friend make some of his slow sites fast, and making some of my own sites even faster. There's so much I didn't understand about the page render process and this helps massively!

</comment><comment><USER34> I never noticed the setting to show color "as authored" before. Normally, devtools converts RGB or HSL colors to hex, so you can't copy tweaks back to the source code. Leaving the color alone is how I'll have my devtools now.

</comment><comment><USER35> What tools is used to build this presentation ? Is it open source ?

<comment><USER2> You should use the Chrome web inspector to dig around ;)

[https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJ...](https://plus.google.com/118075919496626375791/posts/LG93tTdJYLy)

<http://code.google.com/p/io-2012-slides/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> let me know when it can <http://stackoverflow.com/q/4911338/55948>

</comment><comment><USER37> Was at the talk and what really looked useful was the HAR stuff (HTTP archive), see httparchive.org

<comment><USER8> Confusingly enough, HTTPArchive.org, and HAR the file format are two different projects (although one depends on the other).

httparchive.org - captures web trends <http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/har-12-spec/> \- HAR file format

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nice to see a PonyDebugger mention here. :)

</comment><comment><USER39> BRB off to write a ton of custom panels :)

Great slides.

</comment><comment><USER40> dat navigation controls...

</comment><comment><USER41> And to think that if they didn't use javascript at all the page would be even faster...</comment>


Ask HN: What actually goes into learning math? I don't know where to start. - <AUTHOR>

Grade 11 - Pre-calculus is where I last left off. All I remember where tons of graphs of parabolas going every which way and we had to identify them I think by -x/0, xx/+x or something, I legit have no idea.
I want to learn math, but whenever I googled I always had different answers.
Is there a Math road map? Like I'm having trouble understanding even the possible directions, let alone their existence.
I don't know where to start. I'm looking at open courseware on MIT and even the first undergraduate courses are far over my head.
Any help? <comment><USER2> Start with Khan Academy, work from the beginning until the calculus/precalculus sections. (it won't take long for you to blaze through the really early math and get to the point where you're reviewing highschool stuff) Then you'll be at a point to do early calculus and linear algebra courses online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Khan looks good.

<comment><USER3> I recently went through the stats courses... it was a great refresher from college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience is more with applied math (for physics and engineering), which is kind of another world from what mathematicians do. I'm not sure which you would prefer, but if it's the former I recommend checking out the table of contents from Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering by Riley, Hobson and Bence(can be viewed on amazon). It has a nice listing of all the topics, mostly in the order you'd want to study them (with a few exceptions). Doubt I'd recommend it as a first book in those subjects for an 11th grader, but it should give you an idea of what's out there.

[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics- Engineeri...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Methods-Physics-Engineering- Comprehensive/dp/0521679710) (click to look inside -> table of contents)

The "other world" that I'm much less well read in more involves proofs and foundations, and would probably start with Euclidean Geometry and Set Theory, then topics like Abstract Algebra, Topology, Advanced Calculus, Real and Complex Analysis, Category Theory, and so on.

I'd also recommend j2kun's blog, which I've found great for a first intro to many topics, though it has a bit of a programming focus: [http://jeremykun.com/](http://jeremykun.com/) As mentioned above, Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, EdX and the others are good too, especially since they're free, so you don't have a lot to lose if you get in over your head.

Not sure if this will help, but it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is plenty of math that does not lie on the academic beaten path (i.e. arithmetic -> algebra -> calculus --> etc.) I would recommend trying to figure out what area of math you are most interested in first, that way you will be enthusiastic about learning it. Once you have the mathematical momentum from that you will probably be able to learn whatever math you need to. A couple of books that helped me to find a direction were _Mathematical Ideas_ [1] and _Concepts of Modern Mathematics_ [2], which cover many different areas with just enough depth to give you a feel for each. If you are wanting to learn math solely for CS I would also recommend something like _Schaum 's Outline of Discrete Mathematics_[3].

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Ideas-Edition-Charles- Mil...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Ideas-Edition-Charles- Miller/dp/0321693817/)

[2][http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Dover- Book...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Dover- Books/dp/0486284247/)

[3][http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Discrete- Mathematics-R...](http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Discrete-Mathematics- Revised-ebook/dp/B009SVX6NK/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggest equipping yourself with some mathematical computation software. Mathematica is my favorite. There are some free, opensource alternatives like ipython which seems to be pretty popular lately. It helps to grasp things much more quickly by simply playing around with stuff. And you also get to write some code as a bonus. Say when I was learning economics I'd simply code all the concepts and charts in Mathematica and then play around with different input values to see what happens. mathworld.wolfram.com is a great resource for understanding mathematical concepts, very short, fairly formal descriptions with references. Helps to expose yourself to mathematical language even if you're confused at first. Wikipedia articles tend to be too long and all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a startup opportunity. Like Kumon, but online and free. Or does it have to be free?</comment>


The Hiring Post (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ <comment><USER2> "You have to design a test, But even the flimsiest work-sample outperforms interviews, so the effort pays dividends immediately. create a scoring rubric, and iterate. But even the flimsiest work-sample outperforms interviews, so the effort pays dividends immediately."

My cofounder and I believe so strongly in this idea that we started an entire company meant to level-up the tech industry's hiring process. ([https://www.headlightlabs.com](https://www.headlightlabs.com))

We've designed a series of concrete and practical technical challenges, rubrics with established criteria that's visible to candidates, and a consistent process for evaluating submissions. Candidate's get constructive feedback and companies get a fast, fair tech screen.

<comment><USER3> How do you prevent cheating?

<comment><USER2> Great question. It hasn't come up as a problem so far but given that the problems are pretty open-ended (interact with an API and display the results in the browser) it's a lot more obvious when you've copied someone else since there's so many possible ways to do this.

We also ask candidates to submit a writeup and the expectation is that they'll discuss their solution with the company in the next stage, so if someone cheats, it'll be pretty obvious in that call.

<comment><USER3> Why can't a candidate just have somebody else do the problem and the follow up call? How do you verify identity?

<comment><USER4> Do me a favor and give me your answer to this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18164600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18164600)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if you meant to link to something relevant, but I'll reply anyway.

It should be obvious but having someone use a computer and talk on the phone is much less involved than showing up in person and using an earpiece. Also, I'm not sure how awkward these people normally are, but the in-person faker would be astoundingly obvious.

<comment><USER4> _but the in-person faker would be astoundingly obvious_

Yet, based on your previous comment, you think the person _will_ be able to BS their way through a conversation with you about code they didn't write and don't understand. I don't see how you can hold both of those positions simultaneously.

<comment><USER3> The person who stands in and does the exercise also does the follow up call.

<comment><USER4> Do they also do the on-site interview?

Look, I've done a lot of interviews as the interviewer. This attitude that we have to design processes as if there are five hundred quintillion octillions of googolplexes of novemdecillions of cheating lying "fake coders" for every one qualified person is not rooted in reality, nor is the level of paranoia you're displaying. There are perfectly reasonable processes you can use which _will_ catch a cheater if you actually get one. But designing a process entirely around the assumption that everyone is a cheater trying to lie their way into your company is just not useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After a few months of "running the gauntlet" myself, I found this to be an extremely enlightened and reflective article on the interviewing process. It's valuable advice that hiring managers would be wise to consider. Once I am in position to make the recommendation at my next job, I will do so whole- heartedly

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone happen to know what the "$80 in books" mentioned were (or are now if it's still a thing)?

It's probably an useful exercise to come up with that list of books you would like every applicant to have read before interviewing, even if you don't provide them, and seeing others' lists would be interesting.

<comment><USER7> From the original March 2015 discussion, here is a version of the list, retrieved from the Wayback Machine:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170411010702/https://www.amazo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170411010702/https://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R2EN4JTQOCHNBA)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9160014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9160014)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159557)</comment>


The secrets that human resources keeps from you - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/the-secrets-that-human-resources-holds-from-you/

<comment><USER2> Legally this is bullshit. You are not bound to any contract terms you haven't seen before you sign, whether or not the contract says so.

Make sure to keep at least a mail where you ask for these documents.

<comment><USER3> Of course you're not bound by anything you didn't sign. But it's rather inconvenient to accept a job offer and possibly move across the country only to find out on your first day that the terms of your employment are not something you can agree to.

By the way, the other big secret HR won't tell you is that HR works for the management, _not_ for the good of all employees. If you have a problem with something at work and you take it to HR, their job is to cover the company's interests legally and financially, and helping an employee is only something they'll do as long is it doesn't contradict that primary goal.</comment></comment>


Android Ice Cream Sandwich launch, live - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/10/18/galaxy-nexus-and-ice-cream-sandwich-launch-live-blog-starts-oct-18-630pm-pdt-930pm-edt/

<comment><AUTHOR> Prediction: Asus will reveal a Tegra 3 tablet, rendering my Eee pad obsolete :-)</comment>


Basic Income Observations Log: Entry One - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-observations-log-entry-one-security <comment><USER2> Really interesting read and congrats on your first post with this.

Your point about security is a really important one. At the end of the day, if you do something that pisses people off, or even if others just decide they have better uses for that money, you lose your funding. So there is still some sort of string attached whereas there in theory would not be one (or a different type of one) with a government program.

You may have posted this elsewhere, but I'd love to get some background on where you live, what your expenses/cost of living are like, etc.

If the government rolled out a basic income program in the US, I'd honestly consider looking at where I might be able to buy a house such that the basic income would cover a substantial portion of the mortage/taxes. Probably somewhere less desirable in fly-over country, but being essentially a step closer to retirement like that could pay off huge in the long run. In fact, with the more mobile lifestyle we're seeing people have these days, I could see that being a viable path for young people who aren't established yet and are looking to figure out their path in life.

In terms of budgeting, has this added security caused your expenses to grow to account for the new funds? Or are you working hard to keep expenses the same? The interesting thing is that with your experiment, you aren't really impacted in the same way as you would be if EVERYONE suddenly had this, because there's a reasonable expectation that market prices for everything would rise to consume the new income.</comment>


Blast: Full text search and indexing server written in Go, on top of Bleve - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mosuka/blast <comment><AUTHOR> previous HN on Bleve [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16087936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16087936)</comment>


If cash gets damaged, this Treasury team will make sure it's not a lost cause - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/if-your-cash-gets-damaged-this-treasury-team-will-make-sure-its-not-a-lost-cause/2020/02/13/609fd154-3c6b-11ea-8872-5df698785a4e_story.html <comment><USER2> There is a great Planet Money episode that covers this: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/30/535062249/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/30/535062249/episode-781-the- money-fixers)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Bretton Woods Agreement pegged the dollar to gold ($35 for an ounce of gold). I understand that this can work if the central bank emits $35 for every ounce of gold they store.

But how does that account for destroyed/damaged/lost dollar bills ? The loss is very hard quantify and monitor, but needs to be compensated either through re-printing of new dollars, or through the destruction of stored gold to maintain the desired exchange rate.

Could someone with better knowledge than me explain how this works ?

<comment><USER4> > Could someone with better knowledge than me explain how this works ?

The short answer is it doesn't. We haven't been on the gold system for a long time, and BW was a sham, no one really did what the agreement said, there wasn't nearly enough gold to do so anyway. Breton Woods was a fictional agreement, basically. But once Nixon stopped pretending, we've been purely a floating currency like most others since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate dearly that this team exists and wouldn't be surprised if their specific techniques for uncovering mutilated cash can be used in other scenarios e.g. criminal forensics, but I feel like this is one of those groups that would be targeted for a government cost-cut in the not-too-distant future.

> If you're still using cash, it's at your own risk. We no longer have a > recovery service for paper money.

</comment><comment><USER6> A. This the hard-core disaster recovery for cash. For mundane stuff (my bill got ripped in half) you can go to a bank and they will give you new bills and ship the damaged ones to the Treasury.

B. If you have a stomach for cheesy movies, _The Hurricane Heist_ (2018) is about a fictional plot to steal $600M from a cash destruction facility. (Cash that is too old/damaged to be in circulation, but is still legal tender.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Someone should do the same thing for lost cryptocoins ;)

<comment><USER8> Plot twist... Satoshi' Bitcoins were in cold storage, but got burned up in a fire.

<comment><USER9> I mean that is certainly possible, maybe unlikely (because of the amount you'd assume they'd have backups), but possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> CBS Sunday Morning (my favorite news show) had a segment about this too: [https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday- morning/video/GZb3nlcVQ...](https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday- morning/video/GZb3nlcVQD7qUGIx9BqXoUoiiJzV2Wt4/how-the-government-handles- your-mutilated-money/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised it's a free service. How long are they spending on these $100k+ cases?!

I guess an argument for it being free is to garner trust in the currency.

<comment><USER12> A lot of very old government services are like that, they hail from a time before everything was expected to be "free market" and needed to turn a profit to justify its existence.

<comment><USER13> It's not really a free service we are all paying for it via government spending.. which is loosely related to taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those struggling because of the paywall you can try outline. It's a pretty decent site that can bypass a lot of paywalls and is actually usable compared to most news sites. Ad block doesn't work here as it only shows the first paragraph.

[https://outline.com/crbq2m](https://outline.com/crbq2m)

Note to moderators, If the direct link isn't allowed please change it to just outline.com

<comment><USER14> You can also read WaPo by carefully timing a click on your browser's Reader Mode icon when the article loads. (The icon disappears once it detects that you're not a subscriber, so you need to snipe it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish we had a team that cared as much for our democracy.

<comment><USER16> A solid monetary system is a prerequisite to democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's kind of hilarious that they still spend money on the PR team to push these stories about how important and sanctimonious cash is while at the same time printing billions of dollars every night and just transferring to any bank or hedge fund that wants it in the overnight repo market.

A whole set of theatrics for the commoners who still use cash, meanwhile we just press some buttons and poof a billion dollars appears out of thin air in your account (if you're rich enough).

<comment><USER18> _commoners who still use cash_

You're right, it's much better to use payment methods that track my wants, needs, desires, habits, location, companions, financial status, political and religious preferences; and then weaponizes it against me. Stupid commoners and their freedom.

<comment><USER19> Whatever the merits of the parent comment, I think you're misinterpreting their intent.

Their stance is that the average citizen is made to jump through hoops to get their cash replaced, while major players are handed money freely. The "commoners" appellation is sarcastic.</comment></comment></comment>


Solar Panels in the Screens of Smartphones Could Power the Devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/solar-panels-in-the-screens-of-smartphones-could-power-the-devices-180954457/

<comment><AUTHOR> > Phones, like Samsung's Blue Earth, have solar cells embedded on the back. > But when using a phone, the back is obscured by your hand, and it's the > screen that gets the most exposure to light. So Kyocera has incorporated > transparent solar technology into the screen of its rugged Torque line.</comment>


Client Side PHP - <AUTHOR> https://atymic.dev/blog/client-side-php/ <comment><USER2> Post author here

I'd be happy answer any questions. It was a fun experiment, but I wasn't expecting to see it on HN!</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my startup: OpenNow - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys -
My friend and I have been reading Hacker News for a long time and we recently decided to launch our own thing: OpenNow. It's all about finding nearby restaurants that are open right now.
We still have a long way to go and would really appreciate any feedback or ideas you have around how to improve OpenNow.
http://www.opennowsf.com
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Where are you guys pulling the business open hour data from? (I hope not Yelp since they're hours and filtering are all wrong in my experience).

This is something I've been trying to look for, for awhile now, especially late nights (not so much during the day for more obvious reasons but it does have some use during the day in some cases).

Few things to note. Since you have location and neighborhood set already, I would probably get rid of the request for location upon arriving. This will annoy a lot of people and you're only serving up SF to begin with, that doesn't seem like there is a need for that even if it maybe useful later.

The second is if you're planning to expand to other cities, why choose opennowSF (emphasis on the SF) in the domain name. Why not go with a more generic name to begin with rather than rebrand later?

The design isn't bad but I would maybe rethink the blue font for the results and have alternating background color for each result so its not blended so badly. I like that it displays how long before the business closes but I'd also like the business hours for the entire week listed so I can get a quick overview.

Also if the website has an online menu or website, include that. Not exactly sure if I'd use the share feature which btw I didn't even know was meant for sharing X restaurant was open till I clicked on it. First impression was I thought it was the twitter or facebook page for the restaurant. Also maybe have a simple sorting system such as sort by name (alphabetically) or by remaining business hours, etc.

Hope these help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is all really helpful! We're aiming to have more accurate hours information than anyone else and we're investing in several techniques to make that possible. And I completely agree about the domain name, that was just to get us started right away.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


The Strange But Effective Way I Stick to Hard Goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2016/01/habits-overhyped-heres-really-works.html <comment><USER2> For me the best habits and skills I developed happened when a burn action developed into an enjoyable action, in article's terms. For instance, I once used to work as a windsurfing instructor. On average it takes 10 lessons for a beginner to catch the wind. What I saw was that most people would quit because the first 10 lessons are all 'burn'. Imagine pulling out a heavy sail out of water for an hour straight just to fall back into the water. But, on your 10th you catch the wind and it's fun like nothing else (almost). The problem is that you don't see a gradual increase in enjoyment until you start surfing. What I'm saying is sometimes burn takes a while until you see results.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't explain how to stick to the hard goal of burning a $100 bill every time you don't go to the gym. I just know that I would stop doing this as soon as it came time to burn the money. What do I do when I don't burn the $100 bill? Burn a $100 bill?

<comment><USER4> If you breach your self-contract by not burning the money, you then have to burn $200!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr increase stake in the goal by committing to destroy $100 bill if you don't.

With a self-aggrandizing tone and link-bait "strange way" I found off-putting.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention all the self-quotes inviting you to tweet them out. Sorry, but this article is drivel. It fails to mention the third choice: don't do the routine _and_ don't burn the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This idea seems more like how to stick to doing something you don't like, rather than how to stick to a goal. The seem similar but the latter implies you have a choice in how to accomplish it.

If you assume that a goal is a long term accomplishment and the strategies you use are short term, then something like this will allow you to stick to a strategy. However, done to excess would imply doing things you hate all the time, against the peril of doing things you hate more, which will make your life miserable.

This line of thinking reminds me of most school systems, which uses somewhat the same strategy, ie. do this simple task, now, or in the immediate future, to some exact specification, and if you don't do it properly you'll get a bad grade.

I find it much more helpful to tread lightly when considering doing things you don't like in order to accomplish a goal. If you can find a way where you are enjoying yourself and working towards a goal at the same time, it is much better even if it seems likely to cause you to take longer at doing it.

For instance, I often switch projects during the day, rather than work on only a single project, getting bored with it, but pushing on and hoping that I'll get through it quick and be able to go onto the next one. By switching it up, not only am I happier and actually excited to work on the stuff I do, but there is a synergistic effect, since the concepts of one of the projects often applies to the others as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a similar concept that Tim Ferriss talked about in 4 Hour Chef. You'd (with a friend for accountability) put money in an escrow account for an organization you absolutely despise (political, religious, etc). If you fail on keeping your promise (in this case going to the gym) the money would be released. I think he calls it the Stickk method (there is even a site dedicated to it: [http://www.stickk.com/](http://www.stickk.com/))

<comment><USER8> Using Stickk I quit drinking completely for six months. There were some negligible lapses, but overall utilizing this loss aversion technique was a positive experience for me. I will try it again soon for other long-term goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ridiculous. The effective way to stick to hard goals is to figure out how to enjoy them. Weight lifting is difficult and strenuous, and when I first encountered it I found it ridiculous and demeaning (because I was terrible at it). I set goals, researched it, and did it long enough it became a habit I can't live without. Not doing it is more psychologically and physically painful to me than breaking my back on deadlifts at this point. Same thing took place learning physics, software development and machine learning.

I'm presently experiencing the lighting hundred dollar bills on fire every day (except they're thousand dollar bills) in that I've started a company. This is painful, and not in a motivating way. The easiest thing to do is to stop lighting money on fire and get a day job. It would be a lot easier to quit lighting money on fire and lifting weights if lighting money on fire was the only thing keeping me going to the gym.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to suffer from compulsions and developed a related trick to break their grip that normal willpower just couldn't provide. Sufferers will be familiar with the 'you must do X, otherwise Y might happen' state (where X is often something pointless and Y is something 'bad' \- dying or similar). I found a way to extend that thought with '.. or, actually, if I _do_ do X, Y WILL happen' \- hence the best move became not to play. Now years on, this habit seems to have proven enough for my brain to 'snap out' of a compulsion and eliminate the majority of their negative impact.

</comment><comment><USER11> Didn't read the article, but the comments here remind me of initiatives like these: [http://www.pactapp.com/](http://www.pactapp.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: What are/is the SEO book(s)? - <AUTHOR>

I am a recent marketing graduate. I am now teaching myself computer science through some of the online courses posted here. I would like to know learn SEO. <comment><USER2> There's a book called 'the Art of SEO' from O'Reilly that's really quite good.

As far as websites, both SEOmoz and SEObook are both great, even though they represent very different opinions and frequently disagree.

There's a surplus of SEO material on the internet, ranging from great to potentially harmful if followed.

Read everything, but don't believe everything you think.</comment>


Preliminary Theory of the In-Group Contrarian - <AUTHOR> https://outsidertheory.com/preliminary-theory-of-the-in-group-contrarian/ <comment><USER2> _" You will likely have a sense of where you fall in the orbit of the group(s) you affiliate with: closer to the core or closer to the fringes of some formation. Your feelings about IGCs will probably depend to some extent on this."_

For some reason even without the context of which Group we are speaking about/or where I might fit in said group - the term "In Group Contrarian" makes me bristle immediately against said contrarian... I wonder if this reaction is specific to me or if its more general. To brisle against a person who identifies (or in this case is identified) as "contrarian" absent the necessary context (perhaps because absent context...the "contrarian" is describing themself as contrarian just for the sake of it). Fun semantic games.

I'm somewhat surprised by this as I see myself as somewhat rational but this leads me to think that absent other contextual clues _for me at least_ the "default" setting is to "dislike" the contrarian and I can then be swayed by the veracity/rationale of their argument.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but to be honest, I find that reaction rather disturbing and I hope other people do not share it.

My initial reaction to hearing someone as contrarian is not to assume they are right, wrong, pretentious, self-righteous, or whatever ... but, rather to be curious and intrigued that maybe this person carries some valid criticisms of my or others commonly held ideas and beliefs.

I find it makes life much more intellectually gratifying, and I am genuinely put off when I see people in intellectual communities (like software, etc.) _not_ naturally having this instinct towards people who hold contrary views.

It is usually not a bad thing for someone to think differently from yourself or others. In fact, almost all (if not all) ideas have some valid criticisms and counter-arguments or examples. I personally find that it makes for a much more intellectually honest view of the world to consider them.

<comment><USER4> I think there's a difference: I too enjoy conversation with people who think differently than myself and with whom I disagree. But a self described contrarian may well hold those opinions simply because they are contrary, not because it's something they actually truly believe. That is rarely a satisfying conversation.

<comment><USER5> Lifetime contrarian here. Contrarianness for its own sake is a child's game.

I tend to see multiple sides to things when others seem to agree that there's only one side to see. I'm the person who talks about the elephant in the room. In a professional context, that means putting my neck on the line; be bloody sure that I'm speaking up about something I believe, not just taking the piss.

<comment><USER6> I think there's a tinge of misanthropy in those who are comfortable being contrarian. If most people believe something, it's probably not _that_ right, or at the very least, needs more vetting before blanket shallow acceptance. Contrarians must first diagnose that before all else.

It's totally a valid criticism that contrarians are distasteful for that simple reason, but the herd can be equally annoying. It's a symbiosis.

The Joker to Batman: _You complete me_

We're also very pretentious as you can see :p

<comment><USER5> I agree, Batman is an excellent example of a misanthropic, pretentious contrarian ;)

<comment><USER6> Not the hero you want, but the hero you deserve.

Best cheesy outro ever: [https://youtu.be/6c_H45kt1_8](https://youtu.be/6c_H45kt1_8)

Greatest in group contrarian ever?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is this idea (I got it from Paul Ormerod's Butterfly Economics, but I suspect it's older) that there are 3 types of (economic) decisions that humans can make in any given situation:

1\. Do whatever you were doing in the past and worked well for you.

2\. Copy what other people are doing and it seems to work well for them.

3\. Try to figure out what is the best decision yourself.

I think different people (heck, even same people at different situations) have different propensity to choose one of these options. And it makes sense, to save option 3 only for special occasions.

But what if the group orthodoxy is just an illusion created by all the people who choose option 1 and 2? And the contrarian happens ad hoc, by being the person who for whatever reason chooses option 3?

<comment><USER8> This seems to presuppose that the human will successfully execute their decision, or that they will even make one. Perhaps there should be a fourth category: flail about without any decision, and then justify their behavior post-hoc to maximize their self-worth.

<comment><USER7> IMHO that's the option 1. Continue what you were doing.

Although, maybe you mean things like anxiety, something like fight/flight/freeze response. I guess you could put these sort of human defaults into a separate category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems wildly overthought and an unnecessary invocation of Girard. Everything about in-group contrarians appears more parsimoniously explained by simply observing that groups must be ambivalent about 'loyal oppositions' because 1. such people need to be kinda jerks or autistic personalities to overcome the extremely powerful social pressures towards conformity and express criticisms where they are not wanted; and 2. while they are 'traitors to the cause' in the short run by giving the enemies ammunition & splintering the group costing it momentum, in the long run they are critical to a healthy movement in keeping it honest & prepared for its enemies' arguments & innovations.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Ce qu'il y a d'enivrant dans le mauvais goût, c'est le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire" \--Charles Baudelaire

(Sorry for the French quote)

I think that IGC tactics is also very common for the adepts of Dandyism.

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

Bourdieu also wrote a book on something tangentially related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_\(book\))

"In a specific social field, agents are constantly caught between two contradictory intentions. To be recognized in a field, one must distinguish oneself from it, but distinguishing oneself also leads to being excluded from it. Officers therefore need to adjust the balance between distinction and compliance. To have style is to follow fashion while standing out from it with a few personal touches." (Translated from the better French version of the wikipedia page)

<comment><USER11> It probably would have been easier to just translate the quote in your head instead of apologizing for it: "What is intoxicating about bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Of course, the majority of IGCs are low-follower anonymous accounts, and can > be simply ignored

That critics are not popular is an old rule. I think you can also safely ignore people with a large following, but that is another topic.

> IGC must not just be dismissed, but destroyed

They basically put the finger where it hurts.

</comment><comment><USER13> >We can now return to the concept of the In-Group Contrarian (hereafter IGC). Anyone who has observed social media platforms, especially Twitter, will know the type. This is the person who, precisely when mimetic snowballing is in progress, attempts to apply the brakes. What's important is that this figure is not simply an outsider to the group, in which case they could probably be ignored, but instead claims to share the group's goals, beliefs, etc and merely objects to some aspect of this manifestation of them. The appearance of this figure is as predictable as the mimetic snowballing itself.

This account casts assent and dissent as quasi-deterministic duals of each other. It is overdetermined as a result.

</comment><comment><USER14> "a figure ... who nominally belongs to a given ideological formation but consistently dissents from its orthodoxies"

I'm only comfortable being part of a group if I'm on its fringes. I don't know why I'm this way, but I am

</comment><comment><USER15> IMHO in-group contrarians:

\- Someone how didn't get that all truth-seeking is a facade (no matter if it is a Catholic, feminist, communist, libertarian, etc group). So they don't get that they should pretend to search for truth while accepting the dogma (think about many religious scholars: often it is fine, or even encouraged to ask questions and have doubts, as long as you arrive at the "correct" answer).

\- People who take the gamble (consciously or not) - to be the new leader or a cast-out. Again, it seems that in religion almost every single person considered a key figure falls into this category (some didn't succeed so ended up as heretics, or we don't even remember their name). Think: Moses, Jesus, Martin Luther.

From a tribalistic standpoint, it makes sense to have at the same time:

\- A cohesive belief, so it is a clear distinction for who is in and who is out.

\- Some route to explore other ideas. If the tribe accepts it, good. If considered it wrong, then it is much easier to banish or execute a few people, than counteract to a large fraction of the population which are slightly heretical.

</comment><comment><USER16> "...the way that dissent from the herding dynamics can be an effective way to game the attention economy..."

, yes, go on...

<comment><USER6> When you put it that way, that validates that there is a literal shortage of counter arguments such that people can even enter the market and extract attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lots of words and vagueness without much of a point (other than someone really didn't like being called a grifter on twitter dot com, I guess?). After reading the entire piece I have no idea what the author is really alluding to, and they have to be alluding to _something_ because it wouldn't sound eerily specific otherwise. Why not just state your point with the example at hand instead of uselessly theorizing? Seriously, this is what happens when you take online too seriously - using grandiloquent words like _orthodoxy_ , _skandalon_ , _attention economy_ or citing Girard and Durkheim as though this weren't about petty spats no one outside Weird Twitter has ever heard about. If your reputation and livelihood doesn't depend on your being extremely online, why would you care about this stuff? If it does, and you actually profit from talking about this stuff and playing contrarian, how can you object to being called a grifter?

</comment><comment><USER18> Ok, clearly this was posted as a veiled reference to something occurring in current events. I'll take a guess at the intended subject: Candace Owens?

<comment><USER19> Don't think she counts as someone in the ingroup.

I would think it is more like Contrapoints, who got cancelled for being sympathetic towards certain outgroup members despite being one of the most prominent trans public faces.

or Scott Alexander of slate-star-codex whose rationalistic approach is despised by others in the left, because it often lets the data lead a person to conclusions instead of going about it the other way round. He is quite squarely part of the left, but also disliked by the left.

Stand up comedians often fall in this category. IMO, Louis CK's scorched earth cancellation was a result of him being an IGC, where folks were just waiting for a thing to come out, so he could be discredited.

Being an IGC can yield huge benefits though. But, it requires carefully planning your public persona to a T and you need to be good enough, that you can't ever be called a talentless hack who is profiteering from contrarianism.

I've seen two approaches that have worked. Either build a ton of good will (like Dave Chapelle) and then be a contrarian. At that point. Or, never pretend to be aligned with a group, build an audience that is sufficiently intellectually diverse, mix contrarian opinions with self deprecation and clearly differentiate your person from your persona. (like Bill Burr). It is incredibly important to be intellectually honest though. Because even the faintest hint of hypocrisy will get you cancelled.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand the association of being contrarian and having no talent. Or do you mean the knee-jerk reaction to it? Because I would classify the most eccentric artists to be very contrarian with unlimited baskets of critique.

There is a large portion of philosophy that ponders the question if criticism can be a creative endeavor. I am firmly in the camp that believes it is indeed with no restriction.

<comment><USER19> > being contrarian and having no talent

I meant that if you are a contrarian then the majority will dismiss you as an opportunist who is using their contrarian position to gain popularity, that they would have otherwise been unable to attain.

Their implication being, that the contrarian lacks the talent to make it without the additional attention brought by being the contrarian. I wasn't stating a truth, but rather the perception and resulting reaction from the 'hivemind'.

> There is a large portion of philosophy that ponders the question if > criticism can be a creative endeavor. I am firmly in the camp that believes > it is indeed with no restriction.

I am totally with you on that. I am sorry if the original comment came across as being demeaning towards contrarians.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Basic Performance Analysis Saved Us Millions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heapanalytics.com/basic-performance-analysis-saved-us-millions/ <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14384370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14384370)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting write-up although I'd question the take home at the end: _" It really doesn't take much to find 10x wins."_

Sometimes there's a really obvious problem that you can solve that will get you that kind of 10x performance boost. Often though you have to work your ass off for it or, even having found a problem where fixing it might even double your performance, the fix might be complex, touching multiple parts of the system.

In my experience, whilst you can often find quick wins, and sometimes these will be enough, there will always be cases where the analysis is much harder, or where more complex fixes are required.

(Disclaimer: I am a performance consultant, focussed mainly on SQL Server and .NET. My background is that _years and years_ ago I lead the team that built Red Gate's ANTS Performance Profiler and ANTS Memory Profiler, and also worked on a number of their SQL Server tools.)

<comment><USER4> This. I would call the optimization described on the article as "low-hanging fruit": if you don't have the right DB indices or you are not batching your operations, you can find that kind of improvement easily, mostly just because your code was not following the "fast path".

Still very useful article even if just to show how to use profiling tools, which you will need to even for much-higher-hanging fruit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fom the flame graphs I don't get how there is a 10x speedup - the optimized piece (ExecOpenIndices) is less than 90% of the total?

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice analysis and write up. What's the reason for choosing PGSQL? Your workload appears ideal for a NOSQL DB like mongo

<comment><USER7> > Your workload appears ideal for a NOSQL DB like mongo

Can you expand on that a little bit, please?

<comment><USER8> That is a good workload for column-stores. Mongodb is row-store (an inefficient one at that).

<comment><USER6> The aim of the product is to display usage trends to it's customer, in real time.

My understanding as a non CS, self taught programmer is that such workloads are better served by NoSql DB s. Yes, this comes with the lack of acid compliance, but spotting trends in real-time (apparently) don't require acid compliance.

Please correct me if wrong as I'm getting down voted, which is rather amusing

<comment><USER8> Nosql is very big. Compare redis + cassandra + elasticsearch and you'll see. You have to look at: data-structures the db uses, query patterns, data- velocity, data-shape, etc etc. Basically how the db really works in a _low_ level, to understand what is it good for.

Current case they: have a lot of data, need a lot of compression (or low overhead as possible), need as much query-selectivity as possible (reading as few rows as possible for each query) that's why they have a unique case of selective indexes.

Bonus: mongodb agg sucks. Seach online for comparison to pg or es agg.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Federal court tosses Colorado's Amazon tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.denverpost.com/dnc/ci_20316979

<comment><USER2> I've read the actual caselaw and determined that Judge Blackburn made the correct legal decision according the facts of the case.

That doesn't mean that conclusion that "Sales Tax in Colorado shouldn't be collected." It merely means that the Judge made the right call because the law or legal statute was written by an idiot. It's significantly different from NYS' Amazon law that it takes an indefensible position.

Sales tax under Quill v North Dakota has always stated that SALES TAX specifically and not income/franchise tax has a physical presence requirement. Colorado was stupid because they specifically call out non-resident/companies without a physical presence to comply with a series of demands (reporting, notices and etc) that cost crap tons of money. There's an obvious undue hardship here.

The interesting thing is that NYS' position was much smarter they used the affiliate nexus rules. Instead of going after Amazon directly, they simply stated that Amazon had a physical presence in NYS due to the affiliate marketers in the state. The number of affiliates substantiates a "nexus or connection" within the state to require sales tax. This absolutely works!

Don't get your panties in a bunch because this aint over by a long shot. Whoever wrote the law should be shot because any tax professional worth their salt should've seen this coming.

This is coming from a guy that specialized in State and Local Tax at KPMG and defended audits on behalf of Goldman Sachs and etc. I recently had my opinion drafted by Tax Analysts (Tax.com) incase you're wondering about my background.

I'm going to do a full and detailed writeup on my site later tonight

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I expected to see an article about "affiliate nexuses" being thrown out. IMO, that would have been a huge deal. Now that I understand the details of this case, I am underwhelmed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Woot. I'm pretty sure this will finally push many of the other Affiliate Tax laws off the books as well.

/dancesajig

<comment><USER5> In states where Amazon has _no_ presence, probably (if other courts agree), but with some of the states going after Amazon, like Texas and California, the status is murkier, because Amazon has a physical presence there, but via subsidiaries, which it argues don't count, but the states argue do count. They seem to be settling those cases and conceding the point, though; they've agreed to start charging sales taxes in Virginia and California next year, and Indiana, South Carolina, and Texas sometime in the next two years.

<comment><USER6> Would it make sense to charge sales tax on sales done through affiliates but not the rest of Amazon? Or maybe it's already done that way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _"Enforcing a reporting requirement on out-of-state retailers will, by > definition, discriminate against the out-of-state retailers by imposing > unique burdens on those retailers," Blackburn ruled."_

This is such bullshit. _Not_ charging sales tax on items bought out-of-state will, by definition, discriminate against the _in_ -state retailers by making their prices significantly higher.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but the whole tax system is broken anyway.

Online retailers (excluding the shell games that some companies play) do not benefit from a state's services, so why should they bear the burden of collecting taxes for that state?

Most states have a use tax that is the responsibility of the taxpayer to pay to make up for this; I should know, I just filed my taxes and _paid_ it.

<comment><USER9> >Online retailers (excluding the shell games that some companies play) do not benefit from a state's services, so why should they bear the burden of collecting taxes for that state?

Really? That's interesting, I always thought these roads I drive on were paid for by the state. I don't really see many state-enabled services that brick- and-mortar's consume that internet retailers don't.

<comment><USER10> The online retailer pays shipping companies, and those shipping companies do indeed have a nexus in the state and pay various taxes as appropriate. One could argue that asking the retailer to pay as well is a form of double- dipping.

<comment><USER9> That argument could be extended to any business operating anywhere. If we only paid taxes based upon what we directly consume from the government, I don't think many businesses would be collecting sales taxes. Your lease is paid to a landlord. Your inventory is purchased from a distributor. Your insurance premium is paid to an insurance company.

<comment><USER11> So, I, in California, buy something from Amazon, which pays Fedex to ship it from out of state to me. Fedex pays "gas taxes" in CA, and other CA taxes too[1]. If Fedex ships my pkg by air, there are at least additionally airport fees/taxes.

Since Fedex is not going bankrupt, it seems Amazon is at least paying Fedex enough to offset these expenses, so Amazon is in effect, through Fedex, paying these CA taxes (the same ones that in-state B&M stores would be paying for shipping a purchase to me, or that I would be paying if I bought an item at a local B&M store and transported it in my own motor vehicle).

Now, in my understanding, the purpose of these taxes is to pay for the "services" CA is providing to the taxpayer (in this case, Fedex, and, indirectly, Amazon). For a shipper, "services" would include construction and maintenance of (and bureaucratic overhead associated with) the roads, bridges, airports, etc.

But in your opinion Amazon is skating on their responsibility and should in addition charge sales tax to the customer (apparently for additional "services provided by the state" not covered by the above)? What are these additional services Amazon is receiving (in this transaction) from CA that are not being paid for via [[the above-mentioned]] taxes?

[1] <http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vehindustry/mcp/mcpfaq.htm#what>

[[edit]]

<comment><USER9> I'm not making any judgment about whether Amazon is "skating on their responsibility." I'm just trying to explain to people who are misunderstanding that states CAN CHARGE SALES TAX. This case has nothing to do with whether the state can charge a retailer a sales tax. They can. There is no doubt about that. The issue here is that the law, as written, was unconstitutional. Further, those who are claiming that brick and mortars consume a state's services but online retailers do not are wrong. This notion that retailers pay shippers who pay taxes makes zero sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visualization of the Netflix Database - <AUTHOR> http://magamaps.com/?p=942

<comment><USER2> This reminds me a bit of the lastfm music visualization <http://sixdegrees.hu/last.fm/index.html> . Flipping either on the vertical and horizontal axises puts them in a position to line up somewhat. I wonder with a more full data-set from Netflix if the similarities would increase.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is each axis? They aren't labeled.</comment>


This one guy is in every tech video - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141010151209-25388572-the-guy-in-every-tech-video?trk=object-title <comment><USER2> Linkbaity titles don't work if you're not BuzzFeed or Business Insider.

</comment><comment><USER3> fake title damn u

<comment><USER4> How is the title fake? I'm not awake enough to catch it. The Sandwich dude is in almost every start-up companies video ad. Title seems accurate.</comment></comment>


Economics of Spotify is making songs shorter - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1519823/is-spotify-making-songs-shorter/ <comment><USER2> One infuriating thing about economic incentives and Spotify:

Very often, when a song comes up, I will want to delete it from my current playlist because it no longer interests me. In many years it has been practically _impossible_ in the UI. The only way to do it is to hunt through thousands of songs, then click on a context menu to delete it, despite this being something that would be incredibly easy to add to the current song interface and accomplish in one second (Adding the same song to a playlist is an option there).

So why is this the case?

I recently realized that preventing me from cleaning up my playlist means MORE SKIPS for Spotify. They can shove more ads in my face by forcing me to listen to more stuff I don't care about over time. It sounds silly but I would bet money that this is the reason considering how technically simple this feature is and how large the value would be.

<comment><USER3> Jesus, you are attributing something like this to malice, where it is simply:

It is a power user feature.... and most likely nobody bothered to prioritize it as it wont be changing any metrics at all.

Spotify (the desktop client), had all kinds of features (drag and drop, etc..), that were nice but were eventually dropped in the sub-sequential redesigns. The realization was that less of 2% of the users were using any of those features, and many of those features had costs (extra code, more maintenance, etc)....

Of course, many employees are power users themselves, and some were not happy, but over and over it seems that dropping those features didn't hurt metrics, actually improved them (usually because the UI got more simplified, less cluttered).

That little feature is missing, (and annoying you so much) simply because Spotify is a large company now, and nobody (usually either a PM, or senior engineer) has thought that including it, because it doesn't have a large impact.

When the company was smaller, engineers could just jump in and implement little things that 'annoyed' them. Once the company is large, is gets harder to do that.

That just how it is in most tech companies when they reach a certain size.

<comment><USER4> I have to wholeheartedly agree with your parent here.

The whole purpose of playlists is to organise songs, and almost the entire usecase for removing a song from a playlist is to remove the currently playing song. I almost never want to remove a song under any other circumstances.

This shouldn't be a power feature, but Spotify makes it unnecessarily difficult to do on the fly.

<comment><USER5> You're making a few big leaps here. First that self-built playlists are an important feature for users, that people are actively managing their playlists, and that people curate while listening.

Those might all be true for the majority of users, or it might be that you're an outlier. The only way to know is to actually sample real world users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It was a beautiful song But it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit You gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05 \-- Billy Joel, The Entertainer, 1974

To be fair, the article acknowledges songs were already getting shorter in the 90s, after getting longer with LPs and CDs.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        It was a beautiful song
        but it ran too long
        If you're gonna have a hit
        you gotta make it fit
        So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel in "The Entertainer" referencing the radio cut of "Piano Man."

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it's more likely that the decrease in song length is due to the fact that "music production" is becoming a highly specialized and advanced field of work- In the old days, artists just created songs with off-the-cuff lengths... nowadays, a team of experts are going to mull over every single measure in a mainstream music track and ask the question: "Is this measure providing enough value to deserve a spot in this track? If not, these engineers will "refactor" the song to remove bits that might bore a listener and cause them to play another track... the fact that spotify now exists is just incidental to this separate, orthogonal trend in music production.

It's crazy how technical and deep the music production space is becoming.

</comment><comment><USER9> > DAMN. won the Pulitzer Prize for music, going to show that this trend isn't > necessarily lowering the quality of music.

A bit of a fallacy. Awards aren't judged against music ever recorded, but against peers released in the same year. Quality could very well be going down or going up, but that would be a trend that can't be measured across a single award season.

</comment><comment><USER9> Economics of radio made songs shorter too. Listen to Sun Records tracks and there are plenty of 3 minute songs. I know a few recording artists with several million streams and "radio edits" have been a thing for a long time and not a single one mentions Spotify economics as a motivator for particular edits. I am not sure that recording artists are actually doing Spotify math when it comes to their mixes — they're often just using the same "radio math" they've always done. Pop songs have always been radio friendly. The only artists that can get away with a Stairway to Heaven length song are Led Zepplin-level acts, and even then it has to be an extraordinarily massive tune to get a 5 minute+ song on the radio.

</comment><comment><USER10> Long popular songs often had (and have) "radio edits". This is just that again, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER11> 33 rpm and 78 rpm singles had much firmer time limits, and much wider impact on song length.

Yet my preferred song "service" is BGM on youtube - 10 hours of someone playing jazz. I think we shall see multiple markets developing as song type, duration and other variables are played with.

</comment><comment><USER12> Honestly I'm not bothered, the kind of artist that would care enough about optimizing profit on Spotify to actually change their music isn't the kind of artist I give a shit about in the first place.

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to believe Kendrick Lamar falls in that bucket and with that, I can't take this article very seriously.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I'd be much more inclined to believe it's just a desired stylistic change from him. Or perhaps he knows about shorter songs being more profitable and decided to do it _without_ sacrificing integrity. (Constraints do make creativity more fun/easier sometimes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting hypothesis but it would certainly be strengthened by some input from musicians targeting spotify listeners.

Who is to say shorter attention spans aren't part of the cause?

Another important missing bit of information - what percentage of the song needs to be listened to for it to count as a full play? Is it 100%? That seems to be what is implied by the article.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is one reason I get my music from youtube, not spotify. The videos just as long as the musicians want them to be. For instance [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzjvL6bRRKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzjvL6bRRKg)

</comment><comment><USER15> The tiny data points presented in the article do not justify the strongly worded title

</comment><comment><USER16> Misleading title. The article doesn't substantiate the claim and just points out a coincidence. It even says so:

> Still, it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much streaming has contributed to > the recent shortening of songs. The length of pop songs had already been > falling through the 1990s, before accelerating in recent years. Some music > industry observers blame shortening attention spans—but there isn't much > rigorous evidence that our ability to focus has changed (paywall). Others > believe that shorter songs may be a result of more consumer choice—songs > need to be more compact and catchy to stand out in the crowd.

Interesting that the last part of the url is "is-spotify-making-songs- shorter". Maybe that was the original title and the editor wanted more clickbait?

</comment><comment><USER17> Nothing new, really. Do people generally believe most mainstream songs being around 3 minutes in length is due to artistic choice?

</comment><comment><USER18> Earl Sweatshirt's new LP clocks in at 25 minutes; 15 songs.

<comment><USER19> He's always had short albums</comment></comment>