Amazon Pulls Books That Promote Unscientific Autism 'Cures' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/amazon-autism-books.html <comment><USER2> It's not censorship, it's curating a storefront. The laws that protect us from actual censorship also protect Amazon's right to make choices about what they sell. I don't like that WalMart refuses to stock anything short of the nebulous American concept of "family friendly" yet I respect their right to make that choice. I have the choice to not do business with them.

<comment><USER3> >censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

Friendly reminder that the definition of censorship is not limited to the government.

The books they've banned may indeed be misinformation, but lets not push even more misinformation by denying simple dictionary definitions that seem politically unacceptable.

<comment><USER4> Then every website in the world censors information by filtering out spam. Why does nobody weep for the poor spammers who just want to sell you cheap Viagra? No doubt Amazon has been "censoring" their reviews in this way since the beginning. Where's the outrage?

<comment><USER5> Removing books from a "book" marketplace, that do not break any laws, aren't lewd or pornographic, and simply present alternative information on a subject, is not on the same level as spam.

Censorship is censorship. It doesn't need to be a political body to make it so.

In the 80's, the idea of the corporate ran dystopian future where a megalomaniac controlled society through his mega corporation was seen as scary future.

Now we get the usual boot licking going on every time this topic is brought up as Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (Alphabet) actually put into practice real censorship and attempt to control the majority of online communication, ideas, and a good piece of all information over the internet.

What a turn for the worse we've taken as a society.

<comment><USER6> _> present alternative information_

Like shouting "fire" in a crowded auditorium that is in fact _not on fire_? Let's call it what it is: we're talking about lying about things that can and will literally kill people.

Why should Amazon be expected to provide a platform for that?

<comment><USER7> You can do that if you want, "fire in a movie theater" was an argument in an overturned Supreme Court ruling.

<comment><USER6> You can do that, but if you feel entitled to the theater's help in doing it then I don't know what to tell you.

And if you expect the theater to let you in when you come back to watch a movie the next day, you're going to be disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tip of the iceberg. I just searched Amazon for "cure for cancer" and the first result is "Curing Cancer with Carrots." The cover features a carrot wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, and it has 168 customer reviews, 89% of them 5 star.

Almost all of the nonfiction books and videos on the first search result page promote similar "cures," with only one book based on medical research at spot #8 (The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer) and a book about the engineer who invented the universal microscope (The Cancer Cure That Worked: 50 Years of Suppression)

People should be able to share their personal stories, but Amazon and other tech companies have a responsibility to society, too. Claims like these can have real life and death outcomes. It's not enough to shrug and blame the algorithm because more people click on a book with a carrot on the front cover.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. It shows Amazon is making a bad precedent. If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have not been removed are deemed to be scientific? Should Amazon has a science department to validate all medical books?

<comment><USER10> > If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have > not been removed are deemed to be scientific?

An allegory: I'm currently using Craigslist to look for an apartment in San Francisco. I frequently encounter posts which are obviously scammy. I disregard them because I know that Craigslist can't possibly have the resources to police all its listings.

That said, I still appreciate it when they take the time to remove a scammy post. And I don't by _any_ stretch of the imagination think that the listings I find on Craigslist have been endorsed by Craigslist.

Spot-checking and removing garbage posts from Craigslist (or books from Amazon) may be a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole, but it's still better than letting those platforms turn into the Wild West.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've seen a number of people portraying this censorship (as I had feared) as "proving them right", or making people wonder "what are they hiding?", further fueling the anti-vax fire.

You just can't win. Hopefully this is only an initial reaction and will eventually die down.

Personally, I don't know how I feel about normalizing censorship. Freedom of information is a large part of how we reached the peak of our current civilization. How long before this goes too far?

However, any organization that proliferates plagues should be labeled as a terrorist organization. The anti-vax community is like a terrorist organization with "good" intentions, and they're just regular misinformed people all around us. Very tricky situation indeed..

<comment><USER12> >>Freedom of information is a large part of how we reached the peak of our current civilization.

This is one hell of an assertion, and needs substantial evidence to prove.

<comment><USER13> It seems obvious to me. The printing press is often regarded as the foundation of modern civilization.

<comment><USER12> Printing press allows the spread of ideas. It doesn't guarantee or imply the _free_ spread of ideas. Many countries with printing presses tightly control what ideas can be printed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it is easy to get distracted about whether or not Amazon has "the right" to do this.

The argument for private businesses making their own choices is strong, the argument for them being an effective monopoly is strong, I'm sure many other arguments are strong.

What occurs to me, and especially after listening to the second Joe Rogan/Jack Dorsey and co interview, is two dimensions of critically important inquiry:

\- What effect do policies and procedures like this have? How are they perceived? What are the unintended consequences? What are the limits and conditions surround the erection and enforcement of these policies? What is likely to be the next set of things removed? What are the forces that guide the decision making of the organization removing content?

\- What kind of world do we want to live in? Do these actions move us closer to that world, once all relevant and foreseeable consequences are taken in to account? What ability or mechanism exists to change course if the policy doesn't have the intended effect? Is there a way books can be reinstated?

The reality, as I see it, is the policies surrounding content moderation have tremendous future impact potential for culture and human experience.

We should make sure there is a broad and deep debate, not arbitrary action that takes its validity merely by existing. That's called "might makes right."

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know whether I agree.

The world is full of shitty materials and content. Should Amazon, or other intermediaries, be allowed such interferences?

Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold?

<comment><USER16> Private, yes. Government, no. Amazon is courageously admitting that ignorance is still ignorance and that they have the right not to comply with ignorance.

Dangerous, anti-science literature was on the top of their own charts, and ignoring that has moral implications. Amazon has decided indulging populist fervor and the "wisdom of crowds" does not rank higher than protecting general welfare where they have an influence.

<comment><USER17> Why should I trust Amazon's assessment of whether or not those books constituted "ignorance"?

(Think carefully. Most people will "want" to answer the seemingly-closely- related question "Why do you think these books are 'ignorance'?", but that is _not_ the same question!)

<comment><USER16> You're not under any obligation to. Amazon isn't really a monopoly. The only "sin" they've committed is refusing to cooperate with the implications and consequences of listing pseudoscience on their own best seller list amid a public health crisis rooted in populist ignorance.

<comment><USER18> > Amazon isn't really a monopoly.

I would completely agree with what you said about the rights of the private companies if Amazon was a regular market player. But even you qualified above statement. Even though Amazon is not _really_ a monopoly, it is pretty close for small scale book selling. That is, it has such a dominant market share that its decision not to sell a book can be a death sentence for a small book publisher. Thus they should be super careful when culling titles by content -- next time they might pull <insert your favorite hot topic> and there will be no recourse either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazon is private company and they are free to choose what they want to allow on their platform. Apparently they don't allow pornography which is a lot less harmful than these books. Authors are free to sell their snake oil on their own.

However, when government forces Amazon to remove these books or force them to sell these book, then we have a serious problem.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree with everybody that says that these books are dangerous and removing is probably a net positive in the short term.

However, I worry in the long term that we are normalizing censorship of ideas. It is not just simply a case of book stores not having enough shelf space so they had to make editorial choices. Amazon, for all practical purposes has no limits on the number of books it can stock. In addition, successfully getting Amazon to do this will embolden people to pressure other book sellers as well. In addition, there is no appeal to obscenity or legal fraud as the reason. The book is being banned simply because we do not like the ideas it promotes.

<comment><USER21> I'd say there's a fine line between "free speech" and "dangerous medical advice". Looking at a paragraph from the article:

>"Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism" recommends that autistic children drink and bathe in chlorine dioxide, a compound often referred to as "Miracle Mineral Solution." In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration described it as "a potent bleach used for stripping textiles and industrial water treatment" that "can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and symptoms of severe dehydration."

That's dangerous, plain and simple. I have no problem with a merchant on Amazon that sells rat droppings in a jar, provided they make it very clear what they're selling: rat droppings in a jar. If they start claiming that consuming rat droppings will cure lymphoma, however, then we've got a problem.

<comment><USER22> Fraudulently selling rat droppings as a cure is very different from selling a book claiming rat droppings are a cure. Governments deciding what is correct science and what is heresy have a poor track record.

<comment><USER23> The government hasn't decided anything. Amazon is a private business not a government. Regardless of which side of the debate we fall on here I think it's important to keep that distinction in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now that Amazon has begun pulling books, they have set a precedent that dooms them to continue doing so to the potentially many thousands of others with bad information. This is acknowledgement that they have a responsibility as a marketplace for the information contained in the books they sell.

</comment><comment><USER25> So books that promote unscientific cures are not allowed now? Interesting.

"And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up" \-- The Holy Bible (James 5:15)

[http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies- aft...](http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies-after- parents-use-prayer-instead-of-seeking-medical-treatment/)

<comment><USER26> I think a reasonable argument can be made that the books they pulled are entirely about unscientific cures and the Bible is about much more than just the line you quoted.

<comment><USER27> Where do you draw the line though?

<comment><USER28> It's hard to say. What's not hard to say is that crap like "Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism" belongs on the other side of the line.

Stuff like this baffles me. Like, yes, it's hard to say where you draw the line between patriotism (good) and nationalism (bad), but no one (who is also sane) wonders where you draw the line when discussing Hitler.

(Yes, I know about Godwin's law. I'm not being hyperbolic here, I think this is a good comparison.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is complicated. Anti-vax, flat earth and other ideologies masked as science have turned into virus', distributed over social. At the same time, people with all sorts of ideologies are shouting down facts they don't agree with.

Scientists researching potential behavior and psychological treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome are being targeted on Twitter so aggressively that many are giving up on the research, and some journals are pulling their findings (1). What happens when these people scream until Amazon pulls books about it? A whole field of helpful research could be burried for decades.

These ideological battles used to be local. Now they are global and it's causing real harm. We've discussed this previously. (2)

"Any information system of sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within itself."

(1) [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/science-...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/science-socialmedia/) (2) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is censorship, and it's a slippery slope.

IMHO the right way to go about this, would be for amazon to attach a letter to the cover of the book saying something like: "We're sorry you bought this book, but we do believe in your right to choose what you do with your time and money, so we have not removed this book from our store. FYI, according to (insert number of) scientists and XYZ peered reviewed papers, the vast majority of the content of this book has been certified to be false and you should seriously question the author's recommendations before acting on them, as they may pose health risks. If you require further information, here's some websites & books that provide what is widely considered to be factual information on the matter".

<comment><USER31> Why is it Amazon's responsibility to carry a product they don't want to, then independently supplement that product with their own editorializing?

It's a bad product which they don't want to carry. They're a store. It's their prerogative to simply not sell that product.

<comment><USER32> When a company gets that big, powerful and influential it can't just do whatever it wants anymore. From a European perspective I'd say this is an issue of freedom for society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This simply opens up a place in the market for uncensored book sales. If I want an honest search of the web I don't go to Google because they heavily censor and bias their search results. If I want to peruse the true set of literature on a particular topic I don't go to Amazon for the same reasons. I really don't see this "safe space" strategy paying off for these major tech brands. The holier-than-thou internet simply makes itself irrelevant. People can tell the difference between an honest retrieval of information versus a heavily censored retrieval of information in accordance with some ideological canon.

<comment><USER4> If the "ideological canon" is that they only offer information that is consistent with observable reality, I don't have a problem with that.

<comment><USER33> "Consensus" particularly in complex empirical areas (e.g. are eggs healthy?) is observably in constant flux with various strategic actors exerting heavy influence. For any question more complex than pure math there is always uncertainty and strategic bias.

<comment><USER4> I very much doubt there is any flux around whether or not forcing your child to drink bleach will cure their autism.

Personally, I am glad there are strategic actors exerting heavy influence on the "don't force your child to drink bleach" agenda. You can add me to the list: don't force your child to drink bleach. Ok?

<comment><USER33> Thats fine but I get to decide if I want to buy a book about drinking bleach to cure autism, Amazon doesn't decide it for me.

<comment><USER10> But you don't get to decide whether mixing bleach into your kids' Yoo-Hoo is in their best interest. Because it empirically isn't. A parent who tried to do this would be justifiably arrested on child endangerment charges, and no amount of "parents' rights" kvetching would negate that. And if some parent went on to write a book boosting this idea, Amazon would be roundly condemned if it knowingly allowed that book to be sold on its platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I did a quick search on Amazon for pornography. Nothing. Pretty sure there never has been.

Amazon (and pretty much everyone else) has been censoring stuff from the start. This act is not a radical change in policy, it's a tiny shift in where they draw the line.

I'm constantly baffled at how upset everyone gets in cases like this. I could see it when, for example, Tumblr started cracking down on stuff. But 99% of these cases involve companies that have always engaged in censorship (or curation or picking and choosing or whatever you want to call it) and are just making some adjustments.

</comment><comment><USER35> This was just mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50)

I forget the exact time it was mentioned, but it's in the first half somewhere. The author he's talking to mentions that his book is #20 when you search for autism because the first 19 were of the kind mentioned in this article. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the driver of this.

</comment><comment><USER36> Next is getting rid of all the supplements that don't work for anything they're advertised for.

That would be all of them.

</comment><comment><USER37> Slight tangent: Could Autism even be curable?

Obviously not by scammers/snake oil salesman, I'm talking legitimate science. From my understanding Autism is largely genetic[0], so without the ability to re-write someone's DNA (and the potential ramifications that could have), I don't know if a cure like that could ever exist.

Although I guess Epigenetics[1] could be an interesting avenue of study.

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

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

<comment><USER38> Myopia is typically genetic but is can treated or cured (to a large degree) in a number of ways. Just because something is genetic doesn't mean that there is not treatment to effectively 'cure' it. The problem with autism is that we know so little about what causes it on bio-mechanical level that medical treatment is well beyond us. That may change in the future, but for now, there is nothing we can do.

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure comparing eyeglasses to problems within formation of the brain is a very strong comparison. We haven't really cured anything like autism that I know of.

But I agree we're a very long way away from curing something like autism, particularly if it required altering DNA/gene expression.

<comment><USER38> The comparison is apt to the point I was making: that it is not the genetic nature of autism that makes it difficult to treat but our ignorance of its mechanisms (perhaps also the nature of the mechanisms themselves.) I think that you're confusing the etiology of the thing with the thing itself. Just as there is no reason to suspect that gene therapy would be necessary, there is no reason to suspect that it would be helpful in a person who has already developed autism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Censorship is always touted as an absolute bad thing but in a world where a large segment of the population is ignorant of basic knowledge but has a voice due to the Internet, there doesn't appear to be another option. Like flat- earthers or hardcore religious people, there is no logic in the world that can change their minds. You simply have to block them. Especially, at least, when these things have the ability to harm others.

</comment><comment><USER40> > ..chiding the company about the failure of its algorithms to "distinguish > quality information from misinformation or misleading information."

Out of curiosity, what "process or set of rules to be followed in calculations" would give that result?

(I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too.)

<comment><USER40> > I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too.

But if it somehow does, then perhaps more chiding will produce an algorithm which can prove that too.. cause I have doubts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Before we roll out the censorship talking points, it is worth being clear on a couple of details, I think:

1\. Amazon have removed two books out of hundreds (probably orders of magnitude more) of anti-vax books.

2\. The books they removed do not seem to be primarily anti-vax, but quack medical advice on treating autism.

3\. The only one we have details of recommended bathing your autistic child in industrial bleach.

Slippery slope arguments are one thing, but selling books advising how to abuse vulnerable children, is probably a libertarian argument to far for most.

<comment><USER42> I suppose it's a matter of specifying your success criteria. If you goal is simply to _not have an autistic child_ , then industrial bleach does wonders.

In all seriousness, no punishment is severe enough for those willingly harming innocent children. If only we could force them to experience the pain and terror they caused with their own body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm totally fine with this. Sell your books in a store that specializes in conspiracy theories along with the anti-vax, flat-earther, anti-gmo, essential oil and anti-global warming people.

</comment><comment><USER44> Given the number of wacky yet effective treatments that western medicine has uncovered by accident I'd be more inclined to let people explore the information out there as they desire.

Although uncovered under different circumstances Lorenzo's oil is an interesting case, cannabinoids for cancer patients are another.

Everybody thinks modern medicine is like CSI because a few people know how to use CRISPR. The reality for many people with common diseases is that the doctors a taking shots in the dark. In layman's terms they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

I have far too much personal experience with such things to be blinded by the fancy motion graphics and splashy headlines. Being sick is a total shit show of incompetence.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why are people so concerned about autism, aren't there much worse conditions? I know many genius people that would probably fall into the spectrum if ever tested. They are typically obsessed with some field of research and develop deep insight, which is valuable in an increasingly specialized society.

<comment><USER46> Your "typically" is based on media showing few cases of highly functional people with autism. They do not show the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> 1\. A letter went from CA politician Adam Schiff to Jeff Bezos 'chiding' him. It's state interference.

The question is..would amazon have pulled those books if Adam Schiff didn't chide Jeff Bezos?

2\. It's not about Autism. It's about protecting Vaccines.

Every pharmaceutical drug comes with warnings and side effects. But it makes tons of dollars. Placebos don't.

3\. We live in a world where ..thanks to Monsanto..you can find Glyohosate in mother's breast milk. And that's ok. Because. Science.

I am a woman. The tampons we use contains dioxin. So. Really. Colour me a cynic. The govt doesn't care.

This from CA where homeless people are allowed to live and freeze and shit and shoot up on the streets. And given clean needles to shoot up safely. $600 million dollars and no solution for the problem.

Sometimes 'problems' are profitable. I see this drama and outrage as protection of Big Pharma. There is a tiny fringe population that accepts these books as gospel. There is nothing you can do to change them. This is merely a dry run for censorship and more of a prep for nanny state installation.

I hope this isn't encouraged.

</comment><comment><USER48> Everyone talking about free speech and censorship needs to hold the fuck on for a second... because context is about to play a huge part in this:

If I was selling arsenic on amazon and labeling it as a cure for cancer would Amazon be in violation of our right to free speech for pulling it? If I was selling mentos, but labeling them birth control, would that be censorship if amazon pulled it?

This is supposed to be medicine and it's fucking lies. This is safety and soundness, it will hurt you or your children.

If I'm selling you a cure for something, and that cure is BOTH harmful and does not work, then shutting me down isn't censorship that's fucking public safety. It's even responsible for fuck's sake.

<comment><USER49> I don't hate the outcome, I just wish this was being done the "right way." The author and publisher should be held liable for the content and be made to pay for the damages they've caused. We have a court system for determining when someone is peddling lies and harming people. Is it too much to ask that we lean on our agreed upon institutions instead of making corporations elevate themselves to a less transparent, less democratic, worse version of our courts?

Is it too much to ask a company that provides a platform for commerce to just be a platform for commerce?

<comment><USER50> >I don't hate the outcome, I just wish this was being done the "right way."

So your saying the right way is to force amazon to continue selling this book? That the sole remedy at Law is when people are injured then they can sue the author?

That's not how products liability works. If I'm injured by a defective product, my legal remedy is against everyone in the stream of commerce...manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, etc... they would all be jointly and severally liable for my damages, meaning I can collect 100% of my award for damages from any of the parties found liable.

<comment><USER51> Ideas aren't products. There's a difference between books and physical products that you ingest (such as arsenic or mentos). The GP's argument uses a false equivalency.

<comment><USER52> A book isn't just ideas though. If it's sold and presented by a retailer that you trust (Amazon), then those words carry a lot more weight for the readers than the ideas would on their own.

<comment><USER51> Bullshit. A book is just ideas that have been written down.

And the argument that buying it on Amazon gives it more credibility is so ridiculous that I actually laughed out loud.

<comment><USER50> > A book is just ideas that have been written down.

So are safety labels which attempt to minimize product liability.

So say I sell a chainsaw with safety labels that say to hold the chain and not the handle when starting the thing...could I be liable if someone is injured holding the chain? I mean the chainsaw was a perfectly safe product, as far as chainsaws go, it was only the following of my written down ideas that got someone injured.

I know exactly what you are saying and there is some case Law on point (a case involving a wild mushroom picking book and the plaintiff relying on the book and getting sick as a result). It's one thing for the author to take that risk but it's a whole other animal to force amazon to take that risk when they didn't want to carry the book to begin with.

<comment><USER51> I'm not arguing that Amazon should be forced to sell these books. I'm arguing that the original argument above which used product liability for selling poisons to argue in favor of stopping the publication of books is inappropriate.

Products and ideas are two different things. Frankly, it's frightening that such a basic point has to be argued at all.

To the larger points about "censorship" being made here, for me it's not so much to do with the government banning books or corporations refusing to sell books. It's that there is so much fervor on so many fronts to prevent ideas from being presented at all. Bad ideas will ultimately be discarded if there is open and free discussion because they will be shown to be weak and wrong. Suppressing discussion is the tactic of those who are afraid their ideas won't win in a free marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Relevant to this topic: trolls and bots amplify the online vaccine debate, eg [https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.3045...](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567)

</comment><comment><USER54> This is censorship. Two wrongs don't make a right.

</comment><comment><USER55> WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP

I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship)

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other > information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, > harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a > government, private institutions, and corporations.

From Merriam-Webster ([https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/censorship](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/censorship)), where there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept:

> the institution, system, or practice of censoring

From Oxford ([https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship)), where again there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept:

> The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that > are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

We know Amazon is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Amazon can do whatever it wants as a private entity.

WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS

Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society.

Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm (and similarly, judging what is scientific/pseudo- scientific/unscientific) is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped?

On the topic of health: our current scientific understanding is not bulletproof. It may never fully be. Look at how much our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet has changed, just over the last 100 years of human existence. During that time, various individuals (e.g. scientists), companies, governments (via agencies like the FDA), and other institutions expressed high-degrees of confidence in beliefs that went on to be disproved over time. It would be a mistake to only allow ideas with broad scientific consensus _today_. People should be allowed to decide for themselves which institutions and parties and ideas to trust, and to what extent. Large platforms (privately-owned or otherwise) should not get in the way of that access if we want to maintain liquidity of information exchange.

WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING

Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes.

The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

<comment><USER56> dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as censorship or not will always be up to debate.

I'd see these as all being applications of speech; amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store front. Folks like Donald Trump or Sean hannity have lots of influence, but we don't prevent them from speaking because of it.

<comment><USER55> > dictionaries are descriptive, not authoritative. whether this counts as > censorship or not will always be up to debate.

I don't think I agree with this claim about dictionaries being "descriptive". The word 'censorship' exists already, and it has a definition that is unambiguous. The role of these definitions is so that we can all communicate efficiently using a word that is a placeholder for that full definition, knowing that we have common agreement on the definition since we're using the same language.

The folks scoping 'censorship' to just governments are redefining the term in a manner that serves their own views, and are eroding a preexisting definition to avoid the connotation it carries. That seems like waging rhetorical warfare in bad faith, rather than holding a meaningful discussion.

> amazon is making a statement about these books by putting them in the store > front

Amazon isn't making a 'statement' by putting books in the storefront. They aren't evaluating each and every product or reading/fact-checking all the content of everything they carry. Amazon is performing very basic market activities, in a stoic and impersonal manner. These activities include things like fulfillment, payment processing, catalogs, recommendations based on customer behavior (e.g. purchases), reviews, etc. These are impersonal and low-level activities, and are by no means "making a statement".

<comment><USER57> All definitions are ambiguous. It's useless to argue over them. We need to argue about real things in the real world. To do that we need to name them, point them out. It's easy for things like cows or planes; for things like censorship we need to zero in on a minimal model that showcases censorship.

For example, if I remove a book from my private library because of its contents, is it censorship? I don't think so. What if this is my library, but opened to a public, even to some small community? In this case I think this is censorship. What if the whole community decided the book should be removed? Again, it's not censorship. What if only the elders of the community came to the decision? It seems more like censorship again. What if we removed the book because it's damaged or, say, radioactive? Not censorship.

See, it doesn't matter if I'm a "big player" or something like that, or whether I have rights to do what I do, or what the book contains. All I have to do is to have some people to restrict access to a book or something like that to another group of people because of the contents of the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> We shouldn't censor them because that has side effects when any sort of mechanism is introduced.

However two laws should be made:

1\. Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning.

2\. Promoting non NHS / FDA etc approved medical advice should be a criminal offence and ends up with the publisher, author, owners being chucked in jail.

The latter covers bullshit like homeopathy and Chinese herbal medicine as well.

There's no place for any of this in 2019. We should actively shame anyone partaking in this.

<comment><USER26> > Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence > (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are > confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning

Great, once you pass that law you'll have drug companies lobbying to get their vaccine listed on your "must inject by age X or get your kids taken away" list. Imagine the revenue for every kid in the country being mandated to inject your vaccine.

Usually, our attempt to bring risk to 0 brings tyranny close to 100.

The scenes of the government dragging a kid out of their parent's grasp and injecting a needle into their arms is straight out of any stereotypical dystopian novel.

Yes, it can be frustrating fighting disinformation, but patience and kindness is almost always better in the long run IMO than force and punishment.

I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary risk, but getting everyone vaccinated and respecting individual freedom is not an easy task. Our country is more vaccinated than it's ever been, but the last few % might take longer than most people would like.

<comment><USER58> And I ask you this question: is it morally acceptable to allow someone to harm someone else?

<comment><USER26> That by itself is a complex question. Most people consider violent self defense to be OK.

People's ability to buy alcohol is a safety risk. Many crimes and fatal accidents involve alcohol. Do we force everyone to stop drinking alcohol?

I can't think of a government policy that has implemented 100% adoption without tyranny. I'm all for as close to 100% as we can get, but I don't want to lose our values of freedom and respect to get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Banning snake oil is never a part of a free society. People have a right to delude themselves. Imagine having a child with autism, you are overwhelmed by it, you are unwilling to accept what the doctors tell you.

Who is Amazon, or anyone, to tell someone that they can't explore every avenue, and read whatever they want to deal with that grief? Think about the cathartic experience of reading this book and getting momentary hope that there's an answer to a problem that you've been told is unsolvable. It's psychologically like playing the lottery.

<comment><USER60> > Banning snake oil is never a part of a free society

I mean, sure. But not every trader must therefore carry and sell snake oil. The same free society gives them that choice.

> Who is Amazon, or anyone, to tell someone that they can't explore every > avenue, and read whatever they want to deal with that grief?

All they seem to be saying is that they won't be selling it to you? You are certainly free to explore every avenue on your own. But does everyone have to help you with that?

<comment><USER59> I'm not saying they should have to, but I am saying that they ought to.

I think freedom and free speech are good things. Don't you?

<comment><USER56> id say amazon not carrying an item is a application of free speech.

publisher is saying "this is how you cure autism" and amazon is saying "no, that isn't"

for amazon to leave it up would be to not use their freedom, which is bad because using free speech is good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Visualization Trap - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2010/05/the-visualization-trap/ar/1

<comment><USER2> Lies, damned lies and visualizations.

A great article, and a good backing for why visualizations (even in the form of damned PowerPoints) are so important when selling an idea, strategy or action, but not necessarily for the build up to making that idea, strategy or action on the sellers part.</comment>


Dolphins' elaborate octopus-hunting strategy - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/new-study-reveals-dolphins-flinging-octopuses-into-the-air/ <comment><USER2> I've seen Octopus using tools.

I'm from south-west Australia (where these dolphins were observed) and grew up swimming along the coast, scuba and snorkelling to much delight.

Once, in a little sand hole near Yanchep, I was floating around on a particularly hot day, when I thought I saw a crayfish just lolling around on the ocean floor. Diving deeper to get a closer look, I realised it was just the head of the crayfish, long-since hollowed out, albeit with a bit of flesh still onboard.

I took an even closer look, and what I thought was a bit of weed attached to it was actually a long, slender tentacle, which I followed back to a minuscule hole in the rocky sand, and therein I spotted the rest of the octopus.

Delighted, I stuck around for a while to watch.

The octopus was fishing! It held out the cray corpse just a little, out in the currents, waiting patiently for the stupid little white fish to come and try to nail a bite!

When a particularly dumb little fish got its fangs in, BAM! Out came another tentacle, fast as light, and snatched that dumb fish into the hole. All the while, the original bait tentacle continued to just lull about, swinging and swaying, getting those dumb fish even closer and closer, ever more tantalising.

I stayed and watched it all day - it apparently had a nearly-insatiable hunger, or maybe it was just really enjoying itself. To my dying days, I'll never forget that clever little cephalopod ..

<comment><USER3> May be zoologists have been underestimating the intelligence of mollusks

<comment><USER4> We've known for a while that octopuses are surprisingly intelligent. Great read: [https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep- intellect/](https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/)

(tl;dr: don't eat octopus!)

<comment><USER5> I was wary of eating octopus, but fell relieved now, knowing that dolphins also love them as delicatessen. :-P

<comment><USER6> delicacy - a delicatessen is somewhere you'd buy delicacies

<comment><USER7> It's both...

<comment><USER6> Not in English as far as I'm aware.

<comment><USER5> Dunno, Merriam-Webster list it as both,[1] though from your comment I get that it is most commonly understood as the store. Thanks for the tip though, I was only aware of the food meaning.

[1] [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/delicatessen](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/delicatessen)

<comment><USER6> Perhaps it depends where you are, Oxford English Dictionary only mentions the shop meaning.

<comment><USER5> Weird! :-O

This is what I get:

1: ready-to-eat food products (as cooked meats and prepared salads)

2: sing, pl delicatessens [delicatessen (store)] : a store where delicatessen are sold

<comment><USER8> It's fine as a modifier ("it's a delicatessen salad") but not on its own ("it's a delicatessen")

<comment><USER9> _Delicatessen_ is also plural in German if you use it to mean "delicacy", instead of an adjective ("chai tea"-style).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once saw fresh octopus prepared at a seaside barbecue place. The first thing the octopus did after the cook grabbed it from the kiddie pool full of seawater was to wrap its tentacles around her forearm. Before it could get too firm of a grip, she threw it down on the concrete floor with a loud smack and disassembled it with a cleaver while it was still stunned. It was pretty intense. I can see why the dolphins would have a complex strategy for dealing with the much larger octopus they consume.

Now that it's become clear that the octopus is an intelligent creature capable of solving problems and making plans, I'm going to eat less sophisticated mollusks and leave octopus to the dolphins.

<comment><USER11> Dolphins, which are another highly intelligent species, don't seem to have any qualms about eating octopus.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but we don't eat dolphin because we regard them as too intelligent (unless they spend all their money on the lottery).

<comment><USER13> We do eat dolphin. Mahi mahi type of dolphin, I buy it at Costco: it is good.

<comment><USER14> for clarity, though sometimes called a "dolphin", mahi mahi is a fish, not in the Mammalia class, like an actual Dolphin... so they are quite different.

<comment><USER15> I've seen it labeled "dolphin". I asked the seller if it was really dolphin, and he said yes, so I bought it. It tasted suspiciously like fish. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It's still unclear why dolphins are willing to risk so much for such a small > meal.

maybe it's just they like the taste? it's not like we don't go out of our own way to find some delicacies just because we are in the mood for them.

I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days, but trying to explain everything based on "nutritional value" seems a bit narrow minded...

<comment><USER17> Humans will risk death to ingest or otherwise put things in their body, but not usually because they're tasty, usually because they're addictive.

Do dolphins get high on octopus?

<comment><USER18> Some potentially deadly foods are considered a tasty delicacy. See, fugu [0]. Which can be really, really really poisonous [1]. It makes cyanide seem harmless in comparison.

Although I just learned from Wikipedia that apparently we figured out how to raise non-poisonous pufferfish. Neat.

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

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

<comment><USER19> Apparently people occasionally choke on live octopus (which is served in Korea [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San-nakji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San- nakji) ).

<comment><USER20> you can get that in koreatown in LA as well (probably elsewhere too but that's where i've had it). the taste is pretty subtle but it's weird that it squirms in your mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This makes me think of primitive humans working together to kill large animals for food.

Super dangerous and only possible when working together.

Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will have a similar article about us!

<comment><USER22> > Perhaps one day, thousands of years from now, technologically advanced > dolphins will one day watch us doing the same thing again, and they will > have a similar article about us!

I'd be curious to know how much of human technical advancement was thanks to the ability to relatively easily smelt metal, and whether the inability to easily smelt underwater creates an impediment to technical advancement of species living underwater.

<comment><USER23> Seawater also plays hell with ropes and hide. You can't construct with stone, because it sinks to the bottom, and the silty bottom is a rotten foundation. You can't build with wood because it floats away, it will soften and weather quickly, and things will eat it quickly. You can't wear tools, as that ruins your streamlining, and fast swimmers will generate high drag forces on anything they wear.

The ocean isn't a good place for tool building!

<comment><USER24> Perhaps in a future age, spacefaring civilizations will say the same thing about primitive life forms living at the bottom of gravity wells. How can you get anywhere with so much gravity holding you down?

<comment><USER23> You can still build edged tools, weapons, clocks, and computers at the bottom of a gravity well. Being aquatic is completely different -- the environment often keeps you from evolving manipulators for building tools. Even if you evolve the manipulators, the environment automatically degrades the value of the tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Sprogis and colleagues muse that the nutritional value of an octopus must be "substantial." Or, as marine biologist Holly Bik points out at Deep Sea News, maybe it's just that "dolphins are a$$holes."

Best line from the article :D

<comment><USER26> or the worst line

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems surprising that an octopus leg hitting the oceans surface 15 times kills it.

I can't imagine that a dolphin can throw an octopus leg at more than 15-20 mph, and at that kind of speed I wouldn't imagine damage to a soft bodied creature.

I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10 minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it. Wonder why they don't do that? Too hard to defend a bleeding morsel of food from other predators?

<comment><USER28> >I would imagine a better technique to be to leave the octopus legs for 10 minutes for lack of bloodflow to kill it.

Arms work even 1h after cutting off: [http://moscow.sci- hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/ha...](http://moscow.sci- hub.cc/58b56284136af39dc0eaf7491b31d759/hague2013.pdf)

<comment><USER29> Interesting survival technique, if I can assume it is. The octopus in question dies but the dolphin who tried to eat it does also. Serves as a warning to dissuade eating the species/order as a whole. Same as poisoned toads in that regard, just a little more zombie-like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> David Brin's series the "Uplift War" had a backdrop to human's raising the intelligence of a number of Earth origin animals.

How I wish he had the human society uplift the Octopus instead of the expected mammals.

<comment><USER31> They would've taken over the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's not clear to me that they're "risking death."

The article reveals that dolphins can be killed trying to eat octopus in a more conventional fashion, but I don't see any "risk" involved with their throwing method.

<comment><USER33> What about if they don't throw it enough times to stun it? Or if that particular octopus is particularly stun-resistant? Or if the dolphin hesitates at some point in the grab-and-throw maneuver, giving the legs a chance to grab on to its face, mouth, or throat? It seems like there would be a lot of opportunities for error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The full article is just amazing, [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12405/full) I love and fear dolphins at the same time

I will totally continue eating octopus

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm probably missing something obvious, but... why don't the dolphins just chew their food better?

<comment><USER31> They don't chew. Chewing is what land animals who eat leafy plants do.

They can bite, and that's about it. Do these look like chewing teeth? [http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic- life/d...](http://4everstatic.com/pictures/674xX/animals/aquatic- life/dolphin,-teeth-190821.jpg)

<comment><USER35> Ah, of course. That makes sense. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I thought the brain:body size rank was Humans, chimp then dolphins but looks like I am wrong about it[0].

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

</comment><comment><USER37> The octopus and likely the dolphin is probably much smarter than we give them credit for. On a whim one day I studied the octopus and finding them majestic and so smart I stopped eating them. The kicker was when I learned that female octopus when giving birth find a rock out of sight of predators and spend their last days and minutes doing nothing (no eating etc) but waiting for the next generation to birth and then they subsequently die. It was moving.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've seen this behaviour with seals when kayaking. Fascinating to watch, and I swear they were just showing off to us bunch of humans hanging out enthralled by the sight of a large seal slamming the octopus over and over again against the water until it was dead enough to disappear with back into the deep.

</comment><comment> awinter-py Hmm -- I didn't think dolphin airways were connected to their digestive system.

<comment><USER39> You're right, they're not. I wonder what the cause of death was, then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "Art of the octopus smackdown" haha very colorful writing

</comment><comment><USER41> One more reason why I realize how similar I am to a dolphin. You have no idea how many times I have risked my life so I too could eat octopus.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would like to challenge my hard-core religious physics and biology teacher from 7th grade with this evidence. He kept giving me as low a grade as what was acceptable, while I still aced pretty much every test. (Sweden. Småland. 90s. I don't think this is an issue for todays kids.)</comment>


Derek Sivers on Life Advice, Writing and Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHIiC6SPxoQ <comment><USER2> I only skimmed/watched about 5 minutes of this, so my comment is really to recommend Derek Silver's recommended books with notes: [https://sivers.org/book](https://sivers.org/book)

I have used this list to buy several books.</comment>


The gopher:// manifesto (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20160911053736/http://www.scn.org/~bkarger/gopher-manifesto <comment><USER2> Gopher sucks. You cannot have text and pictures mixed. This was originally in Gopher in 1992, but it was so much better in http [http://timonoko.github.io/alaska/index.htm](http://timonoko.github.io/alaska/index.htm) . (Original html formatting preserved for historical accuracy and nostalgia).

Contains fancy _HYPERLINK_ to Usenet-message. Also there are some difficulties with uppercase Ö and Ä - characters.</comment>


MULTI – world's first rope-free elevator system - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUa8M0H9J5o

<comment><USER2> Wow that was a content-free video. No mention of how they plan to address the fundamental reason elevators have not changed in 160 years: foolproof safety. Elevators have a flexible locking bar that deploys if the rope breaks.

How does their independent cabin ensure its impossible to drop in an uncontrolled manner? Not just pretty sure; impossible. Because that's where we are now.</comment>


Introducing Vector: Netflix's On-Host Performance Monitoring Tool - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/04/introducing-vector-netflixs-on-host.html <comment><USER2> I got down to

         you should be able to install PCP from binary packages made available by the PCP development team on:

        ftp.pcp.io

and that threw up a red flag in my brain. Then I noticed that techblog.netflix.com doesn't redirect to https (and indeed can't serve https) (I use [https://www.eff.org/HTTPS-EVERYWHERE](https://www.eff.org/HTTPS- EVERYWHERE) and did not get content over https).

The directions _I_ saw for building from source looked pretty innocuous, but you might see a different set of directions if you're being MITMed. Observe an appropriate amount of caution.

<comment><USER3> Happy to discuss your concerns. PCP 3.10 should be available on Ubuntu's official repo pretty soon too.

<comment><USER4> His concerns seem plain to me. Unauthenticated channels for software distribution or software installation instructions are bad.

The techblog isn't using SSL, and the git pull url for PCP is using the git protocol which is also unauthenticated, rather than the authenticated https transport (ssh is only an option when user accounts make sense).

Someone's at a conference and follows the link over public wifi. They get the same page but with "here's how to get PCP: ftp evil.io or git clone git://git.evil.io/pcp" Even if the webpage were ssl-enabled so that an attacker can't rewrite the pcp.io links, an attacker or evil network operator could MITM git.pcp.io or ftp.pcp.io. (FTP?!)

Being in Ubuntu's repo doesn't make it safe if Ubuntu's maintainers have no (semi-)trustworthy way of getting the code.

<comment><USER5> Ubuntu's maintainers can check the MD5SUM file on ftp.pcp.io:

      ftp://ftp.pcp.io/projects/pcp/download/MD5SUM

The project seems to be hosted by Red Hat these days.

<comment><USER6> FTP is just as unauthenticated as everything else above, so having MD5SUMs available over FTP doesn't really change the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's enormously frustrating to me that the Windows platform is so far behind.

I've been researching for a rebuild of our ecommerce site with the idea of a modern microservice architecture. Team skillset and some other considerations dictate a .Net environment.

Netflix and other companies have created a really rich platform, between logging and monitoring technologies like this; message queueing; deployment; and so on. In the Windows environment there's precious little to compare to.

One bright spot is the news story also on HN today [1] about MS announcing Docker-related Hyper-V technology - but in the next version of Windows server.

It might be that to satisfy those .Net compatibility wishes, we just go to Mono and do everything else in Linux.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342369)

<comment><USER8> The web was built, and runs on, *nix/BSD. Windows is an outlier. Windows can't even get the slashes going the right way. There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure how that was supposed to be helpful.

I also don't think it's strictly true. For sure the underlying networking came from Unix. But as for the web itself, once we got to real dynamic content, it seems to me that Microsoft were the ones that got things moving.

While the Unix world was mired in the awful world of CGI, Microsoft gave us high-performance ISAPI, and then Cold Fusion (also on the Windows platform) and Microsoft's ASP made programming a little more sane. While the Unix world tried to deal with JSP (which IMHO wasn't a very good solution), the Microsoft platform seems to have been the innovators for several years, until Ruby on Rails and then node.js and stuff started coming out.

Today, the Apache server powers far more sites than any other, it's true. But IIS shares the 2nd-place spot [1]. When you say "There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows", that's pretty much true for the servers, but far off the mark when counting clients. And the reason for that is that Microsoft's strength hasn't historically been radical advances, but in figuring out ways to take the bleeding edge tech that doesn't really work quite right yet, and packaging it into commodity software that may not be as sexy as envisioned by those with the original ideas, but actually useful to the average guy.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis- and-n...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis-and-nginx- battle-for-second-place/)

EDIT - missing word "world" in 3rd para

<comment><USER8> Your examples presume there was something better than CGI at the time and the other products are better than something else. For one, I wouldn't be caught dead using any of the products you mentioned.

You claim IIS by using a ZDNet article from two years ago but the reality is IIS is number three behind Nginx and Apache. Still, being a distant #2 is nothing to brag about.

Now you're trying to claim clients are what powers the web but that's not the topic. What an amateur uses does not define what the professional uses. And to claim not wanting to be on the bleeding edge of things is no excuse for falling behind. Firefox and Chrome knocked IE off its perch years ago by being on the bleeding edge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just tried installing this on a test VPS. PCP went well, but whenever I tried to input a "hostname" in Vector's UI to get stats, it just kept telling me it couldn't connect and to check hostname, regardless of what I put in the box. PCP was available and of course ports open and whatnot. I'm not sure what the problem was, but that was a bit frustrating. It looks like a slick product otherwise, especially for a first version! Thanks for releasing projects like this! I'll be trying again in the future, for sure.

<comment><USER3> Can you open an issue on GitHub and post more details? Any errors on the JavaScript console?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> After using Stackdriver for the last 18 months, I would never go back to rolling my own monitoring infra if I could avoid it. I had nagios, cacti, munin, graphite all running and had two ops guys pretty much 80% of their time managing it.

Stackdriver with pagerduty and I have 250,000 custom metrics being published and hundreds and hundreds of graphs on dozens of dashboards.

Although, I am looking at SignalFX to give even better version of this, but I manage nearly 1,000 machines with only a staff of four.

<comment><USER11> Never heard of it, so checked out Stackdriver. Seemed very interesting, especially since it's geared at AWS (which we use).

Until I noticed the big red flag on the front page _" Stackdriver is now part of Google."_

Surely Google is going to kill this product and use the knowledge to offer something similar for Google's cloud services.

<comment><USER10> We were concerned when.Google bought them and we had many meetings with them about this, I do not believe that will happen, but if that is still an issue for you, use signalFX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I wrong in saying this is a web interface that wraps PCP? So you can't really compare it to inspeqtor or collectd since those actually do the metrics collection.

<comment><USER3> True. But that's the first release of Vector. We expect to make our custom PCP agents public soon.

<comment><USER12> Sorry I should clarify I was making that statement for my understanding, not to degrade the project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does this have that CloudWatch enhanced metrics doesn't? From the screenshots, the metrics look pretty similar. Not a slight at all against this project (it looks awesome), I'm just curious if your infrastructure is already AWS based what would cause you to choose a non-CloudWatch option.

<comment><USER14> CloudWatch charges you per instance if you want 1 minute metrics instead of the standard (free) 5 minute metrics. Any tool that collects the data for you gets you out of that $3.50/instance/month detailed monitoring charge [1].

[1] [http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/](http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure what the difference is between that and Collect + Graphite / InfluxDB.

<comment><USER16> There are many, many differences - there's some books about PCP that might help clarify PCP design points, see: [http://pcp.io/documentation.html](http://pcp.io/documentation.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The charts look like they were built with nvd3. Can anyone confirm/deny?

<comment><USER3> That's right. Any suggestion of better reusable charts?

<comment><USER18> Honestly? Just write your own SVG code. If you inspect the elements the output data is super simple and easy to understand. NVD3 just wraps D3.js which just wraps utilities that output relatively basic data. Well, d3js is a data- binding system that's way too god damned complicated if all you want to do is make some simple charts which is how it's used 99% of the time.

I've spent more time trying to manipulate chart libraries into doing almost the same thing but just different enough to cause pain and suffering. Output your own path data and it's a million times easier.

For reference here's what I made: [http://forrestthewoods.com/unbalanced- design-of-super-smash-...](http://forrestthewoods.com/unbalanced-design-of- super-smash-brothers-part-3/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow this looks great, thanks for releasing it! Nice to see even 'simple' stuff like this that can help people who aren't running at Netflix scale is still released.

</comment><comment><USER20> Could anyone who tried this monitoring tool compare it to Munin?

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a slight tangent...but does anybody know what UI toolkit Netflix is using for this?

Or if it's in-house, any info on whether they have, or might release it?

I see bootstrap-submenu.css mentioned, but not Bootstrap itself:

[https://github.com/Netflix/vector/tree/master/app/css](https://github.com/Netflix/vector/tree/master/app/css)

<comment><USER3> It's bootstrap (see bower.json dependencies), but with our own layer on top of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm curious how this compares to Zabbix's agent and server. Does PCP give you finer grained details, or is it possibly more lightweight?

<comment><USER16> PCP is much finer-grained than Zabbix in terms of the metrics it makes available (esp. from the Linux kernel); not sure on Zabbix costs but PCP is quite light on all resources (mem, cpu, net) and very robust.

I've worked on production systems where everything else was failing (hardware, kernel, applications) but PCP kept chugging along, recording and telling the sad story to anyone that would listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone care to compare this to something like collectd? [https://collectd.org/](https://collectd.org/)

<comment><USER3> Goal is a bit different. Vector doesn't collect and persist metrics. We needed something that had as little overhead as possible so it could be deployed to all our hosts and simplify the process of analyzing those metrics.

<comment><USER14> If its not collecting and persisting metrics, is it more of a glorified htop?

<comment><USER24> Wait, really?

Why not? Storage is cheap. Do you use something else to get historical visibility into metrics?

<comment><USER25> Yes, Atlas, which is also open source: [http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/12/introducing-atlas- netfli...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/12/introducing-atlas-netflixs- primary.html) . Atlas monitors cloud-wide, and stores historical metrics at a one minute granularity.

Vector is for per-instance custom drilldowns. I gave a talk last year where I showed how they both fit together: [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-09-27/from-clouds- to-r...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-09-27/from-clouds-to- roots.html)

<comment><USER24> Got it... and thank you Brendan!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where can I find deb packages for pcp version 3.10 or higher?

<comment><USER27> The git repo has a MakePkg script that will generate deb packages for you.

I found it really easy to use.</comment></comment>


France to ban use of meat terms to describe vegetable-based products - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43836156 <comment><USER2> Does the ban only affect vegetarian products that use unqualified name such as "sausage" or "steak", or does it also ban product names such as "veggie sausage" or "soy patty"?</comment>


How keeping quiet saved our startup $225K - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/28/how-shutting-up-saved-our-startup-225k/

<comment><USER2> Really interesting post. I actually worked with a guy that would just get really quiet when someone wasn't saying what he wanted them to say, or would throw in short questions like "why?" or "how's that?" to incite some sort of need for approval in the other person.

I gotta say, it's manipulation at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real protip here is to know a board member with enough pull so somehow a clear cut contract can be magically renegotiated. The price is just a matter of chit-chat afterwards.

<comment><USER4> Knowing the name of a board member is probably all the knowing that's required. Then a phone call to do the work. The board member is in a position to acknowledge that there's little to be gained by trying to enforce the sales contract in such circumstances...and that the sales representative can easily waste enough time and energy on trying to enforce it to more than offset any possible gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> John, the guy at the other end of the negotiation, probably got a pretty good deal too. He got $25000, which was probably more than it cost his company to provide the service. His alternatives would have been to either (1) walk away from the contract and get nothing or (2) sue a startup company that had negligible assets and get almost nothing (or even lose money on the legal fees).

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like it was a bad decision to get into this contract in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER7> Glad for you, but 1 case is not enough for statistics :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this just good advice overall? The key insight in the article is in the title and repeated toward the end:

       All I did was shut the fuck up
       and let it play out in front of me.

Aren't many of us often a little too eager to jump in to add our two cents, even when speaking is redundant or unnecessary? I know that it's a foible of mine!

PS I hope this post itself isn't "redundant". :) I'm trying to make the larger point that the article's advice should be viewed more generally than just for sales negotiations.</comment>


Ride the Snake: reddit keynote at PyCon 09 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/kn0thing/ride-the-snake-reddit-keynote-pycon-09

<comment><USER2> "relational databases are really good solutions to problems we don't have"

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the reddit team's presentations. Does anyone have a video to the whole thing?

I'm guessing reddit uses BeautifulSoup just for crawling for images? I've always wondered how they decide which of the 100 images on a page to use for thumbnails.

<comment><USER4> We certainly got a lot of feedback on our thumbnail-ification process. Try reading the twitter feed with the presentation: <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=reddit+%23pycon>

And we'll blog.reddit.com the video and embed the ppt once everything goes live. A big thanks to everyone who got up early for our talk.

<comment><USER5> If the thumbs were really cut off (hard to tell from the slides), you should use the Python OpenCV hooks and center the thumbnail on the likeliest face.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=opencv+haar+cascade>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love offbeat slides like these, but I only get 10% of the story from them. Mind you, making up the content might be more interesting than the real thing, in some cases!

</comment><comment><USER7> These slides are hilarious. Definitely good to see a group of developers that don't take themselves too seriously and don't inject a macho attitude into their work. Refreshing for sure.

</comment><comment><USER8> If anybody wants a CSS preprocessor like the C55 preprocessor mentioned in this video, check out <http://sandbox.pocoo.org/clevercss/>

It's pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER9> Folks, PyCon videos should go up once the con is over.

</comment><comment><USER10> I need to build a file with shit that I need to learn at some point. ctags would go in that list.

What does this have to do with this presentation? Nothing. But ctypes reminded me of ctags.</comment>


One Man's Junk - <AUTHOR> https://rootsofprogress.org/one-mans-junk <comment><USER2> Maybe not totally on topic, but both the OP and the first article the author links in the text claim there are no natural resources, but both are seemingly not addressing one of the most frequently used natural resources: wood. In the text of "there are no natural resources" the words "tree" and "wood" do not appear.

In most cases we are indeed shaping the wood to be what we need, but obviously nature isn't going to grow door frames or rafters for us. It sure grows wood, though. No need to smelt it or refine it or really even figure out how to use it properly. It's not a "highly inconvenient form."

We get sheets and blocks of plastic shipped around that aren't in their final form, but they are the final refined substance, just as wood is.

<comment><USER3> Not highly inconvenient? You don't just cut down a tree, rip it into planks, and use them. Their dimensions, and physical properties like hardness and density, change as they dry. That takes either a good deal of time, or a good deal of infrastructure and processing work - the latter of which is actually _required_ , if you want the kind of repeatable, predictable results you need to produce the dimensional lumber with which we're all familiar today.

Hell, you can't even _burn_ green wood without a lot of effort, smoke, and the occasional steam explosion - and not very much useful heat. Have you never cut your own firewood? Unless you're smoking meat with it, you want to give it a good long while to dry out, ideally a season or more, before you use it.

So, no, by the article's definition, wood is no more a "natural resource" than iron ore. In both cases, ingenuity and effort are required to convert the raw material into a reliably usable form. The same is even more true of plastics, which require a great deal of complex refinement to go from original feedstock to nib or rod or wire or billet that can be cast, machined, or 3D-printed into finished products.

<comment><USER4> >You don't just cut down a tree, rip it into planks, and use them. Their dimensions, and physical properties like hardness and density, change as they dry.

Not to mention that you get very different results depending on how you saw the tree into planks. Flat, quarter, rift sawn wood have all kinds of pros and cons. You will get more wood from flat sawn, so it will be cheaper, but it will be more likely to warp.

<comment><USER5> Almost all wood that is intended for use cases where warp is a problem is engineered wood.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean as in building homes? I suppose that's true, but I do woodworking - things like custom furniture - where warp matters but we don't use engineered wood.

<comment><USER5> Custom furniture is art, not engineering. As for building homes you will find engineered wood in trusses and almost all sheet. 'Sticks' are used for framing where a little warp will be corrected for by the sheeting on both sides, and might only come out as a few mm of wall thickness variation which nobody will notice unless you look directly along a wall. Use a grazing light to see how bad this can be and then compare to standing around looking at the wall. Works well for ceilings and floor too.

<comment><USER6> > Custom furniture is art, not engineering.

Out of curiosity, could you expand on this? Is it because of the scale or something else?

<comment><USER5> Custom furniture is the work of craftsmen (and women) and something to be treasured the way you would treasure a work of art. Very few wooden structures such as houses or bridges would be made to the same standard. I have the privilege of knowing two especially gifted woodworkers and even though I'm sure that their work will stand the test of time it is not engineered in the same way that a load bearing structure would be. Form is almost if not more important than function whereas in engineered structures function takes priority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't help but feel that "One Man's Trash" might have been a better title with less connotations.

<comment><USER8> Changing it for that reason would be a bit nannyish. Let's control ourselves instead.

<comment><USER9> _What if_ , you guys, _what if_ , hear me out, you guys, _what if the pun was intended?_

<comment><USER10> Well, let's check the text.

> _It is a resource to someone who can look at it and understand its use and > value_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Social: screencast and screenshots - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/open-social-scr.html

<comment><USER2> Here is more screenshots (from TechCrunch), examples include some other sites than Ning. [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/31/google-opensocial- image...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/31/google-opensocial-image- gallery/)

It is very interesting to see all these. It gives me the feeling of build once, play anywhere is coming true. Which should be great news for any developer out there that is seeking to promote their products virally and find new users for them</comment>


Quora Co-Founders Share Numbers, The Secret Of Surviving The Hype Cycle - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/23/quora-co-founders-share-numbers-the-secret-of-surviving-the-hype-cycle/ <comment><USER2> Sadly, the closest thing to the 'numbers' promised in the headline are D'Angelo's GPA and the magnitude-free claim that traffic has been "breaking record after record".

It would be nice to know real details: are their 'boards' taking off? What are more demographic details on the newer users? What's the rate of change or new record levels?

I believe the larger-than-just-Q&A theme of Quora is still: moderating and surfacing reliable information, against the backdrop of an increasingly polluted and adversarial open web. While it's sad that's necessary, it's a big and important enough opportunity to justify their (prior and rumored) valuations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are the numbers? Who's upvoting this stuff? Here's a more fitting title: "Sarah fondly speaks on random Quora factoids overheard in a bar."

</comment><comment><USER4> It's quite ironic really, that the article sneers over 'hype' and proceeds to do, unabashedly, just the same. I think Quora is a good product, it did not get the stickiness it deserved, and they tried well by adding features that brought in some sticky bits.

The article is completely elusive on the numbers, and mostly claims provided to a journalist that ate it up without question. As Steve Jobs once said, 'If you sell a lot of something, you'd want to tell the whole world about it'. Using this hype to fuel a better-than-you valuation created out of thin air is sad. Hardly relates to the noble cause that Quora is purportedly after.

</comment><comment><USER5> "It's less about Reed Hastings answering your questions — he has too much to lose by being blunt. It's more about a guy from Netflix answering them. The everyday people that actually create the products, sites, and movies we love. The previously nameless and faceless parts of the machine that know where all the bodies are buried and are just "unimportant" enough to be honest."

This is the section that most resonated with me, and describes why Quora can be so powerful and valuable. It reminds me of an answer that has 828 upvotes, "What's it like to play on the same basketball team as Jeremy Lin?" -In it, a former Harvard teammate gives intimate, candid insights on observing a great player before the world had any clue he was great (though UConn eventually did).

The UX of Quora encourages this type of ask and answering: where long-tail bits of curiosity can be met with long-tail flashes of idiosyncratic insight. It's the best thing about it.

But, as with many kinds of truly valuable, deep insight into something, I'm myself curious how far and wide it 'scales' as a business or industry. Perhaps they are creating what financial-types call "optionality", with a diversified reach at lot of little bits of insight, any number of which might be hugely popular at any time.

Either way, I'm glad Quora is there for this. On the other hand I do very much believe that online Q&A is still quite nascent in its ability to help people not just learn, but achieve, produce, and collaborate on both deeply value- creating endeavors as well as the daily block-and-tackling of our work and personal lives.

</comment><comment><USER6> Alexa seems to show that they've moved up about 165 Alexa ranks to be the 775th most popular site on the Internet, and their users use the site for an average of 3 minutes. Looking at the trend it looks like they're just a bit past a early-2011 peak and have been steadily improving for 6 months after a slump.

It's true that their rank appears to have mildly improved, though 'surge' is an exaggeration.</comment>