Opera Neon, new concept browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2017/01/opera-neon-concept-browser/ <comment><USER2> Looks gorgeous and I am just installing the macOS version.

Does anyone know if they plan a Linux version too?</comment>


Handwriting synthesis with recurrent neural networks: Browser demo in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://seanvasquez.com/handwriting-generation/ <comment><AUTHOR> GitHub link (while the TF implementation was done in 2018, the browser demo seems to have been created this year in 2020)

[https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting- synthesis](https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting-synthesis)</comment>


Now this really is 'New Money' - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bitcorps-blog/on-tokens-and-crowdsales-309e49d9530d#.oiqy8m3kg <comment><USER2> Daniel, the writer, is the founder of a great service that streams from any computer for pennies (paid in bitcoin)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this should be seen as wealth creation. A novel thing in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER4> crowdsales in crypto land!!</comment>


Avoid DRY for Product Development - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/11/avoid-dry-for-product-development.html

<comment><USER2> I can't disagree with that nonsense enough. When he refers to polish, he is referring to code which he has already thought out which will eventually not be repetitive, so applying DRY is easily dismissed as not applicable in that instance. Applying DRY never usually means that you will create branches, etc. You do that if you are writing modular code. The whole point in DRY is that you do not repeat yourself. Good OO DRY code never commonly suffers the need to do what he is describing. Writing DRY code is actually faster than copying and pasting whole chunks but only if you have a very good understanding of the code. A good reason I can see to not use DRY techniques is if you do not have the skill level required to write DRY code because you are unfamiliar with an included library of classes for instance.

As far as scrubs, he's referring to someone as doing a job which he thinks he is above when it would benefit his project if there where many eyes on the same thing instead. If he understood his libs and tools well enough, he wouldn't need a "Scrub." What use would they be anyway if they are new to the language? How are they going to spot that cross site scripting hole you've copied and pasted five times everywhere? Most people doing the job which he describes make a poor effort because it is well known that developers who are not adding new features are largely disinterested in their work.

My point is that if you learn properly how to write DRY code, you avoid large fixes that involve searching through the entire code for particular strings. If you use OO DRY techniques, your fixes are in one place and are made quickly. There is nothing slow about writing DRY code and very few real disadvantages (None of which he has pointed out.) So if you learn to write DRY code properly you should see your development time slashed by sometimes by as much as three quarters. You will also have considerably less code to maintain.

It's nothing personal. My experience tells me that he is yet to use DRY techniques correctly and if he needs a "Scrub," to tighten up the code, it is almost always faster to just re-write the entire project using DRY techniques instead. If you write code and then try to make it DRY, you have completely misunderstood the point of DRY.

<comment><USER3> I agree the article isn't written well, but I don't think your response is much better. As with all things in software engineering, DRY is a principle that needs to be applied judiciously. I believe the OA is referring in part to the common situation where some code can be "DRY"ed by replacing two methods with a single parameterized method. These can be quite nuanced decisions to make in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm all for going just what needs to be done, but I think you are not giving good advice about "hiring scrubs". I worked for a successful company that had a younger less experienced developer write the original code. But he was not a "scrub". His code could have easily have been written by another developer with a few more years experience. Yes, he made some rookie mistakes in the code, but it worked and was close enough to keep the company going.

However, you often get what you pay for, and that goes for both hiring inexperienced developers and offshore/contracted development.

If you do hire young/inexperienced, make sure they have a mentor that enforces good practices or have code review/are pairing and that these developers seem to be learning good practices.

There is a difference between bad and "good enough".

<comment><USER5> I got a job being that "scrub" while under the direction of the lead developer, very helpful. I was in high school so they paid me nearly minimum wage, but I landed a salaried gig my junior year in HS. I gained the experience needed to provide value to other companies, while subsidizing the cost of my intern by working - a win win IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. I think the company that hired you was very smart. I'm going to write more on this, but the central theme will be about how companies should focus on nurturing and providing opportunities to grow better talent rather than waiting for it arrive in a nice package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Going in with this attitude is not good at all. I'd say don't become obsessed with DRY, because in the beginning it often won't be clear when it's appropriate to "fork" portions of the code versus adding a branch or two to the core logic. But if you go in with the idea that copy/pasta is the way to write code then you'll have important logic spread across dozens of places and it will become a nightmare to make what should be a simple change.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Balance is key here. A bit of DRY to keep things tidy and a bit of copy/paste to get things moving and working as quick as possible.

The company I work for has been very much anti-DRY. They copy and paste pretty much everything and have quickly brought a working product to the table. Funnily enough the code base is HUGE. Me, however, new to the company and fresh out of University have been fighting the good fight and trying to introduce DRY. However this slows down development as I refactor, and can sometimes break existing stuff while merging two inconsistent branches.

So I have learnt to pick my battles. There is a balance. Don't fix what ain't broke and if copy/paste will get things moving along, do not hesitate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a cost benefit tradeoff, but I still think far, far more people routinely underestimate the costs and overestimate the benefits than the other way around. In all the major systems I've worked on in the past five or six years, I've _always_ gotten serious leverage making sure I'm working DRY, and thus able to do more with less, and in particular these past three years have A: involved me doing a project where if I had adopted this mindset it would have failed in the worst way possible, initial modest success followed by endless soul-sucking failure brought on by code debt brought on by DRY violations, and B: having the worst part of my day-to-day coding (and, correspondingly, the most expensive part for my employer) being the part where I have to deal with a large mass of non-DRY code. In fact my current project is basically replacing a clusterfuck brought on by a system that adopted the recommended approach quite extensively.

In my admittedly limited experience, non-DRY code still has huge costs that are easy to gloss over at first and a benefit curve that curves down way faster than anyone would like to admit. In many cases people can't even see how fast the curve is trending down because they've never even _seen_ a properly-done product.... and I don't even mean "a product done to the pitch of academic perfection", I just mean a decently done product that isn't perfect, but we still put significant time into staying DRY and fixing DRY violations.

YMMV, of course. I suppose ultimately people following this advice has certainly advanced my career, as I clean up behind them...

</comment><comment><USER9> Damn... I had a boss that wrote significant parts of a product and we could always tell that he wrote part of it because he'd repeat a 30-line block of code 7 times, rather than writing a subroutine.

There are cases where we all violate the DRY principle... Sometimes it makes sense to subroutinize something the fourth or fifth time rather than the second time. But overall, DRY is good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think DRY is very good, and I feel like many people missed the point of what I wrote.

DRY is very engineering centric which works very well for systems (i.e. non visual things like MySQL or node.js).</comment></comment>


Amazon drivers are hanging smartphones in trees to get more work - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/amazon-drivers-are-hanging-smartphones-in-trees-to-get-more-work <comment><USER2> I used to work at Uber and we would see similar behavior from drivers at airports. There would be a geofence around the parking lots where drivers had to wait before they could be sent a ride. However, the app would still send a ride to the closest available driver, so they would all lean their phones against the gate to get as close to the edge of the geofence as possible.

Ultimately, Uber implemented a FIFO queue at these lots, meaning a driver was added to a waiting list as soon as they entered the lot, thus removing the need for this behavior anymore.

<comment><USER3> Most every taxi firm in the uk has a piece of plastic water pipe and a bunch of ping-pong balls. As each driver comes back they take their number from the basket and drop it into the far end of the tube. The next call that comes in, and the despatcher takes the ball out the "near" end.

It is an almost foolproof FIFO pipe (literally), simplemfor everyone to understand and very cheap to run.

<comment><USER4> At German train station the taxis form a line. You are expected to take the first car in the line. If you try to take another one most drivers will tell you to go to the first car.

<comment><USER5> Same here (UK) the only exception to jumping their taxi queue is if you need a specific vehicle further back in line (large, wheelchair friendly, etc)

<comment><USER6> Or if they don't want to carry you because you need to "cross the river" or get out of Zone 1.

Does not happen nearly as often since Uber is squeezing them though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the amazon brain actually think that the person standing 10/20/50 feet closer is the better person for the job? My first impression was that these phones were being run by people blocks/miles away, but they are actually only a few feet closer.

>> That means a phone in a tree outside Whole Foods' door would get the delivery offer even before drivers sitting in their cars just a block away.

That seems ridiculous. Plus or minus what, a minute? There has to be a better way to select drivers.

<comment><USER8> The requirements were surely to give preference to closer delivery people, and the easiest code to write will simply order delivery people by distance.

The simplest solution is therefore that, yes, someone 10 feet away will get it before someone 20 feet away.

The developers would have to go out of their way to add a buffer zone, e.g. find the closest person, add 1,000 feet, find everyone within that range, then select randomly. Or create a "local zone" distance range and a queue. Or other options -- once you try to figure out "what's fair" it gets really complicated.

That extra code is only going to get written if it has to.

So there's nothing ridiculous about it at all. In fact it's the simplest, most expected solution.

Now that it's news, however, Amazon might actually come up with more sophisticated requirements.

<comment><USER9> This sort of "unintended consequence of over precision" has happened a few times... I remember a while back a dating app (I think?) was returning the distance between the two people with a ridiculous amount of precision, which allowed people to triangulate where someone was with three phones

<comment><USER10> Here's an article about how Tinder fixed it: [https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/09/how-tinder-keeps-your- lo...](https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/09/how-tinder-keeps-your-location-a- bit-private/)

<comment><USER9> Oh man, I forgot they originally sent the actual location. I still can't believe how many developers think you can trust the client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's just amazingly interesting to see our own societal evolution in action, rapidly spurred on by technology.

A company or event or technology changes something, and an evolutionary/behavioral niche newly forms to take advantage of it. People are smart and infinitely adaptable...

<comment><USER12> > our own societal evolution

I'm not sure I'd call it "evolution" so much as a race to the bottom. The drivers in this article are now forced to pay an intermediary in order to secure work that was previously available for free. It's basically a form of scalping.

This is why labor laws are important and why classifying employees as contractors can be so detrimental.

<comment><USER13> However these are the essence of contacted work. A job is put up and you choose to take it. There is nothing being forced upon anyone. I know people who drive for Uber, no one is forcing them too. They have their stories of taxi drivers who tripled or quadrupled their income by switching.

Using California's onerous law that has caused so much trouble in this area, did you know that taxi services are not affected unless the city or county regulation body says so? isn't that interesting? they typically are in rental agreements with cars and medallions. However the government has a vested interest in medallions and these companies donate to local politicians all the time. Their workers are getting the shaft but it does not make news because it does not involve an internet company with billions.

The situations I do not like were stories surrounding instacart shoppers being able to cancel tips after delivery, now that is fraud and the company should be liable. I believe uber eats did something similar. T

<comment><USER14> > There is nothing being forced upon anyone.

This is leaving out the lack of the normal jobs which would be created if the employer couldn't avoid it this way. People are desperate enough to take gig economy jobs because there's been a steady erosion of other options.

<comment><USER15> I don't think those jobs losses were caused by the gig economy, though. Rather the gig economy arose out of the glut of labor available.

It's an important distinction to make. Although Uber et co may be predatory on underutilized workers, I don't think banning them is going to bring back the better jobs that used to exist.

The best way to make Uber pay better would be to have compelling other options for these workers; easier said than done though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is pretty easy to spoof GPS locations, at least in Android, in a way that is undectable to apps using location services. Might be a better option for these drivers?

<comment><USER17> That might require a level of technological sophistication that a lot of drivers don't have.

<comment><USER18> Seems like a business opportunity for someone to sell them that service (sell them an app, or personally configure their phones, or both).

<comment><USER19> "Business model: Uber, but for Uber"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree, it seems they saw a bunch of phones hanging in a tree, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt it is an existent phenomenon, but would also question the extent. It's interesting because the case here is that the gig worker wants to behave like an employee, basically polling the system and taking a job without evaluating it is akin to getting assigned it. It feels like the flip side of what you normally see.

Now the problem here is the why, that is necessity, desperation. And the who, which is that it seems some parties might be predating here, snapping up the gigs and basically scalping/arbitraging them.

The part I grapple with is that it's certainly unfair for companies to utilize gig workers and expect employees. Is it just as wrong for a company to stand by and watch their gig workers sort of organize themselves into employees?

<comment><USER21> Did you mean for this to be a reply to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343643)?

<comment><USER20> Ah apologies, yes I did. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't Amazon just adjust its algorithm to punish delays in delivery? Penalize drivers who take longer to get there than they should if they were truly nearby?

<comment><USER23> Apparently they are putting the phones in a location that is impossible to be physically closer to in order to get the job first -- park car, walk over to the tree to sync your phone then wait in your car for the next job offer.

The trick -- per a previous job -- is to figure out where _the computer_ thinks the address is (on the street, in the middle of the parking lot, &etc...) and get your location as close as you can to that to get an edge over the competition.

<comment><USER24> Why are drivers willing to allow this and not just walking over and destroying these phones? I don't understand the benefit of getting more deliveries but at the cost of a significant percentage of the payment.

<comment><USER25> Because destroying other people's phones is a crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Amazon drivers seem to be far less careful in their deliveries as well. In the past, deliveries were delivered to my porch. Then the started showing up on my drive. Yesterday my wife found a book delivery under a shrub next to the curb.

</comment><comment><USER27> Simple Solution: Treat all phones within X distance of the store as being the same distance away. If the typical parking lot is 1/4 mile away, that's the minimum distance to use.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is no different from traders laying down their own cables and private communications infrastructure to get a millisecond advantage on trades on the DOW.

<comment><USER29> It is quite different. They are Amazon's own fleet of workers, competing to get work assigned to them by Amazon.

<comment><USER28> Not employed by Amazon since they are "gig" workers , pretty sure there are similar hacks used by Uber/Lyft drivers to get the best paying rides.

<comment><USER29> Gig workers are still workers. This whole ridiculousness would be avoided if they just paid them like the employees they should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I always wonder in these kinds of articles how many people are doing this. The problem is that it is so sensationalized, that it could be that there are 10 people doing this, and it's not really a big deal. Or it could be that 50% of the people doing this work, do this. For example, the article says that it reviewed photos and videos of phones near Whole Foods and Amazon delivery stations. Okay, so how many phones did they find? How many people do they have personal knowledge doing this?

I've noticed that a lot of news articles tend to take a few examples of something outrageous, but never say anything about how widespread the practice is. I find it hard to be outraged or care unless there is some quantification of the problem. In any system, people will find a way to cheat.

Amazon is aware and maybe they are working on a way to fix this, but it's not clear Amazon has had much time to figure out what to do. Even if you think Amazon is evil and doesn't care, it takes time to figure out how to defeat this. Maybe they won't care, but at least give them some time to respond.

<comment><USER31> > _I 've noticed that a lot of news articles tend to take a few examples of > something outrageous, but never say anything about how widespread the > practice is._

That's entirely on purpose. Most of such "outrageous" things, including some hot political topics, wouldn't look nearly as outrageous if it were compared against the baseline. So necessary information is not included. Actually informing people "weakens the story".

<comment><USER32> Don't underestimate the role of laziness. It's much less work to just find a localized instance of something, and then report it as a phenomenon vs. doing the actual in-the-weeds journalism in order to get a widespread view of the topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't help but think of the stories from before stock market colocation was a thing. Nowadays the stock exchanges have a fair setup where people can put their machines in the same data center as stock exchange. And everyone gets to connect with an equal length wire. But before this modern solution, it was a free for all with companies trying various tricks to rent space as close as possible.

<comment><USER34> Isn't this sort of still the case in HFT, where some firms try building e.g. their own microwave radio tower networks to beat others by a few milliseconds?

<comment><USER35> Yes - between Chicago and NYC.

<comment><USER36> I believe there is one between London and Frankfurt as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Instead of paying their drivers a fair wage regardless of how much they deliver, they're letting them fight amongst themselves while they laugh all the way to the bank.

And the drivers actually seem to want this, knowing full well the market is oversaturated. If Amazon were to pay drivers a fixed amount, they'd probably end up with much less drivers.

</comment><comment><USER38> Unidentified person or entity?

Just talk to the guy with a baseball bat hanging out in the vicinity to thwart all the "yay free phones!" folks.

<comment><USER31> It's enough that they wrote this piece, it may very well kill this system - the trick gets less profitable for drivers as more of them participate.

That, and being in the news will probably spur companies to combat this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have a hard time believing this story, not because the technological explination doesn't make sense but because it is my understanding that there is no shortage of work for Amazon delivery drivers.

I have read several stories about Amazon contract drivers being worked half to death, no breaks, long days and constant pressure to deliver more. Several of these stories have been posted in HN. (Just Google "Ycombinator Amazon drivers overworked").

It is possible that the Whole Foods delivery contracts are more lucrative but to imply that due to the recession drivers are desperate to get work doesn't jive.

<comment><USER40> The articles I'm reading from that Google search refer to drivers who are FTEs or have set contracts (eg 10-hour shifts with quotas).

By contrast, this article is talking about the just-in-time, on-the-fly gig- work market, like lyft and uber's labor markets. This is pretty clear from the fact that it's not really possible for an employer to overwork a gig worker without the gig worker's enthusiastic consent, since they explicitly choose each marginal contract they do (in fact, the theme of gig worker complaints in this area is usually against the restrictions placed on consecutive hours worked).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> We really are living in a William Gibson novel, aren't we?

<comment><USER42> Or Stephenson;

> You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical > operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the > line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers > might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway, > you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can > move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the > uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of > innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his > shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or > 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.

<comment><USER43> That's exactly what I was thinking about. Snowcrash was a ridiculous (but thoroughly enjoyable) novel, but it feels less and less so every year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _One reason Flex contractors do this is to get around the requirements for being a driver, such as having a valid license or being authorized to work in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter. In such cases, someone who meets the requirements downloads the Flex app and is offered a route earning $18 an hour. He or she accepts the route and then pays someone else $10 an hour to do it, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter._

[https://fourhourworkweek.com/](https://fourhourworkweek.com/)

<comment><USER45> Delivery gig arbitrage. Now how long before the cash flow from such operations is securitized and sold off? </sarcasm>

<comment><USER46> Amazon could do this under an innocuously-named subsidiary to reduce their effective hourly pay costs.

<comment><USER44> It might be a valid way around "sticky wages."

 _If one looks at the whole economy, some prices might be very flexible and others rigid. This will lead to the aggregate price level (which we can think of as an average of the individual prices) becoming "sluggish" or "sticky" in the sense that it does not respond to macroeconomic shocks as much as it would if all prices were flexible. The same idea can apply to nominal wages._

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

If Amazon were to open a subsidiary for lower priced delivery services it might be able to maintain its workforce branding and add lower rungs to the wage ladder for the purpose of labor supply development. It might be politically inconvenient for a wealthy company like Amazon to have an acknowledged wage tiering system even if it makes sense on different levels. For example, Amazon probably cannot publicly hire people without workforce documentation--an unacknowledged arms-length subsidiary would be able to provide this service.

<comment><USER46> This is sort of like taxi medallions. Amazon could have people _pay_ to become authorized drivers, and then the medallion holders could rent them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Walk up to the phones and check to see if you can see any software running?

Wouldn't it be a prime target for cell phone theft?

<comment><USER40> Per the article, one person stands nearby

<comment><USER47> Then wouldn't they keep the phone in their pocket?

<comment><USER40> Yea that's a good question: a pocket wouldn't work, but I wonder why they couldn't just stand next to the store with a bag full of phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

</comment><comment><USER49> This is why humans > AI.

The best laid plans of algorithms and men!

</comment><comment><USER50> I thought I saw an app that would spoof a false location for a mobile device. That app would be more practical.

</comment><comment><USER51> Sounds like the market is just self-optimising in a way? Obviously to the detriment of those left behind.

<comment><USER40> It would be self-optimizing if they were just waiting in Whole Foods parking lots, not hanging phones in trees. It's a case of optimizing for the metric, not the objective, by exploiting the divergence between the two. This is generally pretty distinct from a market self-optimizing.

The objective is "closest driver", the metric is "closest phone that connects with Amazon's servers", and the divergence is exploited by this multi-phone syncing/dispatch setup. (In this case, the divergence is unavoidable, short of unspoofable, unremovable microchipping of anyone who wants to pick up gig work)

Though it seems like a pretty easy fix: just lower the granularity of the location query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Come on. .. someone who can do this can prolly get a better job in IT

<comment><USER53> Apparently they are using some third party app to accept orders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Amazon knows about it," the driver said, "but does nothing."

But why should they as long as from Amazon's perspective, the system is working?

<comment><USER55> Efficiency.

If a driver has to spend 4 minutes of every hour doing stupid antics to get an order, and can earn $15/hour doing antics+delivering, then effectively $1/hour is going to pay for stupid antics, from Amazon's perspective.

Amazon would like to switch those 4 minutes from "doing stupid antics" to "doing deliveries" so that they can pay the same $15/hour but get a full hour of real work instead of only 56 minutes.

<comment><USER55> More concretely: Amazon's drivers (arguendo) don't care what they're getting paid $15/hour to do. If Amazon removes the incentive for antics, then it can pay 14/15 the per-delivery fee, and each driver can do 15/14 the deliveries and still make $15/hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This feels more like practical magic/cargo culting than reality.

I've heard that if you say "bezos bezos bezos" while spinning around counter clockwise in front of an amazon locker your delivery tips will go up 5%

<comment><USER57> It seems that Amazon selects the closest driver. So they are hanging those phones in the closest tree to the warehouse, while the driver is not there.

Doesn't seem like a cargo cult.

<comment><USER39> >>>"while the driver is not there"

How many deliveries is a cell phone worth? I can't imagine a driver would leave a phone for anyone to take just to make 10 bucks or less.

<comment><USER58> The article suggests one person runs the set of phones, and sells their service to drivers. So I'd imagine that person has tuned the number of phones to be profitable. You can get older used cell phones for dirt cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It seems obviously fabricated that a pile of phones hang from a tree and not one person turns them off, smashes them, or takes them.

<comment><USER60> The drivers are sitting 10 feet away, they're not just abandoning them.

<comment><USER61> The article described drivers as walking up and syncing to them to get a job, so they're not always sitting by the phones.

<comment><USER40> Seems like a trivial extension to the story that one person is sitting nearby keeping an eye on the phone. The advantage still holds, since all the other drivers in the group can spread out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> > to get a split-second jump on competing drivers.

Or it uses GPS and sees they are closer rather than the impossible.

I get reporters believe this fantastical stuff because they are not in IT and are somewhat more the Arts realm.

But they need a way to fix this, like a wiki. Or not. I guess stupid people believe it and click.

The core of the story is true somewhat, you do miss out on the idea leaving phones in strange places fools the GPS and you can use this to an advantage. Or why not just GPS spoof. Or is it using the wireless, so why not use a repeater?</comment>


Ask HN: Firebase as static web host or GoDaddy with WordPress? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It depends on a task. IMHO, "WPEngine with Wordpress" - is better choice or "Firebase with cloud functions".

</comment><comment><USER3> How long is a piece of string?

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as one wants it to be.</comment></comment>


How to Validate an Idea on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://blog.remoteworknewsletter.com/2014/10/15/how-to-valdiate-an-idea-on-hacker-news/

<comment><USER2> Misleading title - this isn't about how to validate an idea on HN, it's a single story about how one idea hot the front page on HN and lots of people signed up.

There's a difference.

It's an interesting story, it's an interesting project, but the title is definitely wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> mh, sorry for misleading you. not my intention. but i think my story is exactly about how to validate an idea on HN. I wrote about every step I did and couldn't have been more transparent about it. I learned quite a lot from similar articles on HN from other people... having said that, I'm happy to hear suggestions for a more fitting title, and have nothing against a mod changing it

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe a mod can change it to "How I validated an Idea on Hacker News"?

<comment><USER2> You can change it - hit the "Edit" link.

And it's not about validating an idea - I think that's where we have a mismatch in expectation. You didn't validate it, you submitted it, and it went well. There's a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, maybe there is a mismatch about what we think validation means. I think it means looking for indicators that you are not the only one liking your idea. When you offer a product, one indicator (the most obvious actually) would be, if people buy it. For an email list, the most obvious indicator if other people like your idea is, if they are willing to give you their email address. From all the visitors to my site, 25 percent thought the idea was good enough to enter their email address. And everybody who runs a newsletter can tell you how hard it is to get people to enter their email. To me this is validation. Validation that people find value in the idea...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley enables online slave markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415204).</comment>


FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FBI_SURVEILLANCE_FLIGHTS <comment><AUTHOR> > The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it > uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating > new cover companies to shield the government's involvement, and could > endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions.

</comment><comment><USER2> This link isn't working for me, but this appears to be the same story:

[http://www.voanews.com/content/fbi-behind-mysterious- surveil...](http://www.voanews.com/content/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance- aircraft-over-us-cities/2804456.html)</comment>


The Yang Gang and Its Bots - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bellmar/the-yang-gang-and-its-bots-493dbd482f4b <comment><USER2> The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he might be better than others, although I don't know how good their fake follower detection works.

I have been following this campaign since a few months, and I can attest that it has pulled in a large number of voters who were not politically inclined, the members are very passionate, and also that Yang Gang is quite cliquey and live in an echo chamber. Given those facts, I won't be surprised if those accounts were mostly real people.

Full disclosure: I like Yang.

<comment><USER3> > The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them > being closely connected and cliquey.

Multiple accounts with the same name, image, and profile, coupled with radical changes in the types of content posted, and also with superhuman (clearly automated) posting rates? What more evidence do you need?

<comment><USER2> I didn't say there weren't any bots. But the article portrays Yang's followers as somehow being more full of bots than others. There is no evidence for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting post if you also follow the subreddit for Yang[0].

There are a lot of people there that created Twitter accounts just to follow Yang and participate in those polls about who is more popular. So when the author mentions the creation of new accounts when Yang started, it actually doesn't surprise me. The campaign is very technocentric after all. Also, these people (a lot of them "true believers" types) do post A LOT on Twitter and get involved in any mention of Yang (go check any YouTube video about Yang). You have to "yang" everyone that you can. It is a really weird community to be honest. But one where they are actively telling one another to create social media accounts to promote Yang. What this post really tells me is that it is hard to distinguish real people from bots. Here's a post even about YouTube comments[1].

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/esycun/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/esycun/the_daily_show_reposted_their_getting_to_know/)

<comment><USER5> I had no position on Yang.

After a couple very negative experiences with the Yang Gang, where anything less than instant adulation must mean you're anti-Yang, I'm anti-Yang.

<comment><USER6> That's unfortunate. Yang himself isn't very dogmatic / ideological. But his supporters are very passionate about his candidacy. So i can see your bad experiences happening. I support Yang; not sure if i would call myself Yang Gang...

For me personally, Yang is the first political candidate who sees and reasons about the world in a similar way to myself. He's a systems thinker. Everything in society is connected and to correctly address issues you have to understand how one component will influence another. That is very exciting for me!

He has a lot of policies, i don't agree with all of them but i'm a lot more aligned with him than any other candidate. Left or right.

<comment><USER7> I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang. Yang is still my 2nd though, because unlike Yang Gang folks, I don't base my support on the followers of a candidate cause that's just lunacy. I've chimed in on a few to set the record

A. we're not all that bad.

B. You can't blame us for what gets banned by mods of a reddit when they use bots to do so.

C. Many of us would support Yang if he were on top or higher than Bernie in polls. But we want a chance at winning, and Bernie has a strong grassroots.

D. Whether the online real/fake people on reddit/twitter are 'toxic' in your opinion doesn't even matter isn't relative because THEY aren't Bernie. They could even be bots or trolls. Listen to the candidate and make your decision from that, whether they're a good or bad person.

<comment><USER8> >I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang

Well, Bernie's subreddit literally bans every single person who makes a post containing the word "Yang". They even remove him from the poll results. Certainly doesn't give any socialist dictatorship vibes (that, and his support of Venezuela).

<comment><USER4> Come on. People will get upset at you for speaking like this on the Yang subreddit, expect the same here. It doesn't matter if another group is more toxic or not. It isn't a competition about who can be more toxic. We say "Humanity First". If you really do support Yang, stand by that. You're talking to another human and you're also representing Yang. Be kind. We're running a campaign about unification, so expect to be called out if you're causing division.

<comment><USER8> I'm not American so I don't really support any candidate. I have my own preferences, and neither is Yang my preferred candidate, nor is Bernie my most disliked candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a lot of narrative overlaid on the data. The author even says this about Democratic politician accounts:

> All of them had bot activity of some kind. Given enough time to collect the > data, bot networks would eventually appear for all of them.

I think the analysis could be very interesting but they're injecting too much personal spin on the motivations of everyone involved. Why is the teenager who follows the Yang bots and MAGA bots "sad"? Is there a corollary teenager following Democrat bots? Are they sad too?

I think it would be interesting to study bots and how they intersect with media and politics in a less biased manner.

<comment><USER10> > Why is the teenager who follows the Yang bots and MAGA bots "sad"? Is there > a corollary teenager following Democrat bots? Are they sad too?

Which party do you think Yang is running for?

Anyway, the article was clearly describing as "sad" that the teenager is trying to build an online following but his "following" is just bots using him to look less like bots.

<comment><USER4> One of Yang's pitches is that he is pulling from the MAGA group. Just scroll down the subreddit [0] and you'll see tons of posts about MAGA/Republicans switching sides for Yang. If anything I'd __expect__ a real person to be more likely to be connected to both MAGA and Yang (compared to the average democratic voter). But that also makes it difficult to tell real people from bots, which is what this story is really about.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/)

<comment><USER11> Obviously a dark horse Democratic candidate would claim MAGA support, that's a tactic to present as "electable".

<comment><USER12> Sure but in this case it's his adherents who are claiming to be right leaning and former MAGA supporters.

It doesn't look good to Democrats to see memes for Yang or back to Trump so I cannot be cynical here.

edit: Because it's a bad look with Democrats to have a lot of right leaning support I take the MAGA supporters at their word. Particularly because I'm a Yang supporter and became politically disengaged after supporting Bush in my first election cycle.

<comment><USER4> Just an FYI, a lot of people that voted Trump in 2016 were big Bernie supporters. I personally know quite a few people that made this switch. Is it a surprise that the same thing is happening again?

<comment><USER12> A lot of people who voted for Trump are Bernie supporters now. It isn't surprising that people who are anti-establishment would be for Bernie. I am objecting to the casual dismissal by loneappde. It is meaningful that a large part of the population, left and right leaning, is so anti-establishment and flippant dismissal will become dangerous in another cycle or two.

Unfortunately I think I'm being mis-read and unfortunately I am blind to why. ...it happens

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how many people are more of the author's mistaken bots, like Mike mentioned in the article?

If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd have a lot of bot like behavior. Activities the author describes as bot-like to me seem like activities a noob on twitter would engage in.

Twitter itself does a lot to self-create these node clusters, with a circle jerk of recommended followers based on your activity. If you have a bunch of twitter noobs, all liking and retweeting Yang and his surrogates, they will inevitably get clustered together via twitter's own algorithms.

I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform to promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

I say this as someone who converted an old twitter account from 2011 I used when I was a teenager for spam purposes, to become a Yang account. I'm sure I'm considered a bot by the author's software.

<comment><USER4> > If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd > have a lot of bot like behavior.

To add to this, that yang subreddit actively encourages people to create Twitter accounts (if you don't already have one) to participate. It is definitely an agenda that is pushed. Lots of new Twitter accounts that are pro Yang is not surprising if you visit the subreddit. It also shouldn't be surprising that these accounts would be associated with MAGA bots and supporters. After all, Andrew is targeting the same demographic as Trump. There's several posts a day on the yang subreddit about ex-Trump supporters turning.

All of this makes me think that it is very hard to distinguish bots from real people who are excited by the campaign.

So I fully agree with this

> I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would > like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform > to promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

<comment><USER14> > To add to this, that yang subreddit actively encourages people to create > Twitter accounts (if you don't already have one) to participate.

Not only that, Yang ran a couple of UBI-themed contests offering a chance to win money for following and retweeting him. What better use is there for acquiring an army of fake accounts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's terrifying how cheap and easy it is to masquerade as hundreds of thousands to millions of people on social media using automation, and how little social media companies are doing to stop it.

Regardless of the numbers, the stress it's placing on discourse is devastating, and there seem to be few serious, market-driven solutions to this problem.

The growth-at-all-costs mentality has put companies like Twitter in a position where they must choose between profits and responsible community development and moderation. It's clear which path they've chosen.

<comment><USER16> It's also terrifying that headlines and articles can be taken as valid. Smear articles and misleading information are troubling as well in the upcoming years.

<comment><USER17> Oh, the irony of an account created specifically to defend Yang in the discussion about bots created to defend Yang.

If you're truly looking to support him this probably isn't a good way to help his case.

<comment><USER9> An anonymous account is not the same thing as a bot. As acrimonious as the current state of politics is, I wouldn't blame anyone for using a pseudonym online to voice their opinion.

<comment><USER17> Touche. But you'll have to pardon me for being distrustful of anyone that walks in just to defend a politician of any kind (without hard proof, anyway).

<comment><USER18> This is understandable, but nonetheless HN guidelines ask that you suspend that distrust. Every legit account starts with a first comment, and it's natural that a person's first comment would be on a topic they feel strongly about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Twitter in 2020 seems to be a seething mass of agenda driven automation. I am a Tulsi Gabbard for president supporter and am aware that 'like' counts on pro Gabbard posts appear to be regularly culled, presumably by Twitter themselves. Gabbard's team have complained loudly about this on Twitter (@CullenYossarian for example, Gabbard's press assistant). I recently started reusing Twitter, partially to explore this election cycle and am struck by the number of dissenting tweets appended to pro Gabbard posts (Russian asset etc etc) from obviously recently created accounts with very low 'followers'. (These posters almost never create an original post but retweet other posts 'as themselves' on their main account). If you challenge a comment, asking for proof that Gabbard is a Russian asset for example, the effect is similar to responding to a robocall, with the account suddenly being manned by a human for a few hours. There is typically a hail of abuse and denegration of the candidate, then the poster falls silent again, presumably going off duty. Regardless of who you are rooting for in the election I find this alarming. It is very difficult to know how to go about investigating these networks and who the actors are.

</comment><comment><USER20> The fact that Yang's campaign is struggling should throw cold water on the notion that this kind of thing poisons the political process.

It remains to be proven whether an armada of Twitter bots can change anyone's mind about a candidate. In the absence of evidence, the claim should be rejected and we should look for simpler explanations for political ills.

The more likely explanation, and the one loathed by those who still can't accept that the US elected the current president, is that things like Twitter bots and fake Facebook ads are just sideshows.

<comment><USER21> It seems like a pretty strange null hypothesis that people are entirely unaffected by the social media they are exposed to. The fact that using Twitter bots hasn't caused one candidate to become the most popular doesn't seem like sufficient evidence. Perhaps he would be even less popular without the Twitter bots. And perhaps many of the other candidates are doing the same thing, but better or at a larger scale.

<comment><USER22> > It seems like a pretty strange null hypothesis that people are entirely > unaffected by the social media they are exposed to.

Why? When people measure how ads perform, the null hypothesis is that the ad has no effect on the behavior of the viewer. Bots are sort of like ads that look like native content.

That being said, I don't think a single data point (Yang) is enough to be conclusive, but it does change my beliefs a little bit on the effectiveness of bots.

<comment><USER23> Individual ads, sure. But an equivalent null hypothesis would be "social media advertising has no effect on people," which would seem pretty strange.

<comment><USER24> Also, the null hypothesis is just a starting point from which you gather and analyse the data that may disprove it. There's no reason that 'X has no effect on Y' should have a privileged position in messy real-world epistemology; we don't assume that nothing causes anything in the absence of conclusive proof, we keep an open mind and make our best guess based on whatever information we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Slightly related - Twitter still hasn't done anything about those bot accounts with fake crypto scams. Elon Musks tweets for example always have these fake crypto scam tweets at the very top often using account names of popular people. I think it's been going on for almost 2 years now if I remember right. This should be such a simply thing to take care of but for some reason, Twitter hasn't bothered.

<comment><USER26> I would love to know how many people actually fell for that. People who own bitcoin isn't your normal crowd but recent surges in the scams and hype, may have created a lot of people who are oblivious as to what bitcoin technically is but talk and broadcast it everywhere along with having invested a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How many startup people have actually read "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel?

Yang has gone from 0 to 1 and is going to see exponential growth as Iowa gets closer. All these articles are people who have a distorted views of reality and chalk up his support as bots in order to fit their world view. The most likely reason from my observation is bias against Asian American men in leadership positions.

<comment><USER28> > Yang has gone from 0 to 1

Yang hasn't gone anywhere, he's been bouncing around in the same range for months with no systematic progress.

> and is going to see exponential growth as Iowa gets closer.

If he did something radical like doubling his support in Iowa in the, what, 10 days remaining, and the sources of support he gained were optimally distributed for him to move up positions, that would still only get him to fifth from his current sixth in Iowa, and he'd only be a little over half the support of #4.

<comment><USER27> According to the latest national Emerson poll today, Yang is in #4 with 8% support.

The thing with exponential growth is that by the time you realize it, it is too late

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has anyone considered that bot operators might be latching onto movements, anything will do, simply to grow their audiences and networks?

Simplest explanation is probably that they don't care about election outcome, they just want to leach off of whatever's hot at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised Twitter isn't doing more about political bots, since they've banned political ad dollars.

On the other hand, if they banned an account and it turned out to be a real person, they could get some first amendment lawsuits.

<comment><USER31> > On the other hand, if they banned an account and it turned out to be a real > person, they could get some first amendment lawsuits.

Access to post on Twitter is not a 1st Amendment right!

<comment><USER32> Some Senator who's name I can't recall was arguing otherwise. He said something to the affect of, if social media companies, or websites in general want protection under the law from content generated by their users, then they should not be able to dictate what their users can and cannot post barring illegal content.

It's an interesting argument regardless of what you believe, but certainly your first amendment rights don't currently extend to Twitter.

<comment><USER33> Are you referring to platform/publisher?

If so, it has no legal basis for many reasons, including Twitter's first amendment rights to choose what they show. See [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does- no...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-not-require- platforms-be-neutral)

Also, isn't the whole reason we're on HN the moderation?

<comment><USER32> He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing an amendment.

I don't think that HN, nor the community at large does as much as say twitter or reddit to stifle opposing points of view. Relegating extremist to their own echo-chambers is a good way of proliferating their beliefs. Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, they may be dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may see the flaws in their argument.

<comment><USER33> > He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing > an amendment

I wanted to point out it would require radical changes to our current laws and maybe the Constitution. I wasn't sure if he was aware of that. (Stronger versions of this argument, including ones deployed by members of Congress, have said it described current law)

> Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, > they may be dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may > see the flaws in their argument.

This is a popular position in a popular argument, and it's been debated to death better than we can. Here's an summary I found useful [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media- gl...](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global- comparisons)

One interesting study mentioned in that summation found that temporary internet outages in Germany reduced hate crimes against refugees.

> This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We > show that anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against > refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. > To establish causality, _we exploit exogenous variation in major Facebook > and internet outages_ , which fully undo the correlation between social > media and hate crime. We further find that the effect decreases with > distracting news events; increases with user network interactions; and does > not hold for posts unrelated to refugees. Our results suggest that social > media can act as a propagation mechanism between online messages and violent > crime.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972)

<comment><USER32> With regards to the paper you posted, I don't think it does enough to escape the fallacy of correlation/causation. It stands to reason that a news event implicating refugees for a crime will attract anti-refugee sentiment, likewise why would such sentiment spread to unrelated news posts? Facebook has already been caught prioritizing controversial content in user news feeds to increase interaction. Facebook will quickly learn a user that displays such views interacts more with said content, and display more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But my activity then might have seemed bot-like.

Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a few YouTube videos of him.

<comment><USER4> This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as funny).

<comment><USER9> There's nothing bot like about this person's post. It's actually kind of a nice tale of civic re-engagement. It _does_ make me more interested in hearing what Yang has to say because it seems honest and like a statement from someone who hasn't been doing political activism for years.

<comment><USER35> This looks like a green handle bot supporting another bot. You may find my statement pretty silly today but in about 5 years we will be in the uncanny valley.

<comment><USER4> Up and coming HN post "How I used GPT-2 to join the Yang Gang". (clearly I am a bot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tangential thought: There is an biting element of dehumanization when you call someone a "bot" (who is actually a real person). I see this term thrown around a lot in political threads when the account in question is quite obviously human.

In short, It's become a term du jour for compromising and silencing those with whom you disagree.

<comment><USER37> Yes, this is a good and important point. There are many people who declare NPC a vile, dehumanizing term...who hypocritically call everyone who disagrees with them a bot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Yang Gang is very active online and offline.

Source: I'm Yang Gang

</comment><comment><USER39> People exhibit such bot-like behavior in certain circumstances that the burden of proof for calling something a bot is extremely high. If you saw sports fans in a stadium you'd think they were bots authored by the team's robotics division — the same behaviors manifest in online discussions of politics. It's like how CAPTCHAs today are virtually unsolvable for humans -- we meatbags are more bot than the bots.

</comment><comment><USER40> I encountered this myself after responding to someone's comment about the Universal Basic Income (UBI) concept, and got spammed with negative replies. I figured it was just ardent supporters, bots make sense though given the speed of the responses. Sadly, I think this may be the new normal of politics in the 2020s.

<comment><USER41> > after responding to someone's comment about the Universal Basic Income (UBI) > concept, and got spammed with negative replies. I figured it was just ardent > supporters, bots make sense though given the speed of the responses.

Ardent non-supporter of UBI here! Not a bot!!

The nefarious issue with UBI is that it threatens our existing social safety nets. The social goal is not to give everyone a single basic income, it's to give everyone a single basic standard of living.

It's far more fair and moral to give folks access to basic standards of human decency (e.g., healthcare, education, housing, food, air), than writing them a check and letting them fend on their own. The moral underpinning of social safety nets is not to increase the total or average, but to increase the lowest.

<comment><USER7> Bernie supporter here AND UBI supporter, (not Yang's version per se though). I support a bigger more expansive UBI that would basically cover all food, housing, and major monthly expenses. We still need education/healthcare though as Bernie suggests. Which is why I support him.

I like the idea of ending the current welfare system because it makes the recipient feel 'less' because they're on 'state assistance' vs everyone gets 3k/month + 500 per dependent per month.

We'd need a different tax system though, and need maybe VAT to offset it a little. It would move everyone above poverty though so pretty much everyone could afford at least some level of taxes. It would also give job mobility and more ability to negotiate wages. Some would choose to stay home and join esports leagues, or start an arts career or go back to school, or start a business. Meaning less people would be required by labor, meaning supply/demand would be in worker's favor -- which would drive up wages.

I think there's definitely a place for UBI on the table, AS LONG as single- payer and free college ALSO exist - -and college debt forgiveness.

<comment><USER41> > Bernie supporter here AND UBI supporter, (not Yang's version per se though). > I support a bigger more expansive UBI that would basically cover all food, > housing, and major monthly expenses.

I agree that those basics that make up common humanity should be covered. But I differ on how to get there. UBI means writing a check to someone, and letting them spend it how they wish. They can spend it on food and healthcare, their startup, or alcohol and gambling.

But if the purpose is to set a minimum level human decency (food, housing, healthcare), then we should provide that level of decency, rather than writing a check and hoping people will use it wisely. If an entrepreneur takes their UBI check and rather than buying healthcare, puts it into a startup that eventually becomes big, that may be a better result for the overall economy, but we've still failed that person in providing a minimum level of humanity.

The moral purpose behind UBI is not to just write checks, it's to allow humans to retain their humanity. Providing solid public schools, healthcare, and basic housing better provide that minimum level of dignity than sending a person a check.

<comment><USER7> I also come at it from a technical standpoint. It's easier/cheaper to shut down all welfare buildings and government programs and just cut a check. That ends a lot of wasteful spending to pay for the thing. Also housing/food differs dramatically across the country. How do you manage that? Mailing multiple checks? Multiple EBT like cards? I mean it's really difficult to think of a method other than just writing a check that's big enough to cover most..

Who in America would not be better off with a guaranteed $36000/year income? If they have a spouse and two kids they'd make around $50k...and that's BEFORE they take up a full or part-time job.

<comment><USER40> I support UBI and social welfare program reform, but the two are separate things. The programs are there for when people need help. The UBI is there to minimize the number of people who need help.

All the solutions I see for UBI are short term. What I posted on Twitter was the idea of addressing it in the long term:

For each of the 3919528 babies born in the USA in 2019 ((11.979 babies born per 1000 people, in 2019; 327.2 million population), deposit $100k in a lower risk growth mutual fund. , at a cost of $391 billion. Do this for 50 years. When the first cohort of babies turns 50 they should have around $1m available for retirement. So will each year's cohort after them for the next 50 years. Much of that money will be passed on to a new generation, or go back to the government if they die without issue (and that money goes into a mutual fund whose interest goes to help pay for subsequent cohorts).

Yes, it won't touch the problem for 50 years (hence the need for social program reform now too), and it requires both political parties to agree to not dismantle it (like Soc Security was tampered with). But if so, the problem is solved after 50 years, for at least 50 years and hopefully longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It deems accounts as bots if they post and retweet a lot and are newly created? Being familiar with the Yang Gang, people are extremely passionate almost to an addiction of supporting Yang. They follow his every move, his surrogates words, and engage with any tiny bit of content they can. Many are new accounts because few have ever followed politics and want to keep separate from their main accounts.

Yang has one of the strongest audit scores with 95% of followers being real. Contrasted with Bernie Sanders at only 69%. [https://www.twitteraudit.com/andrewyang](https://www.twitteraudit.com/andrewyang) | [https://www.twitteraudit.com/berniesanders](https://www.twitteraudit.com/berniesanders)

While there may be a few bad actors, it is definitely not representative of those that engage with Yang and his campaign. It shows up on the ground as well where Yang's following shows up in biggest numbers.

At least in Iowa, there were hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that flew in to canvass in the snow, outnumbering most campaign ground forces. In San Francisco, weekly hangouts have been growing to 30 people, and volunteer events turn out 15+ people regularly. I believe this is nationwide as well, there aren't many campaigns that have been matching the grassroots volunteer forces.

<comment><USER43> how do you know the passionate to the point of addiction Yang supporters are real?

I think its likely that many are, but that there are also many passionate supporters of the other candidates who just lurk on Twitter without posting due to social norms about how often you should chime in and how forcefully. The social norms around Yang supporters on twitter have changed by bots posting often and loudly, breaking the bubble and giving permission to people to do it too. If you then turn the bots off, the YangGang effect would last. (I'm sure this applies to not just Yang...)

<comment><USER12> Bots don't meme.

Yet.

<comment><USER40> I've seen proof of concepts that could be strung together to do that, using a combination of Generative Adversarial Networks, style transfer, and rule-based semantic reasoner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> My favorite part was the link to the article where Newt Gingrich's Twitter account with 1.6M followers was shown to be only 8% real people.

</comment><comment><USER43> Someone should make a Twitter-like that verifies posters at various levels based on humanness/geographic locale and other characteristics.

Then posters could limit conversations to those with >90% human score (with score going up when twitter has more certainty that you are a human) located in the US (for US political conversations), etc.

I'd certainly pay a few bucks to be verified and contribute much more often to conversations than I do now, as now it just seems like screaming into the bot void.

<comment><USER45> that would destroy the main principle of the Web2.x - "on Internet, nobody knows you're a human"

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If any journalists are writing about this in a serious capacity, contact me. I will trade info :)

</comment><comment><USER47> What I don't understand about Yang and his UBI push, is that he doesn't mention anything about the housing crisis.

It's not really the people that have homes that are at risk. It's the people who are renters, and are under the whims of landlords raising the rents to match expensive mortgages.

There's no mention from him, about socializing the cost of housing. This is the primary source of inequality.

I am not a fan of socializing anything, but it's clear to see, that rampant capitalism has run amok, and distorted the housing cost for everyone.

Is his he expecting that people will take the $12,000/year UBI, and move out to podunk Iowa somewhere, and buy a small plot of land, and farm the earth and raise chickens to be self subsistent?

Like, what happens after you receive this monthly UBI check?

Clearly, this isn't enough to pay the rent. Will these people work part time driving for Uber, or delivering for DoorDash?

<comment><USER4> > There's no mention from him, about socializing the cost of housing. This is > the primary source of inequality.

It isn't well mentioned on his website[0], but he has talked about it in more details before (sorry, I forgot which videos he specifically addresses this in. There are a lot and they are long). But the tldr is he wants to do better zoning, encourage high rise apartments, and throw in government incentives for affordable housing. If you post this question in the subreddit I know it'll get answered quickly, with many links, and will likely be updated on the website (that's the usual pattern).

> Is his he expecting that people will take the $12,000/year UBI, and move out > to podunk Iowa somewhere, and buy a small plot of land, and farm the earth > and raise chickens to be self subsistent?

In part UBI, but in part he wants the IRS to refund some moving costs[1]

> that rampant capitalism has run amok,

This is actually at the forefront of his campaign: "Human Centered Capitalism"[2] That the rules need to be rewritten and we need to make the economy human centric, not money first.

> Clearly, [UBI] isn't enough to pay the rent. Will these people work part > time driving for Uber, or delivering for DoorDash?

There's no way you can pass a living wage UBI in this political climate. But $1k/mo does more than $15/hr (presuming hours are stagnant and you can get full time work. Most states already pay above federal minimum) and it is something that Republicans are on board with (because it simplifies welfare and enables more choice). I know it isn't a complete win, but it is an obtainable win. People are already asking how you pay for UBI, now imagine if he doubled the amount. Let's not let perfection get in the way of good. Think of it as a step in the right direction, not a full solution.

[0] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/)

[1] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/get-america- moving/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/get-america-moving/)

[2] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human- capitalism/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human-capitalism/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Pretty graphs. No data. Qualitative analysis. No source code.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yang supporters believe expats should also get the freedom dividend. It would be funny if yang just declares a United States of earth and distributes the freedom dividend to every human on the entire planet...

<comment><USER12> Not really. Yang is unequivocal that expats should not receive the dividend while they are abroad. And they deserve their part given we tax them as if they were present.

<comment><USER41> > Yang is unequivocal that expats should not receive the dividend while they > are abroad.

What is the moral basis for this? Pretty much every other U.S. right and rule is grounded on U.S. citizenship, not where you're currently residing. Basing rights on where you live (rather than citizenship) also leads to some weird results. If you deny expats some right because they don't live in the country, then shouldn't you grant non-citizens who are indeed living in the country those same rights? After all, the standard is where you live rather than citizenship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Kind of ironic that the candidate aiming to solve issues created by AI is being propelled forward by AI-driven bots

<comment><USER34> I think that one article doesn't prove that Yang's campaign is driven by bots.

I'm a 42 year old programmer who has never voted before. I am voting for Yang because his policies are superior and the other candidates have outdated policies or worldviews.

I have contributed around $400 or $500 and if there is something we are "trying to trend" I will retweet it (even though I never really used Twitter before now).

By the way, Yang has received endorsements from people like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dave Chappelle, Donald Glover, Jack Dorsey, Alexis Ohanian, James Gunn.

Saying the campaign is driven by bots is an unsubstantiated smear.

<comment><USER37> I am most definitely not a Yang support, I am critic, and yet I strongly agree with your last sentence. Saying the campaign is driven by bots, based on the 'evidence' presented so far, is an unsubstantiated smear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Theorem: 100% of these articles talking about "bots" on twitter are bullshit. None have any evidence, yet we're supposed to be impressed because ... muh plots. Nobody has any idea how many "bots" are following Trump or Yang or anybody else.

</comment><comment><USER52> ah another russian asset is born. good job

</comment><comment><USER53> It's always bots and foreign influences when an organic populist movement that doesn't fit the blessed agenda grows.

The machine is showing it's rust more and more, and the more it flails the more credibility it loses.</comment>


Ask HN: Will CNN be considered trustworthy/capable again? - <AUTHOR> I have watched CNN pretty regularly. I have considered them in the past - a quality news station.<p>My trust for CNN has never been lower. Curious if others agree? <comment><USER2> Is this news? My level of trust in CNN has been very low for at least 2 or 3 years, I forget which lie it was, but it seems like every time I go to a place showing CNN, if I fact check what they are saying, they are either skewing the story or changing facts to suit the narrative the newscaster or panelist wants to tell.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that, you just have to recognize them, along with other unreputable sources as just pure entertainment, and treat them as such. If I turn on the TV I do not expect news, I expect entertainment.

That being said, there are still reporters out there like Amy Goodman who are doing real investigative journalism, but it is not something you will run across commonly.

<comment><AUTHOR> The elections were easy to notice the decent.

I kept hearing things like .. "Let's stick to the facts" and then it would be followed by complete opinion.

It became disheartening.

<comment><USER2> It was very disheartening, but perhaps I was already of a steel heart. I remember going out to Michigan days after caucusing for Bernie & watching him lose to Hillary, and there was such an intense resentment for what happened to Bernie inside the DNC out there, that I am not suprised at what happened.

Its a state full of good people, tired of the current economic system. Trump will likely not make things better for them, but to many out there it was that or Ms. Walmart.</comment></comment></comment>


2014 ACM-ICPC World Finals – Problems - <AUTHOR> https://icpc.kattis.com/problems

<comment><AUTHOR> Problem-set PDF: [http://icpc.baylor.edu/download/worldfinals/problems/icpc201...](http://icpc.baylor.edu/download/worldfinals/problems/icpc2014.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Do you know if an editorial/discussion on solutions is posted somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> During the live broadcast, there was some discussion on the problems. ICPCNews uploaded clips for all the problems to Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/ICPCNews/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ICPCNews/videos)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Scoreboard: [http://static.kattis.com/icpc/wf2014/](http://static.kattis.com/icpc/wf2014/)</comment>


Same-sex mice genetically engineered to have babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45801043 <comment><USER2> Layman here, but I don't understand how the title follows from the article. It's not that same-sex mice were able to reproduce, it's that scientists modified their genes and cells (not even just sex cells) using "cutting-edge science" [sic] in a way they could artificially produce alive zygotes from two individuals of the same sex. How is this, for example, any different than cloning? We were able to clone a sheep (Dolly), but that doesn't mean sheep can perform asexual reproduction like starfish or hydras.

From the title I was expecting either scientists observed mice having same-sex reproduction under extreme conditions (e.g. their population is in great danger) or that scientists created an artificial environment in which mice were able to have same-sex reproduction. Being mammals, mice being able to do one of these would be groundbreaking and extremely surprising.

<comment><USER3> It's the BBC, their quality of editorial content accuracy is terrible.

<comment><USER4> I remember when people would note, "It's the BBC," as a way of vouching for accuracy of news.

<comment><USER5> One of the things we got the BBC to do that still stands out from many other "news sources" today is they link their sources where applicable.

Part way down this story, for example, they link [https://www.cell.com/cell- stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(18)3...](https://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/fulltext/S1934-5909\(18\)30441-7)

So, there you go, an actual journal article whose authors claim they did this.

<comment><USER6> They try and boil it down for the lay person, but often fail. It's nice that as you say they at least they include the sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> By my understanding, this research has identified a small number of epigenetically regulated genes that affect the ability of two haploid sets to combine into a viable zygote.

The researchers proved their effect by knocking them out, probably with a CRISPR/Cas9-like deactivation complex. Future developments will have to instead epigenetically de-regulate and artificially re-regulate those target genes in order to produce a healthy adult organism.

They may eventually be able to make the haploid set from a stem cell masquerade as either the set from an egg or the set from a sperm, as required.

</comment><comment><USER8> This was already done once, if I'm not mistaken, in Japan in 2004:

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2004/04/mouse-two- mothers](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2004/04/mouse-two-mothers)

<comment><USER9> This is not exactly the same. That used the genetic information from two mouse egg cells. The Chinese study is using haploid mouse embryonic stem cells with genetic contribution from either an mouse egg (successful) or mouse sperm (unsuccessful).

<comment><USER10> Can you explain a difference in more lay terms? The experiment that @ppeetteerr points out, is that not a baby mouse created? And that baby is from the genetic information of 2 mothers?

You also mentioned the Japanese study used egg cells, while this one uses haploid cells... aren't egg cells haploid?

<comment><USER9> Yes, in both cases baby mice were made. And yes, eggs and sperm are haploid. But the difference here is that the starting cells were embryonic stem cells -- that is, they are cells that are "pluripotent" \-- that is cells that haven't yet been programmed to be any particular cell type. So it is a more difficult accomplishment than just working with two eggs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enabling female mice to reproduce without needing males involved would significantly reduce the risks of a mouse uprising against their overlords.

</comment><comment><USER12> What sick minded individual thought this is important to find out? So many of these science experiments amplify the reverberations of eugenics in my mind. Justifying the torture of animals in the pursuit of knowledge and good deed.

<comment><USER13> This is a classic debate — but I think it's mixing two very different ethical questions.

* Should any two people be able to reproduce using their own genes? Should a homosexual couple, or an individual with a gamete disorder have that option?

* Is it worth mouse suffering? More broadly, is any medical research worth animal suffering? It is routine. Is there a difference between animals suffering at the hands of humans vs suffering in the wild? Honestly laboratory protocols are often more humane than what happens in my backyard every day.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia founder calls alt-medicine practitioners "lunatic charlatans" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/wikipedia-founder-calls-alt-medicine-practitioners-lunatic-charlatans/ <comment><USER2> > But how would space be doled out to advocates of alternative theories, who > are just as certain about the rightness of their ideas as any scientist, if > that guideline became more flexible?

It can't. If you crack open the door to pseudo-science you will be flooded with garbage. Peer-review is definitely flawed, but it is all we have.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this article is 2 years old.</comment>


How Germany used radio waves to guide night bombing raids in WWII - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/england-was-almost-destroyed-by-radio-waves-df70830e8593 <comment><USER2> The title is terrible, but the story is interesting. Germany was using ground- based radio waves to guide aircraft, possibly including unmanned ones. It was clever, but easily jammed, especially since England had a BBC tower readily converted to a jamming system.

One wonders if they would have discovered frequency-hopping spread-spectrum, famously co-created by actress Hedy Lamarr, but her patent in 1941 was after the Germans abandoned their project. I suspect that the distances were too great for it to work well (they were trying to guide planes to specific target from transmitters in Germany and France, hundreds of miles away).

<comment><USER3> Ok, we've taken a crack at a more accurate and neutral title. If anyone has a better one, we can change it again. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Much less clickbaity, thank you. It's a really good article.

<comment><USER3> > It's a really good article.

That is pretty much the thing we most hope to hear from users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coventry. That was not a normal raid. It is also a raid that is mired with myth. According to the legend Churchill knew all about it but 'sacrificed' Coventry as that would reveal that Enigma had been cracked.

This myth has persisted for many years and those that perpetuate it never mention that there were other sources of intelligence such as the guided radio waves, which were only turned on when the planes were on their way. There wasn't much point doing anything other than praying when the radio beams came on, it was too late to evacuate the city by then.

It is also quite hard today to appreciate what a useful place Coventry once was. It is not a particularly remarkable city, although, that said, the people there are remarkably friendly, welcoming and helpful. It also lacks urban sprawl, so although a 'big city' it does not feel that way when you enter it. Compare with nearby Birmingham where there is no green space between Birmingham proper and built up 'West Midlands'.

The myth about Churchill letting the Germans just bomb Coventry also serves to under-appreciate how important manufacturing was there. Coventry really was where it all got made, the numerous car companies that were once there all swapped over to making weapons of some sort and with no car companies there today it is hard to imagine so much came out of Coventry.

Other places the Luftwaffe helped with the town planning didn't quite have Coventry's industrial clout. Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool and Hull were historically ports rather than places where stuff got made although there were plenty of factories in all these cities when Britain was the 'workshop of the world'. Quite a lot was made in London too, although this is quite hard to believe given today's complete absence of smokestacks in the capital. All considered, the idea that Churchill just let Coventry go so as to not reveal Enigma is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's lots more in _The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945_ by R.V. Jones.

[https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific- Intelligence-19...](https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific- Intelligence-1939-1945/dp/0698108965)

<comment><USER6> Cannot recommend this book too highly. Also worth reading is anything about PMS Blackett and the birth of Operations Research, Barnes Wallis (the JP Morpugo biog is good), and Solly Zuckerman ("from apes to warlords") on the bombing accuracy issues, statistics and the 'transport plan'

its not on kindle, but Robert Buderi's book on Radar is also worth reading. from the roots up to chips and microwave physics, amazing stuff

<comment><USER7> Thanks for this comment. I recently discovered that the inventor of PCM, Alec Reeves, was also involved in the development Oboe system for guidance of bombers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Reeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Reeves) (the offsite reference pages are particularly good)

I get the sense that he was much less of a mover and shaker than either Blackett or Zuckerman. By the same token, I wonder if they have been idolized a bit (even though I had never heard of them, and their names are clearly not heard very often these days.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's an amazeballs BBC documentary on this "Secret war; the battle of the beams"

[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x123i1g](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x123i1g)

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

The entire BBC series is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's been posted in this thread, but I'll say anyway: The British "The Secret War" documentary is absolutely fantastic and well worth watching either for the engineering or the human intelligence working around the engineers

</comment><comment><USER10> Steve Blank has covered this issue well in his Secret History of Silicon Valley

[https://steveblank.com/tag/world-war-ii/](https://steveblank.com/tag/world- war-ii/)</comment>


Romney 2012 is first political campaign to buy Twitter trending topic - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/29/3277934/romney-2012-first-political-campaign-buy-sponsored-trending-topic-on <comment><USER2> This is almost as relevant to HN as it is to The Verge, a tech news rag that will rewrite _anything_ on its quest to hijack someone else's work.</comment>


No more concessions from the EU will be given to the UK over Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-52723409/no-more-concessions-from-the-eu-to-uk-over-brexit <comment><USER2> Laughable, the EU needs the UK more.

Is the EU going to fund the SNP's welfare if they secede?

<comment><USER3> Without a specific reference to which domain we are speaking about, the statement "the EU needs the UK more" is very close to being utterly meaningless (and is typical of a whole slew of extremely woolly posturing on the subject).

It's becoming pretty clear that the UK standing alone does not have the contractual power necessary to secure terms comparable to those it had whilst part of the EU block with regards to (say) trade relations to major foreign economies (such as Japan and the United States). Furthermore the UK's predominantly service-oriented economy does not serve an integrated purpose within the EU economy and is predominantly geared towards either serving the local population or handling financial and/or legal issues for EU-native economies.

Eventually this fact will dawn upon the Leavers.</comment></comment>