E-waste recycling innovator faces prison for trying to extend life of PCs - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/02/15/eric-lundgren-e-waste-recycling-innovator-faces-prison-for-trying-to-extend-lifespan-of-pcs/ <comment><USER2> If the licenses are what is worth the money, not the discs, and the licenses are still tied to the PCs that the restore discs are being provided with, I don't see the significant problem here other than the infringement of using MS/Dell logos on the discs themselves.

Really seems like a reach by Microsoft to claim lost sales. Already had a negative view of Microsoft, especially from their past, but this is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton wrote to Hurley, the judge, describing the case as one of "software piracy," costing the computer industry billions annually, and saying that prosecution was important "to deter others from engaging in the illicit global trade in decoupled product activation keys"_

Yet earlier in the article it's stated:

 _Microsoft filed a letter seeking $420,000 in restitution for lost sales_

So which one is it?

</comment><comment><USER4> * "The value's in the license. They didn't understand that."*

Friendly Challenge to Bill & Melinda Gates -- this lawsuit goes counter to your Foundation goals, helping the world's poorest. Fix This!

</comment><comment><USER5> > Lundgren claims that the assistant U.S. attorney on the case told him, > "Microsoft wants your head on a platter and I'm going to give it to them."

Are you kidding me.</comment>


The Debian ghetto - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoinrevolt.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/the-debian-ghetto

<comment><USER2> The "ghetto" dig seems unearned to me. The error message isn't great, but this post is largely much todo about nothing. Software worked in a way you found non-obvious and opaque, we can discuss that till the cows come home but it doesn't explain the mini-tantrum documented in the blogpost.

The first two things I thought to google off that error message ("native package version may not have a revision", '"native package" revision') lead to a workaround as the first result, and an explanation of the limitation respectively.

I don't know anything about debian packaging beyond the time I used deb-src to grab a package and debug a PAM module, and I won't defend their packaging process and tools as I don't know them. But even I know the difference between quilt and native packages, something your manged to come out the other end of this process without stumbling into. If documentation reads "You should only use a native Debian package when it is clear that the package would only ever be of use in Debian," I'm not going to fault Debian for not giving you the version number flexibility you're angry they only provide to quilt (non- native) packages.

You assert "The Debian team will X" as if you somehow know the Debian team well enough to predict how they'll respond to the suggestion while simultaneously not knowing the Debian project well enough to grasp the basics of their packaging format? I should have just stopped reading when you admitted your only two debugging tools were google and printf.</comment>


Yahoo: The Linux Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/yahoo-the-linux-company/8618

<comment><USER2> This sounds like a perfect opportunity to sell services, just like Amazon did with AWS.

<comment><USER3> They were one of the first companies to offer some seriously useful web services, but they never found a way to market them. Business-to-business might not be one of Yahoo's core competencies.</comment></comment>


Dynamically Generated Forms and HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://kellysutton.tumblr.com/post/9129585294/dynamically-generated-forms-and-html5

<comment><USER2> This post has good intentions (I'm all for the sharing of professional knowledge!) but contains a lot of red flags, such as sending data to clients that they don't need and can only use incorrectly, inadvertently, or maliciously. The whole thing is topped off with this alarming statement:

> If you're not using JavaScript, you're not using the web. Special > considerations shouldn't be made for you.

The practices described in the post may "work", but they are irresponsible and shouldn't be encouraged. As shapers of the web we should strive for better.

<comment><USER3> _(This is different from worrying about pages that "degrade gracefully" is a terrible idead in my opinion. If you're not using JavaScript, you're not using the web. Special considerations shouldn't be made for you.)_

That's the full quote. And I agree.

Whatever your business is, its doubtful that supporting browsers with Javascript disabled would help.

"Degrade gracefully" - at least to the extremes (no js, no css) is just bragging rights / pride for developers. I can't imagine a business scenario where this would be a legitimate requirement.

<comment><USER4> _I can't imagine a business scenario where [degrade gracefully] would be a legitimate requirement._

Not degrading gracefully, which rather than being a way to say you're going to support older versions or browsers without certain "advanced" or "specific" capabilities, is one way we ended up with bank, utility and government websites that only work in Internet Explorer. Most of those days are thankfully behind us, but that's mainly because IE doesn't have the market share it once did, and those browsers that do have the significant market share are now more compatible with each other. Often sites are more complicated than they need to be anyway, and if they weren't so complicated, they wouldn't need to degrade, gracefully or otherwise.</comment></comment></comment>


This Brilliant Trick Will Help You Bike in a Skirt Without Flashing Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/02/penny_in_your_pants_the_bike_hack_for_biking_in_a_skirt_without_flashing.html

<comment><USER2> That was depressingly stupid. If you plan on wearing a skirt then you shouldn't be riding a bike with a crossbar.</comment>


The Obvious Corporation - <AUTHOR> http://obvious.com/

<comment><USER2> Maybe they'll make something like Twitter...and Blogger...combined into ONE!

Nah. That's too obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked how non-obvious it is what they do or plan to do :-) Startups need a good sense of humor.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ironically the meaning of "there's room for innovation in how businesses measure success and more meaningful definitions of ambition" is not at all obvious.

Arab spring and Twitter connection aside, are they going to measure success in rainbows, or cash like the rest of the world?

<comment><USER5> Better: bitcoins!</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Ecological Open Farm in Turkey - <AUTHOR>

I am planning to start an ecological farm in Turkey modeled after this farm www.dedetepe.org.
If possible I would like to buy land near them and join their network of eco farms (called TaTuTa http://www.bugday.org/bugdaygil/Tatuta/)
The main product of Dedetepe farm is olive oil but the owner is also involved in alternative energy and other interesting projects. They accept volunteers to work on the farm in return for free stay. This video is in Turkish but it gives a good idea about the place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmUciqlokl0. Check this out too in English: http://turkishjukebox.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/farming-in-kucukkuyu/
I am looking to find persons who are interested in living and working in an ecological farm. I estimate that we will need to put together about $100,000 for the land with enough olive trees in it (Dedetepe farm has 200 trees).
If you are interested let me know. No knowledge of farming is required. I don't have any experience in farming either.
If you are interested and want to read more here's a mission statement that I drafted: http://ecofarmproject.wordpress.com/mission/ Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Dedetepe Farm:

[http://www.dedetepe.org](http://www.dedetepe.org)

Eco Farm network:

[http://www.bugday.org/bugdaygil/Tatuta/](http://www.bugday.org/bugdaygil/Tatuta/)

YouTube video about Dedetepe Farm (in Turkish)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmUciqlokl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmUciqlokl0)

Blog post about Dedetepe Farm

[http://turkishjukebox.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/farming-in- ku...](http://turkishjukebox.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/farming-in-kucukkuyu/)

Mission statement

[http://ecofarmproject.wordpress.com/mission/](http://ecofarmproject.wordpress.com/mission/)</comment>


Summify Users: We're here for you. You're safe. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.news.me/post/16172768107/summify-users-were-here-for-you-youre-safe

<comment><USER2> I've been researching tools like these for a while and while none of them are even close to perfect, I've found news.me to be the better of the two ( _just_ ).. so don't hesitate if you're going from Summify.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome — we've got some work to do for sure. looking forward to any thoughts you have on what to improve.

<comment><USER3> please let me increase the number of stories I receive in a day (I currently receive 10 stories every morning)

allow me to set the time that I receive the email. thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summify user here. Loved their iPhone app and it felt like the quality of news delivered got better over time. It wasn't just about the frequency of links in my twitter feed (or else I'd get a bunch of crap), but it allowed me to like certain posts and it tracks which topics I'm most interested in.

I'm also looking for news more than once a day to stay relevant. Summify delivered summaries every 6 hours for me - if you could incorporate this in your service, that'd be awesome.</comment>


Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220434/Thunderbolt_vs._SuperSpeed_USB_3.0 <comment><USER2> USB is also an intel technology. Of course they would say it's not in competition as if either takes off they can consider it a success.</comment>


Huge data breach prompts resignation of OPM director - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33481285 <comment><USER2> I wrote about this one almost a month ago: [http://caseysoftware.com/blog/why- this-security-breach-is-wo...](http://caseysoftware.com/blog/why-this- security-breach-is-worse-than-all-the-others-combined) (spent a day on the front page here)

Every time OPM says "it was only X" it comes out a few days later that they're lying.

My original statements have applied since day one: "Whoever took this data has all the relevant information on anyone (and their families and their friends) who has received a security clearance. Not some. Not parts. ALL."

and

"If someone just steals your identity, consider yourself lucky."

It was also uncovered that the so-called "hackers" had read/write access to the system so therefore _EVERYTHING_ in it - whether good or bad - should be considered suspicious. People who shouldn't have gotten clearances, may have. People who should have been cleared, may have been blocked.

<comment><USER3> Another aspect worth considering, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, is that this database clearly fits the standard criteria for Top Secret classification (potential to cause "exceptionally grave harm" if compromised). I really think Archuleta and Seymour should be brought up on criminal charges for mishandling information that should have been classified Top Secret and likely also should have been associated with a special-access program. Even if the records for an individual person don't rise to that level, 20-ish million of them together absolutely do.

That's 1/15 of the entire population of the nation. There just are no words for the asininity of storing all of that data in a single database in the first place, IMO - let alone a database that is actually accessible through _any_ number of network pivots from the internet.

<comment><USER4> Storing all that data live in a db almost certainly predates Archuleta, and to be honest, I doubt she was in a position to fix this. Consider the political capital needed to say, "This system is insecure, and insecurable by design, so we're taking it offline until it can be secured."

Until you have a breach, essentially nobody would be willing to have that happen.

       the "secure" Web gateway to OPM's background investigation systems is a
       contractor-hosted website at an application service provider. That Web
       gateway is reached through a Windows Web server running JRun 4.0, Adobe's
       Java application server, as well as ColdFusion
       [...]
       In 2013, someone hacked into Adobe and stole the ColdFusion source code. And
       Adobe dropped the JRun product line entirely in 2013—with extended "core"
       support ending in December of 2014. There is no evidence that OPM or its
       application provider had purchased expensive extended, dedicated support,
       but JRun would hardly be the only unsupported platform still used by OPM.
       The agency still has systems based on Windows XP (supported under a custom
       support agreement with Microsoft), and many of the core systems run by the
       agency are based on mainframe applications that haven't been updated since
       their COBOL code was fixed for the Y2K bug in the late 1990s. [1]

A gateway running windows, java, and coldfusion. Not to even mentioned fucking eol-ed versions of the aforementioned. That simply cannot be secured in any meaningful fashion.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/epic-fail-how-opm- ha...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/epic-fail-how-opm-hackers- tapped-the-mother-lode-of-espionage-data/)

<comment><USER5> The political _and economic_ capital. Big stack updates like this cost a pretty penny. Who's going to advocate for increased taxation to secure a bunch of admin databases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good. I last worked for the government in 2007 and all of my data was still included in the breach. Heads rolling is the very least of what needs to happen when a security error of this magnitude occurs.

<comment><USER7> I'm in the same boat. I'm not sure if you've had any kind of clearance, or know what kind of info you have to give for the investigations (everything), but this will be terrible for generations I presume. Instead of offering us 18 measly months of credit monitoring, they should offer lifetime/18+ years credit monitoring for any dependents involved in the paperwork.

I suspect this will cost their ass.

<comment><USER8> How do people take advantage of this 18 months of monitoring? My wife and I are almost certainly in the impacted population (and the fact that we've had 4 separate fradulent activities on our accounts in the past month isn't helping...)

<comment><USER7> I was sent an e-mail to my .gov address with a code to signup for the service.

<comment><USER8> I'm a former fed...If what I'm hearing is true and they got access to SF86 data on EVERYONE then we are all screwed. Just from that alone the attackers would be able to build a huge map of all sorts of programs that the government has not acknowledged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those that missed it, I suggest this look at how comically bad security was (is) at OPM, to the point there were security reports saying the loss of productivity by shutting down the database completely would be preferable to the ridiculously vulnerable state it was in. No one listened.

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/epic-fail-how-opm- ha...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/epic-fail-how-opm-hackers- tapped-the-mother-lode-of-espionage-data/)

<comment><USER10> TL;DR: No 2 factor auth, yer dead?

I am having an impossible time following this story. So vague. Thanks for the most descriptive link yet (although still totally lacking). I watched the cspan event and all I could derive was that inadequate logging meant they couldn't say how bad the event was. Totally unclear.

<comment><USER11> If you have 4 hours to kill, this House hearing video clears many things (about how incompetent, but also how dismissive both Archuleta and Donna Seymour, the CIO, were - Seymour still not fired yet).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVPPTooB80E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVPPTooB80E)

And this is part 1:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ass73n7lH0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ass73n7lH0c)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope we can use a breach of this magnitude to really start thinking about how we authenticate in real life. The current system is broken. The whole SSN thing is bad enough in and of itsself.

Anything you can ask from me to authenticate myself: copy of a birth certificate, copy of my drivers license, social security number, information about where i grew up or my family... someone else has all of that now, which means they can now easily get original copies.

</comment><comment><USER12> > usernames and passwords that background investigation applicants used

if this is correct, I guess that means passwords were stored in cleartext or reversibly encrypted. that is either epic stupidity, or someone wanted to keep passwords of potential employees so they could use them elsewhere

<comment><USER13> Malice is very unlikely. If I had to guess, maintaining interoperability with legacy systems probably played a role.

<comment><USER14> Which points to corruption and inability to control your vendors (i.e., regulatory capture).

Ultimately in large organizations like this that are arguably well funded, the answer often lies in corruption (and not necessarily just the bureaucracy, but also the legislators who earmark crazy stuff like specific vendors and specifications that are handpicked for their favorite funders).

<comment><USER15> Sounds like the DoD asking for bids for a support for a product, which can only be legally fulfilled by the authors of the product--instead of considering replacing the product where more than one can actually bid for it.

<comment><USER16> _Sounds like the DoD asking for bids for a support for a product, which can only be legally fulfilled by the authors of the product_

Why can it only be fulfilled by the authors?

<comment><USER15> Because the authors don't have a contract licensing program for consultants

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If governments cannot keep data like that safe what are the chances of most other data owners being able to do the same? The way that we need to give it out all over the Web is a recipe for disaster as we are shown time and time again.

<comment><USER9> Well the good news is that they were barely putting any effort into keeping it secure, so reasonable efforts are not in vain.

The bad news is that almost your entire government is barely putting any effort into keeping your data secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I want to know if if she resigned and was immediately re-hired at another cushy high-paying government job. In other words a transition with no financial consequences whatsoever. The correct consequence is that this woman ought to be kicked out on her ass, lose her pension and go out there in the open market to find a non-government job matching her degree of incompetence.

To a large extent firings or layoffs in government amount to shuffling people around rather than what most would conclude from such a headline.

How many additional OPM's and Healtcare.gov's do we have to witness before people revolt and demand excellence out of government?

Today we seem to be content with the idea that government operates at precisely the opposite end of the scale, a place where a range of behaviors from sucking at your job to lying and criminal behavior seem to be considered virtues. And what's worst, there are no consequences for being utterly incompetent, lying or acting criminally?

The breach wasn't the problem. The problem is how fucked government is at nearly every level. That's what needs fixing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like they missed a basic aspect of operational security - compartmentalization. Sensitive databases must be compartmentalized so a breach in one is not a breach in all. No login credential, for example, should grant access to all of the database.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes; this is exactly what her psychological profile suggested she would do.

Excellent.

</comment><comment><USER21> Political loyalists appointed by lawyers. No more explanation necessary.

</comment><comment><USER22> Plaintext in 2015 ! Inexcusable.

<comment><USER23> The attackers stole legitimate login credentials. Encryption wouldn't help with that.

<comment><USER24> I run a bunch of websites which store bcrypted hashes of users' passwords. If you had my SQL login, you'd just find bcrypted hashes. It would absolutely prevent you from discovering their actual passwords in a meaningful amount of time.

<comment><USER25> You would, however, have plaintext copies of every piece of other sensitive information in that database.

Who cares is passwords are harder to brute force, once an attacker has walked away with everything in the OPM leak?

Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely in favour of hashed passwords. But with this sort of data it's a long way from making a complete database leak a nonissue.

<comment><USER24> I was responding to a comment about plaintext login credentials. I'm not claiming that bcrypting passwords somehow makes a database full of exquisitely private details somehow unimportant.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco has transformed from rising rents to filthy streets - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/how-san-francisco-has-transformed-in-the-last-decade-from-rising-rents-to-filthy-streets/articleshow/72201466.cms <comment><USER2> Still high rents, just filthy streets now.</comment>


Twitter Reports Weak Earnings and the Stock Is Crashing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-28/twitter-falls-short-on-promise-to-speed-up-user-growth <comment><USER2> > "It calls into question why they didn't see this coming," said Victor > Anthony, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management, who has a buy rating on > Twitter's stock. "I don't think anyone ever questioned their ability to > generate revenues."

Hmm, I thought everybody did? I guess wall street really does have a clear view of this whole tech scene.

<comment><USER3> >Twitter cut full-year revenue guidance to $2.17 billion to $2.27 billion, from the previous range of $2.3 billion to $2.35 billion.

I still don't question Twitter's ability to generate revenue, because they will generate over $2 Billion this year. I question their ability to meet Analyst expectations, sure, but they _already have_ revenue. Billions of dollars of it.

They beat their earnings estimate by 57% and missed their revenue estimate by 4.7%. This is by no means the definitive death knell so many people on HN are making it out to be. Wall Street is a crazy place and expectations were sky high and yes the stock dropped a lot, but Twitter will survive and is doing just fine.

It seems like HN is convinced the company is eternally doomed and will never make money. That notion has been pretty much proven false. Twitter makes money; they're just behind where people thought they would be.

<comment><USER4> Twitter is incapable of ever meeting the Price-Sales multiple of 20X+ until the stock drops closer to reality. The average stock is less than 2X. Apple is around 3X and has never in it's history been greater than 7X. What can Twitter do to multiply their sales by 5X? It's great they make some money but the stock price is unrealistic.

<comment><USER5> Apple is a bad comparison because the near-death-experience in the 90s combined with its contrarian attitude has put it in on a very short leash with Wall Street. I mean, aside from its years in the desert Apple has performed as well and as consistently as any tech company over long stretches. And yet it's P/E is consistently a third of Google's or Sony's.

And it literally won the war. They take the lions share of profits in the personal computer market and they have a huge moat. You could argue they will be in trouble when personal computing devices stop changing so quickly and are fully commodified, but I can't imagine that's within the next two decades. Honestly I find it weird their P/E isn't higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://twitter.com/Selerity/status/593136296236752896](https://twitter.com/Selerity/status/593136296236752896)

"Today's $TWTR earnings release was sourced from Twitter's Investor Relations website [https://investor.twitterinc.com](https://investor.twitterinc.com) . No leak. No hack."

Looks like someone found a draft post. Yeesh.

<comment><USER7> Even better is that NASDAQ runs Twitter's IR site...

<comment><USER8> Major ouch. Although it's pretty funny to see that their first reaction was to call it a leak before investigating...

<comment><USER9> A leak's a leak. Accidental of intentional.

<comment><USER8> I think a leak requires intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone expect any different from Twitter? Their main platform needs significant improvement.

Biggest disadvantages for Twitter:

1) People are flocking to other social messaging apps, especially the mobile variants (Snapchat, Instagram, etc). I suspect because its coolness factor is waring off, because of rampant trolling, and poor discovery.

2) Most of Twitter advertising is useless, in large part due to poor data collection. I have yet to see any performance campaigns really kill it on the platform. Brands only advertise because they are easily misled by agencies.

Can anyone offer realistic suggestions to help improve the company's outlook? Here are some random thoughts:

1) Trying to take a piece of the mobile ecosystem seems like a smart move, as they show genuine expertise. I liked their acquisition of MoPub and every developer seems to use Crashlytics. People seem to use Periscope and Vine often, as well. This could lead to a lucrative formula: Making apps easier to build with their tools, nudge developers to monetize through MoPub, and then take the plethora of learnings from the latest mobile craze and build an awesome new app.

2) They need to better monetize news, not just social interaction. How much content is written today because "Person said X offensive statement on twitter"? Twitter gets $0, despite the fact most news comes from them. Maybe try to attempt to be the Bloomberg Terminal for all news going forward? How about trying to beat Nielsen (16bn market cap) in actually monitoring sentiment? This obviously would take some ingenuity, but could be very rewarding. They seem to be trying this strategy, with some of their recent acquisitions.

3) Find out what other countries want. There is still a huge untapped marked in the 3rd world. Twitter could expand there by offering new services.

4) Somehow disincentivize blowhards from going on Twitter too often.

<comment><USER11> >Most of Twitter advertising is useless

My comlany stopped doing Twitter advertising. It is basically marketers marketing to eachother. The whole thing is gamed. Not to mention it is opaque, expensive, and clunky to use. Sharp contrast with say google adwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can understand why investment type people like y-axes that don't start at zero - they're usually interested in tiny changes a long way from zero. But for the general public to watch? If you didn't already have an up to date feeling for the price of Twitter shares, then this whole report is meaningless without finding the -$9 and doing the calculation yourself. She even points out that it's now $40 but not what it was before. Are most viewers really that tuned into the market that they know the prices of things before they're in the news?

Turns out this is only something like 20% drop making it the same as February this year! Nothing spectacular at all. It endured a similar crash in October last year and took a few months to recover.

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=twitter%20share%20price%20history)

<comment><USER13> > Turns out this is only something like 20% drop making

A 20% move is huge for _any_ stock (most don't move that much in a _year_!), and it's certainly far outside the norm for TWTR[1].

[1] [http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=TWTR&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p298069...](http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=TWTR&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p29806926087)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My personal reason for using Twitter less is the degradation of the website. Using J to scroll down has always been buggy with image posts and often resets to the first post, but newest 'feature' includes not being able to view threads inline. When clicking a tweet it will go to the details page (opening in a new tab doesn't work) and when going back you have to scroll down possibly hundreds of tweets. When opening images inline (that still works in most cases) the page scrolls up a random amount, anywhere between 5 and 50 tweets it seems. Copying image URLs using right click also doesn't work anymore when viewing an image (only from the tweet list can you copy it, then manually editing the URL to include ':large' works). And of course the ads, even though I don't see them, the J key doesn't skip them so I know they're there.

Overall, the user experience becomes worse and worse. They said Twitter makes a good replacement for RSS feeds, but honestly I wish my Twitter feed was an RSS feed to be loaded in any reader I like.

<comment> z-e-r-o I started using [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) especially for the above reasons. Somehow the JS is way more reliable on the tweetdeck site. It's a pity that even the widest column setting is way too narrow, it still feels more like a "management interface" than a Twitter home feed.

<comment><USER15> does tweetdeck have ads?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ya'll need to chill out and look at a price chart of TWTR over time. This is very common run-of-the-mill volatility.

Source: [http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=TWTR&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p870792...](http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=TWTR&p=W&b=5&g=0&id=p87079254187)

<comment><USER17> Another way to look at it is that Twitter's first trade on the NYSE in November 2013 was at $45.10, and today, almost a year and a half later, it closed at around $42. That is not a whole lot of return for what is supposed to be a growth stock. It's also not a particularly great story to tell prospective employees if you're trying to attract them with stock-based compensation.

<comment><USER18> Public companies give RSUs to employees. Which don't need a grown story.

<comment><USER19> If the share price isn't going up, one would rather get paid in cash.

<comment><USER20> One would generally always rather get paid in cash, which can be used to invest in a diverse portfolio of valuable investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Twitter cut full-year revenue guidance to $2.17 billion to $2.27 billion, from the previous range of $2.3 billion to $2.35 billion.

I find it astonishing that what is basically a short message broadcast service can generate billions of dollars of revenue. So I think that they have to be doing something very right. Perhaps everyone is anticipating the inevitable next hot thing a little bit too hard.

<comment><USER22> >I find it astonishing that what is basically a short message broadcast service can generate billions of dollars of revenue.

Basically a short message service? That's naive. Twitter is a marketing platform with 300m people signed up to receive marketing materials, people who also readily provide the platform with the details of what they like/would likely click on/spend money on, where they are in the world, what age they are, what gender they are and more. Of course it's extremely valuable.

<comment><USER23> I like Stewart Lee's take on it.

 _" a government surveillance operation run by gullible volunteers, a Stasi for the Angry Birds generation"_

<comment><USER24> That is a rip of of the Onion:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program- dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically- cut-agencys-cos,19753/)

<comment><USER23> Is a different take on a similar joke - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XpvH-j9BHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XpvH-j9BHg)

The idea that social networks are useful for surveillance and the joke that the users are just useful idiots, massively predates the onion sketch as well though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Random question: How do I stop videos from auto starting on Bloomberg? I'm running Safari with no Flash, and have Ad-block on. Video doesn't start, but audio does.

Super Annoying.

<comment><USER26> I've taken to identifying the VPO (video platform organization) and their hosts, and adding them to my /etc/hosts blocklist.

[https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QZ1vdpwB...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QZ1vdpwBpZc)

These will catch most of them:

        0.0.0.0                 www.autofixinfo.com     # Autoplay video
        0.0.0.0                 c.brightcove.com        # Autoplay video
        0.0.0.0                 player.theplatform.com  # Autoplay video
        0.0.0.0                 link.theplatform.com    # Autoplay video
        0.0.0.0                 ci-2862d2c8d6-68f418d2.http.atlas.cdn.yimg.com  # Autoplay video

If you _must_ watch the vids, downloading via yt-download (from another host or vm not using that hosts file) frequently works.

<comment><USER27> Why not use NoScript and/or RequestPolicy instead? That way, all such sites are blocked by default, and you can temporarily or permanently enable individual ones with a couple of clicks.

<comment><USER26> I do, but they don't work on all sites in all situations.

I find communicating to VPO's that I'll block them for this shit, and advertising this fact and methods, might have some positive effect.

There are a small number of video providers for all the usual 80/20 rules. A half dozen or so nails virtually everything frequently used.

And very little video is even worth viewing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This probably shouldn't be surprising news but it has some shock value. Twitter is very close to what some would consider a model civic communications platform. I remember hearing one tech pundit refer to it as "citizen's band radio for the 21st century." The idea that such an effective tool needs to generate revenue a la Facebook seems odd, even though I understand that it operates like any other business entity.

<comment><USER20> I would not consider a proprietary, monopoly-controlled communications platform to be a model for anything.

<comment><USER28> I don't see why not. You can take the result of some effort and say, OK, this is a model for the kind of result we'd like, but are not currently getting from our more open, idealistic systems. There would probably be many benefits to such, err...open ways of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I bet the mood there is REALLY sombre.

Leak or not, missing earnings is a career limiting move for management. And it was a HUGE market reaction for an earnings miss, kinda implies that the market isn't convinced by the fundamentals of the stock.

Ouch!

</comment><comment><USER30> Irony is a black box trading system listening to the firehose and picking up that nugget.

</comment><comment><USER31> The reaction makes a lot of sense. Their revenue is miniscule compared to a $34 billion market cap. That market cap can only be justified by massive future revenue growth. The results are indicative that the future revenue growth might not be as massive as people thought it was.

</comment><comment><USER32> Twitter is currently valued at >10x revenue, is unprofitable and future revenue projections are being dialed back. The hype has worn off. It's going to get real ugly real fast unless they can post some decent results real fast.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meh, I don't get it.

They're making money, they grew to 18% more active users (that sounds like a lot), what seems to be the problem?

<comment><USER34> The way stock prices work is that the price of a company's stock (or more relevantly, the price*num_shares) incorporates their current earnings as well as their potential future profits (which is driven by the company's forecasted growth). Updates on how the company is actually performing (e.g. earnings releases) are a chance to get concrete information that allows everyone to update their expectations of future growth. If the market at large was expected some number $N, and the actual released figure less than $N, then self-evidently the expected growth would be adjusted down.

If I expect that I'll have 50,000 dollars in the bank a year from now (starting from 0), and 6 months in I only have 15,000 dollars, then naturally I would adjust my expectations downwards.

<comment><USER33> Ok but from my understanding - you get to buy and sell stocks. So when twitter says that instead of earning say 300 million, they a bit less like 280, why is this a big problem?

Did they expect the stock to be valued higher and because it has not lived up to that, they're selling it and buying a different stock that will do that?

<comment><USER32> It's both what they just did and what they are trending towards in the future.

twitter is currently valued at say $35 billion then long term to justify that valuation per what the stock market demands long term they need to consistently generate around 2 billion a year in profit. If they do really well and have say a 25% margin they'd need $8 billion a year in revenue to operate at that level. Current revenue projections are closer to 2 billion and are being scaled back by executives and they're not consistently profitable at all.

There's a big gap between where they need to be to support the current stock price and where they are (and seem to be heading in the near and mid term). That's why the stock is under a lot of negative pressure.

<comment><USER33> Thank you, that cleared it up for me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the writing is on the wall for Twitter. The younger generations are increasingly flocking to snapchat, yik yak, and similar apps. I never hear of anyone using it anymore(college student here). I would have stopped facebook a while back as well if I didn't use OAuth for damn near everything

<comment><USER36> Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc… they are all just iterations of the same basic things: messaging, file (photo) sharing, identify, news. The writing is on the wall from inception. The value is in the community, but community is amorphous and not really ownable or defendable.

The only real difference I've noticed in the last, lets say 15 years, is that people have grown up with things now and so they seem "easier" and more "accessible." To some extent that's true, but it's mostly the people that have changed not the products or services themselves.

I don't really believe that any "internet company" is sustainable. The value they add exists at a point in time and decays. Get in and get out. The basic functions are too easy to copy and there's no guarantee you keep your community unless you do so by force.

At some point you either become a media company that caters to specific demographics (the lookalike audience you acquired), or you disappear.

<comment><USER27> I think your comment is quite insightful. Just think about how many times instant messaging has shifted from one most-popular platform to another. IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Skype...SMS?...Facebook?...WhatsApp? It's just a constant shift from one service to the next. Obviously this cycling will continue forever. Therefore it would seem unwise to invest in any one platform too heavily, if at all--as a user or an investor.

<comment><USER37> Skype - was released in 2003, and is very popular among teens 12 years later. These users were 2 years old when Skype was released.

<comment><USER27> Kind of an anecdote, but still interesting, thanks. The question is, then, for how long will Skype be as popular as it currently is? And, will these teens keep using it as they age? If so, will Skype's demographic tend to follow them?

Of course there are a million variables. I mean, AIM is still around, right? But it's no longer the "default" IM system, while a few years ago, it seemed to be (to me, anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Crashing" is a bit inaccurate. It dropped and has now stabilized at a lower price. Crashing would imply that it's continuing downwards, which it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a developer, how accurate do you think Twitter's user numbers really are? There are a ton of fake accounts out there. Some are semi-legit (for development), but there are millions of followers available for purchase and Twitter has only removed a fraction compared to Facebook from my anecdotal evidence. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER32> Twitter is just a sign of what's to come for a lot of new tech companies. The street wants profit. Once you go public the whole cool startup party ends (unless you can be a cool startup AND hit your profit numbers).

It's time to be a real business or pay the price of being an overvalued pile of stinking financial junk.

<comment><USER35> The downward pressure came from Twitter missing revenue expectations, not profit.

<comment><USER32> Yes, but the street cares about revenue because they care about profit. If you have high costs you can always just say you had a bad quarter but profit will come when costs come down.

Even if Twitter fired half its people and cut costs like crazy they'd still struggle to justify their current valuation. The street is angry at the reveune numbers since on this current trajectory there's not really a clear path for how the company can generate enough profit to justify its valuation... unless their revenue skyrockets, which is looking less and less likely evey quarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I never understood Twitter management. Just accepting small and medium sized companies to consume their firehose and charge for that will be enough to significantly increase their earnings. This was the Google AdWords breakthrough.

<comment><USER41> I really find it hard to believe that firehose revenue would be anywhere close to ad revenue.

<comment><USER40> Why not? there are a lot of companies looking to analyze their own market possibilities.

BTW: Lot of downvotes instead of replies.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, but I'd imagine the number of companies who want to advertise something dwarfs the number of companies doing data analysis.

It's mass market vs niche market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I remember that CNN was all Twitter all the time a few years ago. I haven't watched until today for Baltimore info. No mention of Twitter in the last six hours of watching.

<comment><USER43> I watched the coverage all day yesterday. The police were talking about their Twitter as the official way to stay updated, and the news anchors frequently were talking about who tweeted what. Maybe CNN just has something against Twitter now, who knows.

<comment><USER42> I'm talking more about CNN putting tweets up on the screen and discussing the contents of the tweet. Like when a tweet about MH370 being sucked into a black hole was discussed by a panel.

<comment><USER43> Yes, and I'm saying maybe someone in their company decided that Twitter is bad, or maybe some Twitter VP ate the sandwich that person wanted to eat, or they decided Twitter is a competitive threat, or whatever. As I said, who knows.

<comment><USER44> Or maybe the novelty wore off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I see boomers yelling 'the bubble is bursting'.

</comment><comment><USER46> While I understand Twitter from a technical perspective, I have never understood why a large number of people use it. The value proposition for an average person is effectively zero. It's great for businesses and celebrities, but one-sided value propositions tend to not work out long term. We are now starting to see that inevitable result play out. You can only defy gravity for so long.

<comment><USER47> The serious interactive users of twitter typically use it like a threaded IRC channel, with added benefit of being able to search based upon user and hashtags.

I've used it to good effect to watch real-time events like protests and riots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This explains the deluge of dubious advertising at the top of twitter pages.

</comment><comment><USER49> this is my theory that the current economic model we have of dot com stocks is very much flawed, grossly overvaluing future potential revenues vs. current revenues. This argument never makes sense to me, unless you are investing in infrastructures like oil rigs or telecom grids that have a very sure and quantifiable return on investment, this is a mystery with a lot of dot com companies, especially for those that fail to demonstrate ability to earn.

I think a market correction is long overdue, I believe that after this year, capitals will be tougher to come across, companies that didn't really innovate but instead captured markets by burning cash won't be able to sustain this level come rainy season when capital market dries up for these firms.</comment>


Cold calling is a numbers game, just like all other lead generation activities - <AUTHOR> http://www.jslogan.com/blog/40-blog/98-cold-calling-is-a-numbers-game-just-like-all-other-lead-generation-activities

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but what's the point of this blog post? Maybe this article is somewhat more valuable (for a start-up). <http://online.wsj.com/article/S60519BORZO.html> "Software tools and online services that ... generate[s] sales leads without the usual legwork and the often-inefficient cold calling. "

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure a numbers game, but I know from experience there are people 10x+ better than others at cold calling. Its tough to make one adwords campaign that much better than another.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's why I built a webapp that makes cold-calling obsolete ;-)

<comment><USER5> What the heck, dude. If you're going to shill like that, mention the URL in your comment or at the VERY LEAST put it in your bio.

(Not that I'm upset that you're mentioning your product, but it was a successful mention that otherwise fails if you don't provide a way for folks to find out more.)</comment></comment>


Inside OCZ's Factory: How SSDs Are Made - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/9218/ocz-fab-tour

<comment><USER2> I love how Kristian opens up with a flow chart of OCZ's design process. Every OCZ product fails in step 4 -- or seems to jump from 2 to 5.

I read the title of the article as "How SSDs are Made (Poorly)". This was a bad acquisition for Toshiba.

<comment><USER3> They forgot to include the "Testing unfinished products on client PCs" phase :-)

<comment><USER4> And the history of black/grey market meandering. I remember watching a discussion on their official support forum from users requesting help on broken drives purchased new in box off of ebay. OCZ didn't even bother to check serial numbers for legitimacy they just made a blanket rule against anything purchased on ebay. I'd have chalked this up to typical support laziness but after (respectfully) posting suggestions for various methods that can be used to distinguish clones from legit they deleted the whole thread. Just a horribly shoddy company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's weird that OCZ tries to somehow salvage itself from the reputation of a company that knowingly produces unreliable hardware and knowingly lies to customers.

<comment><USER6> I think they were eventually acquired by Toshiba.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had three OCZ SSDs - a Vertex 2 and two Vertex 3s. One lasted a month and a half; the others lasted a month. It's surprising that Toshiba would want to be associated with this brand.

<comment><USER8> OCZ basically did the beta testing for SandForce, and paid the price with their eventual bankruptcy. But by then they had acquired Indilinx to provide an in-house alternative to SandForce controllers, and that's a significant chunk of what Toshiba was interested in buying. Winning in the SSD market seems to require making your own controller and/or flash, and there's only one good source for buying a good high-performance controller on the open market (Marvell).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Few companies have poisoned the well as thoroughly as OCZ has, by treating their customers and investors as utterly disposable. There are a lot of people out there who won't forget what they did. Toshiba would do well to retire the brand, dissolve the org and integrate the assets fully.

<comment><USER10> I think they will. They shipped "Hitachi" drives for awhile, but now are branding them Toshiba. I think the same thing will happen with OCZ-- they introduce a Toshiba branded drive, that's exactly the same as the OCZ and over time make these more available than the OCZ branded ones until the market has transitioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty empty article TBH. This is not only standard, but very simple pick and place assembly that any CM can do.

Most of what goes into 'Making an SSD' is the ASIC and firmware design on the controller. The actual assembly is incredibly mundane from there.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm surprised that they're looking to replace some of the more mundane manual tasks with automation. Labor is a lot cheaper than machines in China.

I somehow doubt that putting stickers on a SSD is the bottleneck in their production facility.

</comment><comment><USER12> Will never, ever buy anything branded with OCZ. This company nearly poisoned the SSD market.

<comment><USER13> I completely missed this - what did they do?

<comment><USER8> They rushed several products to market, got tons of market share because they were setting performance records, and then they got basically all of the backlash when the bugs in the controllers and firmware started causing lots of drive failures. They also got in a bit of trouble once or twice for swapping out components with cheaper stuff that didn't perform as well. On the other hand, they were doing a great job of pushing the price/performance frontier so all the more reliable and more expensive drives that eventually made it to market still had to at least match OCZ's performance. That led to the very surprising situation where _Intel_ basically withdrew from the consumer SSD market for a few years because they couldn't keep pace without sacrificing their QA standards.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu 9.04 Review - <AUTHOR> http://techcombo.com/ubuntu-904-review Ubuntu sponsors, Canonical , announce the release of Ubuntu 9.04 destop version that can be downloaded for free now... <comment><USER2> Wasn't quite sure who this article was aimed at. Started off with updates that might interest an Ubuntu follower but finished with comment seemingly aimed at the new Linux user; that "you should try it because it's free".</comment>


If Money Was No Object - <AUTHOR> http://themindunleashed.org/2014/06/money-object-everybody-including.html

<comment><USER2> It's not a bad idea to ask yourself that question, but I think the advice is double-edged. Disregarding money and pursuing whatever you're passionate about at age 20 can ruin your quality of life and stunt your future.

In general, it's a good idea to be wary of inspirational advice. I think Terry Pratchett put it best:

 _Miss Tick sniffed. "You could say this advice is priceless," she said. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," said Tiffany.

"Good. Now…if you trust in yourself…"

"Yes?"

"…and believe in your dreams…"

"Yes?"

"…and follow your star…" Miss Tick went on.

"Yes?"

"…you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Good-bye."_

\-- Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men</comment>


How to Tell Good Studies from Bad? Bet on Them - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-good-studies-from-bad-bet-on-them/ <comment><USER2> It is funny they were worried about whether they just got lucky with their result, then did the prediction market thing, and then didn't worry whether they just got lucky with _that_ result! (At least the article didn't, perhaps the researchers did.) So here are some amateur stats, please check my work.

This article says that the prediction market correctly predicted 71% of the replication results of 44 studies, or 31 correct.

Assume the studies have a 50% chance of being replicable. Then a random coin would predict a mean of 22 correct with a std dev of sqrt(0.5 * 0.5 * 44) = 3.3. This sample has a z score of 2.72, which means there's a probability of 0.003264 (0.3%) of the random chance approach being correct 71% or better. So the result seems pretty significant. (Changing the assumed 50% to other values makes the probability even more extreme.)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't changing the assumed rate of 50% to something higher make the probability less extreme? I know my initial inclination is to believe that less than 50% of the published studies have results that are able to be replicated, but that could be just the cynic in me. I know that the article mentioned that just 39% of the selected studies were able to replicate the results, but that could be caused by a selection bias in which 44 studies were used. I'm inclined to believe this study, especially because the results are rather amusing, but there is definitely room to be more sure.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for thinking critically about my comment! As I mentioned I am an amateur at stats and I now think I modeled the problem wrong.

Let's hypothetically suppose that we knew that 75% of the studies were replicable. Can we make a better coin flip prediction? If you had a coin flip that says yes 75% of the time, it isn't necessarily correct at a rate of 75% -- instead it'd be right .75^2+.25^2 = 62.5% of the time. In fact a coin that just predicted "replicable" every time in this scenario would be right 75% of the time. So I think maybe my null hypothesis should've been based on "did they do better than a parrot that always says yes", not a coin flip.

I _think_ the math in the original problem stays the same, it's just you change it to "a coin that always predicts it will be replicable". And in that case, if the underlying rate of replicable was 71%, then their prediction market only does as well as the always-yes coin and is in fact not very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a good answer from the incentives angle - how to motivate people to check whether studies are good or bad. On the object level, the answer is surprisingly simple: actually read the thing. The press is full of stories where a journalist rephrased another journalist's story about a press release about a study, and when you actually go to the study, it says something subtly different. When I see those, I try to jump out of the journalist's summary and get to a PDF as fast as possible, guess what the caveat is going to be, then check for it.

<comment><USER5> There are two stories here. One is, how do you—I'm guessing you're not a scientist—tell which studies are worth a damn. In this case, yes, reading the study is the best thing to do.

The second is, how do scientists know which studies are good? This is a harder job than for you¸ because you're only ever made aware of papers that made it through the publication gauntlet. (No, they won't publish "anything" these days, not in a journal that gets any coverage.) For scientists, the task is harder, so prediction markets might be the tool they need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The beauty of the market is that we allow people to be Bayesian" [...] "People come in with some prior belief, but they can also follow prices to see what other people believe and may update their beliefs accordingly [...] participants in the market could focus their bets on the studies they felt most sure of, and as a result, rough guesses didn't skew the averages as much."

It certainly isn't a fool-proof method of increasing accuracy, and it does favor popularity of a theory over other factors, but overall it's probably a nice layer of data to consider adding to the mix.

<comment><USER7> It isn't fool-proof, but there is a lot of research into the phenomenon that groups of humans are pretty good at predicting outcomes (much better than most individuals). I forget the math behind it, but it makes a lot of sense mathematically.

Here's a book all about it: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James- Surowiecki/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James- Surowiecki/dp/0385721706)

<comment><USER6> Very true. There's another one floating around somewhere about how good we are at estimating the IQ of other people. Pretty interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with this is that it seems likely to be biased against unexpected results or results that contradict the dominant theory. The old saying, "Science advances one funeral at a time," has a lot of truth in it.

<comment><USER9> If you are correct you can make money by betting contrary to the bias.

Science advances one funeral at a time. The stock market accelerates the process by separating fools from their money.

<comment><USER10> > If you are correct you can make money by betting contrary to the bias.

This betting market only covers reproducibility, not truth. But since most reproducible findings are still false, betting contrary to bias is unlikely to work.

<comment><USER9> Could you give some toy example to illustrate this? I honestly don't understand what you are trying to claim.

Toy example to illustrate my claim: Suppose a given finding has a probability p of replicating, but the biased market estimates q < p. This means that you must spend $q and if the experiment replicates you'll earn $1.00.

On average you'll win $p from these bets - $1.00 exactly p of the time. Your net winnings will be $p-$q. As long as your theory more accurately predicts the replication probability, you make money.

<comment><USER10> As an example, what if the statistical analysis for a study was wrong? In that case the study may well be replicable, but the underlying claim being made by the study is still false.

At least in the context of the phrase 'science advances on funeral at a time', usually folks are talking about studies that are wrong for reasons other than replicability. (Because in general it's pretty easy to convince folks that something is false if it can't be replicated, but much more difficult to convince folks that there is some deeper methodological or epistemological issue.)

<comment><USER9> Given that replicability would presumably be about predicting observable statistics, an incorrect calculation wouldn't change it.

I.e., observe a bernoulli trial and see 60 successes in 100 trials. Plan a followup study which will repeat the bernoulli trial 100x - predictions would be on the # of successes in the followup, not some statistical analysis.

The phrase "science advances one funeral at a time" is somewhat orthogonal to this idea - it tends to be about older scientists being unwilling to accept new theories in spite of repeated successes. Such scientists would lose their money if they bet or be ignored if they didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the idea at the end of using prediction markets to figure out which studies should be challenged by attempting replication.

<comment><USER12> Replication is not supposed to be a "challenge", that is not the point. The first point is ensure you can communicate the methods effectively, this demonstrates the experimental conditions are understood. The other point is to see if the observation is stable to whatever differences arise due to varying time/location. And they should be looking at estimates of effect size, not whether p<0.05.

Attempting to replace the role of independent replication with opinion is an awful idea. And that is the goal here, to replace, not to supplement. Of course, it doesn't seem replication attempts are very common in this area to begin with. So this is actually going to be a justification for continuing that pseudoscientific practice and to avoid checking all the previous results.

<comment><USER11> No, the main purpose of attempting replication is to challenge of the result. "I think you made a mistake, let's try to replicate and show it." And if you fail to replicate, you publish that and show the world that the result shouldn't be believed.

If you successfully replicate, then it has survived the challenge. The more challenges it survives, the more confidence we can have that the result is valid.

That said, we do not try to make replication challenging. We try to present experiments in a way that makes replication as easy as possible to perform. Exactly so that people don't have to take what we said on faith.

The point of the prediction market here is not to replace independent replication with opinion. It is to ensure that the energy that gets spent on replication is more likely to be spent effectively.

Ideally, of course, targeting replication efforts more effectively will increase the value of time spent in attempting replication. This should therefore increase how much effort is spent on replication. Which is exactly the opposite of replacing independent replication with opinion!

<comment><USER12> > "if you fail to replicate, you publish that and show the world that the > result shouldn't be believed."

A lone report of some observation should never be believed. It should be verified by others who retrace the steps.

>"If you successfully replicate, then it has survived the challenge. The more challenges it survives, the more confidence we can have that the result is valid."

If the observation can be independently replicated, it shows that the methods required are understood well enough to communicate and that it is stable in the face of unknown influences. This increases our confidence that we understand what is going on and that the phenomenon is worth theorizing about.

It has nothing to do with an observation being true or valid. The observation was made, it happened. It is true. It is valid. (Excepting outright fraud, which is treated equivalently to some severely unstable phenomenon)

>"The point of the prediction market here is not to replace independent replication with opinion."

They explicitly say that is the goal in the paper. I like this method of eliciting priors, not that the goal is to substitute it for actual replications.

>"It is to ensure that the energy that gets spent on replication is more likely to be spent effectively."

If a study isn't worth replicating, then it wasn't worth doing and reporting in the first place.

<comment><USER11> While I generally agree with the attitude behind your comments, they do not agree with actual research practice.

See [http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43875/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43875/title/Psychology-s-Failure-to- Replicate/) for horrible replication rates in psychology. See [http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040028) for evidence that medicine is no better. See [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html) for evidence that the research on which we base clinical drug studies is also in bad shape.

At this point anything that focuses attention on, "We should replicate SOMETHING" is a huge improvement. Eventually we should get to, "You should expect to be replicated." But we are a long, loong, loooong ways away from that now.

<comment><USER12> >"While I generally agree with the attitude behind your comments, they do not agree with actual research practice."

I am well aware of this problem. I expect you will have no more success convincing these people that replication is necessary than you would convincing a fervent religious believer their deity does not exist.

These juvenile research practices really need to stop though. It is driving the most intelligent and competent potential contributors away from careers in these areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've often though there should be a similar mechanism for solving disagreements in the workplace.

<comment><USER14> The CIA(1), and other Fortune 500 Companies have internal prediction markets that work quite well. However, internal politics inside of the organization sometimes spell the death of those markets.

This is more good data that gives me more faith in the www.Augur.net decentralized prediction market premise.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no4/using-prediction- markets-to-enhance-us-intelligence-capabilities.html)

<comment><USER15> Is there any software to create a simple intranet prediction market?

<comment><USER16> We make prediction market software for companies to use internally: [https://cultivatelabs.com/forecasts](https://cultivatelabs.com/forecasts) if you want to chat sometime.

<comment><USER13> Very interesting....since you're in the business, I wonder if you could share any observations on any difficulty selling into organizations where politically competent people are very much _not_ interested in discovering and publicizing the ability of others in the organization to make correct predictions?

<comment><USER16> We often have people participate anonymously - either anonymously among their peers, or in certain instances, anonymous from anyone in the company and we serve as the 3rd party arbiter of all the data. It really just depends on the organization's culture and how transparent they are ready to be.

Minimally though we're looking to establish an ongoing dialogue between the different levels of an organization. Our belief is that people on the ground building product, interfacing with clients, etc. aren't consulted nearly enough about predictions that inform big strategic decisions. Instead, leaders are making decisions based on input from a limited number of SME's, data analytics, and their own beliefs. None of these are bad per se, but not leveraging your own people we believe is a huge opportunity lost.

Happy to follow up live/over email if you'd like. adam at cultivatelabs

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The cost of a contract doesn't represent whether the result is reproducible or not, it predicts the _probability_ that it's reproducible.

So what do they mean when they say it correctly predicted the outcome? Are they just saying the odds fell on the same side as the reproduction indicated?

If so, that seems arbitrary. If the cutoff for a p-value is 0.05, then shouldn't we say that any contract selling for less than $95 predicts a reproduction failure?

</comment><comment><USER18> So in other words, a bunch of people guessing which hypotheses were true was more accurate than actual scientific studies of them (71% vs 39%). Great.

</comment><comment><USER19> >With a p-value [of 0.01], the result hardly screamed "false positive" like a barely significant one of, say, 0.05 might.

Is 0.01 that low for such a crazy finding? Let's say you believe that it has a probability of 1 in 10,000. And that result really seemed really really unlikely. 1 in 10,000 might be generous. Then, after this study, the probability that it's true is 1%.

</comment><comment><USER20> Prediction markets are great tools in general. Unfortunately, incentives are usually against implementing them. Experts are easier to control.

<comment><USER21> There are a few nascent cryptocurrency-based prediction markets on the horizon, Augur being the most well-known. If one of them takes off, it could influence our economy and society in a big way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> isn't that just how options or event prediction exchange / markets work?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any sites with live technology / coding / JavaScript stats? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for any websites that track live stats, like this one: https://githut.info/ <comment><USER2> I'm not fully understanding what you're looking for, something like this? [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)</comment>


A Bridge Made of Grass - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-48628325 <comment><USER2> I don't know why I expected some kind of naturally formed bridge made out of grass. Pretty cool tradition, but it is rope made out of grass.

<comment><USER3> There are bridges made from living roots in India[1], some of them longer than 50 meters.

[1] [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/root-bridges- cherrapunge...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/root-bridges-cherrapungee)

<comment><USER2> Now that is awesome. Thank you for sharing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of a bridge in Cambodia. It was made of bamboo and every year the Mekong washed it away. [https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/indochinapursuit/koh- pae...](https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/indochinapursuit/koh-paen-island- and-back/)

</comment><comment><USER5> _Tradition dictates that only men are allowed to work on the making of the bridge itself. Women remain in the upper part of the gorge, weaving the smaller ropes._

dudes, WTF?

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat, but think article title is trying to make this seem alot more interesting than it is. Rope bridges are common

<comment><USER7> How many rope bridges have been rebuilt every year for the last 600+ years? I find that extremely interesting.

From the article:

> The Q'eswachaka bridge is woven by hand and has been in place for at least > 600 years. [...] The tradition has been passed on from generation to > generation with every adult in the communities on either side gathering to > bring new life to the crossing. [...] The reconstruction of Q'eswachaka > takes place once a year, [...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> god I read 'of Glass'..

<comment><USER4> There are several glass bridges in China.

<comment><USER8> Well I'd have loved some links :)</comment></comment></comment>


One minute of DDoS attack punished with two years - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/04/oneminute_kochblocking_attack_earns_attacker_two_years_massive_fine/

<comment><USER2> The lawyer fees sound excessive, but when you play with fire you can get burned. I wonder though what the guy's lawyers were doing, or if the guy confessed, or how the evidence against him was gathered.</comment>


Rutgers lab studies female orgasm through brain imaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.nj.com/insidejersey/index.ssf/2010/04/science_consciousness_and_the.html

<comment><USER2> From the article: "'It's the hard question I want to answer,' he says. 'What creates consciousness?'"

This isn't just rhetoric: he's talking about a major area of philosophy of consciousness called the hard problem or hard question -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness> \-- and if they answer that via the medium of masturbation I'll be tickled pink.

<comment><USER3> I hope that double entendre was intentional.

<comment><USER4> I don't think he did it consciously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having participated on the researcher end of fMRI stuff, I am impressed if they can get a lot of women to actually climax in there. You really need to be focused on what you're doing, because there are a multitude of distractions. fMRI is significantly louder than a typical MRI exam, for example.

On a side not. You _can_ bring metal stuff into the MRI room. It just can't be ferromagnetic. It's fun to play with sheets of aluminum and coins in the high field area. The metal will resist movement due to eddy current effects.

<comment><USER6> If 'used properly' in this context, it is likely even louder! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this part disturbing: "The business-savvy Komisaruk already has taken out a patent on the peptide that creates [post-orgasm bliss]." What an awful thing to do.

<comment><USER8> What does it mean to patent a peptide? I suppose that it doesn't mean that everyone has to pay him to get an orgasm. He didn't patent a process for making the peptide either. So perhaps it's the use of the peptide in other situations than a natural orgasm? If I discover a planet, can I patent the use of the planet?

<comment><USER9> > I suppose that it doesn't mean that everyone has to pay him to get an > orgasm.

I laughed so hard after reading that and thinking of the implications of such a scenario. My gf asked my what happened; I told her someone has patented orgasm bliss. I think she believed me and seemed genuinely concerned about paying someone to get orgasm.

<comment><USER10> Girlfriend's never been to Vegas, has she?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've read the whole thing, and while it is kind of light on the science, it is well written and fun to read.

</comment><comment><USER12> Quoting the article...

 _"I try to remain calm as a vision of dangerous flying dildos passes through my mind."_

</comment><comment><USER13> What a boring way to study it... :-)

<comment><USER14> "While the 68-year-old Komisaruk has been witness to more than 200 live-action orgasms in his lab..."

Boring?

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't you rather be a participant than a witness?

<comment><USER16> At 68, the lab would turn to a funeral scene in 3 seconds flat.

<comment><USER17> The risk will only get worse the more he delays.

If attempting coitus would pose a health risk at 68, then he certainly shouldn't make an attempt at 69.

<comment><USER18> <http://www.instantrimshot.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have to admit to not having read the article, but I would be interested to see how many upvotes an article of the same flavor about male orgasms would get.

</comment><comment><USER20> Quick summary of the article:

Doctor: _We want to find ways to increase pleasure in people's lives_

Woman Subject: _"Science needs my climax!"_

Woman Subject: _"I try to remain calm as a vision of dangerous flying dildos passes through my mind."_

running through fMRI brain scan as woman subject tries to self-stimulate to orgasm

Doctor: _"One of the biggest conundrums of the orgasm turns out to be a nagging question for all mankind: The orgasm activates the same part of the brain — the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula — as pain."_

 _"What creates consciousness?"_

 _"How does the brain create the mind?"_</comment>


The impending crisis that is Windows XP and IE 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/01/the-impending-crisis-that-is-windows-xp.html <comment><USER2> Another website that requires loading an advertising script/tracker (Disqus) in order to show _actual content_.

Authors: please stop using this pattern!

<comment><USER3> It's the disconnect rule: any article which requires disabling ghostery/disconnect to read or which have 10 or more trackers merit flagging. If the content is good, there is most likely a better home with fewer trackers / ads (which is not to say that I'm against ads entirely, but there is a limit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The good news for those organizations is that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is coming out in the same month Windows XP's support is expiring. If they are ever going to move off Windows (especially governmental institutions), now it's the best time to do it, with them moving off XP, and with Windows 8 being so schizophrenic, radical, and generally enterprise-hostile.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's likely that a huge corporation whose entire IT infrastructure was built around Windows and Microsoft software would migrate to Linux. It would be a big technical and political risk for the executives: if something went wrong, the company would be seriously hurt and they'd be fired. Upgrading to a newer version of Windows would be technically easier and politically much, much safer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 9 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090546)</comment>


Use your phone for work email? Your employer can erase it - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304027204579335033824665964

<comment><USER2> Recent BlackBerry smartphone models such as the Z10 or Q10 get around this by providing Personal and Work profiles. This means that employers can erase the Work profiles on the phone, leaving the Personal profile intact.

AFAIK, they are the only mobile OS supplier that provides this functionality so far. I don't own or use a BlackBerry, but my friends recently showed me this feature. Evidently there are some pain points to this, such as notifications _not_ crossing profile boundaries. Thus, if you happen to be in Work mode, you'd have to switch to Personal mode throughout the day to see if you received any emails or [SMS|app] notifications.

Of course, this is probably the only way to enforce cross-mode/profile separation, but in practice it sounds like a PITA -- at least until you leave employment and your Work profile is erased.</comment>


How to strengthen your ssh server - <AUTHOR> http://linuxaria.com/howto/3-steps-strengthen-ssh-server?lang=en

<comment><USER2> Lightweight, abysmal.

1\. No discussion of private key only root logins (can be useful for backups even if you don't want admins logging in as root directly).

3\. No discussion of ~/.ssh/config (far easier than having to type `-p 2222` every time you log in to that server).</comment>


Stanford JavaScript Crypto Library - <AUTHOR> http://bitwiseshiftleft.github.io/sjcl/ <comment><USER2> I would personally recommend libsodium.js as the default choice for a JS crypto library: [https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium.js](https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium.js)

Fundamental issues with JS/web crypto aside, that is. You would still need something like WebSign ([https://www.cyph.com/websign](https://www.cyph.com/websign)) or a framework like Electron that allows shipping your application outside of the browser.

<comment><USER3> SJCL is 6.4KB gzipped, libsodium is 188KB.

If one plans to use the lib in the browser, it makes a huge difference.

Also, I'm not a crypto expert by any mean, but SJCL seems higher level, and hence, easier to use. Not to mention harder to missuse.

Projects like [https://0bin.net](https://0bin.net) have been using it for 7 years, with 500000 visitors in the last few months, so I'd say it's pretty battle tested too.

Not nearly has much as libsodium, of course. But I wouldn't discard SJCL, I think it has a place.

<comment><USER4> How does it compare to [https://tweetnacl.js.org](https://tweetnacl.js.org) ? That's 7KB minified and gzipped.

<comment><USER2> TweetNaCl.js is great. I'd go with that if you really need something smaller than libsodium.

Presumably it shares the downsides of TweetNaCl ("doesn't wipe internal buffers [...] [and] has two harmless instances of undefined behaviour"[1]; among, I expect, other shortcuts that may make it less optimal/safe than NaCl), and the fact that it's pure JS adds additional side channel attack surface, but those may be acceptable risks depending on your threat model. They're certainly the least of your concerns if you're just using it in a web page like 0bin.net.

1: [https://monocypher.org/why](https://monocypher.org/why)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having used SJCL before, I'll just say that it's quite old, and I'm not sure how well maintained it is at this point. It also is likely not using any of the new crypto browser APIs which can speed things up like pbkdf2 a ton. Recommend using something more modern and "on the rails" like libsodium if you have a choice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this add anything that many of the more popular and widely-used crypto libraries offer? I haven't been able to find anything, but am always curious to try new tools.

<comment><USER7> What would those many libraries offer, deserving switching from SJCL? I particularly like the size of the library; having said that, there could be some more important features.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found it while looking at TiddlyWiki developer documentation. This is used to make encrypted wiki pages that are decrypted on the client.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.nccgroup.com/us/about-us/newsroom-and- events/blo...](https://www.nccgroup.com/us/about-us/newsroom-and- events/blog/2011/august/javascript-cryptography-considered-harmful/)

How relevant is it today?

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't use it, just use WebCrypto API.

<comment><USER3> It's way lower level, and easier to missuse.

<comment><USER10> The only low-level thing I noticed about the native Web Crypto APIs is its reliance on typed arrays. The speed difference is night and day as the native stuff can be hardware-accelerated by dedicated CPU instructions.

Browser support is very good: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=cryptography](https://caniuse.com/#feat=cryptography)

Documentation is also very good: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/SubtleCrypt...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/SubtleCrypto)

In terms of "ease of misuse" it's debatable. One of the biggest default security improvements with Web Crypto is that *cryption keys are _not readable by JS_ once instantiated - they can only be used by the cryptographic functions (unless you explicitly make them exportable). This is a subtle but very important defense against certain drive-by attacks that could dump loaded keys from whatever non-native JS crypto library you might be using.

In general I don't think it's safe to be using crypto at all outside of basic stuff like password hashing if you don't have a basic understanding of concepts like salt lengths, block cipher modes, hasher output sizes, etc. so I don't really agree with the "easier to misuse" statement. Some library that holds your hand more isn't going to significantly make things safer.

<comment><AUTHOR> > One of the biggest default security improvements with Web Crypto is that > *cryption keys are _not readable by JS_ once instantiated - they can only be > used by the cryptographic functions (unless you explicitly make them > exportable). This is a subtle but very important defense against certain > drive-by attacks that could dump loaded keys from whatever non-native JS > crypto library you might be using.

That's a really nice feature. This should be better advertised. I wasn't aware that Web Crypto was even a thing.

<comment><USER11> Yes, that kinda HSMish model of non-extractable keys is a very nice touch. I really wish they would add Argon2 though. PBKDF2 is still a valid choice but there are a lot of HW optimized solvers out there for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm thinking this from the security point of view. Unless you bring the crypto operations outside the battlefield of JS runtime, any js library is basically unsecure.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not just a C or C++ crypto library compiled to WASM?

<comment><USER3> Size

<comment><USER13> How much? One of the crypto libraries cited in the comments is about 10x the size of SJSC.

Besides, as an avid use of Signal, Wire, Bitwarden, and other e2e encrypted tools, I would GLADLY download a larger but superior encryption tool that is compiled to WASM instead of relying on JS.</comment></comment></comment>


Best recommended books for entrepreneurship/interesting life things? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a new book to read during the last leg of my day before I sleep. I want to read something qualitative that I can apply in every day life. Similar to 4 hour work week perhaps? <comment><USER2> Best book for entrepreneurship: none. You don't learn "entrepreneurship". You experience it.

If you're already kicking the ball (instead of reading books on how to kick a ball), read about anything but "entrepreneurship" :)

I recently unsubscribed from most big tech blogs because all they write about is "X ways to become a better entrepreneur" and all that nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh... I'm not sure this qualifies as something for "every day life", but since I seem to wind up recommending this book in every other thread on books, what the heck:

 _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ by @sgblank

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but one of the best "life" books I've read is The Wealthy Barber. It covers a lot of personal finance advice in an interesting way.

</comment><comment><USER5> * Unleashing The IdeaVirus By Seth Godin

* The Art of Start By Guy Kawasaki</comment>