Google Talk Chat History can no longer be turned off by default - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/talk/answer/161925 <comment><USER3> Whenever we get around to establishing a (glorious and best) totalitarian government, it's really going to appreciate how easy it is to find out who the loyal citizens are, and who the future gulag workers will be. People have really gone out of their way to lay some really solid groundwork. We'll set new records for efficiency in identifying those critical of the regime and getting them separated from the pure-minded.

<comment><USER4> When that happens, that government won't need Google to give them the information. Chances are they already have it. AT&T's secret rooms have been public knowledge since at least 2006.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This comes at a funny time. Just today I searched for a secure (end-to-end encrypted), multi-device capable IM service. It does not seem to exist.

You are forced to pick _either_ proper multi-device support (GTalk, Skype, Hipchat) _or_ end-to-end privacy without multi-device support (libpurple based client with OTR-plugin).

It's sad. It's especially sad that not even the utterly over-engineered XMPP has bothered to specify proper multi-device support (conversations synced to all devices).

<comment><USER6> Not sure I'd agree with over-engineered, but anyway.

End-to-end privacy with multi-device support has been specified in XMPP for years; the problem is that it's vastly complicated and therefore nobody ever implemented it.

In part this is because when XMPP was started, people wanted different things from multi-device - they wanted to be able to leave their desktop logged in, move to their laptop, and _not_ have the conversation pop up there - <USER2> being no message-read state in XMPP. So instead, the idea was that you'd pull the archive from the server if you wanted it.

Later, Carbons were introduced, which basically says that if the message wouldn't normally come to "this" client, tell me about it anyway.

As for end-to-end... Well, the original RFCs include a method based on X.509 and CMS (RFC 3923). Never implemented. There's been various different concepts since (OTR-esque and XMLSEC based). None has yet got traction, but you'd be welcome to draw a line in the sand and implement one of them.

<comment><USER5> _they wanted to be able to leave their desktop logged in, move to their laptop, and not have the conversation pop up there_

Did someone outside the XMPP-bubble really request that?

Why would you possibly want to _not_ see the entire conversation when switching between multiple devices?

 _the problem is that it's vastly complicated and therefore nobody ever implemented it._

That's what I mean by over-engineered. As a matter of fact no single jabber client or server (that I know of) supports multi-device sync, not even without crypto. I.e. 13 years after its inception jabber (the "platform") still lacks fundamental functionality. Despite tens of thousands of lines of specification and lots of energy spent on absurdities like "transports".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After seeing "off the record" chats synced across browser sessions a few times, I became convinced that Google was storing the chat session on its servers at least temporarily. I can't help but wonder if this is just a way to remind people that "off the record" really isn't, and nobody should be relying on that particular property.

<comment><USER8> The correct way is for google to be storing encrypted off-the-record chat messages, decrypted by the client in javascript (or however the android client would do it). That way, Google would be able to persist chat history across devices if they share keys, but the stored ciphertext is useless to them.

Do we know if they're doing that?

<comment><USER9> They're almost certainly not doing that. That would be _extremely_ difficult to implement in a way that works in regular browsers without special plugins and is still secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't imagine any possible reason they'd have for removing the option that isn't creepy.

<comment><USER11> The simplest explanation is that it would be hard to persist messages across devices/apps without storing them somewhere.

<comment><USER10> I appreciate that -- but there's a difference between "chat history enabled by default [to make our services work better]" and "you can't turn off chat history permanently." In the latter case, one could imagine it wouldn't be too hard for Google to keep messages temporarily until they've been pushed to all devices and then remove them from their servers?

<comment><USER11> A very legitimate point and question. Needless to say, it seems Google is not trying to serve the same demographic and use-cases as say... <http://www.whispersystems.org/>

Though I agree it would be nice if someday we could enable temporary history and client-side encryption for everything. Perhaps this could be how DuckDuckGo grows beyond just search. I would look forward to such a future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This may have something to do with the FBI's recent push to monitor real-time communications like Google Talk, Facebook chat, and similar services ([http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_we...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html)).

</comment><comment><USER13> My guess is this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714557>

I think google is going to kill off gchat/xmpp entirely in favor of hangouts eventually. :(

<comment><USER14> I really wouldn't understand such a move. If I had to do a Hangout instead of placing a voice call, this has major unfavourable implications on my telecommunications:

1) I have to ensure that I shower and shave before every such call.

2) As a somewhat average looking (at best) chap, I have to contend with bias (however subtle) against my appearance (especially when doing interviews and such-like)

3) As a, uh, "person of colour" with a relatively clear accent when speaking English, I have to contend with bias (however subtle) against my appearance (especially when doing interviews and such-like)

4) (admittedly minor reason) I would be unable to physically goof off while still sounding relatively professional (think pacing about, spinning on the chair, stretching out on the couch, etc.)

For all these reasons, I've never understood the point of things like FaceTime and Hangouts replacing normal voice calls.

<comment><USER15> You can still do voice-only hangouts just fine. Sharing video is in no way a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For any Googlers who hang around Hacker News, what's the most effective way for us to report our displeasure with this feature removal?

<comment><USER17> Google Groups; although Google and its obstinacy won't listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is good news: Don't pretend to not be logging something they're actually logging (and, can't really choose not to log since they can be ordered to secretly do so).

<comment><USER19> So Google (and others) can build a network of companies to avoid taxation, but a chat system that's safe from eavesdropping would have been off-limits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I would assume that Google Now-type products work better when they have as much information as possible, and making all chats save by default all the time would be a good way to get much more information from people. Still, yes, kind of creepy.

<comment><USER21> _I would assume that Google Now-type products work better when they have as much information as possible, and making all chats save by default all the time would be a good way to get much more information from people._

IRS, FBI, your divorce lawyer, former business partner's lawyer and the local police department also work better...when they have everything you've done, where you've been (hello Android!)searched for and said all stored and cataloged. If it's stored they'll get it, otherwise there's nothing to get. If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried and all. /s

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I'm not thrilled about the change, just hypothesizing why they would have made it from a business point of view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And here I was hoping for _real_ OTR encryption in Gtalk. Silly me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Stupid question. Do they only keep a history of chats happening inside the Gmail chat client? I only ever use Google Talk via Adium or Pidgin. If they're recording my conversations even when I'm not in the Gmail app and I can't turn this off, then I think I'm done with my Google account.

<comment><USER24> Yep, they keep a history of chats even when you're using Pidgin. This is pretty easy to confirm...

<comment><USER23> How do you confirm other than looking for chat logs within Gmail? I don't have any chat logs as I had all conversation logging disabled before this update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o This only makes sense if they monitor chat conversations.

<comment><USER25> Why are you worried about monitoring? Do you have something to hide?

<comment><USER8> Honest question: is this sarcsam? I can't tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there a way to disable Google Talk/Chat/whatever entirely, so that no one can initiate a chat with me?

<comment><USER9> Click the top left button in the the chat window (icon of a person) and pick "Sign Out." AFAIK it will not sign back in unless you ask it to.

<comment><USER26> That does in fact work, even across browser sessions. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wasn't aware that Google Talk was keeping chat transcripts until a couple of weeks ago. But it turned out to be a huge win for me when I had to deal with a former business partner.

</comment><comment><USER28> While my users today did get a message on their Windows clients, all my chat histories still seem to be "off the record" for my Google Apps for Business account.

Not sure how long that will last.

</comment><comment><USER29> Getting kind of sick of your shit, Google...</comment>


Matt Aimonetti: Ruby in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://rubylearning.com/blog/2012/04/23/ruby-in-2012/

<comment><USER2> > Finally, at the end of the day, if a JS framework becomes a better solution > than anything else I use, I will certainly switch.

I'd recommend Matt just to dive deeper into Node, Express, Flatiron and all the 8,000 packages and he will discover tons of better solutions instead of sticking to the current status quo. And Node often feels faster, easier and less cumbersome than Ruby/Rails (once getting used to callbacks). I didn't mention performance which would be one reason to use Node—Matt wrote he would use it because being the new cool framework.

Ruby mainly exits because of Rails. Rails is the most automated web framework on earth, it's great and paved the way. We use both every day as first choice because of its maturity, the community, the high day rates we get, ten thousands of great gems seaming-less working together, the convention everybody knows.

Definitely Rails is the best full-blown solution for web development but real innovation happens somewhere else.

EDIT: disagree != downvote, reply if you disagree

<comment><USER3> What I don't understand is that Ruby already has the purported benefits that node.js provides.

If you're doing networking stuff, we've got EventMachine for doing event- driven architecture, and that's a _heavily_ proven library in production.

Sinatra pioneered the microframework niche, and most microframeworks in other languages like node.js are almost a carbon copy.

And, of course, we have the highly mature full-blown frameworks like Rails, which is becoming more modular by the day. It's dead simple to pull out the default "cruft" that Rails comes with to make it easier for beginners and custom build your models, routing, controllers, templates, assets, etc.

I just don't see the appeal in switching to a less mature platform that doesn't have any benefits that I'm aware of.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of what people said when Rails was the new hotness, only the Rubyists were on the other end of it.

All the Java devs and the Pythonistas were calling us late to the game and slow. The simple fact is, people enjoyed Rails more than what they had to offer at the time, so it grew and became what you see today. The fact that something is possible in two environments doesn't mean it's equally enjoyable in both. Never discount the impact that love can have on a project.

<comment><USER3> I'd say that Rails made it much more quick to get started with web development than Java and Python did at the time, maybe. Certainly, I could do the same things with PHP as I could with the new hotness that was Rails, but I did it much more quickly with Rails and I ended up with nicer code. Node.js hasn't helped me in a similar way, but maybe I'm missing something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Website Feedback Request - <AUTHOR> Hey Everyone! I'm new to Hacker News so I don't know if my request is appropriate - my buddy Brendan suggested over coffee that I should ask the Hacker News community for feedback on my personal website that I recently designed and developed. So here I am! I'd like to ask three things about the site: 1. What do you think about the design? 2. What do you think about the UX? 3. What do you think about the quality and usefulness of the content? My website's up and running at http://jabariholloway.com<p>Thanks in advance!<p>-Jabari <comment><USER2> I definitely recommend putting in the time to use https. If you use LetsEncrypt it is free and can be completely automated.

Closing the about me window to reach the achievements and stories links was unintuitive for me. (also perhaps consider having clicking outside one of the story events close the story (the same as clicking outside the about me and contact me panes), scrolling back up to the x wasn't that bad but my first instinct was to click on the background.)

I am also unsure why the achievements / stories buttons switch between the two as they don't overlap, I understand not wanting to have too much showing at once, put perhaps a pan on the background or something (not a fully fleshed out thought).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback dzolvd!

I checked out LetsEncrypt and it looks like just what I've been looking for! I've got another website I'm working on (an in-person Continuing Education platform), which will also need https so this is a great solution! Thanks!

I can see how moving from the about me window to the achievements and stories links is unintuitive. Which part is most unintuitive: Knowing to close the about me window? Knowing to click the achievements button or stories button? Or that clicking either button reveals the achievements or stories links, respectively? The problem I'm trying to solve here is to have some introduction to the site as well as a self-image shown immediately to 1. Let people know what the site is about when they first arrive and 2. Connect the real-world me with the virtual me. I believe the about me window does that, but it also seems to cause confusion in how to navigate the site. What are your thoughts?

Oh yeah, you called it - when both the achievements and stories links are shown at the same time, the page looks too busy. Also, on mobile the achievements and stories links do overlap.

Thanks again for your help!

<comment><USER2> Knowing to close the about me window was the most unintuitive for me, I had clicked the three links along the bottom a few times before I saw the x, perhaps linking the achievements and stories text on the about me to their respective views could help, or include one or both along the links at the bottom? Some of it may be I am expecting to see it listed alongside those links from years of websites having essentially a resource list along the bottom? (not saying this is good practice necessarily...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great insight and great suggestions! I really like the idea of linking the achievements and stories text on the about me to their respective views! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> a few ux things:

\- background image could be a little more crisp for big screens and retina

\- white text at the bottom doesn't indicate what is clickable and the "Site Design © 2016 Jabari Holloway" is much to prominent for something that adds little value to the site

\- blue buttons look very bootstrappy, I'd use the outline versions (there is a button-outline for bootstrap, no?) to keep the weightless look fitting the theme of the site.

\- some subtle shadow on the floating text in the color for the "black" in the picture would add readability, fading away really close stars (just 1-2px at 50% opacity can to wonders and is hardly noticeable as a shadow)

\- the about screen needs a big button for [come on in and have a look], the close button is counter-intuitive and hard to find here.

\- the reddish text in the about me looks a bit off, I'd stick to black, white and your highlight color blue

\- I'm personally not a big fan of half-transparent backgrounds.

\- I like the paging on the stories, but once you scroll the back button is gone, it should be always visible

\- I would consider always showing all menu points, make achievements and stories visually different, but keep them on screen.

\- I like animations to be very quick, so I don't have to wait for them to "use" the site. The growing glow to make the text readable is much too slow for my taste. Maybe use "ease-out" to quickly grow to size and still have a smooth stop.

\- a fancy suggestion: show all achievements and stories, but connect each group like star constellation and have "Stories" and "Achievements" as the constellations names ( [http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~jeffery/astro/constellation/con...](http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~jeffery/astro/constellation/constellation_north.gif) )

\- when scrolling down on stories, the bottom menu moves up the page, guess that's not supposed to happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback anotheryou!

-I like the way the outlined buttons with transparent background look

-I'll try your subtle shadow suggestion

-Do you absolutely think I need a call-to-action button on the about screen? Do you think adding Achievements and Stories links respectively to the "Achievements" and "Stories" text within the about screen would work well?

-While the reddish text looks off, it doesn't stand out well with black, can't be seen with white (based upon the current background color of the about screen) and looks unappealing with my highlight color blue. I agree with you on sticking to a color palette, but doing so didn't work well in this case

-Thanks, I wrote my own pagination algorithm :). I'll add a back button that's always visible

-Do you know a way of making the achievements and stories menu points visually different without the page appearing too busy?

-I'll try the "ease-out" instead of "ease"

-Cool suggestion! I'll keep it in mind for a future design of the site!

-The bottom menu moves up while hovering over a story, which happens incidentally if the mouse intersects a page while scrolling. I'm not sure how to keep the hover effect and disable it while scrolling

Thanks again for your help!

<comment><USER3> \- call-to-action would not be needed if achievements/stories buttons are visible. Maybe you should make the about page a bit more bold. A big fat "Hi, I'm Jabari" and no close button.

\- the reddish text: I'd probably go with black on opaque white

\- I'd make the stories/achievements with the outlined buttons and the about/newsletter/contact things in small text right underneath, maybe with underlines so it's clear they are links. Maybe seperate them with "|" (about | newsletter | contact)

\- just position the menu with "fixed", not "absolute"

<comment><AUTHOR> \- ok, great. I'll work on making the about page more bold. I prefer the "Hi, I'm Jabari" over the "JabariHolloway.com" \- it's friendlier and people already know they're at the website if they've come that far so I don't need to reiterate where they are!

\- when it comes to viewing text, black on opaque white doesn't cause confusion and looks neat. In this case, if I went with opaque white, people wouldn't be able to see the stars in the background, which would detract from the sense of outer space the website conveys

\- I like the idea of using separators - I'll add them :)

\- perhaps this is truly a bug because the menu does have "position: fixed" set. Are you viewing the website on a large monitor, say 24-inch or 27-inch?

Thanks again anotheryou!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How would an idea hacker fix the USPS? - <AUTHOR> http://damonpace.posterous.com/how-would-an-idea-hacker-fix-the-usps

<comment><USER2> Crap ideas, given that they show no understanding of the limitations imposted on the USPS. Or even a sense of reality.

1\. "Change the address system" such that it's to a person instead of an address. Huh? I have several addresses for people to get ahold of me, and what happens when I'm on holiday and want people to send to my holiday address? The answer is in #2 ("Usernames and online account management") .. guess I can't get some mail sent to my bookkeeper, other mail sent to me via my sister, and have my wife send something to the hotel I'm staying at for a few days.

4\. "Change home delivery frequency". The USPS has been wanting to do this for years. It requires Congress to agree. They haven't wanted to. Amazon is also against it.

It's almost as if Congress is against the USPS, given that for the last 25 years it's supposed to survive on its own revenue, yet Congress sets limits on what it can/cannot do, including the 2006 mandate from Congress that it (unlike every other government agency) must pre-pay retiree benefits.

That, along with the recession, are the major reasons for the acute USPS budget shortfalls.</comment>


Classification of the principal programming paradigms [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/paradigmsDIAGRAMeng108.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> An associated paper was released by the author over here: <http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/VanRoyChapter.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER2> Already been posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578632></comment>


Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Gives Feds Copies Of Messages - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai.html <comment><USER2> Ok, I see why they did it, now they need to advertise the fact on their home page for everyone to see.

Pretty asinine to call yourselves a security company and then just role over like this-- no court fight, no resistance.

Further, this also goes to show that any company in a MLAT country is vulnerable to being made to turn over the information you're paying them to keep private.

and of course, given the way the US is going they will always have an excuse for getting this info- drugs, terrorism, pedophilia., but as we have seen in the past these excuses are a veneer that wears thin and it becomes outright spying.

Hushmail is now compromised- and they didn't even resist. Any further breaches won't even be newsworthy, and the feds know they will role over... so any time a hushmail.com adddress comes up in an investigation, they'll just demand the info.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I say I told you so?

<http://reddit.com/info/uctp/comments/cudwx>

</comment><comment><USER4> "However, installing Java and loading and running the Java applet can be annoying"

Any reason that they can't use Flash?

<comment><AUTHOR> My guess is that Flash doesn't have all of the encryption libraries. They'd have to rewrite all of them in AS...

<comment><USER4> I was aware of that possibility. Still, implementing a standard encryption algorithm shouldn't be hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assholes.</comment>


Wifi performance and the new iPad - <AUTHOR> http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/36557748875/wifi-performance-and-the-new-ipad-counterintuitive <comment><USER2> Read to the end of the article, folks.

This is what happened: he tweaked settings galore, hoping to squeeze out more performance somehow. Nerds tend to do this; it's natural.

However by removing the automatic settings and forcing it into one or more configurations that may have been suboptimal, performance actually decreased.

When he returned the settings to "fully automatic" everything was fine and dandy and maximal.

Moral of the story (and I quote): "Resist the urge to tinker with these settings."

You can basically ignore everything except that last line—and if you're familiar with the excellent AirPort Extreme, you probably already knew that.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that there is no particular reason those configurations are suboptimal, except the empirical "it makes the router run slower." Enforcing 802.11n for instance. If settings that should be good choices end up having side effects, that's not a great design of the Airport Extreme.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, the settings should be more useful in general.

However, it's possible that the flexibility of the settings toward other cases (like using the router with older hardware, or less compatible or buggy devices) necessitate their presence and complexity. Seems likely to me that each of these settings has been placed due to a specific support case with the plethora of device data and testing cases that they must have from years of customer support.

I think, then, that the settings are not for the maximal optimal case, and the misunderstanding here is that the router is somehow not initialized for maximum performance. This may be true for other router brands, but in my experience, is not true for Apple.

<comment><USER3> In general, I agree that messing with random settings is not a great idea. But these particular settings are some that I would feel pretty confident messing with. Like setting a different 5Ghz network name is done for a particular reason, because you want to be able to choose 5Ghz or 2.4GHz for the connection, and you don't want it to switch back and forth as it wishes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that the autoswitching has gotten good enough to trust that it's making better decisions than you are about whether the 5GHz network is superior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get this behaviour with my (latest-gen) Airport Extreme. I have a separate 5GHz network and get consistently 360Mbps to 450Mbps connection to it. Are you sure your Airport isn't faulty?

Changing it to a single name for both networks leaves my iMac always connected via 2.4GHz and no obvious way to switch to 5GHz.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure? I don't have an iMac, but I've tested with two MBPs. They will always use the 5GHz network if it's available. This may have something to do with how good your connection to the airport is - does your signal quality say Excellent?

I can't say that this configuration change will help for everybody - I'm just reporting what I'm seeing.

<comment><USER5> I found that my aTV, MBP (Lion) and iPad 2 were always connecting to the 2.4 Ghz network with my dual band Airport extreme as well. Setting them separately, I have forced it to 5Ghz. I live in a condo building so 5Ghz has far less interference, so I don't understand the reason for the behaviour.

<comment><USER6> Try this on the MBP:

* Connect to the 2.4Ghz network

* Hold "Option" and click the wifi icon in the top menu

* Note the "Transmit Rate"

* Repeat this for the 5Ghz network

When I first setup my Time Capsule I noticed that my Mac often times was attaching to the 2.4Ghz network. At that point I separated the networks and did the above.

Low and behold, each time the Mac picked the 2.4Ghz network it did so because it had a higher transmit rate than the 5Ghz one in a given location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to know a little more about the network setup. Are the Expresses bridging via Ethernet, or acting as repeaters? I don't know if that could be part of what he's seeing, but I'm still interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> This airport extreme is connected directly to outside (cable modem). There are several airport expresses extending the network (I have no idea how to tell if the client devices are connected directly to them, and I'm not sure it matters). There is a second airport extreme bridged to that one, which is running a dedicated 802.11g network to keep those devices off the same network as the faster devices.

<comment><USER8> I'd really like to know if the situation changes if you:

1\. Disable your other airport expresses and the 2nd airport extreme

2\. Place your iPad as close to the airport extreme as is reasonably possible (the one connected to the cable modem... just to try to get the max speed – it would be interesting to see what the speed dropoff with distance is in a second, separate test)

3\. Try the different options again (especially connecting on 5ghz using a different SSID with the airport extreme's 5ghz network set to n-only)

It's not just the wifi interference (which shouldn't be a problem, but could you also post how many other wifi SSIDs are visible from your iPad?) – but multiple airport expresses mixed with an airport extreme falls outside the realm of what 99% of users do (I think it could be a bug when the airports interact).

As other posters have said, this kind of performance drop is abnormal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will run some other tests when I get a chance. I've done #2, with no effect.

I don't think the Airport Expresses have anything to do with it - I've had some reports of other people being able to replicate my results without that.

<comment><USER9> Have you tried using specific channels (choosing channels with less interference from other access points in your area -- i use wifi-explorer) for 5ghz and 2.4ghz, instead of leaving them at automatic?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not in this case, but I've found in the past that the appropriate channels tend to shift with other usage in the area, and leaving it on automatic allows it to compensate for that, while hardcoding a channel can work for a while and then stop being the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When it comes to any mass-market consumer product, 99% of the users (I'm exaggerating, no, probably not) will leave all settings at the default. Therefore the default settings have orders of magnitude more real-world testing than all non-default setting combinations COMBINED. Nearly any mature product is therefore bound to behave dramatically better on its default settings than in any other configuration in sheer defiance of what "should" happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> That really depends. It's completely untrue for, say, TVs:

[http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins- movies.h...](http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 100% true. For this device, just roll with the defaults.</comment>


Samsung's $2k folding phone is breaking for some users after two days - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/17/samsung-galaxy-fold-screen-breaking-and-flickering.html <comment><USER2> Do we _need_ screens that fold? Really? What use case? So we have a double thick brick when folded? I can't imagine they are resilient to thousands of open/close/drops/over-extensions/etc

I think folding screens are a "one up Apple" feature that Samsung came to market first with but is not ready or necessary in primetime right now.

<comment><USER3> > Do we need screens that fold?

In the economic sense of "is it a thing people want and will pay for because of value it provides", yes, or, at least, there are people who need the screen size and will accept folding as the way to get there.

> I think folding screens are a "one up Apple" feature that Samsung came to > market first with but is not ready or necessary in primetime right now.

I think it's more about the premium Android feature wars than about Apple.</comment></comment>


US Workers Are Paying High Taxes. But Without Any of the Benefits - <AUTHOR> https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/labor-tax-rates-united-states-health-insurance <comment><USER2> Discussed 5 days ago with 504 comments (same author and article, just a different website): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19609191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19609191)

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't surprising in light of [0]. The core statement in [0] is that american health costs are high. In particular, predictably high based on Actual Individual Consumption.

[0][https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why- everything...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything- you-know-about-healthcare-is-wrong-in-one-million-charts-a-response-to-noah- smith/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Salaries in the US are more than twice as high as salaries in Europe tho. Maybe not having any benefits is a part of the equation to get those salaries? (naive suggestion, I'm not an economist)

(Source for the salaries: [https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary- information...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information- for-us-workers-2060808)

$28,000 for no high school degree -> people with BS gets this kind of salary in Europe. $37,000 for high school degree -> people with MS gets this kind of salary in Europe. Same logic for the other salaries on this chart.)

<comment><USER5> Maybe, if Salaries in the US are twice as high as Europe, then the average American is already paying more total tax than the average European and thus might expect more benefits.

<comment><USER6> A lot of the benefits' cost are labour (i.e. doctors, fire fighters, etc), hence are more expensive to provide. It's the circle of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you look at the federal budget, it is easy to see that the federal government is misallocating a significant amount or tax money to purposes that don't really benefit the average American. Interest on the national debt and military spending are the two big ones. There are probably also wasteful spending in most of the other programs as well.

Then there is the issue of too much inefficiency within existing insurance programs. American consumers are not getting a good value for the healthcare dollars that they do spend.

Lastly, I would say that the American education system is too expensive and too inefficient at training new medical staff.

<comment><USER8> It's easy to rip on US military spending, but it's actually not far out-of- line with other OECD countries. Considering the amount of war-mongering we do, I don't know how anyone expects it to be average or lower. For reference, it's about double the average country: [https://www.pgpf.org/chart- archive/0184_ally_defense_spendin...](https://www.pgpf.org/chart- archive/0184_ally_defense_spending)

It's 63% higher than China and ~double France's & the UK's. Russia's is actually 38% higher than ours (not that Russia is a model country for anything): [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ms.mil.xpnd.gd.zs](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ms.mil.xpnd.gd.zs)

Maybe if we could stop starting wars constantly, we could lower our military spending. But it doesn't look like that's the direction the voting population is moving toward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > As the Mercatus Center noted last year, by implementing a Medicare for All > system, the US could insure 30 million more people, provide dental, vision, > and hearing coverage to everyone, and virtually eliminate out-of-pocket > expenses, all while saving $2 trillion over the first decade of > implementation.

This is assuming Medicare would have the same cost structure if it insured everyone that it does right now, which is incorrect because Medicare is currently being subsidized by private insurance.

In order to make healthcare in the US cost less, something that is currently being paid for has got to go away. That isn't primarily "insurance company profits" or anything like that. The profits are a single digit percentage of the premiums.

The costs come from things like the extraordinarily high cost of getting FDA approvals reducing competition between pharma companies, doctors choosing unnecessary tests for liability reasons and patients preferring them when someone else is paying for them and things of that nature. It is not clear how Medicare would change any of that, given that it currently doesn't solve them even for existing Medicare patients, it just pays below its share of the fixed costs and lets private insurance pick up the difference.

You have to actually get the costs down. In theory you could just declare by fiat that you aren't going to pay as much, which would cause _something_ to be cut, but not the inefficiencies that the law continues to require. A "solution" that causes good things to be cut so that existing wasteful things will still fit into the budget is not very good.

<comment> grey-area _This is assuming Medicare would have the same cost structure if it insured everyone that it does right now, which is incorrect because Medicare is currently being subsidized by private insurance._

No, it's assuming that the successful outcomes and cost-benefits of single- payer, as proven throughout the world, can also be applied to the US.

<comment><USER10> At this point the fact that the whole friggin' rest of the OECD states have managed to come up with something less-broken _and_ less expensive than what we do, and that AFAIK even the most "free market" and incomparable to ours demographically and geographically (e.g. Singapore) have done this with price controls and a "public option" or similar, is such easy-to-come-by and oft- repeated info that "gee I just don't know how this could work in the US" or "more government intervention can't possibly fix anything" can't be charitably interpreted. It's concern trolling or gross ignorance. Period. We've been talking about this for decades. The data are there. They're not hidden. It's not theoretical. Pick a demonstrated-to-work system and do it.

<comment><USER11> I'm in one of the other OECD states and I'd pick American healthcare over mine most of the time. You guys have so many more treatment options available.

<comment><USER10> Ours is the one where you end up with one hundred bills from a twenty different providers, fighting insurance & hospital billing departments for a hundred plus hours on the phone, and five-figures of out of pocket expenses for a completely normal pregnancy & birth of a child, if you've got decent insurance. It holds back entrepreneurship, and it threatens to take all the money you've saved up, at any time. Inheritance? The hospitals will get it before you do. Your savings for retirement? You're just holding on to it before the hospitals eventually get it. Maybe your kid gets seriously sick and then you just don't retire ever. Freedom! Choice!

It's a huge source of risk and anxiety _even if you have insurance_. The extreme budgeting uncertainty and stress are hard to put in dollar terms, but they're _expensive_ , on top of what's already the most expensive system around, and getting more expensive at something like double the inflation rate. It's inhumane and unsustainable. If it blew every other system out of the water it might, _might_ be worth all that, but it doesn't, so it isn't, at all.

<comment><USER12> And yet the U S has a higher birth rate and more entrepreneurs than Europe. Can't be that bad.

<comment><USER13> What the hell do those have to do with health care?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everyone knows this but those that benefit from the status quo also have enough influence to keep it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reading the history, They did a great job to make people pay tax without asking question.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Practices for CSS in a Modern JavaScript App - <AUTHOR> So I feel I have a pretty good idea of the tools and techniques available for modern javascript development (React / Angular / Webpack / Typescript / Redux / Mobx / Electron etc..), but when it comes to CSS I am pretty much lost, there seem like a ton of options (postcss / sass / less / css modules / radium / react-css / cssnext etc.) and I don't really have an idea about the various trade offs involved.<p>I would be very interested to hear:<p>- What are you using?<p>- Why did you choose this?<p>- What do you like?<p>- What don't you like? <comment><USER2> I've had a lot of success with CSS modules together with PostCSS. CSS modules are great if you're building a component based application using something like React, as it lets you sandbox the stylesheet together with the component's JS file, and forget about potential naming collisions. The PostCSS ecosystem has many modules that enables extra features, which you put in your webpack config.

I used sass before, but not looking back now as you get the same features with postcss. Also, the node-sass bindings are always a mess to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER3> I prefer react-css with react mostly because I can import styles and treat them like regular objects. I also find it much easier to do responsive styling by computing CSS values with js.

Another reason for this approach is that I believe React Native will be the universal framework for mobile and web development and it also uses this method of styling so I'm adapting to it.

<comment><USER4> I'm still using straight sass a lot (via node-sass/webkit) mostly because of legacy use of bootstrap.

For future looking projects, I'd be inclined to try jss or aphrodite (for some reason I always think ambrosia when trying to remember that framework's name).

I think that tighter integration to an application and controls will be better for webapp consistency... for a website, I might be inclined to go the post/precss route... though invariably it may come down to whatever UI kit I start from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> LESS compiled to CSS, mainly use it because it looks better and I don't have to deal with selector weight, also variables are helpful for colors - and some mixins here and there when necessary

</comment><comment><USER6> I just use pure CSS (crazy I know) with Angular. No complains so far but I don't do anything fancy in styling. Mostly just using bootstrap with some little tweaks.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Best practices" are a mirage.

I just use a regular CSS file. Because it works nicely without any weirdness.</comment>


On Attention, Focus and Autism in the Tech Workplace - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/on-attention-focus-and-autism-in-the-tech-workplace-8246526fbbc0 <comment><AUTHOR> This has been revised and clarified.

I now use a whole bunch of terms that I find are useful to communicate personal attention patterns to those who didn't think about them so far: attention sponge, liking focus patterns to vehicle types, attention pathogens etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Last year I wrote about focus and attention when programming and how slow tools and slow compile-run workaround time hurt us. "Software Development at 1 Hz (medium.com)" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577283)

This is my followup with more general attention and focus issues for some parts of the workplace. [https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/on-attention- focus-and-au...](https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/on-attention-focus-and- autism-in-the-tech-workplace-8246526fbbc0)

If you like it I would also appreciate a retweet. [https://twitter.com/MartinCracauer/status/902199195674824704](https://twitter.com/MartinCracauer/status/902199195674824704)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I am not a tweeter :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I enjoyed this. I guess because I relate in general. I was surprised that there are not more comments here. I started reading last night right after you posted, and left it open until this morning. This could be the start of a great essay.</comment>


In Germany, a tradition falls and women rise  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/world/europe/18iht-women.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> "Without the €800 she contributes to the family income of €2,400 every month, the Maiers could not run the two cars they depend on in the countryside"

Let me guess - they need two cars so that they both can get to work?

Later in the article a couple who hired a nanny is mentioned. I guess it all boils down to maths skills in the end...

I suspect much more often than "female liberation" it is sheer economic necessity if both parents go to work.

Still, I can not bear the thought of all day school. Possibly it would be different from "normal" school (more socialising with peers?), but still. Besides, wouldn't it be cheaper to just get decent game consoles for the kids?

I also resent that as a reaction to the literacy study, all they could think of was to make school longer. Seems likely to me that longer school would only make kids more stupid in the end (when does the brain have time to grow??). Being at school tends to be mind numbing, not mind enhancing.

<comment><USER3> > Being at school tends to be mind numbing, not mind enhancing.

> wouldn't it be cheaper to just get decent game consoles for the kids?

Is this satire?

If it isn't, this is what the article is about:

1\. mothers want to work because it gives them meaning/satisfaction.

2\. this is not possible if the kids get out of school at noon. Hence the necessity to lock the kids up for a few more hours.

3\. this contradicts the German maxim of Kids/Cooking/Church, so a cultural shift is needed.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the expenses of having two cars. Whether day care is a good thing for kids is debatable, but it sure beats the cheaper game console "solution".

<comment><USER2> The article tried to make it about lifestyle choices, but it also mentioned the economic necessities. What I said is that I think the economic necessity is the bigger factor by far here. It is almost zynic to turn it into "women's liberation" when what it really shows is that people are struggling much harder economically than they used to.

Liberation would be to give people a choice. In fact, if the women's jobs were so great, they would probably be able to afford a nanny? Certainly the "academic women" should be able to afford it (the ones who are most likely to want to work according to the article)? If it wasn't about money, perhaps the women could volunteer in a part time job while kids are at school to get their fulfilment? Honestly, I think that is a bit of bullshit - how many people really want to work, in non-creative professions?

I don't know how much a nanny costs, but as long as the women's job pays more than a nanny earns, they should be OK? Certainly the academic ones should earn more than an nanny. Also, nannys can be pooled (they can take care of several kids at the same time) - granted, might as well send the kids to school, but why should the tax payer have to pay?

I have grown up in Germany and still live here. Maybe I come from an atypical family, but so far I have not had the impression that "Kids/Cooking/Church" is what determines our lives. That is just sensationalist writing for the newspaper.

As for the game console, it seems to me that from a certain age, kids can entertain themselves. Why should they have to stick around at school all day passively digesting input? Probably kids have even more ideas on how to spend their time than adults. Obviously I would consider the game console to only be a last resort - probably still better for the kid's imagination than school, though. But as you said, if it is all just about "locking up the kids", why shouldn't the game console be adequate?

As it happens, I went to the public library a lot as a kid, as I also grew up without parents permanently being available. Just saying. I found my way to the library and back all by myself, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems that the schooling aspect is not as important as the "daycare" aspect. I wonder if it will mean that the students in the longer classes will get better marks or be better educated? My guess, no.

</comment><comment><USER5> Articles like this feel a lot like propaganda. Isn't America so enlightened, etc. Is this really newsworthy or interesting, except for the small self- congratulatory pat on the back it gives Americans reading it?

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Add to that an economic crisis that has hurt traditional male jobs in manufacturing harder than female ones in services — in Germany, only 10,000 of the 230,000 who have lost jobs in the slump were women — and the female factor emerges as stark. ..."_

Understanding what is going on in the world means you better understand potential markets.

 _"... Everywhere, women still earn less, are more likely to work part time and less likely to hold top jobs. But young female doctors, for instance, are rising in numbers, and women dominate middle management in major consumer companies. They could run the hospitals and corporations of tomorrow. Many will be family breadwinners; in Germany, every fifth household is already sustained by female income ..."_

Understanding broad social changes means you can make things people want instead of potentially asking in _"n"_ years time, _"gee that's a big market, how come I missed that? Where did that come from?"_.

 _"... Is this really newsworthy or interesting ..."_

If I told you I could actually hear the Earth rotate you wouldn't believe me. [0] But you can do this reading articles like this one on the changing proportions of male/female in a first world technological country. A lot of the time very specific, technical _"now"_ posts are made but I've found you gain just as much by looking at how large societal changes shape adoption.

[0] The Dr. actuall says this in _"Dr Who"_ , S1E1, BBC, 2005 ~ <http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Rose_(TV_story)>

<comment><USER5> Those are good points... It's got a bad headline but the article goes into decent depth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Starting at 8 years old I used to attend classes that starts at 7:15 am and ends at 4:15 pm. Both my parents are working full time.

Maybe in other parts of the world this is something horrible but in some countries this is our way of life. We don't complain instead we are very thankful that we CAN go to school unlike others that cannot.</comment>


Financial Times acquires London-based developer of its HTML5 web app - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2012/01/05/ft-buys-assanka-the-developer-of-its-html5-web-app/ <comment> kai-zer Great news. The FT mobile app is really well put together. The whole reason why they created it to begin with was to get around Apple's percentage cut of subscription revenue from apps on the App Store.

The FT site is a true example that non-native apps can still be excellent.</comment>


Show HN: Make and Sell your own MineCraft style mobile game - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1188137332/create-and-publish-your-own-minecraft-style-mobile

<comment><USER2> I really like how you straight-up stole the Creeper face for this project. Not sure if it's a trademark, or if you're legally liable... But it's _extremely_ poor taste.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking the page out buddy!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do you Commit Changes in Version Control? - <AUTHOR>

In git/any version control, at what point do you commit changes? After a single file? After the feature starts working? In arbitrary chunks? <comment><USER2> When I feel like I have reached a stopping point/mini milestone. Might be a single file, might be multiple files/directories.</comment>


Crazy iphone 4s launch in China - <AUTHOR> http://pipi818.com/11916/

<comment><USER2> market with 1.3 bil people</comment>


Shimano Sport Camera - <AUTHOR> http://shimano.camera/

<comment><USER2> Wobblecam. Look at the sample footage, the problem is obvious. This is a solved problem, they just need to apply the solution. Yes it takes power... so, up the battery size. Yes batteries have weight, but if weight was the only concern, you wouldn't be carrying a camera, and it's better that the camera produce useful output.

</comment><comment><USER3> please let me dictate the speed at which I can scroll through the site without having to wait for the animations to fire before proceeding.

i'm glad to see that Shimano is doing it's damnedest to stay relevant. It's a name from my childhood, along with all of the Italian/American bicycle companies that they bought over the years.</comment>


Model beats Wall Street analysts in forecasting business financials - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/model-beats-wall-street-forecasts-business-sales-1219 <comment><USER2> Hi former Wall Street enterprise software analyst here. Financial models were, generally speaking, tightly managed by the companies being modeled. For each upcoming quarter and full year, management (typically investor relations, sometimes CFO) would hop on a call with my team and discuss where our estimates were vs. consensus. Sometime, "consensus" was an internal measure and not what was reported by e.g. Bloomberg or FactSet.

If estimates were particularly out of bounds from consensus, they would politely ask how we modeled their business, if we would like help modeling their company, if we had a particular reason for out of bounds estimates, etc. That was a firmly worded but polite way to describe that the estimates might need some review and adjustment.

<comment><USER3> Were parties aware that this was close to or a de facto reg fd violation ([https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-7881.htm](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-7881.htm)) and/or how was this handled internally?

<comment><USER4> Could you explain more? That is like a hundred pages of regulations and I don't know anything about this.

<comment><USER5> Short answer: reg fd requires companies to disclose information material to investors to all investors. The previous post is suggesting that the close work with the bank analysts is conveying material information without proper disclosure. My hunch is that the legions is compliance lawyers at both the banks and at the companies have deemed this to be within the bounds of the regulation, but we'll see if the SEC/US Attorneys agree.

<comment><USER6> Being cynical, I'd assume the "help" they offer is more likely to be stock market manipulation than disclosure of material information.

<comment><USER7> That's incorrect for these style of calls. The help is more akin to marketing - the company is arguing that they are doing better than the analyst thinks, and the analyst's company is offering their help to explain that to them and to other analysts.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what I meant. They are not necessarily disclosing real information, they are trying to increase the stock price.

<comment><USER7> That isn't what stock market manipulation[1] means.

      Market manipulation may involve techniques including:
        Spreading false or misleading information about a company;
        Engaging in a series of transactions to make a security appear more actively traded; and
        Rigging quotes, prices, or trades to make it look like there is more or less demand for a security than is the case.

Presenting real information in a way that makes it more clear to investors is absolutely not market manipulation, and no interested party would ever claim otherwise.

[1] [https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/general- resour...](https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/general- resources/glossary/market-manipulation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Citadel and Two Sigma both have had large teams working on this for years. They are making a lot of money doing it but barriers to entry are very high. You need to collect all the data in a way such that you can reconstruct how it looked at any point in time. The vendors can't be trusted to not make retroactive corrections, so you have to collect it for years before it becomes useful. Doing that takes a lot of time and money.

<comment><USER2> One of the wildest things I found while working on Wall Street was that ad blockers are wholesale selling data to analysts and funds. For example, I reached out to Ghostery asking if they had data about the data analytics tech / ad tech vendors used by industry, website, etc. to estimate market share and they responded back with a sales person telling me I could buy that data from them for five figures per year and that a number of my peers and clients were doing the same.

<comment><USER9> Ghostery seems to have fallen completely out of favor for this behavior, replaced by the EFF's Privacy Badger, actual ad-blockers, and even some browser built in functionality.

It would be interesting to know which other privacy plugins that sell data. Current recommendations seem to be pretty unanimously favoring plugins which do not, but it is always a moving target.

<comment><USER10> Hi, I work on the Ghostery extension.

In addition to my answer regarding the business model of Ghostery above: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809). I'd like to add a few things to address your points:

(1) Ghostery did not "fall completely out of favor", as far as I can see. It is true that in _some communities_ (in particular some sub-reddits), _some people_ tend to recommend different addons instead (often not based on any technical arguments, though), but this is not a trend that can be generalized (more people continue to recommend Ghostery as a very solid privacy protection suit).

(2) EFF's Privacy Badger is not a replacement for Ghostery, for more information about why, we wrote about it in the past[1][2].

(3) Ghostery has an "actual ad-blocker" built-in, in fact, it is one of the most efficient out there as was shown in a study that we published this year[3]. The adblocker as well as benchmarks are open-source and anyone can run them locally to verify the claims. We also more recently wrote extensively about the internals of this adblocker[4].

References:

[1]: [https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_us...](https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_users.html)

[2]: [https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking- without-b...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-without- blocking-trackers.html)

[3]: [https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html](https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html)

[4]: [https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are- born...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-born- equal.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Like virtually every other attempt at predicting future events in complex systems, equity analysts -- even very knowledgeable, hard-working, well- connected, experienced ones -- are mostly just guessing. They regularly get beaten by a random dartboard in the WSJ, just like the majority of mutual funds trail behind index funds. Not much different than ESPN's former coaches and players -- smart, successful, domain experts -- whose sports predictions are not much better than random chance.

<comment><USER12> You don't have to be much better than random chance to make mountains and mountains of money.

<comment><USER11> You can actually be worse than random chance and still make mountains of money.

The fact is, for most jobs like this, it is far more important to look & speak the part -- to be able to make other people think you really know what you're talking about -- than it is actually to be accurate. Most popular weather- people are attractive and telegenic. Very few ever are actually measured by accuracy of predictions. Similarly, equity analysts who can impress the client base (who are, mostly, non-financial professionals) rarely get called out for lack of accuracy. Not saying it never happens, but most of the time the analyst (with the help of their employer) takes all the credit (for hard work, knowledge, insight, etc) when they are right, and blame "unexpected circumstances" or "unforeseen events" when wrong.

<comment><USER13> You can't be worse than random. If your estimates on a binary question are consistently wrong, all you need to do is to do the inverse of what your estimates tell you, and now you're better than random.

<comment><USER11> Irrelevant to this profession and discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The entire sell side business is filled with sycophant analysts being paid under the table for producing good reports. The entire training set is bullshit if all you have as your "correct" dataset are these corrupt fuckers.

<comment><USER15> Do you, in so many words, concur with _sword's comment further up?

<comment><USER14> No. He's describing one side of the equation, which is companies forcing you to produce a favourable report. That is almost common knowledge at this point in the industry and he's absolutely spot on.

What I'm including beyond that is stuff like your brokerage arm asking you to produce a favourable report so clients will buy more of the stock. That's just one example. There are blatant and flagrant floutations of rules and procedures in these markets.

One recent example is Goldman producing a Buy report on tesla during the same week that their investment banking arm was placing shares on the market for tesla. Ideally you'd want a complete blackout on any sell side reports if your firm is placing the fucking shares, but goldman just didn't give a fuck and got away with it for that quarter (far as I remember, I didn't follow up beyond the next quarter).

<comment><USER2> I disagree in part with this. I had complete freedom to publish a report in contradiction with the firm's interest, which is also backed up by regulation. Investment banking and equity research on the sell-side is firmly divided by compliance and I could never ever speak with my colleagues in investment banking without the explicit supervision of my compliance department. That said, unless I was extremely highly convicted in an idea, it was usually better not to burn any bridges long term with the bankers or the companies.

Edit add-on: You're restricted on what you can publish while your firm is doing banking business with the covered company. The restrictions are stipulated by a mix of regulation and compliance departments. Typically during an offering you either can't publish at all, or you can only discuss points factually without changing your opinion or estimates. That however means that if you publish a report and you're buy rated, even if you're publishing a factual update on a stock you're effectively reiterating your rating. I'm not sure of Goldman's specifics, but they know what they need to do to meet research compliance requirements.

<comment><USER14> > but they know what they need to do to meet research compliance requirements.

Yes sir. And they were caught wrong footed. But I mean, the number of these "misdemeanours" they get away with has always been pretty high so it isn't surprising. They _almost_ got away with 1MDB for fuck's sakes.

I don't know where you worked, but I was buy side, so I had full freedom to publish my own recommendations. However, my PM was a smart man and always wanted me to get on a call with the sell side analyst if I was disagreeing with him. But since I was very junior, a senior analyst used to lead the call (and was already tuned into the stock and following my models on the side because he was my mentor). Man the senior analyst (an ex sell side analyst from goldman) used to grill the ever loving shit out of the sell side guy on the call. Threw him charts from my report, charts from bloomberg / factset, news links etc on email while he had him on the call.

Like 3-4 emails exchanged just when we were on the phone. Sell side guy was also highly fucking experienced. Never fucking gave ground and admitted that he was being forced by the brokerage to mark it a buy. Always a stalemate and it was wondrous to me when I was new.

Then I understood they both knew it was going to be a stalemate long before the call starts. My senior analyst is cursing the sell side guy to me, and the sell side guy is probably cursing the two of us to his colleagues. We both agreed to disagree, but he never could fully justify his position in my eyes.

<comment><USER2> We had total freedom to give any rating we could justify. We downgraded banking names under coverage, or gave unfavorable ratings to some of the names that bankers wanted us to add to coverage. These sometimes led to calls from banking (moderated and monitored by compliance) demanding to know why we did such a thing, or my director of research receiving emails from companies that thought they deserved more favorable ratings that would personally insult my team. We nevertheless made the right calls for our investors to the best of our abilities, and I'll always stand by that.

I've been on a bunch of aggressive calls and they always get my pits sweaty. I was on a few with the senior analyst I started working under that I really remember. We had a contentious sell call on a stock and one of their top 10 holders wanted to speak with us. We hopped on the conference call and they brought every one of their covering analysts, PM's, and even a trader onto the call just to try and talk us out of our rating. It was one of those calls where we knew neither side would find an agreement, but ultimately we both got a better understanding of where our disagreements lay, which helped better inform both sides about debates in the stock. The cursing and aggression from these clients made that call especially tough.

On a different note, I found the former sell-side turned buy-side analysts to be the toughest clients to work with. They know exactly how the research game is played, but several seemed to have an especially large chip on their shoulder and wanted to badger the sell-side guys since they had taken that beating for years.

<comment><USER14> > On a different note, I found the former sell-side turned buy-side analysts > to be the toughest clients to work with. They know exactly how the research > game is played, but several seemed to have an especially large chip on their > shoulder and wanted to badger the sell-side guys since they had taken that > beating for years.

Very, very accurate from what I've seen. Especially from the former aggressive sell side people like the senior analyst I worked with. They somehow get redirected to the most aggressive current sell side people as well (despite stock coverage being assigned however).

My coverage finally didn't have too many contentious names (I took up defensives in fucking 2014 thinking the bull market was ending), but the ones that did had very mellow sell side guys. Whereas the sell side guys handling big tech and consumer discretionary names were aggressive as fuck. For instance, the same senior analyst took like 2-3 hours reading up on my stock before a sell side call, but with the consumer discretionary guy, he used to read up from the night before because (a) the stocks were more complicated, and (b) the sell side guys for these stocks were always super charged dudes with a ton of info directly at their fingertips. You needed to adjust your entire demeanour to deal with them differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What really bothers me about these articles is that the authors claim to beat but they only study 37 companies. What about the 38th? Or the 380th. I guarantee you I can cherry pick 37 companies where a linear regression will accurately predict earnings quarter over quarter... what does that prove?

<comment><USER17> A study never proves anything. A p-value only tells you how likely the results are by random chance. Presumably, the companies were chosen beforehand. It is unlikely to have happened by chance that it beats for 37 companies. That's different then selecting the companies after the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> At the end of the day, securities pricing is based on supply/demand for the security. Predicting precise sales numbers isn't that important, stock prices move based on a plethora of other factors. How many times have we seen a company out-perform expectations and then the stock plummet, or a company under-perform and rally? It's cool that they're able to do this but it's not that big of a deal...

<comment><USER19> > How many times have we seen a company out-perform expectations and then the > stock plummet, or a company under-perform and rally?

Far, far, far less than a company's stock surging after a good quarterly, a great product launch or tanking after a bad earnings report. You are nitpicking.

Yes, outliers and "irrational" market reactions exist, but there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity in deriving accurate sales numbers or other indices before the market gets its hand on them.

<comment><USER20> It is uncommon for a company to outperform expectations and plummet but very common for it to simply _not react_ or dip slightly. Thus making it hard to make any serious money if you can predict outperformance

However it is more common for a stock to tank if it misses expectations. If you can predict underperformance, you can make some serious bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not the model, it's credit card data.

VISA / Mastercard could have its own hedgefund making great amount of money if it didn't sell the data to other companies.

<comment><USER22> Sell the shovels!

<comment><USER21> Maybe you are right, but having a monopoly on the data makes competition smaller and extracting revenue easier.

<comment><USER23> Their current position (apparently) keep them safe from antitrust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Small data, Kalman filter, belief...

They're using Bayesian statistic. Probably added some expert belief to their prior distribution (informative prior). The whole article made it sound spicier than it has to be. The majority of the ML algorithms out there have too many parameters so it require a lot of data to overcome certain weaknesses like selection bias in tree ensemble, etc... So with small data it seems like ML are turning toward Bayesian. Also article may be missusing the term inference.

<comment><USER25> they do not use priors or expert belief. they solve the system id problem directly - which in most problems is unresolvable

<comment><USER26> What does solving system id mean?

<comment><USER25> estimating model parameters. normally people use heuristics because it's an unreasonable problem for linear dynamical systems without additional assumptions. here, they're able to produce analytical results and finite sample analysis

<comment><USER25> *unresolvable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The headline itself demonstrates ignorance as to what matters to an investor putting money on the table. 1\. Sell-side analyst forecasts do not drive the investment decisions of the more sophisticated investors. The sell-side is just a big marketing machine and the value-add of the analysis is very low at an individual stock level. 2\. The model 'beats' the consensus forecast on a limited sample of names. By definition, the consensus forecast is an averaging out which leads to dilution of any one analyst's alpha - hence it is not an appropriate benchmark.

It is a naive approach and study, but typical of academics who unfortunately have little exposure to real-world investing/trading strategies.

The use of 'alternative data' is not new and is definitely leading to alpha generation for some firms, but as mentioned by others such data-driven strategies will usually have limited shelf-life.

</comment><comment><USER28> 99,999 other models failed.

Let's see how well this model performs for n > 30 or across diverse industries.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lots of comments about alternative data like credit card data.

But:

1\. There are many factors that influence the movement of a security. "Short- term reality" (important KPIs basically) is just one element in the vector that determines price.

2\. Getting long term exclusive alternative data is very difficult. Datasets are rapidly commodified.

</comment><comment><USER30> Great. Now fire all those business analysts and replace them with software programmers.

</comment><comment><USER31> Don't tell me what's in your model, just show me what's in your portfolio..</comment>


UK's Plans to Regulate Bitcoin Revealed in Treasury Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/breaking-uk-treasury-issues-landmark-digital-currencies-report/

<comment><USER2> With new services like ShapeShift, I am unsure if this is an appropriate or even enforceable option - and will increase the probability of pushing Bitcoin and crypto-currencies underground as far as the UK goes.</comment>


Ocado's burning robotic warehouse - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47160448 <comment><USER2> I found the fact that they're using modified 4G over unlicensed spectrum to control the robots pretty interesting. Latency, scalability and consistency seem to be the key drivers. There's more on that at:

[https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-wire/ocado-uses- unlicen...](https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-wire/ocado-uses-unlicensed- lte-to-enable-the-march-of-the-warehouse-robots)

[https://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/media/uploads/files/UK5G...](https://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/media/uploads/files/UK5G_- _The_death_of_IP_Fraser_Edwards_-_Why_LTE_didnt_cut_it_for_Ocado.pdf)

[https://www.silicon.co.uk/networks/voip/ocado-4g-network- unl...](https://www.silicon.co.uk/networks/voip/ocado-4g-network-unlicensed- sprectrum-185777?inf_by=5c5cec74671db8e90d8b499b)

<comment><USER3> Any clue what radio IC they used? I didn't see the hardware mentioned in those links. Can you tune a vanilla LTE baseboard to unlicensed bands? Or did they use a software-defined transmitter with a custom LTE stack?

<comment><USER4> I believe most LTE chipsets can be tuned into any band you like, as long as you design your own RF front end (antenna and circuitry to/from the chip) and persuade the chipset manufacturer to give you a firmware update in such a way that they aren't liable for you distributing illegal devices. It's probable quite difficult to find manufacturer who is prepared to work with you if you're only going to buy 50,000 modules. I guess being Cambridge Consultants gives you contacts.

<comment><USER5> Given that Cambridge Consultants spawned Cambridge Silicon Radio you're probably right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But let's not forget there's a good reason why data centres full of computer > servers are often built inside icy mountains or under oceans. Electronics > get hot.

Gell-Mann amnesia effect applies here. This is pretty bad reporting.

<comment><USER7> You mean to tell me my ap-south-1 instances are not actually inside Mt. Everest?!

<comment><USER6> Nope, they're in an orbiting datacenter. You can't beat the dead cold vacuum of space.

PS: You can, the vacuum of space is actually terrible for cooling, I was making a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate that "robotic warehouse" makes for a good headline but I just wanted to point out that only the part the retrieves the goods from the shelves is robotic. Humans are still packing and dispatching the orders.

It's amazing how many people in this thread are looking at the headline and jumping to the conclusion that there were no humans present at all.

<comment><USER9> > Humans are still packing and dispatching the orders.

Perhaps not for long, according to the article they're now training robot arms to perform the packing tasks.

<comment><USER10> That is a _much_ harder task than just picking up boxes that are all the same size. It's essentially still a research task that many universities are working on.

I'd say we're at least a decade away from a robot that can pick up irregular items like a person can.

<comment><USER11> Is it that hard when you know, what are you picking? I mean, each box contains only one type of objects. Weight, shape and package type is known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's hilarious that a journalist thinks that datacenters are "often built inside icy mountains or under oceans".

<comment><USER4> It'd be funny if it wasn't entirely normal for the BBC's technology output.

<comment><USER13> BBCs reporting is nothing short of dire on everything at the moment. Random people on twitter are better journalists.

<comment><USER8> The BBC do seem to have realised this, considering a lot of their "stories" recently are literally just cobbled-together lists of tweets from these random people.

<comment><USER14> IIRC BBC Online was deliberately gutted by the top brass to keep the (Conservative) government happy because it was perceived as competing too effectively with commercial news providers.

<comment><USER13> So basically not lining up with the Daily Express?

<comment><USER14> Not so much about political positioning, but simply that the quality of the straight news reporting was high & there were no ads, so viewers were flocking to the BBC website in preference to other commercial news providers. This was deemed unacceptable by the Conservative government during a crucial time in the negotiation of the renewal of the licence fee, so the website was quietly gutted to appease them.

That's the story I've been told at least.

<comment><USER13> If that is the case then it's a sad outcome and it shows political overreach.

<comment><USER15> Broadly speaking everywhere the BBC did well the Tories took as reason to see them as impacting on free competition and commercial interests. There have been periodic Tory calls to privatise them for decades.

BBC online has been significantly limited twice, and BBC news more generally once (One relatively recent Tory change required the BBC to take on the costs of World Service that had always been Foreign Office until that point. Whilst editorially independent, the FO could ensure certain regions received output).

It is quite sad, as there were many areas they were doing well in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is an interesting question: how do you plan for the unforeseen?

We as humans are very good at coming up with solutions to ambiguous/messy real world scenarios... robots less so. By definition, the current set of robots are programmed for specific situations.

As we automate more and more, I suspect we will have more and more "one off" catastrophic events. Yes, once we experience them, we can "test" against them. However it almost seems to argue for one amount of human in the loop no matter what, if only to give an occasional "that seems weird" check.

Am I missing something? Yes we can make an argument for machine learning to learn "nominal" and report off nominal... but that only works if you gave the right sensors being inputted in the first place.

<comment><USER17> Fire in buildings and warehouses is not an unforeseeable risk. It is a major, well-known risk.

<comment><USER16> Correct, this particular case is obvious (and they should plan for it). However what I am trying to dig into is the "less obvious". An example, snow showing up in an area that hasn't seen snow in the last 100 years. Or perhaps someone "crashing a car" into your factory. My point, and my questions has to do with the following at the core: "How do we replicate/approximate the 'general' knowledge that a human will inherently have?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So their award winning sprinkler system clearly didn't work.

Will be interesting to read the investigation report & see what actually went wrong.

<comment><USER18> A sprinkler system... for a giant lithium batteries fire? If it was an actual water sprinkler system that may have been an issue.

<comment><USER14> One hopes that they had thought of that, but who knows?

Looking at the warehouse videos, it's clear that under the robots is a vast sea of individual towers of plastic boxes, all packed in tightly. I suspect that once that plastic was burning merrily, it would be very hard to stop & the heat would start cooking off the lithium batteries in the robots above. Hard to see how a sprinkler system can prevent fire from taking hold deep inside those towers of boxes, if that's what happened.

<comment><USER19> A fire detection camera system could have picked out the heat plume in a short amount of time, and parked the robots as far away as possible from it. The article even comments on how cold the warehouse was, so any heat from fire in 'the hive' should have been easily detectable.

My bets are that it started somewhere totally different and unrelated to the robot system. Will be interesting to see why their system failed.

<comment><USER20> Could the robots bring buckets of water to dump on the fire? :)

I guess there's a lot of isocyanate foam insulation, once that gets going no sprinkler is going to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this what the learning curve is about?

Although we've heard of hover boards, and the rare steals bursting into flames it is odd that battery robots on rails weren't thought to be a fire risk.

That added to the fact that it wouldn't be simple or safe to get to a fire in the middle of the grid.

</comment><comment><USER21> For some reason I really felt for the engineers hearing about this. They've presumably lived and dreamed this for years. A bit like watching say a model railway go up in smoke: sure, no-one is dying, but what a _waste_ of best- efforts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much building fires are a source of pollution in urban areas.

Whilst commuting into London Liverpool St I'd quite often see huge plumes of thick black smoke from fires in tyre dumps, which must be a huge source of pollution even with all the diesel lorries and cabs.

</comment><comment><USER13> As an Ocado smartpass customer who is expecting an order today, this appears to just be manifesting itself as a few items out of stock.

Slightly disappointed though if I'm honest. This was the future. And now it's going to be looked down on by every semi critical person as a complete failure even though the actual picking process was working very well.

For those who don't know, Ocado was the only supplier in the UK that pretty much have a 1:1 correlation with what you order and what you get and haven't been sitting on a shelf for days. All the other supermarkets are picked from local stores by hand and are quite frankly terrible with 2-15 items (from experience) missing on every order and some things very near expiry dates.

Sainsbury's for example substituted me some bread which was out of stock with a fresh loaf expiring on the day it was delivered. The delivery turned up at 22:00...

<comment><USER22> Its not that night and day.

Ocado will for example substitute some things that I don't really need, and aren't really substitutable. but if they don't have the nappies you ordered? No substitute, nadda. And it isn't like you can wait a week for nappies if you're running out.

Sainsburys I've always found ok, even for our Christmas shop, there weren't any substitutes.

Where Ocado is better is search. If I search for 'juice' in Sainsburys I very quickly get 'quinoa with juice of jojoba'. Ocado gives me actual fruit juices.

<comment><USER23> In case you don't realize: If they substitute something and you don't want it, you can just ask the delivery person to take that item back. I've not done that often, but when I have they've never had an issue doing it.

(the real big thing for me is that I have a weekly shop set up, and if I forget to look on their site, they'll send me something based on a tolerably ok prediction of what I usually buy; it far from perfect, but good enough that I occasionally doesn't bother log in on purpose, because I know it will be close enough to what I need to be ok)

<comment><USER22> You can reject things you ordered too, like the £40 of toilet roll added to reserve the delivery...... So I've heard of course.

<comment><USER13> This does work. I know someone who has done it a couple of times. I suspect that there's an alarm somewhere that picks out regular abusers though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have some criticism for Ocado. They were a freaking successful business in a no brainer industry... and then they decided to make robots out of a sudden.

Not only their risky robot venture cost them a lot, but they ended up burning more by operating them than regular warehouses.

Why?

</comment><comment><USER25> Next time their plans should include some firefighting robots.

<comment><USER26> The article says they had a world class sprinkler system.

[https://ocadoengineering.com/ocado-engineering-awarded- prest...](https://ocadoengineering.com/ocado-engineering-awarded-prestigious- highly-protected-risk-award/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Was it arson?

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't really care about this story. I don't feel compelled to care as it is not like other warehouse fires, e.g. the Asos one where you wondered about people and their jobs. When it is just robots and when you know the customers will just place their orders with one of the other click and pick outfits, e.g. Waitrose, Sainsbury's or whatever there isn't that requirement to give a damn.

In retail there are thieves who don't care about stealing from big companies like how they might care about stealing from small businesses as there is an assumption everything is insured. I am sure Ocado have insurance and I don't care too much about the shareholders of the insurance companies as I am sure they have their losses 'insured'.

File under 'expensive mistake' rather than 'human tragedy'.

<comment><USER29> There are some holes in your argument. Most glaringly, this fire presents a risk to everyone who has to fight it, and anyone else in the area.

<comment><USER30> If, and I know in this case it wasn't, your no-people warehouse was far from homes and was on fire, wouldn't one option be to just let it burn itself out? No risk fighting that fire...

<comment><USER29> Then I'd agree, but when you think of how far burning cinders can be carried on the wind, it would have to be very very far away. There would also need to be some legal framework to allow firefighters to say, "No thanks, we're not risking our lives for your property, and we are 100% sure there isn't a kid or homeless guy who snuck in for the night."

[http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a- surprising-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising- amount-of-detail)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


General david petraeus's rules for living - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/11/04/general-david-petraeus-s-rules-for-living.html

<comment><USER2> While cheating on his wife was obviously a really terrible thing to do, it looks like he is in fact following his own advice. He screwed up, but now he is taking responsibility for it by openly admitting that he made a mistake and resigning. Some may not think that the resignation was necessary, but being the director of the CIA doesn't exactly leave you with much time to mend your broken marriage.

I thought that this list was mostly full of great advice, but as someone with substantial military experience I have to say, it's pretty goddamn easy for a 4-star general(or any field grade officer for that matter) to say "don't rely on your rank" when he's already got it. Most soldiers and younger officers, even ones in supervisory positions, are told to do what they are told without question. When I was in, I had some really brilliant, creative, young soldiers who eventually got out because they were tired of being treated like they were stupid even after years of establishing a good reputation. I'd be more inclined to agree with him if I had heard him say it when he was LT Petraeus.</comment>


Go to Apple.com and look at the name of the image in homepage - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Actually, Apple always names the main image of a page 'hero'. Like '<http://www.apple.com/ipad/home/images/hero1_20111004.png> on <http://www.apple.com/ipad/>.

He WAS a hero nonetheless. I, for one, would miss him gravely ;…(

</comment><comment><USER3> t_hero.png possibly means The Hero

</comment><comment><USER4> yesterday the iPhone photo had the *_hero.jpg name</comment>


Recommendation for Tech Blogging Platforms - <AUTHOR> I am a senior developer and I am interested in doing some tech blogging. I would like to get some feedback on what blogging platform would be ideal for tech blogging.
The topics could range from a variety of areas in computer science and mathematics including OS internals, security, programming, algorithms, statistics, calculus etc. My target is a technical audience interested in learning.
I would definitely like to spend more time on content and not have to deal with blogging infrastructure. I would like a platform where dealing with mathematical symbols and highlighting code is not tedious. Finally, I would like to reach out to a wide variety of folks including developers, ops, technical managers etc.
I am aware of github and medium but I am not sure if there are better platforms out there that will meet my needs. <comment><USER2> I use wordpress

> where dealing with mathematical symbols and highlighting code is not tedious

It will render LaTeX and will perform code syntax highlighting

> I would like to reach out to a wide variety of folks including developers, > ops, technical managers etc.

Wordpress gives you significant control over the look and feel of the blog without forcing you to write any code. Just choose a theme that will speak to your intended audience.

Lastly, my advice is to focus more on the content than the medium. If you have interesting things to say, people really won't care how your blog looks.</comment>


WhatsApp backups will no longer count towards the Google Drive storage quota - <AUTHOR> https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28000019/?category=5245251 <comment><AUTHOR> WhatsApp backups that haven't been updated in more than one year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage. To avoid the loss of any backups, manually back up your WhatsApp data before November 12, 2018.

</comment><comment><USER2> so that means they have figured out a way to monetize it?

<comment><USER3> yes - i don't think your chat backups are encrypted, so now google and facebook can read them</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where else do you get your news? - <AUTHOR>

Where besides HN, TechCrunch and PandoDaily do you get your news and discussion fix? <comment><USER2> _Where else do you get your news?_

Google News, with some custom sections to emphasize news about science and technology and about education, and the many friends I have on Facebook, who post interesting links regularly. I follow several blogs and other websites with regular news updates, especially about science. When I really want to research a subject in depth, I go straight to the academic libraries of my alma mater university across town (now often via its extensive subscriptions to databases that I can access from home with user authentication I gain through an affiliation with that university). For articles to look at for submission to Hacker News, I

1) make sure to have a science section in my Google News set-up, and additionally use Google News and Google Scholar keyword searches to check submissions by other users to HN,

2) follow the recommendations of certain key Facebook friends of mine who are either professional scientists, science writers, or science educators,

3) daily read Science-Based Medicine <http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/>

(I don't submit to HN from Science-Based Medicine every day, but I have found some GREAT articles there over the years)

4) daily read Why Evolution Is True

<http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/>

(which sometimes has personal posts by the site owner but also has EXCELLENT posts by him and by guest posters on cutting-edge science issues, some of which I post directly and some of which lead to professional journal articles I post directly)

5) daily read Skeptic Blog

<http://www.skepticblog.org/>

(which goes from very ordinary to EXCELLENT in quality in unpredictable fashion, and has several very thoughtful co-bloggers contributing)

6) daily read Respectful Insolence

<http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/>

(which has had some EXCELLENT posts about the methods of research over the years)

7) receive specific suggestions of research articles to read on human intelligence and human behavioral genetics either by request or by researcher nomination from the Minnesota Twin Family Study researchers with whom I discuss issues in a journal club during the school year

8) occasionally look at Pharyngula

<http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/>

(which is going through a dry spell right now while its author finishes writing a book that I am very eager to read, but which in the past has had some great posts on topics of much interest to HN participants)

and

9) generally prowl the Web and recommendations I see anywhere else in cyberspace for good articles on science. I test most articles I see submitted anywhere with the checklist from Peter Norvig (Google's director of research)'s article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation,"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

which is my all-time favorite link to share in discussions on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess I have been thinking lately about how homogeneous the news and opinion seem to be between HN, PandoDaily and TechCrunch and that I should probably try to diversify my sources. The problem is, if HN, TechCrunch, PandoDaily are CBS or NBC, then who is Fox News?

While I understand most of these are just aggregates of various people's contributions and really represent a vast number of sources, overall, the reports, opinions, and interpretations of news and events seems to cluster pretty closely within these communities.

Additionally, the owners of these news outlets are fairly close with one another which I think further contributes to covering similar type of topics from a very similar point of view. I am not suggesting there is control, manipulation or withholding of news stories, just that people who think alike keep together.

So, is there an alternate tech community out there that interprets the same events discussed here in a completely different light? I know there are individuals here who do, but what about an entire community?

</comment><comment><USER3> There is this website made by a HN user that kind of gives you a lot of sites where you can get news from: <http://skimfeed.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Besides HN I read the somethingawful.com forums and a few RSS feeds of mainly blogs related to web design. I've had to remove the major tech blogs from my reader (Engadget, Gizmodo, etc) because there's no way I can keep up with the number of posts.

<comment><USER5> I think the SomethingAwful forums have become vastly underrated these days. I am confident that if there is something I need to know I can usually dig up a thread and an expert to help me out from technology to rare synthetic hallucinogens.

<comment><USER4> Sure there's better places on the net for finding specific information, I follow threads about subjects I'm interested in which tends to keep me in the loop without too much effort or information overload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somebody posted a news aggregator on here a few months back that I keep an eye on...

<http://hackurls.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Prismatic is what I use. It's fairly good; I hope they come up with an iPad app though. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> On-line, mostly The Register. In print, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://arstechnica.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> www.slashdot.org

</comment><comment><USER10> techmeme.com</comment>


Why I stopped using DuckDuckGo - <AUTHOR> http://murtali.com/stopped-using-duckduckgo/

<comment><USER2> One of the convenient things about DDG is that if your search results aren't to your liking, it's just a few additional keystrokes to pipe your query into another search engine via bang syntax: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)

I have also found DDG to be not as good for a lot of software/library/syntax related searches, and now I usually append "!g" to those queries. But those are maybe ~20-30% of my total search volume, so it's worth it to me.

I think it is fair to say that making DDG your primary search engine _today_ involves some compromise of overall search quality, but that's the price of supporting an evolving product.

</comment><comment><USER3> One gentle problem with DDG is that results tend to be heavily US centric. I'd like some way to filter those, even if it's not perfect.</comment>


Dell launched sweeping update of its Latitude, Precision business laptop lines - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/dell-launched-sweeping-update-of-its-latitude-precision-business-laptop-lines/ <comment><USER2> They say the 7x10 have moved to soldered ram. Does that mean the rest and the XPS still have user upgradable parts?</comment>


Generate 512-bit prime numbers in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://liveweave.com/jE9cQl

<comment><AUTHOR> The algorithm uses non-deterministic Miller–Rabin primality test. It generates (probable) primes with very high degree of certainty, so practically it should never generate a non-prime.

It uses the standard browser _crypto.getRandomValues()_ function.

Works faster in Chrome.</comment>