Microsoft Office 2019 will only work on Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.descasio.com/microsoft-office-2019-windows-10/ <comment><USER2> To be honest, I would have been much more surprised if they'd spent time and money to support older versions as well. I mean, Win 7 mainstream support ended at the end of 2014 I think with extended support to end in January 2020.

Conclusion: entirely legitimate business decision?

<comment><USER3> They're entitled to make whatever business decisions they like, but of course those of us who don't want anything to do with Windows 10 won't now buy their new product in this case, so only time will tell whether the business decision has the effect they're hoping for. Microsoft's strategy under Nadella seems to be shifting towards the extremes of enterprise-scale customers and lightweight home users at the expense of the SMEs and power users in between, so this decision seems consistent with their recent pattern.

<comment><USER4> What exactly is wrong with Windows 10 though? In my opinion, it has been a huge improvement over Windows 8/8.1. Also, the Linux subsystem feature seems pretty usable to me.

<comment><USER5> The list is long but top reasons for me after having used it for a while:

\- start menu completely random. Like typing "upd" doesn't display anything but typing "update" shows windows update. And the behaviour doesn't seem to be stable. Sometimes old control panels show, sometimes not. Seems to be erratic through time and across different machines.

\- microsoft dropping unwanted apps regularly in the start menu. Candy crunch, all sort of ads for sponsored software

\- Frequent forced reboots

\- Microsoft trying to force my hand on everything. Like default apps, making it difficult to change the default or for videos and images requiring me to confirm on every single different file extension one by one, or not allowing to select an app by its file path for all images or videos (only allowing me to pick from a shortlist of useless apps), making it difficult to create local accounts, all these multiple opt out confirmations are annoying. No means no.

\- telemetry

\- two control panels and making things worse, settings progressively moving between the two such that the location of a setting is unpredictable. The new control panel often gives the feeling of having been simplified (which in itself is fine) but also to hide the access to more advanced options (not fine).

\- generally speaking the big buttons, all grey UI is not particularly pleasant

\- many small usability features. Like when prompting for credentials, the RDP client doesn't allow you to access the username and password boxes with the keyboard, you have to select them with your mouse. It feels unfinished.

\- I haven't had blue screen for a long time on windows 7, while it has become quite common on windows 10

\- repeated interruptions. The OS should be discreet and not be interrupting your workflow unnecessarily. They since removed the full screen notifications in windows 10, but didn't for Windows Server 2016.

There are notable improvements too. Like finally being able to copy-paste in command lines was long overdue. The server features are also much better (hyper-v, powershell functionalities, IIS, etc). But on balance I think it provides a poor experience. I am not saying Windows 7 is perfect either, it comes with its own annoyances but I think it's not as bad.

<comment><USER6> I just want to agree with your point about search. Search on Windows is horribly broken, unreliable, and poorly designed. But in my opinion it has been in that state since at least Vista and they've only managed to make it worse every release. Integrating Cortana took something barely functioning and piled on complexity.

If Microsoft were to "delete and start again" on two areas, for me it would have to be Windows' Search and the Printer stack. They're almost impressive in their terribleness. I literally use Notepad++'s file search for file content and FileLocator Pro for filenames instead of Windows search because it is more consistent, reliable, and faster.

I actually had a conversation with a Microsoft employee at a conference who then worked on search in Windows 7. And after that conversation I absolutely understood why it was in the state that it was in. He believed it was bad because it wasn't complex enough, wanting to pile in even more supported file type filters and expanding language services. Both of which they wound up doing in Windows 8, making it even more complicated and unreliable.

<comment><USER5> By the way on search (not in the start menu, in explorer), do you know why it is so slow? It can sometimes take minutes to search for filename in a network drive when listing all files in the same drive in c# takes seconds (and if you even dare to change how results are sorted, it would reset the search from scratch...). That's not specific to Windows 10, Windows 7 does the same. It seems to be doing all sort of unwanted stuff but I don't know what and I don't know how to turn them off to only search by file name.

<comment><USER7> > "By the way on search (not in the start menu, in explorer), do you know why > it is so slow?"

I've given up using it. A work colleague recommended Agent Ransack and I've been happily using that ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not link to the original article?

[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2018/02/01/...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2018/02/01/changes- to-office-and-windows-servicing-and-support/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This kind of makes sense. I mean, sure, never breaking backwards compatibility is a great way to get popular, but you also end up with systems that are inflexible and hard to maintain.

Also, Microsoft Office 2019 somewhat looks like the title of a science fiction thriller.

<comment><USER10> Science fiction thriller with a bad ending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real question: will Office 2019 produce documents that can't be read in older versions? It's one thing to say "you need the latest OS to run the latest Office" but another thing to say "everyone you interchange documents with needs the latest OS and the latest Office"...

<comment><USER12> I've worked on Office. There's a ridiculous amount of effort put into file format backwards compatibility. Someone I know had to consider Office 2007 compatibility when working on a feature within the last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Considering windows 10 is the only windows that's not in extended support, that's not too unreasonable.

<comment><USER14> Sort of misleading:

Both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are still in extended support ([https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows- lifec...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle- fact-sheet)), and of course the older versions are _no longer_ in extended support.

So Windows 10 is the only version _not yet_ in extended support.

<comment><USER15> >So Windows 10 is the only version not yet in extended support.

Given that MS has said they're moving away from major version numbers, it's not in any way misleading. Windows 10 will continue to get incremental updates into the indefinite future. MS has intimated it may be the last major version ever, although that's not a hard commitment.

<comment><USER16> They haven't moved away from major version numbers, "Windows 10" is just the product name now (like Mac OS X used to be). The major version is "Fall Creators Update" etc (monthly updates provide the equivalent of minor versions).

<comment><USER15> That's patently and provably false. "Creators update" is the same thing as a service pack, _NOT_ a major revision. Major revisions as follows:

    		Windows 10	29 July 2015	NT 10.0
    		Windows 8.1	17 October 2013	NT 6.3
    		Windows 8	26 October 2012	NT 6.2
    		Windows 7	22 October 2009	NT 6.1
    		Windows Vista	30 January 2007	NT 6.0

"Fall Creators Update" is version 10.0.16299

<comment><USER17> Creator's update is nothing like a service pack of yore. A defining feature of service packs was that they didn't have any new feature. Only bug fixes and stability/security. Creator's update is a bigger upgrade from base Win10 than Win10 was from Win8, in terms of features.

<comment><USER18> > A defining feature of service packs was that they didn't have any new > feature. Only bug fixes and stability/security.

Pretty much every service pack includes new features.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Service_packs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Service_packs)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Updates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Updates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still use Microsoft Office 2010 at work and it does everything I need it to do. It if it was up to me I'd go backwards. Every newer version seems worse than the last for my use cases. I'm a scientist and I just need to crunch numbers in Excel and write papers in Word.

<comment><USER20> This is completely non-malicious: why are you writing papers in Word instead of more advanced typesetting tools like LaTeX?

<comment><USER19> Haha oh man. I don't think a single human in academia I work with even knows what that is. We don't need typesetting tools, we just write the text and provide figures and the journal does the typesetting, etc. It just needs to be as easy as possible and looking up LaTex that seems to be a bizarre abstraction that seems even more difficult than typing in Word.

<comment><USER21> You must be in a very different field than me.... If someone posts a word document on the arxiv, it's almost a reason to ignore it as unprofessional.

<comment><USER17> If people are judging research by that criteria they are idiots. I'd prefer not to associate with or gain approval of such persons.

<comment><USER21> It's more about conforming to the standards of the field. I can think of maybe one or two articles written in Word that I've seen on the arxiv ever (maybe it's different outside hepex and astro?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The beauty of windows is that the newest version of windows runs the oldest programs. Not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER23> I moved to OS X from Windows 7 around 6 years ago and I really missed the Windows at first. But then checked 8.1 and had no regrets, the thing was awful UX-wise, they tried to break my patterns but why?

The only company I partially trust with my data is Apple and I think if I'd have to switch back to Windows right now I'd pick 7 - because it wasn't integrated so well with the Internet and it had no Metro.

What sucks today is the fact that I feel the OSes are gradually getting worse from user perspective - excepting Linux distros - macOS is way less stable and secure than 6 years ago when I first joined the club and Windows after 7 feels like rushed job, just like with ME/Vista.

<comment><USER24> > What sucks today is the fact that I feel the OSes are gradually getting > worse from user perspective

Windows10 UI is the same as Windows7. I don't get what you're saying here.

> excepting Linux distros

Linux is by any means objectively the worst UI for end-user. Otherwise the year of linux desktop would arrive.

<comment><USER17> I was surprised to learn that you can't even move the taskbar to another position on the screen in Ubuntu, which is supposed to be the most user- friendly Linux.

<comment><USER25> "User-friendly" doesn't have to mean "user-empowering", just that it can be used without too much effort. In fact, all examples (that I can think of) of OS UX changes that were supposedly made to be more user-friendly, took away power/choice/features from users. From Windows 10 to OS X.

In the world of Linux DEs, allowing the user to change the DE is considered a "power-user" feature. Sounds quite the opposite of "user-friendly", doesn't it?

<comment><USER24> > In the world of Linux DEs, allowing the user to change the DE is considered > a "power-user" feature.

The thing is 99.5% of computer users do not care about any of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Big highlight note: Folks on Windows 7... probably not in a huge hurry to have the latest and greatest version of Office either. Except for the lack of security updates, Office 2007 would still be "good enough" for most users today. 2010 is still a supported, secure version of Office that does everything most people need it to.

<comment><USER27> And quite frankly, if you don't need anything newer than that, you'd probably be perfectly happy with Libre Office. I moved our office to using it because our needs are pretty simple: we need to type out letters from time to time, mail them, then move on to the next.

<comment><USER26> I've been amazed how many obscure Office features (that have been around since well before 2010) that people actually use, and consider a borderline crisis if they're not working right. Where I work, anything not Microsoft Office would become an immediate nonstarter.

But it definitely depends on your environment. For my personal use, I use Etherpad, EtherCalc, and Wekan on Sandstorm.io, despite having access to the full Office 365 through my community college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile in the free/open source world, LibreOffice works about anywhere and LaTeX works on my old chrooted chromebook, allowing me to write all my university stuff on a ~$300 computer.

<comment><USER29> Good for a student but try proposing this to an enterprise of 10k staff.

<comment> castle-bravo Here's my pitch: LibreOffice can do everything MS Office can do and it'll save you 2.3M$ up front.

<comment><USER24> But it can't tho. Also, you would have to train your staff. You make it sound way easier than it actually would.

<comment><USER30> You have to train your staff for MS products as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's even more interesting is that Office 2019 will only be supported for 5 years instead of 10. Do they actually expect governments and companies to buy a new Office license every 5 years?

Even more of a reason for governments to switch to open source. We're witnessing vendor lock-in and abuse in action here.

I've also noticed since Nadella took over, the Q&A team has been cut (resulting in Windows 10 having way more bugs than previous Windows versions), previous builds/editions get support for even less time (like 18 months only), forcing users to get whatever Microsoft pushed in the latest version of Windows, or risk being vulnerable to malware. If you don't like what Microsoft introduced in Creators Update, and you want to stick to the Anniversary Update, tough luck. You'll have to get Creators' Update or say goodbye to patches.

This will likely result in Windows supporting less and less legacy software in the future, where "legacy" will mean something like 5 years old (as it already does for Office 2019, apparently).

<comment><USER32> _Do they actually expect governments and companies to buy a new Office license every 5 years?_

Nope. They expect them to pay monthly per user with an annual commitment.

[https://products.office.com/en-US/compare-all-microsoft- offi...](https://products.office.com/en-US/compare-all-microsoft-office- products?tab=2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A huge portion of people who think they need Office, don't actually need it. There are people in my office who are convinced that Office is the only way they can do their super basic spreadsheets, or type their letters.

Open Office has served me just fine for years now, and it would serve most people as well. For Word and Excel, at least.

</comment><comment><USER34> I remember being excited about Windows 10 a few years ago because it got people on a modern browser.

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/why-everyone- should-...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/why-everyone-should-love- windows-10/)

Microsoft needs to jettison more legacy so they can move faster.

<comment><USER5> Everyone uses chrome or firefox anyway. I don't think the browser changes anything to OS adoption.

<comment><USER10> As a web developer, this is not true. An large number of clients I've worked with have used IE and thanks to Win 10 shipping with Edge (which in itself is a decent browser) I've noticed a huge decline in "but it looks odd in my browser" comments from clients. So while I don't like Windows, or Microsoft in general, I do like the push to get rid of legacy stuff by them.

<comment><USER5> What I have read so far is that Edge usage on the web is marginal despite (forced?) windows 10 adoption.

<comment><USER10> Yes it is, but lots of companies have upgraded to 10. Of all the offices I visit I see Edge open a lot. Chrome of course is the most popular, but I'm happy the awful web rendering engine that is IE is soon gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think some people in this thread are confusing support and getting new features. Just because windows 8 doesn't receive office 2019 doesn't make it any less supported as an OS. This decision seems pretty normal to me.

I can imagine if you're on windows 7, having the latest version of Microsoft office is probably not one of your concerns anyway

</comment><comment><USER5> Given how little Microsoft changes Office between each version, I don't think that's going to be a strong reason to upgrade to windows 10. I can barely notice the difference between Office 2007 and Office 2016 save for the color scheme.

<comment><USER36> They are slowly, sloooowly implementing live collaboration. 2013 had built-in OneDrive support which had save conflicts 30% of the time even using it on a single computer. 2016 apparently supports the whole live-cursor collaboration thing, though I didn't know that until just now after looking it up. I'm sure it would be useful if you everyone else you're collaborating with has the latest version. It'd probably be easier to just use google drive for the one person that inevitably doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> These are the kinds of decisions that can be frustrating when the software you use depends on the _kind of company_ that made it.

Had Microsoft been split up back in the day into an applications-only company, would that hypothetical company have made the same call? In my experience software companies like to support several OS versions because things don't change _that_ much.

</comment><comment><USER38> Surely it will work on the Mac as well, right? As well as Android and iOS?

<comment><USER39> I had the same question given the title of the article. I _think_ it should be more accurate to say that they're dropping old Windows support, not that it'll only work on Win10

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The main question is: why should we upgrade to Office 2019?

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't see anything wrong with that.

</comment><comment><USER41> The New Microsoft™

</comment><comment><USER42> given libreoffice 6 and gdocs, or even office365, is MS Office still relevant ?

</comment><comment><USER43> Perhaps more interesting is the question of to what extent will it only work with Office 365

</comment><comment><USER44> Microsoft abuses it's monopoly position with Office to support it's Windows Monopoly to force some users to upgrade.

Hardly surprising, but in theory this should be illegal.

<comment><USER7> > "Microsoft abuses it's monopoly position with Office to support it's Windows > Monopoly."

Not really. Older versions of Office are not going to stop working. For many users, Office suites from the 90s are still sufficient for their uses.

<comment><USER44> For making documents that's true, for reading documents from other people it's not.

Someone that's going to say edit other people's resumes will soon need to upgrade windows OS simply to appease Microsoft and hand them even more money.

<comment><USER7> > "for reading documents from other people it's not."

I don't see the OOXML standard formats going away any time soon.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digital Identity – How Does EID-Me Differ from Blockchain Identity? - <AUTHOR> https://bluink.ca/blog/posts/how-does-eid-me-differ-from-blockchain-identity <comment><AUTHOR> [https://bluink.ca/eid-me](https://bluink.ca/eid-me)

eID-Me is a project being developed for the Government of Ontario (Canada). See our press release announcing it here: [https://bluink.ca/blog/posts/press- release-bluinks-eid-me-br...](https://bluink.ca/blog/posts/press-release- bluinks-eid-me-brings-ontario-digital-identity-to-your-smartphone)</comment>


Netflix Is Ruining Your Life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@matt_garnett/netflix-is-ruining-your-life-b671409033bc <comment><USER2> > _When was the last time you finished a binge at 3:00 AM on a work-night (or > any night to be quite honest) and felt good about yourself?_

> _I hope the answer makes you sick._

> _...what do you have to show for it besides missed opportunities, > compromised goals, an empty bank account, and an unhappy outlook on life?_

The language in this article is deeply worrying and disturbing. Shame and guilt are tools of religion and cults, and are being wielded here similarly, but given the author's apparent outlook on life—that earning money is the sole purpose and your only value in life is your bank balance—I'm somewhat more inclined to be worried for the author rather than for his potential readers.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. And I hope the author has no intention of having children.

Because having children is a guaranteed path to missed opportunities, compromised goals, and a decreased bank account. It's what comes with raising kids - because it's not all about yourself anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "This is where things begin to break down though. Money is more-or-less an unlimited resource. Additional money can always be earned. This may be easier for some than others, but it can be done. Time is a finite resource. There is no adding time to your clock. That clock is going to continue ticking into perpetuity at the same pace"

I'm really skeptical of anyone who promotes that enjoying oneself is a waste of human existence.

<comment><USER5> Blame Calivinism. My grandpa always said that doing things "for fun" was stupid. Everything other than work, family or church was stupid really. Now he's 90, his wife died and he finally goes for a weekly ride on his electric bike with a friend and for the first time I heard him say that they have lots of fun together. I wish him all the joy in the world but it was sad for me to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I am talking about 46.5 hours of 100 percent concentration. It could have changed your life."

This is nuts, an hour or so per day of low-quality time in the evening after doing a full days work and various chores, gym etc will never be 100% concentration. The only way it's going to change your life is to burn you out.

There are marginally more productive things you could be doing that don't require too much energy, say reading a business book, but do that for a month of evenings and see how you feel, I guarantee it wont be better.

<comment><USER7> I really thought that this was one of the rare things virtually everyone agreed upon - trying to be productive all the time is counterproductive. I've always known some "real-life min-maxers" but even those are more about 'optimizing your leisure time' and less about demonizing spending a couple of hours a day having non-challenging fun.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely correct. Trying to be productive all the time is counter productive. I believe that we can train ourselves to enjoy leisurely activities that benefit our health / relationships as much or more than media consumption. What if we went on a 30 minute walk every evening and chatted with a significant other / child instead of scrolling through Facebook?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think author doesn't understand opportunity cost. While I doubt few are rationally examining other tasks that will benefit humanity vs. watching an episode of Breaking Bad, this is the trade off decision made for each episode.

I think author is partially correct in that people could do more with their life, but watching video has other benefits- stress relief, education, edification.

The author comes off as an ascetic against pleasure as a waste of time.

I think the gauge would be whether it is impacting your work, social life, or emotional well-being. If not, then it's up to the individual to judge. Otherwise, OP gets into some rathole of optimizing other people's lives without knowing them. You may as well complain about commuting, cooking and eating meals vs soylent, commenting on message boards, sleeping more than 4 hours, waiting at stop lights, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, at least for me personally, I could not disagree more!

I work too much, am always taking an online tech class, and read a tech book at least once a month.

To me, I feel like I am doing a good thing when I enjoy something on Netflix or spend a couple of hours reading a good book (fiction, not work related).

It is called 'down time.'

<comment><USER8> Thank you for taking the time to read my post! It sounds like you have a great balance in life and understanding of 'down time'. I appreciate your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the author's bio: "Recreational golfer"

I could write a similar column about how he is wasting his time playing golf. Is hitting a ball with a stick and trying to get that ball into a hole the "most important investment you can make is in yourself"? Doubtful.

People waste time in many ways … and they enjoy life in different ways. Not all of life needs to be the constant pursuit of something more, better, new, etc. Sometimes it's ok to just sit back and enjoy it … even if that means playing a round of golf or binging a few episodes of a show on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of the argument would apply to normal network TV too - that it is basically a waste of time. Well maybe, but at least when I watch Netflix I'm watching something I've read reviews of and have a good idea if I'd like it. When I'm visiting my father he just channel surfs watching five minutes of this and five minutes of that because he is looking for something interesting and not finding anything - that seems far worse of a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ahh yes, the wisdom of youth.

</comment><comment><USER14> According to my Trakt.tv account I've spent 58 days, 3 hours, 49 mins watching 760 movies and 110 days, 17 hours, 34 mins watching 4,521 television episodes.

I am completely okay with this.

<comment><USER15> Should have spent that time "traveling to foreign countries" instead, to really jack up the progress of global warming.

<comment><USER14> I've done plenty of traveling to other countries, thank you very much.

<comment><USER15> Sorry I was making satire of the blog post.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, humour bypass on my end. But yes, this is a bad blog post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why the focus on Netflix? Just because it's popular right now?

This blog post honestly just comes across as "I'm better than you because I claim to use my time more productively, and I'm telling you how to live your life."

Speaking of a waste of time, I'd like my 5 minutes back after reading that.

<comment><USER17> This is about television watching, not Netflix. You seem to have deftly missed the author's point about the value of time.

<comment><USER8> As a millennial I think I confused Netflix with television consumption. I (and most people around my age) don't consume cable television. I used Netflix wrongfully as a scapegoat for television media as a whole, which has in turn confused some readers.

<comment><USER16> There's no confusion that netflix == television, and also no confusion in the tone of your "article"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Blind Spots - <AUTHOR> https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/blind-spots/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because it helps to have a model of other people's blind spots whenever you encounter hostility.

"Navigating around other people's blind spots is tricky and often painful, but it is still worth doing. The internet can make this dance more difficult, but if you are curious and keep exploring, you will escape the confines of the internet's echo-chambers and develop the ability to see things from multiple perspectives. This is the balm that salves the pain from seeing too much."</comment>


The FCC could soon give more power to cable companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/13/the-fcc-is-moving-to-end-tv-blackouts-once-and-for-all-heres-how/ <comment><USER3> These changes don't sound like they're really addressing the core problem.

Here's how things currently work:

\- Broadcaster sets rates.

\- Cable company negotiates and eventually settles (with or without blackouts).

\- Cable company bundles these rates with other rates from other channels and passes it on to the consumer.

\- Cable company gets the backlash from the consumer as a result of rate hikes.

So as you can likely tell, broadcasters have too much power, because cable companies will ultimately be blamed either for blackouts (failed negotiations) OR for rate hikes. So it puts them in a lose/lose situation.

Instead what cable should be doing is:

\- Unbundle channels entirely.

\- Pass on rate increases to the consumer for that specific channel.

\- Itemise how much of what you pay goes to the broadcaster Vs. the cable company

\- Alternatively the cable company could charge $0 on the channels themselves (100% broadcaster) and charge a "delivery fee" or "service fee" on the entire account.

This way the broadcaster gets blamed for the rate hikes directly from consumers, and consumers now have more power to drop certain channels if they feel the value they receive is lower than the cost they pay (e.g. $5/month for Trutv).

That's what the FCC should be doing.

<comment><USER4> So is network TV on cable different from the local OTA broadcast? If network TV is free OTA then why do cable companies have to pay to rebroadcast it? Wouldn't in be in the network's best interest to get their broadcasts in front of as many people as possible? It seems like blackouts would just be reducing their ratings numbers and thus reducing what they can charge for ads.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> Cable companies used to just pull in the local feed, and push that out over their network. The local broadcasters called foul, and got Congress to enact a law (1992 Cable Act) that required cable companies to obtain permission to rebroadcast these public signals.[0][1] This quickly resulted in broadcasters charging ever increasing rates to deliver their content to their own viewers.

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

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Television_Consumer_Prot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Television_Consumer_Protection_and_Competition_Act_of_1992)

<comment><USER4> I guess established Broadcast Networks were afraid of increased competition from Cable TV Networks and got the Retransmission Consent provision added to the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act because otherwise Cable TV Operators would be able to rebroadcast their stations freely which would only encourage adoption of Cable TV? It was sort of a win win for Broadcast Networks regardless of whether Cable TV succeeded for failed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think they should just go a-la-carte on broadcast channels.

My mother-in-law lives in a small city where she can pick up the big networks + PBS and some minor networks (CW, ion) with just rabbit ears.

With an $80 antenna, I get 11 channels from a city that is 50 miles away. All I had to do is nail a bracket onto the edge of my roof.

I am missing CBS and ABC, but I am planning to fill those in with a VHF antenna that points to another city.

The difference in picture quality between the HD broadcast vs the compressed "HD" offered by TWC is night and day.

It seems to me there is no value in getting a degraded copy of local broadcast TV on cable, so you should be able to opt out of it, or maybe just get broadcast stations that don't come in with your antenna.

<comment><USER7> > With an _$80 antenna_ , I get 11 channels from a city that is 50 miles away. > All I had to do is _nail a bracket onto the edge of my roof_.

> I am missing CBS and ABC, but I am planning to fill those in with _a VHF > antenna that points to another city_.

> _It seems to me there is no value in getting a degraded copy of local > broadcast TV on cable_

So, you spent $80 and had to climb onto the roof to install it. You have existing knowledge about what antenna to purchase. You know you need a VHF antenna to get other channels. You know where to purchase this stuff.

All of that isn't existing knowledge to the general public and climbing onto a room isn't a general skill-set. There is definite value in a cable guy coming in and setting everything up for you.

<comment><USER8> Actually, we're only a generation away from when people did exactly that. My father bought his TV antenna, as did everyone else I knew. Installed it an the roof (a big, unwieldy thing), stood there and turned it's direction while I called up when the picture was best.

So, it's not that far-fetched.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alot of people who grew up with cable don't even realize broadcast stations exist. I've had to explain to multiple people that you dont need cable to get abc, nbc, etc.

<comment><USER10> ...and yet, if you want to watch, say, the Superbowl online, you do need cable.

<comment><USER11> NBC streamed it to anyone for free on their website:

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/nbc-will-live-stream-the- su...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/nbc-will-live-stream-the-super-bowl- for-free/)

<comment><USER12> I am unsure of terms for the SuperBowl, but if I want to watch Motocross online I have hoops to jump through to prove I pay for an NBC channel in my cable/sat packege. I do not have a cable/sat package, so therefore I cannot watch on their website.

<comment><USER13> You can watch all the motos here:

[http://www.promotocross.com/mx/video](http://www.promotocross.com/mx/video)

Maybe not live but I watched both 450 Unadilla motos the following Sunday evening. I have no cable/sat package.

<comment><USER12> Yup, MX has been offering post race viewing since 2012(AFAIK). Been waiting for SX to follow suit.

Original point stands, broadcaster streaming offerings are worthless to uncabled viewers if they cannot prove they pay for the cabled/sat option. Forget about viewers outside the US... That's where goatd comes in, I guess...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The core problem is the entire idea of timeslotted television content. Content is only available on a certain channel at a certain time of day.

What cable companies should be doing is acquiring the rights to broadcast CONTENT. Cable really should just become a massive collection of on-demand content plus live events (think sports).

The whole idea of television by timeslot is archaic.

</comment><comment><USER15> Video is a done deal. Most cable companies lose money on their video packages anyway; they're a loss-leader for broadband subs at this point. In 5 years, nobody will be talking about the video business.

And the FCC very well should give more power to cable companies, because the cable companies are at a huge disadvantage relative to the big national telcos (aka AT&T and Verizon). AT&T and Verizon are working together to ensure none of the cable companies becomes a national player capable of threatening them. The old Bells are still much, much larger than any of the cable providers, so they can throw their weight around.

<comment><USER16> > Video is a done deal. Most cable companies lose money on their video > packages anyway; they're a loss-leader for broadband subs at this point. In > 5 years, nobody will be talking about the video business.

If that was the case, cable companies would stop selling me the TV package when I already pay the maximum amount for internet they offer in my area.

Yet, somehow, they are always willing to sell me cable TV with free HBO for 12 months and a $50 gift card for $19.99/month.

<comment><USER15> Because there are still sales organizations within these companies whose bonuses are based on driving video revenue. It takes a while for a large company to unroll those organizations/incentives/etc. As it is, the primary customers of their video products are older adults.

But long-term, video is a non-issue. If prices don't come down, the cable providers will move to a la carte. There's just too much content available online via YouTube, Netflix, etc. It will still be a product, but it will be IP-only, cheaper, and offer more granular video packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think anyone should have to pay anything for a broadcast signal within the broadcast area. I mean, it's free to anyone with an antenna already. I'm not sure, but I get the impression that businesses are not allowed to have a TV showing local channels based on the number of them that show a degraded signal from cable when they could just put up an antenna and get HD.

OTOH there is some damage done by bundling local channels onto cable - <USER2> now have to compete with non-local stuff so the viewership will be lower.

</comment><comment><USER18> Broadcast is a moot point for anyone with a computer and at least a DSL connection.

I'm done with instant broadcast by any method if it's supported with commercials. I have little time free to watch TV. It's too valuable to waste 15-20 minutes out of every hour on commercials.

<comment><USER19> Except when it's not a moot point.

My wife likes to watch soccer when it's on. We have basic cable, so we don't have ESPN. It's either watch using an antenna attached to our TV, watch using low def blurry crap the cable company shows or use some virus-laden app to watch it with a computer.

<comment><USER20> > using low def blurry crap the cable company shows

This drives me nuts. They strip program information, they downgrade the signal, they include a hundred or so music channels that nobody wants, they broadcast blank channels, and the periodically re-arrange the channels (or change/upgrade/downgrade the basic plan). I can't go to my grandmother's house without having to spend an hour or so to re-do all of her channels on her TV sets; and then try to explain to a 90-yr old why the channels are different.

<comment><USER19> LOL.

Is there a real reason for them to need to rearrange the channels? I don't get it.

<comment><USER20> I don't either!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Easier solution: Turn the TV to face the wall and unplug it from the cable company.

Net, the OP is about a big battle over something next to worthless.

My ISP in effect pays me to accept their "basic* TV service -- I get Internet access and phone with TV for less than without TV.

Well, I hadn't watched any TV for years. I tried a few months ago to watch the NBA playoffs, but my _basic_ service didn't offer that.

But for the 2016 elections, I just signed up for an _upgrade_. But, I'm not very happy with the upgrade -- it's a waste of time and money. Even for the elections, I can get what I want, e.g., transcripts, off the Internet.

So, I suspect in another week or so I will cancel the _upgrade_.

Movies? Okay, DVDs or YouTube.

How anything could be as bad as TV is a bit beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER22> From the chart, retransmission fees have gone from $0.2bn to $8.6bn (in 2018, so, a projection) Absolutely, retransmission fees are growing faster than anything else.

But Basic Cable net fees have gone from 16.2 to 46.9bn. Fees paid to RSNs (sports?) have (will have?) gone from 2.7 to 7.8bn.

$35.8bn change for "cable stuff" vs $8.4bn change for "local stuff".

So, yeah, local broadcasters are rolling in it, but the dollar impact on your bill is from cable+sports programming. (albeit likely on a smaller per-channel basis).

<comment><USER15> Absolutely true. The cable companies are about to revolt -- what happens if Comcast says "Fine, we're just giving everyone Netflix + Hulu Plus subscriptions and a Roku box, so ESPN and the RSNs can fuck off; subscribe to MLB/NFL/NHL's streaming packages if you want to."?

<comment><USER23> Never gonna happen.

* Comcast makes millions, if not billions a year off of equipment rental fees. $8/mo for a gateway and $12/mo for an HD box (at minimum) for cheap, crappy equipment.

* Streaming video has gotten good, but streaming live video is still a tough nut to crack. You can't pre-buffer things that haven't happened yet (said by someone who's used the NHL's offering for the past few years).

* Sports are keeping cable TV alive. NBCSN prints money for Comcast, and they pay the NHL a ton of money for that content, and the NHL has one of the smaller North American TV deals (due to demographics, regional popularity, and the weak Canadian dollar).

<comment><USER15> * They do, but thinking is evolving that the TCO of having to develop and support those devices isn't worth the revenue they provide. Because the CableCard scheme used in the US is essentially proprietary to the US, the US cable companies have to develop custom hardware at great cost.

* Very true; but there is a lot of investment being made here. Also, if you're watching over the Internet, do you really care if there is a 5 min delay from live action?

* RSNs are a zero-sum game for the cable operators; the money NBCSN makes for Comcast ends up going back out the door to the other RSNs like FoxSN, RootTV, etc. The cable companies would rather not have to pay for any of it. They just use it to bleed each other for money.

<comment><USER23> For point two, a delay is a problem. Twitch had to introduce a delay as they grew, and it made it difficult for the streamer to respond to things happening in the chat channel. Sticking to traditional TV sports, notification of a scoring event shouldn't happen before the video stream reaches you (ie: ESPN's app notifies you of a scoring event before you see it on a "live" video feed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just push it towards the internet. Encourage broadcasters to directly-market. Now that Android TV is a thing, this can quickly become very user-friendly.

<comment><USER23> Why does Android TV matter? Unless you want to watch a show as soon as you possibly can, most content has been available for day-after viewing from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Xbox Video, etc etc etc for years.</comment></comment>


As HN: Startup name — dot com or not dot com? - <AUTHOR> Me and my co-founder never thought that one of the most difficult tasks in starting a project would be the choice of a domain name.
As everyone knows, it is incredibly difficult to get a good .com name. Unbelievably difficult.  The amount of names of new startups which all sound a little bit as dog names proves it. And the reason for this is obvious — everyone wants a short, pronounceable and a remarkable name... as a .com domain.  However, what I cannot understand is why on earth are .com names so important? I mean, there should be a real reason why startups pick names like reddit, okcupid, gowalla, tumblr, quora, etc, instead of going with simpler and more prominent name in another domains? Since a few years there is a tendency of picking domains like .ly, .me, .io, etc. but I cannot think of a single successful project with a non dot com domain. I rather see another cases, like if a project gets popular it buys a better name (dropbox, facebook, delicious).
If the argument is that .com is kind of a "default" domain and everybody will type "name.com", then I would disagree, since no one is typing a url by hand. We use google, bookmarks, links, so the domain itself seems to be quite irrelevant. Maybe it is the appearance that matters? Or the ease of pronunciation? But the latter obviously suffers for names like flickr and tumblr.
What do you think? Why is e.g. roollr.com better than roller.at? <comment><USER2> As someone running a non-dot-com service (<http://historio.us>), _get a .com name_. If you can't find your name in .com, _change your name_. Nobody can type anything other than .com. Seriously.

<comment><USER3> My problem with your domain is that I continuously typed it as histori.us from memory, whereas with a .com I would have defaulted to a more standard spelling of 'rious'.

(Having typed it enough times now, I do remember - but still every time the way I remember is by thinking of how I got it wrong in the past).

That said, I don't see any difference, personally, between .com/.org/.net - remembering the extension is no problem, it's only when the extension becomes a part of the site name that sometimes confuses my memory.

<comment><USER2> Funnily enough, historius.com redirects to the site. historious.com is a squatter, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _As everyone knows, it is incredibly difficult to get a good .com name._ "

I actually wrote a tool to solve this problem (it finds short, available .coms using real words):

<http://impossibility.org/>

Ironically, it's a .org :)

Basically, the reason you want a .com is so people will know you're a website. It's instantly parsable. "I work for Shoes.com" vs "I work for Shoe.ly... it's a website that sells shoes". It greatly simplifies advertising, press coverage, word of mouth, etc.

<comment><USER5> My new business plan: 1.) Add "anything" to the "end" of my word: "tweet" 2.) Develop something based on the results 3.) ???? 4.) Profit

<comment><USER6> My first result was tweetrage.com. Which if anybody has an idea for, I think is an awesome domain!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stay away from .co at all cost. We tried registered irealty.co when it came out since .com and many others TLDs didn't have irealty, and we really wanted that name. We've put the .co in the logo to emphasize that it's not .com, but people kept telling us that our logo has a typo - it's missing the m the at the end. We ended up ditching irealty all together after that.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can, get both. Our latest product is called Player.IO, so we got both <http://player.io> and <http://playerio.com>. This means that if you type either "player.io" or "playerio" in your browser you'll go to the same place.

Bitly does the exact same thing, <http://bitly.com> works just as well as <http://bit.ly>

<comment><USER9> I second this advice.

I'm curious though, henrik: why 301 player.io to playerio.com when your brand (per the logo) is "player.io"? I'm curious as it seems a little counter- intuitive.

<comment><USER8> I have no good answer for that, I don't think anyone felt strongly about it being either way, so it just ended up like this and not the other way around. :-)

Honestly, I don't think it matters very much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why the focus on short? Is there any study into whether it actually helps? 2-3 words works just as well, in my opinion.

Sure, an extra 4-5 letters to type in the domain name, but at least it's more memorable than the awful and impossible-to-spell-other-than-letter-by-letter 4-5 letter animal noises. (i.e. How many times do you want to say "No, you leave out the 'e'")

<comment><USER7> As a general rule, shorter URLs are more memorable, better for SEO, and better for social sharing.

Memorable: 7 letters or less is best, 9 is still manageable, and anything more than 9 calls for misspelling, too long to type, etc. I personally believe that a 2-word 12 characters name is better than a 5 letter weirdo name or random characters, but I haven't seen a study to support that.

SEO: the URL shown in google SERPs plays in a role in clickthrough rate. A shorter domain name means more of the URL will be shown, as many services limits the maximum number of characters shown.

Social sharing: same as above, short and meaningful domain names are more likely to get clicks and be shared again than a URL that passed through bit.ly and friends. Doesn't apply as much to twitter, but think email, facebook, linkedin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "since no one is typing a url by hand" - that's a pretty big assumption, and if you proceed under that assumption you better nail the SEO for your company name. Google gives better rankings for .com names so at least make sure there is not another active company using the .com. It definitely depends what type of audience you are targeting as to whether they will be savvy with not owning the .com or not.

I know a couple startups that assumed they didn't need the .com that ended up paying a fortune later to get it because their brand was established and it was too late to change. roollr.com actually seems like a decent domain, just be prepared for the misspellings and make sure there is not porn at rollr.com, rooller.com etc...

<comment><USER12> "Google gives better rankings for .com names"

Is this true?

<comment><USER13> Partially. It's one of many factors used in ranking websites, of course, that only applies to the default international search, if you select "results in x country" the local TLD's for that country get extra weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think some people (read: "old people") probably don't even know that non-.com tlds exist. If you want to create a memorable domain, you are seriously handicapping yourself by not going .com.

If your success and customer aquisition is going to be more viral in nature, spreading through invitations/Facebook, or if it is dependant on SEO for traffic, then I don't think it matters as much.

I'm (someday) going to launch my "November" Startup sprint project and went with a non-.com url (<http://www.rankoro.us/>) but, just to be safe, I reserved <http://www.rankorous.com> as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you have a non .com name then you are forcing users to remember two things. Will someone exposed to the domain be able to remember 24 hours later whether it was "roller.it", "roller.to", "roller.us" or "roller.at"?

<comment><USER15> I think that non .com names are pretty easy to remember when they form meaningful phrases like "take.it" or when they reflect the name of the company (e. g. yolk - "yo.lk"). And it signals that you are different.

<comment><USER3> Actually it signals that you are the same as the many, _many_ other people who are trying to be 'different'.

It's no longer a novelty factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This really depends on your target audience and your marketing strategy (if you have one).

The techie audience should have problem remember a non .com, and be comfortable accessing it, other may not.

If you're planning on doing non-online advertising then its more important to have a .com, as people will have to remember the url and type it in at a later date. If you plan on doing stuff online then people click on stuff and it becomes less important.

<comment><USER17> This is good advice!

A domain name needs to fit the web site, and your approach to attracting visitors and maintaining relationships with them. But the original post never described these aspects of the business/service being considered.

I wrote an article about this yesterday: <http://domainjig.com/ideas/great- domain-names.html> in preparation for the public launch of a new ... domain name suggestion tool! I'm not quite ready to post it to the main HN page (still working out a few to-do's), but for those of you wanting a sneak peek, here it is: <http://domainjig.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am in the camp of if you are going to go with roller.at make sure you can get rollerat.com! This actually is pretty easy since it seems like a weird URL, but makes sense once you start talking about your product, "visit us at roller dot at" and people will still go to rollerat.com.

Redirect rollerat.com to roller.at and be done with it. It just takes a little extra time to make sure you can get both domains.

</comment><comment><USER19> Naming is hard, but try to keep at it! It's so important to get a dot-com domain name that's spelled like it's pronounced. You'll be surprised how many times your name will be used offline: conferences, interviews, phone calls, tv appearances, print publications, etc. What you like about any other TLD domain name will be quickly overshadowed by having to explain the URL each and every time.

</comment><comment><USER20> There'll be enough problems to deal with. Please don't add another unnecessary complication by debating over this.

Just go with dotcom. Don't waste another minute.

</comment><comment><USER6> One point that I hasn't thought of until it happened to me: I took my car in to be serviced. My primary email address is on a .org domain. I read out the email address, and the .org bit completely flummoxed the person booking my car in, and she must see 20+ people a day with email addresses. She wrote "<myname>@<mydomain>." and paused. I repeated, "dot org", and she continued to type ".org.com".

I think with a purely technical audience, you have much more freedom with the TLD. However with anything less, you may struggle. Remember even popular non-.com's like Wikipedia are probably accessed much more via Google than by typing wikipedia.org.

</comment><comment><USER21> People trust .com more than they trust .at

Worth bearing in mind even if you're not thinking of the very small minority who type in a domain name and just hit CTRL+Enter to autocomplete to www.domain.com

Domain hacks are also difficult to remember and type. Devs will get it, understanding that the dot comes before the last two or three letters, and that as the last two or three letters identifies a country .tld whether it is 2 or 3 letters. But end users... imagine how many are getting it wrong and letting Google intercept. This may be acceptable to you, but it's hardly a sleek and uninterrupted experience for the end user.

</comment><comment><USER22> > _no one is typing a url by hand. We use google_

I type urls by hand and do CTRL+Return to add the .com and get there.

But even if everyone is using Google, a unique name like "roollr" will certainly be easier to find than "roller" that will exist in many tlds. How will your users remember that you're the .at one, and that .com or .it have nothing to do with you?

It's so much easier for everyone to use a .com

(BTW I don't know if you chose roller as a generic example, but roller.com is apparently for sale at sedo).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh and btw, "for sale". Recently, I made a price request for some dot-com domain, which sounds kind of fun, has 6 characters, but is not even an english word. The price was $18500. Now image what roller.com would cost.

<comment><USER23> I think I might happened upon a domain that you might like in your name's neighborhood. -It's not registered; I don't want to post it. Send me an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think one thing that should be considered, is whether or not people can easily remember and spell the domain correctly after hearing it. A lot of referrals are still by word-of-mouth. There's a big difference between: "Hey check out Facebook" and "Hey check out Orkut". Even when meaningless; Spoondog is more easily retained than Fleaty.

Having a .com similarly makes word-of-mouth referrals easier.

BTW, I found an available .com that might be up your alley. Email me if you like.

</comment><comment><USER24> I never type ".com" in the url box anymore, and I assume I'm not alone.

When I want to go to Google, I type in "google", with no "www" or "com". Safari automatically interprets this as "www.google.com", although I realize that Chrome can't do this (as it interprets it as a search query rather than a url).

However, that is one big disadvantage of not having a dot com url nevertheless. Just something to think about.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the standard thing to do would be to get a dotcom, even if you have to be creative with the name. But there have been successes with non-dotcoms:

Drop.io was acquired ([http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/facebook-acquires- drop-io-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/facebook-acquires-drop-io-nabs- sam-lessin/)), and bit.ly seems to be doing well.

<comment><USER26> That's two. ;) And I'd argue that bit.ly has a special advantage in the confusing-silly-suffix department, being a service that appeals mostly to (a) relatively sophisticated people who know about URLs -- they know what URLs are, and they know that a short URL is better, and they know that one URL can redirect to another -- and (b) robots that shorten URLs automatically and that are very good at remembering arbitrary rules.

Can we name any other prominent examples of non-dot-com stardom? The poster child of the cutesy URL movement, delicio.us, dropped the idea halfway through its rise to, um, near-death and relative obscurity at the hands of Yahoo. So I'm not sure they're a very promising example. Any other big stars? What am I missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If it were me, I'd purchase both the vanity tld of your choice along with .com/.net and use .htaccess rules to redirect content to one or the other.

I'd be wary of .ly domains though.. [http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the- ly-domain-space-to-b...](http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain- space-to-be-considered-unsafe/)

</comment><comment><USER24>
      Me and my co-founder never thought...

Change that to

      My co-founder and I never thought...

I know this is unrelated to the post, but it bugged me to see a grammatical error like this one the moment I started reading.

</comment><comment><USER28> The .com is a must, the average user will just type your startup name and then .com What you should do is buy doma.in and domain.com and redirect the latter to the former.

</comment><comment><USER29> any new food related startup should have a domain name ending in .nom /cc ICANN

pro: I was speaking with a UX designer recently who mentioned his parents didn't know what a url was, they simply typed the website they were interested in into the google search bar in their webbrowser. in this situation as long as you are first in google, you are good to go.

con: if someone happens to know what a URL is they will probably type <name>.com first.

</comment><comment><USER30> Didn't we all already figure this out during the first dotcom bubble? The brand is the important thing, not the URL.

<comment><USER17> For many web companies, the brand = the URL. Otherwise, you might wind up with some like "www.clownpenis.fart" (see <http://www.tressugar.com/SNL-Skit- Clownpenisfart-1965732>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Get roller.at and rollerat.com

</comment><comment><USER31> two incredibly useful tools that will make finding a good .com name less of a hassle:

<http://www.wordoids.com>

<http://www.domize.com>

be sure to double check wordoids' results, as it sometimes report taken domains as free.

good luck!

<comment><USER32> wordoids.com appears to be a parked seo page. Don't go there.

<comment><USER33> He must have meant <http://wordoid.com/>

Of course, here's a perfect example of a novelty-name recollection failure.</comment></comment></comment>


Why promiscuous Covid-19 testing is unwise - <AUTHOR> https://lee-phillips.org/testingbad/ <comment><USER2> > Those who suggest a universal testing program are not recommending that > everyone receive an expensive, time-consuming, accurate COVID test.

I'd recommend an inexpensive, accurate test and the time is what it is. If we scaled up test processing, it wouldn't be that time-consuming, so the premise seems a bit specious. The price can be controlled better than it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me about this inexpensive, accurate test. I actually don't know about the latest developments in test technology.</comment></comment>


Collaboration Tips for Designers Working with Developers - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/collaboration-tips-for-designers-working-with-developers/

<comment><USER2> I don't agree with the idea that designers should just hand off mock-ups to developers and expect them to implement it properly. All of these points can be addressed by coding your own HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Developers don't have the time to worry about your grid, they have enough to do as it is. Design that stops at Photoshop is only half finished, and a web designer who doesn't have the skill to implement their work is not really a web designer at all.

When I work with developers, I just tell them to do their thing and make it work. Don't worry what it looks like - I'll do the rest. Using GitHub on our projects has made this really easy for me.</comment>


Ask HN: Any alternatives to CrazyEgg - <AUTHOR>

Any recommendations for a good alternative to CrazyEgg? I am looking for a more responsive support, live data updates (few minutes intervals are acceptable, too) and solid documentation. I appreciate any input. <comment><USER2> You have some options. Some time ago I tested ClickTale, MouseFlow, Inspectlet. Now I'm using Inspectlet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Inspectlet looks promising. I will give them a try.</comment></comment>


Spectacle App no longer maintained - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle/commit/1dec1ca0923a1d96c3f621f72379354201ad2c66 <comment><USER2> Could you please stop putting "Show HN" in titles that don't meet the criteria for Show HN? The rules are at [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> Can do

<comment><USER2> Appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a real bummer. Is anyone aware of an open source alternative that ONLY does window management for macOS?</comment>


I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing (2008) [pdf] - jules-jules https://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> God I can't stand Nick Bostrom.

I think the great filter is definitely ahead of us, but I'm not so terrified by the implications of this (or so interested in being a pompous contrarian) that I'm moved to bury my head in the sand and publicly hope for stupid things.

I hope we find current or ancient life on Mars, Europa, etc. because that would be interesting and exciting.

It would bring no more additional existential dread than looking outside at your fellow idiot humans.

Life is hard, and we're probably all going to die. Get over it. We can still hope to find interesting things while we're around to enjoy them.

<comment><USER2> I'm not even sure who Nick Bostrom is, but thanks for your comment, it stands on its own :)

<comment> jules-jules In case you were serious, Nick Bostrom is a philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence. He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he leads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director.

<comment><USER2> Yep I was, and thanks for doing emotional labor for me, I probably wouldn't have bothered googling him :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm afraid we're looking at a great filter event very soon. We're doing nothing about global warming, we've demonstrated that the United States has a significant fraction of its population which values short-term pleasure over the most basic work to prevent the spread of a pandemic (and we're likely to see these sorts of things happen more, not less frequently as we continue to encroach on wildlife habitat). I'm increasingly skeptical of the ability for civilization to make it into the 21st century.

<comment><USER4> I really doubt global warming will lead to human extinction. Life might get harder in lots of ways, but it seems extremely unlikely to be an existential problem.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but there's a small chance that it will bring about the end of modern civilization. In that sense it will be civilization-ending. An interesting question is whether humans would be able to rebuild civilization after events like this.

I think the main extinction risk is the secular trend for technology to become both more destructive and more decentralised. If that continues, it might only be a matter of time before independent actors will be able to extinguish the human race. And given the distribution of human motivations, if individuals can do it, someone will sooner or later.

<comment><USER4> I can see the civilization ending argument, although it seems like something resembling modern civilization could be rebuilt, maybe with less access to energy, but with less people you also need less energy, so I'm not sure how big of a problem that will be. Maybe without global industries there won't be the materials science necessary for space exploration.

I have a harder time believing independent actors can extinguish the human race. Biowarfare/terrorism is unlikely to do so for a variety of reasons, and nuclear warfare only has the potential to do in superpower level conflict, and even then I don't think it's certain.

<comment><USER6> > human race

Being satisfied that some "naked apes" still living could mean a survival, as a biological species, of the probable destruction of current civilization is setting the bar really low.

<comment><USER4> Okay, but do you really think civilization is going to collapse entirely? I don't. Even if half of humanity died you would still have civilization of some sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone have a detailed analysis of why we believe we have the technology to detect distant alien civilizations? Given interstellar distances, travel between stars seems unlikely without some new science we don't know yet. Also, do we know we would be able to detect our own radio transmissions with our own telescopes from lighyears away? I think the great filter hypothesis always relied on the assumption that intelligent life would eventually develop Star Trek level technology and be extremely detectable, but what if we're near the end of what's physically possible with respect to energy production, speed, radio astronomy, and communications? What if the aliens are out there, but statistically so far away that we will never detect each other?

<comment><USER5> One issue with the way Bostrom and others frame the Fermi paradox is that they assume the teleological end of any intelligent civilization will be the maximisation of its exploitation of natural resources through the creation of self-replicating probes that will slowly populate the universe. _That 's_ why they think the Fermi paradox is a paradox - if there is life, it should be everywhere. That may well be a reflection of ourselves, however, rather than a universal motivation of intelligent life.

<comment><USER8> At the numbers we're looking at, even if only 1% of civilizations (maybe even 1 in 1000) would be exponentially expansionary, they would still make themselves fairly obvious and outcompete all the others. The Fermi paradox doesn't assume that _all_ extraterrestrial intelligence behaves this way, but this rebuttal has to assume that _no_ ETI would behave this way.

And that seems improbable, if only because aggressive, exponential expansion is a fairly valid Darwinian strategy.

<comment><USER6> > aggressive, exponential expansion is a fairly valid Darwinian strategy.

Earth exists for around 4.5 billion years, life on Earth for 3.5 billion years, the whole known Universe just less than 14 billion years (and we can send some small probes to the limits of our own Solar system only during the last decades). So the Universe is not "old" and the distances between the areas suitable for the life to "expand" are immense and real barriers.

Knowing the distances involved, I believe that had we discovered that we are in much later age of the Universe, not seeing "others" would mean more than it means now. For now, knowing the distances, whatever could be somewhere far could simply be too far from us, nothing more.

Edit:

Re: "The galaxy is only 100,000 light years across" note that that are the _light_ years -- the distance that the light has to travel that much. We know that the whole islands on Earth were unreachable for many otherwise common species for millions of years. But these distances are nothing compared with problems of maintaining complex life over the cosmic distances and in the cosmically hostile environment. Also "10-50 million years ahead of us" doesn't have to mean what we think it could mean. For a context, the dinosaurs were, historically, 60 million years "ahead of us". Nobody can "just assume" the we will cross the limits that are ours limits now. Biologically, we did multiply "exponentially" as soon as we were able to use the natural resources to do so (1). But apart from that (the certainty of life using available resources for biological growth), the growth in technical capability for interstellar travel is not guaranteed. Not to mention that the resources are by definition limited.

So nobody should ask "why aren't others here" when we can't even claim that we reached somewhere else. What we surely can ask is "why don't we get some signals" because, for example, we are able to send a radio message, but I personally wouldn't assume that the other civilizations make such kind of intentional signalling that we must necessarily be able to detect, being where we are now. It's not "just connect the headset to the wire and a crystal and listen." It's something that has to concentrate immense amounts of energy to reach exactly us. At the moment it's not "is there anybody anywhere" but "is there anybody in the conveniently close neighborhood who's capable to send exactly what we expect to receive, and, most probably, to target exactly in this direction." It's immensely hard to even "see" the planets by the closest stars, that how far everything is. I think that probability for that "targeted messaging" is too low, not to mention that I don't think that the "intelligence" in our sense is inevitably happening on every planet -- we know that from the 3.5 billion years of life on Earth, not even plants existed for 3 billion years. Life can indeed be relatively common but the development that the Earth up to now had could still simply be uncommon enough.

1) [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population- since-10...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population- since-10000-bce-ourworldindata-series)

<comment><USER8> If you're going to reply to me, please reply to me instead of editing.

<comment><USER6> > please reply to me instead of editing.

Unfortunately, my account has some very, very low limits on the number of replies I can make per day, which I can't influence. Not all users have necessarily the same possibilities, and the privileges one may have aren't universal.

My belief is, the limits are there to prevent the discussion progressing too fast and if somebody misses some edit and that even helps the thread remaining slower, maybe the measure still achieved a goal. But I admit it can be confusing.

Of course, I'd personally prefer to have at least a bit higher "quota."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article reads alarmingly similar to the Kurzgesagt video about the great filter ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM)).

Of course, the Great Filter isn't a new concept, but provided that this is an argument made by somebody other than the person who coined the term (that was Robin Hanson I believe), combined with the fact that I read almost the entire article before then going on to find the video, I find the two too similar to write it off to simple chance.

There have been criticisms of Kurzgesagt in the past, one I can recall being the following, in video form ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2dAGU- VJcE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2dAGU-VJcE)). I've now found out that the original video was retracted and the creator issued a public apology ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgHGslVdrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgHGslVdrg)), in addition to Kurzgesagt committing to performing more scrutiny over their videos and citing their sources wherever possible.

I do applaud this last step on their part, and I understand that you have to admit that the Great Filter video was published back in 2018 before this commitment was made, but something about the lack of attribution throughout the video doesn't sit right with me, still.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, Great Filter is a really simple idea, and it's very well known in certain circles (e.g. LessWrong community, to formation of which Robin Hanson contributed). I personally had no idea Robin coined it, or that Bostrom wrote about it, despite reading some text of both - and yet I could still give the same explanation way before Kurzgesagt's video aired.

Which is to say, I didn't find the lack of attribution worrisome in this video, because the idea is pretty much "public domain" in the circles interested about the future. It was (as you note) before the time when Kurzgesagt decided to get super-thorough about citing their sources, and I charitably assume that the authors of the video were just aware of the concept of the Great Filter, and not necessarily where they learned about it from. It's a simple idea, easy to explain, and easy to make inferences from - so it may not have occurred to them it's worth tracking down who originally coined the term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honestly, I find the argument that some specifically destructive event (or even a collection of events) would be pervasive enough among all intelligent species to serve as a "Great Filter" to be completely absurd. The chances that any of the examples he listed actually resulting in full extinction (or even an endless spacefaring handicap) are only moderate at best, not assured, even if they did occur. In fact, I think it's quite reasonable to expect that a species, having undergone such a destructive event and been left not extinct, would actually be pushed into space far more efficiently. With that in mind, it's certainly completely absurd to actively hope that monumental (possibly species altering) discoveries are not made.

</comment><comment><USER12> I always thought the notion of the "von Neumann probe" was odd. What is the motivation for a civilization to do this? It would be highly destructive, extremely destructive, and impossible to reverse. No one would set this in motion, right?

<comment><USER13> Consider that, to a very alien intelligence, humanity could look a _lot_ like von Neumann probes.

If we stay on our current technological trajectory without destroying ourselves, we will spread out into the galaxy, consuming more and more resources in order to produce more copies of ourselves.

From a totally alien point of view, we might be as intelligent, conscious, or sapient to them as trees are to us. That is, we might as well be bio-robots. Von Neumann probes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always found these Fermi paradox arguments silly. Just by posing the problem in this way you are making lots of implicit assumptions which you pretend aren't there by dressing up the rest of your argument in faux rigor.

<comment> jules-jules What are some of the implicit assumptions in your view?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is newly interesting in light of the recent pentagon UFO revelations ([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon- ufo-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry- reid-navy.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article)). While these have low credibility, and even if true are likely not extraterrestrial, finding life on mars would change this calculation.

<comment><USER6> > these have low credibility

Lower then low, to the point that whenever somebody mentions them, I believe there was just a "wish to be true" and then stop.

When checked, it was just a "rerelase" of the old already published material (one can also think about to whose benefit that distraction was) which was already carefully debunked by Mick West:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus)

Mick West's full playlist with explanations:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCV...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCVnqTx_c0P3O2t)

An article mentioning Mick West:

[https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage- has-a...](https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-has-an- optical-explanation/)

Also, one day after NYT published their article "No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon's U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" they published a correction too:

"Correction: July 24, 2020 _An earlier version of this article inaccurately rendered remarks attributed to Harry Reid_ , the retired Senate majority leader from Nevada. Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin _may have occurred_ and that retrieved materials should be studied; _he did not say that crashes had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades._ An earlier version also misstated the frequency with which the director of national intelligence is supposed to report on unidentified aerial phenomena. It is 180 days after enactment of the intelligence authorization act, not every six months."

Emphasis mine, now imagine how many articles in how many media were written before the above correction, and it will explain what most of the consumers got as the message (namely, the first, utterly fake version with fake "crashes").

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure I buy this argument... here are some random thoughts on why:

1) Someone has to be first. Let's say that there is no filter, and every species that doesn't destroy itself or get destroyed will eventually become technologically advanced to travel around meaningfully in space. There is a certain amount of time it will take for this to happen. Supposedly the universe is ~14B years old, and Earth is ~5B years old. It takes a certain amount of time for abiogenesis, a certain amount of time for life to evolve, and a species to emerge "victorious" long enough to start conquering the universe before the next extinction event. So we could be the "first", or the top 20% anyway, and it'll still take us a while for those top 20% to get anywhere where they can start detecting/traveling anywhere.

2) What is the maximum distance any extraterrestrial life could observe our technology/planet currently? Space is huge, like uncomprehendingly huge... even if we could go anywhere ourselves right now, would we go visit every single planet everywhere without a reason to? And how long would that take? Maybe there hasn't been enough time for a civilization to a) detect us from 100s of light years away and b) travel to us. Maybe detection of life from far away is impossible past a certain point, but traveling there isn't (since it just takes time).

So I guess my thought is, yeah, we might not find life in our solar system, but we might. But even if we do, I don't necessarily think we'll get filtered out either.

<comment><USER16> I'm not so confident we're in the top 20%. Our galaxy is middle-aged. Our star is only 4.6 billion years old in a galaxy that is 13.51 billion years.

There were several stars that blew up before we got the sun which means several systems and planets right in our neighborhood and that's just 1 star in the entire milky way.

Even at 1% the speed of light, it would take 2 million years to travel across the milky way which, relative to the age of the galaxy, is nothing.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but let's say you're on the other side of the milky way. You can travel at 1% the speed of light. Why would you come to Earth or anywhere near it? It takes 2 million years to get here, so unless you know something is there, that would be an insane trip to make.

<comment><USER16> Well, they wouldn't be looking for Earth specifically, they'd be looking for more resources which are everywhere. An intelligent and energy-hungry enough species would want to harness the power of every sun it can reach.

That growth would be exponential because acquiring resources provides more energy which allows them to acquire more resources even faster.

If an intelligent species doubled the number of stars they control every 2 million years, they'd have every star in the milky way in around 50 million years.

That's still like 0.2% the lifetime of the galaxy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The thought that if the Great Filter is behind us and we kill ourselves is more depressing than the Great Filter is ahead of us and we kill ourselves. I'm not very concerned with which type of intelligent life expanses into the universe so long as at least one type does it successfully. Being human, AGI, or alien does not matter. So finding ETs or creating super power AGI would be a win in my book because it increases the changes that someone will make it.

</comment><comment><USER18> The finding of extraterrestrial life wouldn't destroy my Christian worldview, but it would make things much less tidy. In his Mere Christianity, as I recall, C. S. Lewis opined that there probably was other intelligent life in the universe (i.e., other than God and the angels) and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't agree with the assumption of a single great filter. Why not many sufficient enough filters. Maybe one occurrence of any is sufficient to locally halt forever evolution to space-faring civilization, or successive occurrence of arbitrary filters at arbitrary intervals suffices.

<comment><USER20> The author states the great filter could be composed of multiple filters towards the end of the paper.

> Nothing in the above reasoning precludes the Great Filter from being located > both behind us and ahead of us. It might both be extremely improbable that > intelligent life should arise on any given planet, and very improbable that > intelligent life, once evolved, should succeed in becoming advanced enough > to colonize space.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, got bored and stopped reading before I got to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If it was discovered that the laws of nature prevent a species from expanding into the universe through whatever mechanisms plausible, what would that do the idea of free will? Does free will require unbounded possibilities or would an upper bound rethink our idea of the universe?

<comment><USER22> There is no such thing as free will, is there? Decisions are a consequence of physical brain state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The big assumption here that really bothers me is that any civilization that developed the technology to expand into the galaxy would've found us by now. That's so bogus. We can probably expand to Mars, but we're still bound by the speed of light.

</comment><comment><USER24> What do we typically believe now that we would no longer believe if there were an advanced species benevolently not hunting us for sport?

I am trying to sort out what are the moral and ethical implications of humans not being the most intelligent or advanced species it is aware of.</comment>


Ask HN: WhatsApp for $16B.... What for Tesla? - <AUTHOR>

I know it's a big big fat ginormous juicy rumor, but if Whats App sold for $16B, how much do you think Apple would pay for Tesla? Or Tesla theoretically get from let says, Google? Personally, I think the value-add is greater than Whats App for Facebook.
So....
 - What's your valuation of Tesla?
 - What's the value proposition for a giant tech company: New Market? New Product? Product infrastructure? Leadership and Innovation?
Chime in with your opinions. I'm very curious to see what your thoughts are. <comment><USER2> 1\. Tesla's market cap is $23.74B, on a public market. A premium over that would be needed, but it's worth noting it's not a _ex nihilo_ VC valuation.

2\. I know everyone is having fun dreaming about Apple buying Tesla, but I really don't see any sane reason why it would actually happen.

3\. Why would anyone buy Tesla? Why do we want Tesla to be bought by someone? Worth noting that success stories of uninnovative large companies buying smaller innovative ones to reinvigorate themselves doesn't work very often.

<comment><AUTHOR> 3 solid thoughts. And I agree with you on all.

My question is more of a "pie-in-the-sky" type of thing, because honestly, who would've thought about Facebook buying WhatsApp for 16B?

<comment><USER2> I see. I just now realized I didn't see it coming because I didn't take their attempted acquisition of SnapChat seriously enough.

They really wanted messaging, and WhatsApp users and revenue are already impressive to the point of making SnapChat look tiny in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whatsapp was sold for $16B but only $4B in cash, I'm not sure the $12B in shares of Facebook is real money.

I think Tesla is worth $24B or more. It's not about what they have already achieved but the vision and the long way to go.

<comment><USER4> Can't the 12B of shares be sold for real money?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so, I'm pretty sure Facebook has given them some limitations on how many shares they can sell or when (ie: they can't sell more than 1B each year)

Companies which offer stock in acquisitions usually do because they think their shares are overvalued

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would it not make sense for apple to buy microsoft first. It would get them a mac in every home.</comment>


Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136847

<comment><USER2> Bing will have auto refining? I don't see how based on my definition of refining. A search is some number of bits as input, you can try to tease out more by performing computation or make guesses based on user search history. what you can't do is magic more bits into existence.

the beauty of google is that it approximates artificial intelligence. our primitive computation abilities could never figure out the relevance of pages based on crunching the actual contents of a page. but we're getting better on that end.

the future is probably halfway in between. relevance based on a combination of computation (think a more advanced wolfram alpha screening pagerank results).

I doubt bing has jumped ahead of both of these. throwing money at it won't change that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article assumes that $100 million is a large spend for a search engine launch, though a quick search on google points to Ask.com allocating $100 million to their 2007 ad campaign, and that didn't seem to do much for them. [http://searchengineland.com/askcom-goes-weird-creepy-with- ne...](http://searchengineland.com/askcom-goes-weird-creepy-with-new-uk- commercials-11927)

I couldn't find any official ask.com numbers.

</comment><comment><USER4> "But Microsoft sees an opening on its own proprietary search data: 42% of searches require refinement, and 25% of clicks are the back button".

So does this happen with Google? Or to put it another way, does this campaign imply that it is too hard to fix the technical part so we are after the perception?</comment>


Pig hunting with personal UAV - <AUTHOR> http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/pig-hunting-with-personal-uav

<comment><USER2> This was originally from the Something Awful forums. Lots more videos and info here: [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=343...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3431642)

<comment><USER3> "Special Message From Senor Lowtax Sorry, you must be a registered forums member to view this page."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All this tech and resourcefulness and there's no alternative to just killing these pigs? Electric fence? UAV robots chasing them off? Sounds like he paid almost $5,000 for the camera and the whole thing is pretty time intensive (all night hunting).</comment>


A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2627354 <comment><USER2> I don't get this yet. Their lead paragraph says:

> Jack takes a coin from his pocket and decides that he will flip it 4 times > in a row, writing down the outcome of each flip on a scrap of paper. After > he is done flipping, he will look at the flips that immediately followed an > outcome of heads, and compute the relative frequency of heads on those > flips. Because the coin is fair, Jack of course expects this empirical > probability of heads to be equal to the true probability of flipping a > heads:0.5. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. If he were to sample one million fair > coins and flip each coin 4 times, observing the conditional relative > frequency for each coin, on average the relative frequency would be > approximately 0.4.

If I try to work this out, I write down the 16 possibilities for four coin flips:

        TTTT, TTTH, TTHT, TTHH,
        THTT, THTH, THHT, THHH,
        HTTT, HTTH, HTHT, HTHH,
        HHTT, HHTH, HHHT, HHHH

I count 24 instances where H occurs before the end of the sequence, 12 of which are followed by H and 12 of which are followed by T. So I get the expected 0.5 outcome.

The authors do some other calculation, and I don't understand what they are thinking. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER3> Here's an explanation that addresses this apparent inconsistency: [http://andrewgelman.com/2015/09/30/hot-hand-explanation- agai...](http://andrewgelman.com/2015/09/30/hot-hand-explanation-again/)

<comment><USER4> The linked explanation seems to be that if you do the probability wrong in a certain way, you come up with something below 50%.

Here's one way to reproduce the 40% number they get in the paper. Take a sequence of four flips. Consider five cases:

1\. 0 heads. Probability of head following a head=0

2\. 1 head. Probability of head following a head=0

3\. 2 heads. Probability of head following a head = 1/3

4\. 3 heads. Probability of head following a head = 2/3

5\. 4 heads. Probability of head following a head = 1

Now if those five cases were equally likely, then what would be the expected number of heads following a head?

Answer: (0 + 0 + 1/3 + 2/3 + 1)/5 = 0.4

Is this what they assume gamblers are using for 'empirical probability'? I can't tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone understand their argument clearly?

For three flips I get this sample space:

TTT no data; TTH no data; THT one data point HT; THH one data point HH; HTT one data point HT; HTH one data point HT; HHT two data points HH, HT; HHH two data points HH, HH

total data points by result: HT 4 HH 4

For four flips it's the same deal, after an H I'm equally likely to get another H or a T. Of course.

What am I missing? I don't quite understand their definition of 'empirical probability.'

</comment><comment><USER5> It is clear that there is a selection bias. Suppose there are 3 heads in a row, HHH, and we are going to estimate the probability of the next coin to be H. But we do it this way: if the outcome is H you don't count that as a H, a success, instead we proceed to make another estimation replacing HHHH as the initial condition. Since you don't count correctly the number of successes, this way of estimating probabilities constitutes a biased estimator of the real probability.

<comment><USER6> It is not THAT clear. Hence that multiple other papers, as the article says, made mistakes.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Introducing The Contact Protocol, what do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://contactprotocol.org/

<comment><USER2> It's short and sweet, but I would have to ask if there really needs to be a protocol designed for this?

It doesn't help to solve the problem of deciding whether j. random http client should or should not get my contact information, and if so what level of contact they should get. If I meet someone on the subway, I may want to give them asynchronous access to my attention (email or twitter) but not synchronous (voice, txt, IM).

That would be an interesting problem that could only be solved by a protocol. What you have currently is a spec for a weekend project that would be the base for a reference implementation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was planning on adding a recommendations section that includs some suggestions on this. I was thinking that your contact url could carry this "authorization" information.

For example:

<http://xyz.com/c/jack> -> would return my most public data

<http://xyz.com/c/jack/biz> -> would return my business contact info

<http://xyz.com/c/jack/cr56hj7> -> would return my most private contact data

In your example (perhaps):

<http://xyz.com/c/olefoo/async> and <http://xyz.com/c/olefoo/sync>

Or some such. It would be up to the Contact Server to provide this kind of contact "profile" functionality and you would decide who to give which URL to.</comment></comment>