Accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~acimpian/reprints/jussim_BBS.pdf <comment><USER2> The title could have a hint that the paper is about social psychology in particular. Here's my abstract of the abstract:

"Interpersonal expectations relate to social reality primarily because they reflect rather than cause social reality. This is the case not only for teacher expectations, but also for social stereotypes, both as perceptions of groups, and as the bases of expectations regarding individuals. The time is long overdue to replace cherry-picked and unjustified stories emphasizing error, bias, the power of self-fulfilling prophecies, and the inaccuracy of stereotypes, with conclusions that more closely correspond to the full range of empirical findings."

I'm a layman when it comes to this but I'd be very interested in any refutations of this paper.

<comment><USER3> > I'm a layman when it comes to this but I'd be very interested in any > refutations of this paper.

I doubt there can be refutation in the sense that "its conclusions are obviously wrong".... the catch is how you interpret/act on those conclusions.

Yes, stereotypes become stereotypes because they are, or at least recently were, "largely true" (in the statistical sense - i.e. not always but "too often to ignore"). E.g., in my country, a lot of the petty criminals are gypsies - it would be foolish to reject that truth. However, the stereotype "gypsy = criminal" is still incredibly harmful (despite being grounded in truth), both at the individual level (producing harm to innocents) and at the group level (doesn't solve the problem, only contributes to making it worse).

The bigger problem is that people are ill-equipped to handle these thoughts in the brain simultaneously: that a stereotype can be largely true, and yet it's harmful/a bad idea to act instinctively based on the information it provides. The correct responses to a stereotype are complex/should be based on reason - those based on instincts/reflexes are very often wrong. But it's so hard to resist the instincts, that often it's simpler to just dismiss the stereotype as "false".

<comment><USER4> I am curious how ignoring the connection between being a Roma and your likelihood of engaging in criminal activity is beneficial to anyone? It most certainly doesn't benefit the Roma.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to _ignore_ it, but you need to take into account that a stereotype that's say 60% accurate is still wrong 40% of the time. That difference can affect the optimal course of action tremendously. E.g. if the appropriate response to seeing a criminal is to call the police, applying the "gypsy = criminal" stereotype would lead to the prosecution of many innocent people.

Of course if you are able to accurately take probabilities and uncertainty into account when making decisions, you can make good use of observed correlations; but most people tend to be better at dealing with deterministic rules (I certainly am) and need to consciously remind themselves not to overestimate the accuracy of a stereotype.

<comment><USER4> It seems like you are arguing against stupidity, not ignoring empirical evidence. Does anyone with an half a functional brain think all Roma are criminals or the alternative that if a dozen Roma children descend on them on the street that they are just wanting to say hello?

I try to treat everyone as an individual, but when I don't have the opportunity to do this I have no choice but to fall back on my life's experience. Sometimes this means I avoid people I wouldn't if they looked or acted differently, but I have no desire to be a victim to prove a point.

<comment><USER3> People are stupid all the time. I am stupid. You are stupid. I'm sure even von Neumann was being stupid all the time. Do not over-estimate your own rationality - our instinctual responses are so frequent, that even if they're right 90% of the time, they still make us behave badly/stupidly far more often than we think we do.

> I have no desire to be a victim to prove a point.

This is not a dig against you. Humans - myself included - are incredibly flawed (while being incredibly awesome at the same time). I just find it helpful to keep this in mind. Personally, applying the stereotype as you say is a very reasonable (even "rational") choice. I do it too. But, at the same time, we should recognize the limitations of it - both you and I have probably treated a gypsy unfairly. That's ok, I'm fine with that, I've given up hope that I can be perfect - but, I still find that it helps to remind me that I'm not. And what I'm doing is not helping them. I don't know how I could _personally_ behave better (without harming myself) - but, that only means that I don't believe a solution can be found at the "personal" level. I believe "more of the same" will only work to reinforce the stereotype - so at a policy level, I believe that policies are needed to actively help them raise above their conditions (yes, maybe even positive discrimination is justified - at least, it's _something_ ), while at the same time working to fight against the symptoms (prevent the formation of "ghettos"/ their isolation in roma-only communities).

But, I digress. This was about our own weaknesses, and how the stereotype, even when grounded in truth, can be harmful, because of the positive feedback loop it creates (which is very hard to break). In particular, a stereotype tells you that e.g. gypsies used to be petty criminals (in large proportions), but it does NOT tell you that they have to be so in the future. It does not tell you the "why" \- maybe it's coded in their DNA. But what if (more likely, IMO) it's actually coded in our social norms? Because those, we can change! It takes effort, and time, but it's doable.

<comment><USER4> Lots of people with good (and bad) intentions have tried to "solve" the Roma problem with very little success.

I don't have any useful suggestions other than the observation that when Roma immigrate to countries like the USA or Australia they completely changed their culture and have been absorbed into the general population.

<comment><USER6> "I don't have any useful suggestions other than the observation that when Roma immigrate to countries like the USA or Australia they completely changed their culture and have been absorbed into the general population."

You cannot be a Gypsie/Roma in North America!

Their culture involves roaming in caravans from town to town, possibly doing bits of labour, but mostly running scams. Kids don't go to school, they live their lives as they please.

In France, I saw a Roma Caravan pull up on a local farmers property my French friend indicated that if the farmer complained - he would get a physical threat on his person and property (though I am aware that property rights / routes are different in Europe).

Can you imagine a caravan pulling up on a Farmer's property in rural Alabama? And threatening violence? They would be shot by the owner, or instantly run out of town by the local cop who could give a rats behind about whatever their 'cultural status' might be.

The EU institutionally and systematically enables the 'Roma culture' \- which is in and of itself nearly impossible to make civilized in the terms that we understand. (Not necessarily saying anything against the culture other than we don't know how to 'make it work' as the previous commenter observed)

How does the EU provide for the education of Roma children as they roam through Europe? Health care? Taxation? Etc. etc..

I understand the impetus for the EU to protect culture, and also - you know - history Nazism and all that - but the cultural situation may be 'implacable'.

Dissolving their cultural identity and putting them into a suburban school getting accounting degrees might be the only way we know how to 'fix the problem'. Which of course comes at the cost of cultural dissolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know it is common practice in psychology to rely heavily on data from student populations, but the tables 2 and 3 in the paper - the data on stereotype accuracy - are almost entirely comprised of college students (except for 1 low-n study that merely included students), predominantly psychology undergraduates. Can we expect that these populations represent average stereotype accuracy, or that their perceptions wouldn't calcify toward exaggeration with time?

</comment><comment><USER8> Everybody does hate me. I _knew_ it</comment>


Looking for contributors to a project. Contact me: alexbuzin88gmail.com - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WhitestormJS/whitestorm.js <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, Whitestorm might make good "Show HN" because it is an interesting project. In terms of attracting contributors, I suspect personally approaching people with an existing interest in the project and specific game developers who might use, and then leveraging their word of mouth networks might be more likely to build a sustainable community.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I just look for such forums or websites that can be used to grow Whitestorm.js community. Can you suggest some?</comment></comment>


Clojure at a Real Estate Portal - <AUTHOR> http://www.pitheringabout.com/?p=1069 <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested, he's talking about onthemarket.com.

[https://www.onthemarket.com/](https://www.onthemarket.com/)

Not sure why he just didn't say it, that information is available elsewhere anyway.

[https://juxt.pro/](https://juxt.pro/)

[http://blog.juxt.pro/posts/otm.html](http://blog.juxt.pro/posts/otm.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use an eerily similar stack with clojure, ring/compojure, http-kit, java.jdbc + c3p0, timbre and I have to say it's fantastic.

I created a kind of a template with how to organize namespaces around that and how to address and automatically parse the URL/form parameters depending on the URL and send a "missing param" or "malformed param" back in the appropiate cases. It also deals with optional params

The app basically only abstracts away the HTTP Server stuff and calls the appropriate call in an API namespace (where someone else could hook in if he wants to use his own server).

Also, I now save all DDL in a separate resources/SQL folder and parse it if I need to rewrite the DB from clojure (e.g., at initialization after deploy). In the folder there is a schema.sql in which all other DDL is called via \ir.

Checking whether the current version is the most up to date I still do manually (so if I add an index to some table in the DB, I add checking for this index via postgres native tables in the migrated? function) but this will be automated as well some time in the future.

The reason why I use org.clojure/java.jdbc is because I can use all native postgres features (arrays, jsonb, tsvector, ...) without using the very weird java.sql constructors. This is also one of the major points against any current library.

<comment><USER4> you should replace c3p0 by hikaricp [https://github.com/brettwooldridge/HikariCP](https://github.com/brettwooldridge/HikariCP)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Semi off-topic, but might helps others as well: What should an experienced OO dev read to better understand how dynamic FP languages, like Clojure, alleviate the aforementioned cons of OO in the architecture of large-scale agile projects? In other words: I know from experience what's the downside of OO, but I don't know how dynamic FP languages would help without sacrificing the benefits of OO?

<comment><USER6> > the benefits of OO?

For me understanding the greatness of FP was build on the understanding that there are no "benefits of OO".

Once I realized that the "abstractions of classes and inheritance" and "encapsulations of state in objects" (and other OO-paradigm pillars) where harmful, I started truly researching the alternatives.

I could go back to C --imperative, state-all-over-the-place, self-managed memory-- but it seemed like an impossible step in web development.

Quickly I found promise in languages like Clojure and Haskell. High-level enough for web development, yet faster them my trusted Ruby code, and seemingly more maintainable.

The main benefit of OO I know experience is it's popularity. Going from Java to Ruby is a lot easier then from Ruby to Clojure or Haskell. The good news: many OO languages are incorporating FP'isms, and allowing a functional approach to solve problems, this helps FP like myself newcomers quite a bit.

TL;DR: I came to the realisation that the benefits of OO where mainly theoretical and did not hold in practice. Main 'real' benefit of OO is its popularity.

<comment><USER7> Alan Kay claimed that the big ideas of OO were polymprhism and encapsulation, which not only are first-class features of Clojure but one of its main selling points, via protocols. Haskell type classes support behavior inheritance and subclassing, with monad subclasses being the preferred way to encapsulate state.

When people talk about how their favorite FP language is not OO, it raises my hair a bit and wonder what kind of code this person produces. A Clojure programmer will throw out some multi-level map reduce that abstracts over arbitrary sequences and then jam an ordered tree map into it, and claim it's not OO. And I'm like, what do you think polymorphism and encapsulation are?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your reply.

I guess my wording is not entirely accurate. I meant OO-class-based- inheritance and OO-class-based-encasulation-of-state.

> I'm like, what do you think polymorphism and encapsulation are?

Well, when writing Haskell I'm not dealing with object instantiation, OO- classes and OO-subclassing. I have no problem with encapsulation per se; it is an important tool of creating abstractions needed to reach any kind of productivity. It is more that the OO-style of encapsulation is no longer something that I believe works in the long run. In popular Haskell terms "it does not compose" or more lay-men terms "its likely facilitates creating a lot of maintenance burden".

<comment><USER8> > Well, when writing Haskell I'm not dealing with object instantiation, OO- > classes and OO-subclassing.

I think what the person you're replying to is saying is you actually are. You don't literally write "Foo x = new Foo()" but that's just a syntactic feature of some language. Haskell has types and classes and sub classes. You just don't write them the same way.

<comment><USER6> I upvoted you, but I strongly disagree with that I actually am using those in Haskell (knowing that you did not say that but merely point out what was said).

In the theoretical sense OO and FP share some concept like encapsulation and polymorphism. But a class in C++/Java/Ruby is whole other thing then type- classes in Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How did you handle refactorings? Like, changing userAddress's "type" from Address to Maybe Address?

This is what scares me the most in Clojure and all other dynamic languages - that early on in the project, I'd make an unfortunate decision which I wouldn't be able to go back on once the project goes over 2-3kloc... without introducing hundreds of potential runtime errors, that is.

<comment><USER10> One way is to use regression unit testing, though Clojure community is not very into testing.

<comment><USER11> That last part is complete rubbish.

<comment><USER10> That's just what I've heard - sorry if it's incorrect.

<comment><USER12> The Clojure community is very big on testing, but not all of it is automated (eg testing on the REPL). Automated testing is popular too though, to the point where Clojure has a number of testing libraries (clojure.test, test.check, test.generative, expectations, speclj, midje).

<comment><USER13> If the testing isn't automated, I'm not sure it should really count.

<comment><USER12> Sure it does. It depends on the purpose of your tests and the cost/benefit.

Do you really think that just because you have automated tests, that your software is defect free? Tests (outside of generative/property-based testing, which is still under-utilised) aren't very good at finding bugs outside of regressions. Having said that, most Clojure code worth talking about does have automated tests.

In my ideal world, I would use expected-case Unit Tests to test the contract/requirements/interface. Regression tests to prevent fixed bugs from reappearing and generative tests to try and find bugs. I would write the expected-case tests before the code, use REPL testing while developing and finally write property tests after (once my code has evolved so that I understand the properties) and regression tests only as I fix bugs after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "Clojurians don't like testing" meme probably has more to do with Rich Hickey's famous "guard rail programming" [1] comment than anything else. Of course, even at the time, the joke within the community was, "Yes, __Rich Hickey __doesn 't need to write tests....you do!"

[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made- Easy](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy) (15:30)

<comment><USER15> > The "Clojurians don't like testing" meme probably has more to do with Rich > Hickey's famous "guard rail programming" [1] comment than anything else.

And Rich Hickey isn't against testing. He was having a jab at test driven _design_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for the write-up! Juxt seems like a cool bunch - I'm not London-based (Berlin) but would not hesitate one minute given the chance to join them.

<comment><USER11> Hey, send us a mail to say hi at firstname.lastname@example.com :-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Great books you read in 2018? - <AUTHOR> Curious to know which books you read in 2018. What made a true impact? What made the best learning experience?<p>Thank you for sharing! <comment><USER2> A similar question was asked 2 weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18661546)

</comment><comment><USER3> Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley Hardcover – [https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune- Failure...](https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune- Failure/dp/0062458191)

</comment><comment><USER4> Without a doubt Factfulness by Hans Rosling [1]. It gives a better factual basis for the state of the world today than everything else I have read in my life, combined!

[1] [https://amzn.to/2Re5da9](https://amzn.to/2Re5da9)

</comment><comment><USER5> Something that is perhaps a little more personal, but going by the "true impact" metric it fits:

 _Breaking Negative Thinking Patterns - a Schema Therapy Self-help and Support Book_

Short and effective (although it's no substitute for a proper therapist). Well, provided that you can take a step back to get over yourself and be brutally honest about your flaws, and do the exercises even when some may feel silly.

Helped me identify the causes of a number of problems of the _" why do I keep doing this to myself?"_ kind. Arguably that is the most important step, since that it is required finally start properly dealing with them. I'm in a much better place thanks to that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Related question about non fiction books posted two days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18743465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18743465)

<comment><USER7> And for fiction:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746712)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18746559)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18744462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18744462)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'The Ends of the World' by Peter Brannen [https://www.amazon.com/Ends-World- Apocalypses-Understand-Ext...](https://www.amazon.com/Ends-World-Apocalypses- Understand-Extinctions/dp/0062364804/)

It's about the major extinction events of the past and their relevance to our current situation. There is so much history of life on earth before humans appeared, it's mind-boggling.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really enjoyed Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156)

It's an honest look at the life of a startup founder, but without all that self-congratulatory stuff and bragging you often find in these books. I would say it is a definite read for anyone thinking about joining the crazy world of startups.

</comment><comment><USER8> 'Through Two Doors At Once' by Anil Ananthaswamy [https://www.amazon.com/Through-Two-Doors-Once- Experiment/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Through-Two-Doors-Once- Experiment/dp/1101986093/)

'Beyond Weird' by Philip Ball [https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Weird-Philip- Ball/dp/184792458...](https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Weird-Philip- Ball/dp/1847924581/)

There's some overlap between these two books about the quantum world, of course, but I think they're much better than any pop physics books about this subject from a generation ago.

</comment><comment> Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 Obama's yearly book list ([https://m.facebook.com/barackobama/posts/10156093753316749](https://m.facebook.com/barackobama/posts/10156093753316749)) usually has good gems, as does Bill Gates' one ([https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Best- Books-2018](https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Best-Books-2018))

The book that made the most impact on me is Tara Westwood's Educated: it is insane how different people's worldview is.

<comment><USER10> Educated is also on both of their lists, and also my alumni book club's current book coincidentally. Maybe I should give that one a go myself, although the subject doesn't immediately draw me in for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great books I read and re-read in 2018:

[http://casualwalker.com/95-best-books-to-read- in-2019/](http://casualwalker.com/95-best-books-to-read-in-2019/)

</comment><comment><USER12> "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green was delightful and insightful on multiple levels. It is an excellent dissection of internet fame and punditry, while also being funny as hell.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still enjoying the 10-years-Tor short story collection "Worlds Seen In Passing".

My absolute favorite story so far is "A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" by Yoon Ha Lee: [https://www.tor.com/2011/08/10/a-vector-alphabet-of- interste...](https://www.tor.com/2011/08/10/a-vector-alphabet-of-interstellar- travel/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I blew through The Expanse series: [https://www.amazon.com/Expanse-Boxed-Set- Leviathan-Calibans/...](https://www.amazon.com/Expanse-Boxed-Set-Leviathan- Calibans/dp/0316311294/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545746130&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Expanse)

Hard Sci-Fi, the 8th book coming out next March 2019.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just started "A Random Walk down Wall Street". Looks like it's going to be very good.

</comment><comment><USER16> Drowned Worlds, Jonathan Strathan (Ed) - Stories of climate change. One of the stories will make it real to the reader.

Circe, Madeline Miller - Entertaining and memorable tale with many characters from Greek mythology.

</comment><comment><USER17> I discovered Claire North this year after she was interviewed on the Imaginary Worlds podcast. I picked up Touch, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, all of which were wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The coaching habit" by Michael Bungay-Stanier - I've done some coaching training, and this is a great intro to using some of those concepts in looking after a team.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Delhi: A novel

2\. The modern architecture of New Delhi

3\. Train to Pakistan

4\. Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found

5\. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

6\. Bauhaus

7\. Making of the Atomic Bomb

</comment><comment><USER20> "Reverse Engineering Social Media", by Robert W Gehl. It is about software, culture, and political economy in New Media Capitalism. Helped me to identify the causes of a number of problems social media's progressive aspects despite the surveillance and exploitation

</comment><comment><USER21> Cosmic Banditos

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll end the year at 83 or 84 books for the year (depends on what I choose to start once I get home from the day's festivities), and here were the highlights for me:

1\. An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, et al

An Everyone Culture profiles three high-performing companies that look very different, but all share the assumption that developing the company's people is not a contrary goal to developing the business, and is in fact a great path to getting you there. I read it with a group of my partners in my company, and we came out of it with an actionable pilot program that has gone incredibly well so far and has begun to expand. I read this one twice.

2\. The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson

I avoided Sanderson because of the hype and book length despite years of recommendations from people who know what I find interesting in books. That was a mistake, and this year I fixed it, reading about twenty of his books. They're all in my top half for the year (and I consider the top 85-90% to have been worth reading), but The Stormlight Archive (beginning with The Way of Kings) comes out on top. Fantastic magic system, complex plot, and lucid writing. Check it out!

3\. The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan

Think of this as a giant Less Wrong post by an economist on the value of education. Caplan explains his theory of the value of education (which he doesn't discount), and shows convincingly that much of the system as it currently stands is wasteful for society. I came in skeptical (having benefitted personally and professionally from my nineteen years of school), but I came out convinced. Highly recommended for anyone who reads SSC or Less Wrong and says "I'd love a book that argued a premise that carefully."

4\. The Three-Body trilogy by Cixin Liu

Masterpiece of SF lit. For fans of hard SF only. The prose is not wonderful (as the author himself will tell you), but it's truly wonderful, and deserves all the considerable praise it's gotten over the years. I found the style fascinatingly different and refreshing, having never read much Eastern lit.

5\. Measure What Matters by John Doerr

There's a reason this gets recommended so often, and I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to get to it. After reading I immediately worked toward implementing OKRs in part of my company, and will work towards pushing it throughout. It's a messy process at the beginning, but after a few months we're already seeing some improvements (and the process has revealed some weaknesses we could work on as well).

6\. Letters to Lucilius by Seneca

I reread this periodically, and it always ends up in my top books of the year. Seneca's Stoicism bears none of the toxic asceticism attributed by its critics, and instead simply demonstrates how to live as better people.

7\. The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

The authors took a careful look at the volatile nature of our public discourse, and set out to figure out how big of a problem it is and what might be contributing to it. I came in skeptical of the problem, but was thoroughly convinced to take it seriously. Haidt is, of course, amazing as usual.

Those seven (actually eleven) are the biggest standouts of the year. Looking forward to others' suggestions!</comment>


Bring back the headphone jack: Why USB-C audio still doesn't work - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcworld.com/article/3284186/mobile/bring-back-the-headphone-jack-why-usb-c-audio-still-doesnt-work.html <comment><USER2> Neither USB-C nor Bluetooth is really an acceptable alternative to straighforward analogue audio.

Heck, we're seeing that even keyboards were in some ways better under PS/2 than they are with USB: latency was much better.

<comment><USER3> PS/2 is actually the better interface since it's interrupt-based. USB is polling-based, hence the latency issue. A lot of non-Apple laptops still use it for their internal keyboards and mice due to interrupts using less power.

As with the headsets, it boils down to the right tool for the job, for sure. I refuse to buy a phone without a 3.5mm jack because I know that it'll work with any possible headphone or speaker combination I could possibly encounter.</comment></comment>


Flux Capacity: Flux-Readings of Apple Computer Floppies - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/flux_capacity <comment><USER2> Related to this is the work of "4am" and his efforts to preserve the many titles in the Apple ][ library. His many write ups about the various protection schemes are a fun read. [https://twitter.com/a2_4am?lang=en](https://twitter.com/a2_4am?lang=en)

<comment><USER3> One of my favorite hikes up the california hills was with a friend who worked for Infocom back in the day... it was much later during the DotCom boom and an acquaintance went hiking with us who turned out to have been cracking (and distributing through BBS) my friends games. They had a long conversation on various forms of copy protection and how they were broken... but the great thing was that he still had copies/floppys that worked whereas my friend's copy protected versions no longer read properly!

So my friend was able to get a copy of the game he had written long ago to run again :-) A very happy ending.

<comment><USER4> DRM shows zero respect for the future.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dashboard with Customizable Covid-19 plots (log-scale, normalized) - <AUTHOR> https://codelike.com/corona-dashboard/?countries=DE,CN,US,KR,IT&scale=logarithmic&xaxis=days-since <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I know I posted this a week ago, but I've since added more functionality (e.g. the ability to compare countries from the date when the disease reached 100 cases in each country) that should make it more useful, so I hope this is okay. I truly believe this could be a helpful resource for some people (on the Johns-Hopkins dashboard, Worldometers and lots of other sites you cannot easily select and compare countries). I also put some work into making this mobile-friendly. A friend of mine who runs clinical studies said "This is better than every other solution/dashboard out there!", and I'm glad if it helps more people to understand the infection numbers in different countries.

Feel free to provide feedback and improvement suggestions, I plan to add more functionality in the upcoming days.</comment>


The 17th Century Guide to Sleep (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/17th-century-guide-sleep <comment><USER2> I spend all my time online and don't always keep normal hours. I sleep far better than I used to.

I'm healthier than I used to be and I live a spartan life. To accommodate my health issues, I have no carpeting, no upholstered furniture, no books or magazines in the house, etc.

These articles consistently vilify modern tech and the kind of light it emits. They seem to never, ever, ever mention modern North American Affluenza as in any way pertinent to the problem space.

I think they are overlooking a very important detail.

I'm sure there are others. That's not everything. But I think it's a large factor that is largely overlooked.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Since the way to achieve a good night's sleep was by no means self-evident. > . ._

It couldn't be more self-evident: stop doing things and go to bed with enough time to sleep your amount. Anyone can do it any evening.

The challenge isn't how to sleep but how to prioritize your life to avoid distraction from encroaching in that time. That's a matter of examining your life, figuring out your values, and learning to act on them.

If you prioritize other things and sleep less, fine, you prioritize other things and sleep less, but don't say the way to a good night's sleep is hard if you chose not to turn off your computer.

<comment><USER4> Some of us wasted years lying awake in bed trying to do just that, with abysmal results. My sleep became sort-of-normal with early morning D3 supplementation and significant protein supplementation. YMMV.

Gary Taubes in some interview gave the example (from memory) "The simple, self evident way to make a restaurant popular, is to get people to eat there". And it's true!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get about 6.5 hours on average, and I'm pretty tired feeling usually.

<comment><USER6> I'm basically a zombie the next day if I don't get eight hours. I can function but my productivity and concentration go way down. I've found that discipline is the only way to deal with it: I force myself to go to bed even if there's something I'd rather be doing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Homebrewers please help us with our startup by taking a short survey - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
My friends and I are homebrewers and computer geeks.  We're building a wireless sensor to measure the fermentation cycle from inside your fermentor.
We're calling it BrewBit (http://brewbit.com)
We've put together a short survey to help us better understand how you brew and how BrewBit can better fit into your brewing flow.
Please help us help you brew better beer by filling out the survey at:
http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e63esmufh41kam3n/start
Thank you,
Misha <comment><USER2> Heya Misha, you might want to submit to the Homebrewing sub reddit as well if you want a bigger sample size?

<http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will do. Forgot about Reddit

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link:

[http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e63esmufh41kam3n...](http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e63esmufh41kam3n/start)</comment>


Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers. - <AUTHOR> http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2011/01/26/InternetLosers/print.html <comment><USER3> I'll provide one data point of how this affects Canadian internet users.

I currently have no caps with TekSavvy and pay $39 a month. Starting from March 1st, I will pay $31.95/mo with a 25 GB cap. Any gigabyte over the limit will cost about 2 bucks.

Now, you can buy a block at discounted prices. According to TekSavvy, based on my internet usage, I will need to buy at least a 275 GB extra block. Believe it or not, I don't torrent. I simply like to watch NetFlix, HD movies from iTunes, lots of educational videos online, and backup data in the cloud.

That 275 GB block costs $55/mo. So I suddenly go from paying $39 for unlimited data to paying $86.95 per month, and having to be careful about what I download and what not.

Oh, and the first thing I need to do is stop backing up my data, videos, and photos in the cloud. That's pretty much out of the question with the risk of paying $2 per extra GB. I'm buying an additional external hard drive instead.

How is that for innovation?

<comment><USER4> I actually agree with metering; I think it's the only fair measure. Granted, the metering you describe sounds atrocious, and there'll probably be a long messy transition to the point where our internet bill is more like our electric bill.

But imagine this: on mobile networks, instead of voice minutes, text messages, data caps, fees for tethering, and every other scheme the Telcos are concocting right now (with regard to charging for individual services), we instead have a single measure of our usage — data — and our bill starts at something reasonable like $5 or $10 a month.

The problem with "unlimited" in my view is that it conditions us to think that said resource really is unlimited, versus, say, electricity where we are incentivized to be aware of our usage. Now, if they're going to charge $2 per GB above some arbitrary cap — that's clearly absurd. But to start the bill very low (for the basic connection), and then charge, say, 10¢ or 15¢ per GB? Sign me up.

<comment><USER5> Metering only makes sense if the costs vary with usage. In the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage.

Now, if the line from the CO (where the DSL terminates) to the internet was a significant bit of the cost, I'd agree with you. But my understanding is that the line from the CO to the 'net is a very small cost compared to the cost of all those copper pairs.

You also have a point when it comes to shared-loop technologies like cable. Metering is probably the most fair way to decide who gets what percentage of the limited fixed loop. (and probably the best way to get the telco to add more capacity when a loop becomes overloaded)

I'm just saying, the last-mile has many situations where running the connection, regardless of how much you use that connection, dominates the cost. And in those cases, "unlimited" (up to your port speed) billing makes a whole lot of sense.

<comment><USER6> > Metering only makes sense if the costs vary with usage ... in the case of > DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper > pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of > usage.

That's a somewhat naive view of things. It only works if all the upstream equipment has infinite capacity. If you (and others like you) use 275GB instead of 10GB then it absolutely does cause more equipment to have to be installed upstream, which I don't think is an insignificant cost.

I'm like the GP - I wish every connection was metered, the problem is not metering, but the rate which invariably seems to be way above what is reasonable. Metering seems to always just be a cynical strategy to exploit naive users who don't know how much bandwidth they consume (bill shock, etc) rather than a rational economic way of sharing a limited resource.

<comment><USER7> It is not at all naive, it is very accurate.

After the connection hits the DSLAM it goes onto fiber, which starts at 1 Gbps capacity and goes up to either 40Gbps or 100Gbps per port. Only in the smallest markets would they use a T3/DS3 connection.

Actual bandwidth costs for 200GB (which is about 1Mbps) over the course of a month are about $1 USD in almost any major US city.

Even assuming 4x the cost for Canada's smaller market size, we are talking about a ($4 into $55 upcharge) 13 times markup once the cost of the basic connection, tech support, marketing, etc. is covered by the initial $31.95.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a bargain. There's a business opportunity for you!

<comment><USER9> I think this hits on the real, underlying issue: There is no free market competition in internet access. In the case of Canada it appears one state- owned company owns all the physical lines, and that company is starting to meter access.

So, a sensible approach by the government would be to review the actual access costs - whether it's $2 / 100GB or some other figure - then fix the price at that level. Review it every year. Fair for all. I am sure the guy using 275GB/month wouldn't mind paying $4 for it.

Unlimited access is unrealistic, as is gauging the public for 10x the fair value _when you're a monopolist_.

<comment><USER10> The really stinging part is that Bell isn't state owned, even though it certainly acts the part.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, but Canada has a long history of the government supporting business interests against the interests of its own population. I have a list somewhere that I prepared for an article that I intend to write about this, it's probably never going to happen because I can't get mad enough about it any more (since I've left Canada that sort of thing has gone on the back burner).

<comment><USER12> I would love to see that list actually. I live in Canada and often debate politics.

If its no trouble, could you please contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com?

<comment><USER11> Sure, I'll dig it up and I'll mail it to you, it's on my todo list now.

It was made because I was planning on writing a book on immigrating to Canada from the perspective of someone that has gone through the whole process, and this was to become one article (a blog post) and / or a chapter in there.

The whole thing had as working title 'movingtoca'.

Canada is a fantastic country but some things there are just - how to say this without insulting Canadians - peculiar.

The system works for the most part but if you don't dig in to Canada's history and do your best to understand the way the various interests interlock there is no way you're going to understand how things got to be the way they are.

To an outsider they'd make no sense at all and to people living there that do not have the historical perspective they probably also do not.

Some of these things date back all the way to the prohibition days of Capone!

How do you explain to an American that the same bottle of wine costs 50% more in rural Canada than in New York City :) ?

<comment><USER10> > How do you explain to an American that the same bottle of wine costs 50% > more in rural Canada than in New York City :) ?

Shipping cost? If anything, I'd have thought the LCBO, keeping prices uniform across the province, helps rural areas at the expense of higher density areas (though perhaps not strict downtowns where store lease cost might be significant).

<comment><USER13> Alcohol is heavily taxed and the LCBO also enforces a price floor to discourage heavy drinking.

<http://www.lcbotrade.com/selling_pricing.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't explaining what's going on very clearly. Small Canadian ISPs are allowed to use the infrastructure of Bell Canada at wholesale rates in order to foster competition. This has been reasonably successful. What has happened now is that the CRTC ruled that Bell is allowed to impose the same per-user bandwidth caps on its wholesale customers as it does on its own users.

Since the smaller ISPs should simply be getting bandwidth from Bell, this is totally ridiculous. Their ability to compete with Bell on price or levels of service is almost totally eliminated. When my friends and family in Ontario were explaining this to me I kept having to ask them to repeat themselves because it _boggled my mind_ how ISPs using bell's infrastructure could be subject to those sorts of restrictions.

<comment><USER11> The Canadian government has a long history of propping up the monopolies operating inside its borders, especially when it has a stake in them. For additional entertainment read up on the LCBO and the Egg Board (no, that's not a joke).

<comment><USER15> Not to mention the Canadian Wheat Board, perhaps the most egregious of all monopsonies (apparently it's not a "monopoly" because it is the only BUYER of wheat).

<comment><USER16> Monopsony.

<comment><USER15> I... believe that's what I said?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those not familiar with Canadian bureaucracies, the CRTC governs telecom issues, similar to the FCC in the US.

What may not be so obvious, even to Canadians, is that the members of the CRTC used to work for Bell, Rogers, Telus etc. Much like employees of the Treasury Department in the US, these people go from private sector to public sector and back continuously. A running joke at Rogers used to be that whenever they wanted some sort of legislation changed, the VPs would draw straws to see who had to quit and join the CRTC.

<comment><USER18> This is very true, and the real root of the problem is abstraction and voter apathy. Of course it doesn't help any when Rogers and Bell own many of our major media outlets who might otherwise draw more attention to the issue.

No, not a conspiracy theory. If you're a publicly traded company capable of creating more wealth for your shareholders by creating an agreeable political environment it would be practically unethical to your shareholders not to take advantage of it... Regardless of the long term impact to your customers. After all, it's pretty hard to convince your board that you shouldn't do something that may negatively impact your customer base in 20 years, and should instead settle for less profit today.

So pretty much the same game as the states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The telecommunications situation in Canada is terrible.

Typically, in rural areas the way to get broadband goes something like this:

A bunch of people get a deal with a small ISP to _finally_ provide them broadband because Bell says they won't be doing it. Then two weeks after all the gear gets installed and the small ISP starts signing up customers Bell will swoop in with an offer to undercut them and suddenly all the things that made it 'impossible' to get broadband before are mere chalk lines instead of the hurdles they were made out to be before.

In Canada it is illegal (or was, this is 4 years ago, it may have changed) to have a satellite receiver that receives FTA programming and so on.

<comment><USER19> As an American, I'm not very familiar with the telco situation in Canada. Is Bell related to AT&T (the old one)? Do they have a approved monopoly over all phone service, ala AT&T way back when (by this I mean do they carry all calls at some point, even if its only as a wholesale co)?

<comment><USER20> As it was when I was living in Toronto, the last-mile lines are owned by either Bell (DSL/Phone) or Rogers (Cable). Both of those companies are the Canadian telecom heavy-weights.

Rogers does: cable tv, ip phone over cable (ala Comcast in the US), cable internet (which IIRC it own the only coax last-mile lines in the areas where it is a monopoly -- I think that west Canada has a different cable monopoly), the only gsm carrier in Canada+, a chain of video rental stores that competes with Blockbuster Canada.

Bell does: phone, DSL++, and the only CDMA cell carrier in Canada+++.

\+ At the time I was living in Canada, there were many smaller GSM players, but they had all been bought out by Rogers, so you largely just had different branded GSM services from the same provider. More recently there have been at least two new GSM players (Wind and Mobilicity) though I believe that their coverage area is mainly just the Greater Toronto Area. [Of note is that Bell and Rogers use the same 3G bands as AT&T does in the US and Wind/Mobilicity use the same 3G bands as T-Mobile does in the US.]

++ The last-mile DSL lines were being sold to 3rd-parties ISPs as well as Bell itself being an ISP on those lines. See me ascii-art diagram in the other thread.

+++ Similar to Rogers, IIRC there were a couple of smaller players that were bought out by Bell so that all of the CDMA carriers were under the Bell 'umbrella.'

<comment><USER21> A few things to add though you painted a pretty good picture:

\- Shaw is the cable monopoly in the west. Shaw used to have a presence in Ontario but they did a big asset swap about 10 years ago.

\- A few areas have different cable monopolies but they're vastly smaller than Rogers/Shaw. Cogeco and Videotron, I think.

\- Beyond Rogers (who bought Microcell a.k.a. Fido) and the smaller players, Bell and Telus actually teamed up and built their own GSM network. I think it went live shortly before the 2010 olympics.

\- As far as I know Bell and Telus both operate their own CDMA networks across Canada. In Ontario, at least, you've been able to get CDMA service from both for a long long time.

<comment><USER20> \- I was under the impression that Bell owned Telus or something similar.

\- I heard about the GSM network, but IIRC there is some sort of transition period going on right now. Also, I've heard varying reports about it. I wasn't sure if they actually _had_ a GSM network or if people were talking about them not using CDMA for 3G internet.

<comment><USER21> Today's Telus came out of a merger a long time ago between the old Telus and Clearnet. There hasn't been any merger _yet_ , but oddly there are articles floating around speculating that there will be one in the not-too-distant future. Great, just what Canada needs: less choice in telecoms.

Re: the GSM network, I thought it was kind of ridiculous at first for the two carriers to build an entirely new 3G network when their CDMA works just fine. The speculation I heard was (1) they wanted to sell the iPhone (2) roaming revenue for the 2010 Olympics. Neither seemed like enough reason for such huge expense though. I can't find much solid information but I'm willing to bet you're right and their GSM network is available in a few places nationwide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's another reason why this is bullshit... this is an excerpt from an article I'm working on:

The biggest problem with these caps is that they are, plain and simply, anticompetitive. Probably illegally so.

Let's take Bell's internet service as an example. Bell recently rolled out their "Fibe" offerings, both for internet and IPTV.

Their most accommodating plan, Fibe 25, has a ludicrously low cap of 75GB. It would be pretty easy to exceed that with HD content from iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, etc.

Fibe TV, however, delivers TV over the same network. Bell even treats the IPTV traffic preferentially, as you can in this gushing review: [http://www.benlucier.ca/work/tech/bell-entertainment- service...](http://www.benlucier.ca/work/tech/bell-entertainment-service-the- results-are-impressive/)

There's only one minor difference: Fibe TV is not subject to the same usage caps. You can stream as many movies as you like over Fibe TV, watch as much TV as you like, and never get charged extra for the bandwidth.

Well now, that's funny. Didn't Bell's regulatory spokesperson say something to the contrary just the other day? Oh yeah!

"A bit is a bit is a bit. If you're a heavy user, regardless of what's causing the heavy use, you will pay more. That's the concept," said Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada's senior vice-president for regulatory affairs.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech- news/net...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/netflix- confronting-canadian-challenges/article1866312/)

Yes, Mr. Bibic, it appears that all bits are equal – but some bits are more equal than others.

This is a textbook case of anticompetitive behaviour, one of a long litany of recent sleazy undertakings by major Canadian telecoms (e.g. Rogers' suspiciously well-timed lowering of caps on their most popular plans when Netflix entered the Canadian market). It is also a textbook method for successfully stifling innovation, a problem Canadians are all-too-familiar with.

The Internet is now an essential service. While smart countries like South Korea, Australia, and Japan are making (or have made) large public investments in fast, ubiquitous, and unlimited Internet for all citizens, Canada continues to lurch backwards courtesy of myopic regulators, oligopolistic telecoms and a government that is unwilling to intervene for the good of all Canadians.

<comment><USER17> _Rogers' suspiciously well-timed lowering of caps on their most popular plans when Netflix entered the Canadian market_

I have intimate knowledge of this issue and it really was just bad timing on Rogers' part. They had been planning on rolling this out well before Netflix's announcement, at least 8 months, but they just chose to pick the absolute worst time to make their announcement.

<comment><USER15> If you like, I could also point to the convenient dropping of calls when they are passed from Wind Mobile's network to Rogers' (and the subsequent marketing campaign around that fact) as another example of sleazy behaviour. This does not happen anywhere else in the world.

It may not have been the case in this instance, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. I can tell you that reduced caps are, broadly, an attempt to make alternatives to Rogers' content services like Rogers on Demand less attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How expensive would it be to start a number of small independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs)?

I'm thinking of a decentralized "movement" of geeks organizing what's required to get neighborhoods and villages online: an omnidirectional antenna high enough that Line of Sight can be provided to most residents, a high bandwidth fiber optics connection at the center, and subscriber antennas at the residences.

I've tried to find more information on Motorola Canopy technology in the past days -- look at this example deployment in Nova Scotia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_for_Rural_Nova_Scotia...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_for_Rural_Nova_Scotia_initiative)

From what I'm gathering, Canopy can be deployed over unlicensed frequencies (2.4 and 5 Ghz), allows for hundreds of subscribers connecting to a single Access Point, can provide up bandwidth in the 5-10 Mbps range, etc.

Are there particular advantages to Canopy over 802.11x? Could it become viable, with infrastructure costs spread over some years, to run a small local WISP? I'm thinking of a "Real Internet" designation/"certification" that could be given out to any ISP that follows a basic code of conduct: offers at least one unlimited transfer connection plan and does not throttle traffic.

Is starting an ISP, regardless of the physical layer, overly regulated by CRTC? The Wikipedia page says "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues, or business practices for Internet service providers" -- is that in effect true?

How can anyone manage with 25 GB per month? Are Netflix or the NFB going to do something about this? If not, can "we"?

<comment><USER23> Could be quite expensive. Where I live (40kms from Perth, WA, in a semi-rural area) we use this Motorola wireless technology, and the prices are astronomical - $80 for 3GB on peak and 5GB off peak. When we first signed up, we also had major stability issues (connection constantly dropping out, connection hijacked by a hacker for a few months, etc.), although things are looking better now.

<comment><USER22> Thanks a lot -- do you know if you're using a 900Mhz, 2.4 or 5Ghz subscriber unit?

Also, what's the distance from the ISP to you?

<comment><USER23> No idea. This is a really bad ISP who seem to get nothing but complaints - they assume that all their users are really dumb, so their technical FAQ (<http://oceanbroadband.net/info/faq.html>) states only that they use a proprietary system from Motorola Canopy Wireless. As for the distance from the exchange, I think we are about 10kms away, but once again I'm not entirely sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm embarassed to be Canadian.

I'm not opposed to usage based billing - users who use more should pay more, but the rate should be commensurate to actual costs. Regulation is meant to protect the public from potentially unfavorable actions by authorized natural monopolies. Perhaps the ISPs should be selling bandwidth on a market, like with electricity.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm a Tesksavvy customer and I got a email about this yesterday.

Until now I thought it was crazy that Austrlia was getting a censored internet and wondered how such a thing could happen in a pretty modern democracy. But now I feel like something worse has happened here... While new internet applications that use more and more data are coming out all the time and the cost of moving a byte on the net is going down rapidly, caps are getting smaller and smaller here just so the big telecoms can protect their on-demand TV businesses and keep internet service minimal without having to worry about competition.

This is so anti-competitive that it sickens me.

</comment><comment><USER26> This really disturbs me. I just moved to Seattle where I signed up for Comcast internet. A couple of days later, my connection stopped working until I activated my account on comcast.com. I did, and the first thing I saw was

High-Speed Internet Data Usage: 17% 43GB of 250GB

They sure hide that fact when you signup, not that I have any options, as Comcast is the only provider where I live. This is a horrible direction we are heading. And, if you go over the limit, they call and warn you. If you go over again, they cancel your account.

<comment><USER27> Same here. I'm with BT in the UK and I'm on an unlimited* plan with a fair usage policy. This is fine by me, I held off downloading until night time (for both my own convenience and others) but because I had 2mb/s download and a Steam library of 200+ games, I figured I may as well DL my entire library at once. After a couple of days I'd downloaded over 300GB, one night I get an email saying blah blah fair usage cap has been hit. So now I'm capped at 1mbps between 5PM and midnight every day for 1 month (thankfully the cap is lifted tomorrow) because my "unlimited" plan has _hard_ defined limits that aren't publicised. Try finding the limit for the unlimited plan I have and it doesn't exist, yet EVERYONE gets capped at 300GB/m. In a normal month I use ~150GB and would stick to that if I'd known about the defined limit, the misleading nature of it sucks.

I don't mind limits, unlimited is impossible, but when the limit is the same for everyone regardless of how the service is used and then tout it as unlimited... it's ridiculous.

<comment><USER28> Wouldn't that be considered a breach of contract? I know that if this happened to me (Israel) the first thing I would do is call up my ISP and threaten a lawsuit unless they provide me the service I signed up for.

<comment><USER10> Some small print in a terms and conditions document probably says something like "we reserve the right to Manage Our Network (read: throttle you) as we see fit." Also "we reserve the right to terminate the contract at any time for any reason."

<comment><USER28> This probably depends a great deal on the legal system where you live. Over here there's a decent chance of a "small-print" condition like that being thrown out if it was ever challenged in court. Of course it also helps that usually you sign up with an ISP over the phone, without actually signing any physical contract they can fill with "small-print".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Canadians can sign a petition that also purports to send email on your behalf to the CRTC:

<http://openmedia.ca/meter>

I've been considering not getting Internet at my new place when I move (which is coincidentally the end of the month, when this regulation takes effect) for productivity reasons, and this cements the decision. I've been pretty happy as a Teksavvy customer otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER30> The real kick in the junk is that the infrastructure Bell owns was paid for by the Canadian taxpayers when Bell operated as a crown corporation.

Not sure if the Rogers infrastructure was publicly funded (I suspect it was in part).

</comment><comment><USER31> Ok, here is what is happening in India. It's even more sinister. The ISPs have made some sites free and everything else paid. So, facebook for instance is free while your "littlesite dot com" is charged. The regulators are sleeping.

<comment><USER32> Can you elaborate? Users have to pay to visit littlesite.com, but access to facebook is free?

<comment><USER33> Yes. But it's not happening with fixed line ISPs as i know. It only happens with mobile data usage in EDGE and 3G. Mostly facebook.com and twitter.com can be used unlimited for free or for a very low cost add-on plan. Other sites accessed are charged as per the normal plan.

Even though it appears sinister, the mobile operators do this to attract young customers who use these sites the most on the move. Personally, i don't agree with this setup.

<comment><USER34> I've seen that in Australia and the UK too. Good idea to attract the younger market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Iv'e been following this debate, but it's been difficult to find actual facts. Right now with Telus (Canadian dsl ISP) i pay for 125gb transfer a month and $2/gb if I go over. Yes, the overage charge is insane but it's been like that for a long time.

As far as I can tell, the issue is that the big ISPs (tells, Rogers, bell) all have caps/overage, but the smaller ISPs that piggyback on their network can offer unlimited data transfer. This new ruling seems to 'even the playing field'.

I want the Internet to be free and unlimited as the next guy, but I have yet to understand what the big deal is here.

<comment><USER36> The big deal here is that instead of offering competitive plans the big ISPs are _decreasing_ the level of service and _increasing_ the prices of plans.

Also, Bell/Rogers/Telus have the advantage of offering bundles if you use them for cable/satellite+cell phone+Internet, whereas a lot of smaller ISPs would not able to do such things. This screams anti-competition.

FYI, I don't mind paying per usage as long a the rates are reasonable. How about charging us $10-15 for connection fees, and then $0.25/GB of transfer?

<comment><USER35> >The big deal here is that instead of offering competitive plans the big ISPs are _decreasing_ the level of service and _increasing_ the prices of plans.

Are they? I have the fastest plan from Telus and over the years they have upped the speed without upping the price, several times.

>Also, Bell/Rogers/Telus have the advantage of offering bundles if you use them for cable/satellite+cell phone+Internet, whereas a lot of smaller ISPs would not able to do such things. This screams anti-competition.

agreed, to a point. However all of the little guys I am aware of offer some kind of an Internet/phone bundle

There are several wireless Internet providers here in Alberta and I'm watching them with interest. They've built their own network run along natural gas lines or old railway tracks (where it's easy to obtain right of way rights) and are beholden to nobody (other than their backbone providers). If the big three go crazy with fees, I think these tiny wireless providers are poised to jump in and beat them down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm really lucky to live in Waterloo, Ontario. There's a provider called Yak that offers unlimited bandwidth, non-throttled DSL up to 10MB for $60 a month (comes with non-voip phone line and 5 calling features).

They have their own DSL centers and hence aren't going to be affected by this new proposition. I think we might see more companies starting their own DSL centers.

<comment><USER10> To confirm - does Yak own their own last mile? I'm under the impression this is the crux of the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Didn't the Egyptians just have the Internet cut off? I'd say they're the biggest losers.

<comment><USER39> they aren't on the internet anymore, so no, they aren't the biggest losers on the internet

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you're curious about the regulatory history of this issue - and who isn't, really - then CRTC decisions 2010-255 (<http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2010/2010-255.htm>) and (<http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm>) 2011-44 may be of interest to you. The former is the final in a series of decisions relating to Bell's request to allow them to move independent ISPs onto usage-based billing, and the latter is the recent decision on (effectively) an appeal of that decision.

If you don't care to skim the whole thing, the bottom line is that Bell is now able to force usage-based billing onto third-party ISPs, but must offer them a discount of 15% under the retail price at which Bell sells those services directly to customers.

Some other interesting tidbits found in there:

Unsurprisingly, Bell was against the idea of any discount, saying that even without a discount it would still be possible for independent ISPs to differentiate their services on price and "other methods". It's not clear how they'd actually do this, however. Oh, and PS there's way to determine an acceptable discount rate even if those assertions weren't true, so we shouldn't have one.

There's a nice note in there that "[the] Commission also received a large number of comments, mostly from individuals, that almost unanimously opposed the Bell companies' applications [to force usage-based billing]" - thanks for pointing that out, CRTC.

Bell is only required to provide third-party access to their legacy ATM networks, and not their new fiber-optic networks. This makes sense - as I've never seen the service advertised - but I hadn't seen that in writing anywhere.

If Bell ever does some form of promotion where they let people sign up on unlimited plans, they have to let third-party ISPs do this as well - <USER2> the mechanics are unstated ("[The] Commission finds that...to the extent that each company chooses not to charge UBB rates to any existing or new retail customer, it is required to treat GAS ISPs on an equivalent basis.").

Bell was about ambitious as you can get in the list of things they requested from the CRTC in these decisions. I'm not saying that I like this decision (as of March 1st I'll be paying TekSavvy more for less), but the CRTC did OK for the little guy when you see what else Bell wanted.

No one - not Bell, not the CRTC - says this is a technical issue. It's not that Bell can't handle all the bandwidth people use (which require a technical ITMP, in CRTC-ese), but that they see this as a way to increase profits by charging people who use more bandwidth more money (hence it's an economic ITMP).

<comment><USER15> This is EXACTLY what regulatory capture is all about. Bell knows the game and played it masterfully.

Ask for the moon - ask for really ridiculous things, but expect to only get half of those things. The CRTC, wanting to seem "reasonable" and "balanced", meets Bell halfway. Unfortunately, halfway towards Bell's ridiculous agenda is still absolutely terrible for consumers, a perspective that the CRTC has utterly failed to consider.

This is a classic problem, one that recently contributed to the Gulf oil spill as well (and resulted in the disbanding of the regulator, just as the CRTC should be disbanded or, at the very least, stripped of its ability to regulate the internet).

<comment><USER41> The fact that the CRTC is stacked with former Bell and Rogers employees and NO ONE to represent the public or small ISPs also helps.

The CRTC is just a stooge pretending the play the part of opposition, while they are actually a collaborator.

<comment><USER40> Are they? From <http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/commissioners.htm>, the backgrounds of the Commissioners:

von Finckelstein (Chairman) was the head of the Competition bureau and implemented NAFTA.

Katz (Vice-Chair, Telecommunications) was at Bell and Rogers until 2001.

Morin (Secretary-General) was a career bureaucrat.

Cugini (Ontario) was with Alliance Atlantis, a film and TV company.

Lamarre (Quebec) was with the CBC.

Duncan (Atlantic) comes from various small players in the Cable TV industry.

Molnar (MB and SK) comes from Customer Service and Regulatory Affairs at SaskTel.

Menzies (Alberta) ran the Calgary Herald, a large newspaper.

Denton was on the board of CIRA and was the solicitor of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (the industry group of independent ISPs).

Patrone, Morin, and Poirier were journalists.

Simpson was an ad exec.

If you're counting obvious (perceived) biases there, you'd say Katz is representing Big Telco and Denton is representing independent ISPs. Molnar would count as a half-vote for Big Telco (as SaskTel is an ILEC), but it's a minor one. The rest, as I see it, have no obvious perceived biases in this case.

As for the high-ranking staff, that's a lot harder to figure our their backgrounds - although most of them should be civil service positions, which means they're relatively impartial.

If we check out our lobbying disclosures (always interesting when it comes to this), we see that in the past year there have been 18 registered conversations between lobbyists and the CRTC on the issue of Telecommunications - and of those, I'd guess that the two from Bell and one from SaskTel were probably focused on Internet-related issues, whereas the Quebecor/Globalive/Shaw/CMPA ones weren't.

<comment><USER15> Okay, here's another ponderous question then: How many of those individuals have any qualifications whatsoever that would indicate they are in any way knowledgeable about digital media and the internet?

Why are we allowing broadcasters, journalists, former telecom execs and bureaucrats to rule on a topic and culture they clearly don't understand?

Furthermore, where are the consumer advocates? Clearly the companies they're regulating are well represented. Where's the other side of the picture?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's not that bad. Really.

Australia has had data caps since broadband first came out; for the vast majority of of users a basic plan provides all the data they need, techy users with heavy usage patterns get higher plans, and people with the compulsion to torrent every TV in existence get plans with unmetered periods (a few ISPs don't meter traffic during the quiet periods at night)

The usual behavior once you're over your data cap is to drop the internet speed down to ~64kbs for the rest of the month so even if you kill your data cap you can still access email and other low bandwidth services, you're not off completely.

<comment><USER43> It is bad. We never started with caps in Canada so we're losing a lot.

In australia you get ripped so badly for broadband it is not funny.

This affects not only consumers, but also the whole tech ecosystem.. For example business models that rely on unmetered internet (think netflix, or offsite backup).

It also affects people like me who have to host services in Canada (for regulatory and/or data security reasons). If I get nailed on wholesale bandwidth, I have to pass that cost onto my customers.

This ruling appeared out of the blue.. Without much time to prepare contigencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This reminds me of when the Canadian RIAA (CRIA) successfully campaigned the Canadian government for a "levy" on all blank data media in 2002. They wanted to charge an extra $21 per GB on CDs, DVDs and hard drives in digital media player - ostensibly to cover the costs of piracy. Sound silly? Canadian legislators obliged (though it was overturned in court years later.)

<http://news.dmusic.com/article/4580>

As I recall, this backfired since the levy eventually meant that they couldn't sue people for pirating content - they had already paid for it via the levy. Like double jeopardy.

Anyway, it proved that levies like this don't actually change behaviour much. Canadians drove to the US to buy their MP3 players. Telcos benefitted by online media consumption and competed heavily for broadband subscribers. Digital lifestyles in Canada flourished.

Ironically, it's now the telcos that are complaining for the same reason. The key difference now is that big telcos can use this decision to squeeze their competitors (who they also supply.) Though I can see ways that this will backfire too.

The good thing about the Canadian government is that they have a history of continually watching, listening, adjusting and even backtracking if they feel they made the wrong move. I hope this keeps the telcos from abusing their new rights, and from stifling digital innovation in Canada, which hurts them too in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER43> This could snowball with a nasty public backlash.

Can anyone tell me if this is specific to bell? If so, how would this affect us out west where our wholesale provider might be telus, shaw or allstream?

</comment><comment><USER34> A much better article explaining the same issue:

[http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91228/crtc-ruling-could-mean- da...](http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91228/crtc-ruling-could-mean-data-caps- for-all/) (2010 Nov 3)

Sounds like the regulator really dropped the ball on this one, giving small ISP's only 90 days to investigate possible alternatives, plan for them, and implement. 90 days?! That's insanely short. 9-12 months would have been reasonable. 90days? I'm stunned.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how this will affect companies like Mobilicity who offer unlimited cell phone data usage for an additional $10/month. I have no idea how Mobilicity operates and whether they're dependent on Bell's infrastructure or not, and whether the infrastructure is the same for cell phones as it is for internet.

A systematic breakdown on how this affects all ISPs and phone providers across all of Canada would really clarify the issue!

</comment><comment><USER46> This is going to suck, software gets bloated far faster than network hardware can be developed and certainly faster than network hardware can be installed.

New services such as Netflix and who knows what else is coming down the line (3D Netflix movies?) are going to use up your overpriced bandwidth faster than your ISP can evolve, they'll just charge more for the same service.

This will be like when video became popular when everyone was still on 56kbps modems, the web developed faster than the hardware meant to use it and it will stall development. Why develop when there isn't anyone using it or able to use it?

In the end people will do what they have to when they only have a limited amount of disposable income, ISPs will see people spend $50 for 10Mbps service and when the ISPs increase the monthly bill by a $1 here and a $1 there (to serve us better) consumers will get the 5Mbps service for $50.

</comment><comment><USER47> The most dangerous problem isn't the markup or extra cost, it's that as soon as UBB is old news, the media companies that are now also the internet companies (comcast/nbc) will offer discounts on "in network" bandwidth, so an NBC show will cost you the regular 1.99, but a movie from another network, or an independent production will cost you extra.

I'd be all in favor of this kind of pricing if it was anything resembling an open market, like how the cell phone industry had/has major downward price pressure, but there are far fewer choices when it comes to wires into your house, so the local monopoly effects are very strong.

</comment><comment><USER48> From the CRTC website (<http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/INFO_SHT/t1003.htm>): "The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues or business practices of Internet service providers as they relate to retail customers. This is because there is enough competition in the market that retail customers can shop around for service packages."

Yet they've completely paved the way for competition to be swallowed into oblivion. They're standing aside saying "it wasn't us - it's not our fault" and yet snickering behind our backs while they rake in the dough.

Disgraceful.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is really about conflict of interest. Perhaps it is time for regulation mandating the split of telecom from media content ownership.

In Canada, the telecoms own most of the major media assets (Shaw, rogers, bell).

</comment><comment><USER49> We have this in Australia.

Here at least the situation isn't too bad, because we have competitive resellers at the ISP level[1].

The ISPs compete on service, bandwidth, data limits and inclusions. For example, many (most?) ISPs arrange peering with video providers like Tivo so video streamed on their services don't count towards the data cap.

[1] There are laws to ensure that any ISP can install their equipment in the exchanges, or get access to the dominate telco's equipment at close-to-cost. Most of the time, these laws work, if slower than ideal.

<comment><USER50> It might also be interesting to some that in Australia, where we have always had metered plans and where people have come to accept it, natural competition has seen our first unlimited plans emerge. For $60 a month TPG offers uncapped internet and phone line bundle.

Even thought this may now be legal to do, Canadians may find that some ISPs still offer unlimited plans just to get ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> You mean that most countries don't pay per gigabyte? I live in New Zealand, and there's only one company with an unlimited broadband package, and that's only with a two-year contract.

The norm in New Zealand is to pay for say, 20GB per month, and if you exceed that then you drop down to dial-up speed (or pay for more).

With all due respect to the Canadians here, it's not really that bad at all. Life goes on, and it actually seems to be a pretty good life too.

<comment><USER41> >With all due respect to the Canadians here, it's not really that bad at all. Life goes on, and it actually seems to be a pretty good life too.

You do realize you are being horribly ripped off?

It's true that life goes on, even for slaves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Would be interesting to see if companies like Google, who have a significant stake in a "free and open internet", could establish operations in Canada. Google wants users online as much as possible so they can continue to serve ads. It's too bad all that dark fiber they own doesn't extend into Canada.

<comment><USER53> Canadian telecom providers must (by law) be majority Canadian owned. So sadly no, Google could not do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Socialism FTW! My province's government run ISP faught against the CRTC and is not implementing UBB. Bravo MTS!

</comment><comment><USER55> Welcome to Australia

</comment><comment><USER56> Literally, I think Egyptians just became the world's biggest internet losers.

</comment><comment><USER57> Doesn't that title still belong to Sierra Leone? Or perhaps Liberia? <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm>

</comment><comment><USER58> Seems like the CRTC needs to find a way to remain relevant. This is central planning, socialist style. I hope everyone enjoys it.

<comment><USER36> If this was socialism then either the government or the public would own Bell/Rogers/Telus.

This is also not free-market capitalism. I'm not sure what you would call it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is called Oligopoly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly> in half- assed capitalism. Note that this can be worse than monopoly because few competitors can essentially create informal cartels.

<comment><USER59> Yup. What frequently happens is that companies in an Oligopoly are able to collude to raise the barriers of entry, keeping out new competitors: sometimes with "help" of government regulations, sometimes because of lack of government regulation. As long as there are only a couple of them (< 4 controlling > 80 percent of the industry), they can keep prices artificially higher than they need to be.

When there's no actual competition and little threat of new competitors entering the market, their incentive to innovate or become more efficient is diminished. Consumers end up paying too much for mediocre goods/services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's not a matter of regulations, it's a matter of markets. Some companies such as Bell treat their customers like crap and just want to lock them into a long term contract. So what? There are lots of competitors who will not be doing UBB such as Telus / Shaw / Rogers. Customers on Bell just became the world's biggest internet losers. If people don't like UBB they can always switch carriers unless they were dumb enough to take Bell's crappy long term contract.

<comment><USER61> You're ignorant. Everyone has to apply the UBB and no one has contracts, even Bell.

<comment><USER60> Actually I'm not. <http://www.channelcanada.com/Article5436.html> Some ISPs are not using UBB, nor have plans to implement it.

[http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?method=content.view&co...](http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?method=content.view&content_id=12184)

oh and here's an article talking about people being on 1 2 or 3 year contracts for bell internet. How could they be on contracts if no one has them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62>
        while true; do
          wget http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2010/cmr2010.pdf;
          rm cmr2010.pdf;
        done

Signed,

Japan ($9/month unlimited Internet access)

</comment><comment><USER63> what an overreaction. I`m in Canada and calling Canadians the biggest Internet losers is nonsense.

People who use 300 GB of data per month cost the ISP more than people who use a few GB a month. That`s just a fact of life.

Should they have flexibility to charge more - Yes.

</comment><comment><USER64> If this actually passes, any sentiments I had about moving to Canada would evaporate. Good job guys, you're keeping the techies out.

<comment><USER18> They also throttle our bandwidth and our taxes are ridiculously high. You'll generally have a constant feeling of being ripped off, but you get used to it eventually, and it gives you something to commiserate and bond over with fellow canadians ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Working at a Canadian university I hear my boss say that bandwidth doubles every year for the same price. But Bell has been selling the same service (DSL) for less and less bandwidth... for a higher price every year.

</comment><comment><USER65> Selling Internet access could become something like the next oil. Almost everyone in the US has to buy oil/gas, whether directly or indirectly. Therefore, that's a good business to be in. Internet usage, both in terms of breadth and frequency and data volume, will likely keep increasing. Therefore, getting into the business of selling access to it -- especially if you can sell metered usage -- could be increasingly lucrative. And it's a growing pie.

Furthermore, since so many mediums and industries are seeing their traditional cash flow streams go away due to the easy availability of free alternatives on the Internet, it makes sense that if you can't beat em, join em, and then just charge for the pipe to it all. So-called "pirates" can avoid paying for the official e-versions of digitizable media (songs, movies, images, encyclopedic info, sound effects, games, books, news, etc.) but it's much harder for them to avoid paying for the physical connection.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm surprised as to how many regular people I've talked to who don't torrent and who have gone over bandwidth (with Bell). The caps are super low, even for regular users and not just the techies.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well honestly this does kind of make sense.I'll explain 1.Verizon owns the pipes an charges companies or.Facebook or NEtflix a set fee for bundled usage fee. 2.Netflix and Facebook in turn would have to charge customers basic membership or usage fees to recoup the cost of there bundled usage fees they pay Verizon. 3.Customer would pay membership fees for services that we in theory and utilize alot more because there free.

In retrospect though based on the amount of members or customers of both these companies would there usage growth take that much of a hit and would those two companies still be able to operate if they were forced to change there business models and chage people just to access there content.

In the case of Facebook how many members would thy have if people were required to pay say $9.99 a month to access Facebook.

In the case of the Internet as a whole clearly it costs money for companies like Verizon to expand and lay new lines to meet the demands of usage.Why then would it not be right to charge the data hogs for overuse of bandwith?

Society has become addicted to free and believe that content in itself should have no cost associated with it.However people don't realize the manpower,creativity and cost associated just to have that content produced. It makes sense now as to why Rupert Murdoch is against the freemium models for news via the web.

I mean just think about it on a small scale just for me to write this comment.I'm paying for Internet service,heating bill,electric and other costs also.So why shoudnt I be able to pas that cost to the end user?</comment>


Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta - <AUTHOR> http://mewo2.github.com/nerdery/2012/05/27/eurovision-statistics-after-the-final/

<comment><USER2> > I don't think anyone west of Vienna truly understands turbo-folk as a > musical genre.

Even on the other side we try not to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there's another variable the model can't really account for (and I'm surprised wasn't mentioned much in the article, though perhaps it was already covered previously). People actually do like some songs better than others.

I expect that what friendships actually do is strongly modulate this like/dislike for particular songs. Based on the kind of music favoured in Europe that would probably go a long way explain why Sweden did so well and Norway did so terribly.

<comment><USER4> In earlier articles the "quality" of the song was in fact accounted for - if a song did better in the semi finals than its position within the network of countries giving each other points by default warranted, it was considered to be a better song.

That said, while the predictions had Sweden on top, it also had Norway in third place. Obviously the effect of a song being good isn't as strong as this model thinks. The top three had two countries that have lots of friends, Russia and Serbia, that had not-too-terrible songs that therefore managed to scrape away points even from countries that aren't friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat awkward that Sweden had already won after 35 of 42 countries had presented their votes.

</comment><comment><USER6> What I always find interesting was the differences between "the charts" and the results of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Like this time, we saw the "charty" songs somewhere in the middle while really strange stuff came up.

How does this happen? Do only people call there who do not like the chart stuff coming from the US or sounding like the usual mainstream? Or do maybe really less people like the music that is played on the radio?

For me, I don't call for any shows on TV. In this case I would have propably called for the russian babuszkas because they were funny. I don't like the stuff that german mainstream radios play here and most of the songs on the usual chartlists are crap in my eyes (or ears). So I can't really make up a solution by myself.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sorry but that song by Sweden was just awful. Ok, not as bad as the singing grannies from Russian but still awful.

<comment><USER8> Here in Sweden it has already been played way too much on the radio, so imagine my horror when we won :( Now they'll play it even more...

<comment><USER9> you just need to do what Ireland did in 2008 and do a Swedish version of Dustin the turkey with "Irlande Douze Pointe"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogesoyp8HY></comment></comment></comment>