Drivers are killing pedestrians at highest rate in almost 30 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20927512/traffic-death-crash-statistics-nhtsa-us-2018 <comment><USER4> This is a sensational story based off of a shallow if not deliberate misreading of statistics. They point to an increase in raw number of deaths and say that the rate is increasing - completely leaving out population adjustments like density and raw numbers increasing. The only rate discussion is in a graph that shows % inside vehicle fatalities vs % outside vehicle fatalities. With cars becoming safer of course the % of outside vehicle fatalities will rise since the human body isn't becoming more resilient to car crashes at the same rate.

Also they didn't do any looking into the circumstances of death, as mentioned by throwGuardian - I suspect cell phone related incidents are on the rise.

<comment><USER5> Guess you missed the ones where cities are higher impacted and rural areas went down and that most of these are caused by SUVs because drivers of SUVs are terrible people and have a lead foot leading to more head injuries because of the height of their vehicle. It's pretty clear that the people at highest risk are pedestrians in cities that allow SUVs. The solution should be to ban SUVs in cities, since they are responsible for most of the deaths would cause a dramatic drop in pedestrians dying.

edit: oh and a ton of people hit had alcohol in their system.

<comment><USER6> Less crude than banning SUVs would be requiring vehicles to pass pedestrian safety standards in addition to vehicle occupant safety standards in a crash.

IIRC in the US we only really test safety for people inside the car, not outside.

<comment><USER5> Well yeah but that would require giving up SUVs and trucks altogether and bring calls of socialism because Europe already does that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the factors for this increase seem to be:

      - Explosion in the sales of Crossovers/SUVs/Trucks
      - Smartphone usage among pedestrians
      - More people living in cities
      - More people using bike-shares & scooters
      - Deterioration of public transit resulting in more drivers
      - Increase in ride sharing resulting in more drivers

The crossover/SUV/Truck sales is the most interesting to me. I wonder if that will self-perpetuate, since the presence of larger vehicles seem to make other drivers feel less safe, which make them want larger vehicles, which makes the remaining sedan owners feel less safe....

<comment><USER8> I fear the answer is yes.

I have absolutely failed to convince anybody that they don't need an SUV. Doesn't matter. They _want_ an SUV. Not a hatchback of same practicality but better turning/braking; not a Minivan of comparable bulk and price but hugely increased practicality (for a large-family north-american suburb lifestyle; everything is relative:) - a large heavy SUV with tiny brakes is what they want.

(And when I say "They", that includes my wife and now we have one too :-< )

I have tried to convince with equation of "chance of being in accident multiplied by chance of dying in an accident", with the idea that you can work on either of the variables to decrease the total; and indicated that _maaaybe_ in SUV you are safer if you crash, but with a smaller more nimble better visibility car you are less likely to crash. This makes no progress - <USER2> people's attitude is "When I crash", not "If I crash".

<comment><USER9> > smaller more nimble better visibility car

Small cars don't necessarily have better visibility. I have far better visibility in my Q7 than I did in my Audi A3.

And a smaller car doesn't do much to help against an 18 wheeler or UPS truck. If I am in a crash in a Civic, I am more likely to die than a crash in a Jeep Cherokee

Smaller cars are not safer, because physics.

An SUV built after 2012 (that's when mandatory stability control arrived) is safer than a car. The idea that being nimble keeps you safer is silly. Most accidents don't give you enough notice before they're about to happen. Also, I would argue my turbo Q7 is far more nimble than the Prius.

The Hyundai Accent is the most dangerous car to be in, based on fatality rates. The Jeep Cherokee has zero fatalities from 2012-2015. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2017/07/06/deathtr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2017/07/06/deathtraps- and-life-savers-cars-registering-the-most-and-least-fatalities/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Recently, a local kid got hit by an angry driver. The kid was on a sidewalk, and the driver was swerving (up onto the sidewalk) to get around a slower car.

I really think that the test to get a license should include some kind of screen for impatience, irritability, and aggression. I imagine we could come up with a reasonable way of screening out people who are prone to such behavior.

<comment><USER11> I think that such a blatant and intentional disregard for safety such as what you described should probably immediately disqualify someone from a license for at least five years, even if they killed no one. Driving is a privilege, not a right.

<comment><USER9> I agree completely. The FAA can and does suspend pilot licenses for far less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We are collectively spending a lot of resources pursuing self-driving, when we should be spending those resource making mass-transit more viable. Fewer miles driven means fewer fatalities, both of drivers and pedestrians.

<comment><USER13> Small and economical self-driving electric pods could be mass-transit

<comment><USER14> Do they have to be self-driving? Because if you skip that requirement, e-bikes fit the bill. :) There are also electric velomobiles that are very pod like. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CURGm- BcaaM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CURGm-BcaaM) Main problem seem to be not protective enough hull so you risk being run over by texting drivers.

<comment><USER15> Does the bike appear on demand at your place and disappear from your concern after you take another transport?

Self driving pods are a huge gain over the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The headline says "Drivers are killing pedestrians at the highest rate in..." but there's no actual rate of pedestrian death stats in the article, there's an absolute increase, but that's not a rate -- what's the rate per pedestrian trips or pedestrian-miles? (cities are trying to become more walkable/bikable, so pedestrian trips may be increasing)

<comment><USER17> yes it is a rate, from the article: "The number of pedestrians killed — 6,283, an increase of 3.4 percent from the previous year".

It may not be the number you are looking for, but it is by definition a rate. It would be interesting to know what rate per pedestrian trips or pedestrian- miles are, but that data would be very hard to get across the entire US.

<comment><USER15> It's not the rate of drivers that kill pedestrians, as the title claims.

Even accidents/cars would satisfy the title. Those numbers you quote are just meaningless and should be ignored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also, pedestrians are walking without caution (staring at their phones) at the highest rate in history.

Yes, drivers should be accountable for pedestrian safety, but no law can absolve the common sense personal accountability of looking before leaping, ahem crossing

<comment><USER16> It's interesting to watch this video of San Francisco's Market street from 1906:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU)

Cars travel at walking pace, and cars, streetcars, horses, etc all coexist -- pedestrians seem to cross the street at will, not following any signals or staying in crosswalks.

I think the reason this chaotic system works (aside from the lower speeds) is because street users _expect_ the chaos, no one relies on a traffic signal to tell them when it's safe to cross, they know that they have to pay attention or they'll be run over (or will run over someone else).

<comment><USER19> Sorry but that is completely wrong. The rate of injuries and deaths on the roads were far worse in 1906 than today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this not a normal increase, with regards to population growth and the increased focus on personal health (more joggers/cyclists), during that time frame?

</comment><comment><USER21> I saw someone run a red by a local university (probably because they were looking at their lap), and only about half of the people in the intersection appeared to take notice. The rest were looking down at their hands... while starting to cross the street. Fortunatly it was only a few seconds after the light changed.

<comment><USER22> even walking down the street as a pedestrian is becoming a nightmare - <USER3> mobile phone zombies

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> All new cars should be mandated to have Collision Avoidance Systems as standard. This would reduce pedestrian deaths over time.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Collision_avoidance_system](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Collision_avoidance_system)

</comment><comment><USER23> People drive too damn fast - - and they idle their engines like mofos!

Pardon my french but this reckless behavior kills innocent people

<comment><USER24> Idling engines is super inefficient. It irks me to no end that we have cars sitting around just idling so their driver can listen to a tiny radio or charge their phone. Meanwhile, their engine is at low RPM's polluting their local air and whoever happens to walk by.

Can't wait for EVs to be widespread so lazy humans have a power source for their lazy car-sitting behaviors.

<comment><USER25> There isn't enough lithium to make batteries to replace the US fleet, let alone the rest of the world. ICE will be here for a while. That's not to mention the carbon and pollution output of creating new evs.

<comment><USER24> This is just incorrect, lithium is not the limiting factor for EV adoption. Currently, much bigger are cobalt supply, manufacturing capacity, and the un- priced externalities of carbon pollution. If you freed up those 3 factors, batteries would scale up ridiculously quickly, though yes admittedly in 2019 we can not simultaneously replace 300+ million cars instantly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mathematicians build code to take on toughest cyber attacks - <AUTHOR> https://news.wsu.edu/2015/03/26/mathematicians-build-code-to-take-on-toughest-cyber-attacks/#.VR3cpI9VhBc <comment><USER2> It's kind of sad when university press departments don't include a link to the actual research. The paper that this summarizes can be found at

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.04238v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.04238v1.pdf)

(I thought the summary was pretty clear and unusually technically accurate, although they don't talk about whether other people doing research on post- quantum crypto think that this method does or doesn't have promise or important tradeoffs compared to other methods. It's not as if this is the first-ever post-quantum cryptosystem to be proposed.)</comment>


List of animals displaying homosexual behavior - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior#Insects <comment><USER2> Scroll up a little to 'Fish'. Guess who features? xD</comment>


We Experiment On Human Beings - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/we-experiment-on-human-beings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=we-experiment-on-human-beings <comment><USER2> When I was still on OKCupid, I once wrote a Chrome extension to hide the pictures. I found that I had, in general, a much better experience with the site - I'd actually read people's profiles, I sent better messages, and I got more responses. I eventually gave up on it when a site redesign changed some of the #ids I was depending on and I didn't feel like revamping the code. But interestingly, my eventual girlfriend had _terrible_ pictures - the grainy, multiple-people-in-the-background sort you're never supposed to put on a dating site. Setting up our first date, she was like "We don't need to exchange numbers, you know what I look like", and I was like "Actually, I'm not sure I do, here's mine." (Okay, I didn't actually tell her her pictures were terrible until we'd been dating for six months or so, but that was the general sentiment.)

I think it's one more example of when people's emotions and desires lead them to suboptimal outcomes. Most of the cues we associate with beauty and sexual desire evolved back in the savanna when health and fertility were very real risks; being able to pick up on which potential mates would be able to carry healthy offspring to term and nurture them until adulthood was very important then. Nowadays, the far greater risk is that you'll hate each other and fight all the time, but this has only been a concern since people started living long enough and in close enough proximity to care.

<comment><USER3> > my eventual girlfriend had terrible pictures - the grainy, multiple-people- > in-the-background sort you're never supposed to put on a dating site.

This is not what people mean when they say someone looks terrible in their pictures.

The point of the experiment is to withhold information about whether someone is physically attract, not about whether they have good photography skills. The only reason to avoid putting up grainy pictures is because people will assume you're not good looking and are trying to disguise this fact.

<comment><USER4> According to this research done by the okcupid guys here: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/7/](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/7/)

"The flash adds 7 years"

"The type and brand of camera you use has a huge effect on how good you look in your pictures."

"There are peak times of the day to take a good picture." ala you are more attractive in photos taken at sunrise and sunset.

Between that blog entry and the other ones on the topic the conclusion really is that how attractive you are in real life and how attractive you are in your photo can have very little correlation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heh heh. I recently got a message from okcupid saying "Because of a diagnostic test, your match percentage with <user> was misstated as 31%. It is actually 91%. We wanted to let you know!" I had a feeling something like this might be involved. (I messaged that person anyway, because they had a funny username, so I guess I supported their point.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey OkCupid – How about some SSL Love?

"For the hundreds of thousands of users searching for that special someone through one of the largest free online dating sites, the love fest may be coming to an end. OkCupid is putting users' privacy in danger by failing to support secure access to its entire website through HTTPS. Every OkCupid email, chat session, search, clicked link, page viewed, and username is transmitted over the Internet in unencrypted plaintext, where it can be intercepted and read by anyone on the network."

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/hey-okcupid-how- about-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/hey-okcupid-how-about-some- ssl-love)

The Heartbreaking Truth About Online Dating Privacy: [https://www.eff.org/press/releases/heartbreaking-truth- about...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/heartbreaking-truth-about-online- dating-privacy)

<comment><USER7> Is this really still the case?

<comment><USER8> Oh, yeah :/ The login page is over SSL, but everything after that is not (!!) This protects your password but not your OkCupid session cookies. It's an improvement over no SSL at all (which was the case for a _long_ time) but still leaves a lot to be desired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice to see a new blog post from OkCupid.

They haven't updated their blog since April 2011.

<comment><USER10> Interesting that the author has a plug at the bottom for his new book, which he says he's been working on for the past 3 years. I guess his book writing got in the way of blogging.

<comment><USER11> > I guess his book writing got in the way of blogging.

There were a number of factors (which I've explained elsewhere in my comment history). That's part of it, but another factor was that, in 2010, there were 2.5 people working full-time[0] on doing research for OkTrends.

The blog posts took a _lot_ of work. "The Real Stuff White People Like"[1] took almost two months of my time, plus some from Max and Christian as well. (Much like the product design process, since we didn't start each post off with a clear end result in mind, not all the work was visible in the final product).

I left to go back to school. Max ended up taking on more responsibility for other data/stats work, which slowed the pace a bit, and he left at the beginning of 2012 to do his own stuff.

People asked me for the last three years whether the reason OkTrends hadn't posted since 2011 was because of the Match.com acquisition and whether Match shut them down and I had to tell everyone "No, trust me, they're still around! It's just a coincidence!". Thankfully I no longer have to. :)

[0] 2.5 full-time means: Two of us full-time, as well as Christian, though he split his work time between OkTrends (the blog) and other stuff.

[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white- peopl...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/)

<comment><USER12> I had only heard about the studies but never took time to read the blog posts. I think I've spent the better part of the past two hours on there. Great stuff and always interesting to see people doing experiments like this (and making them open and 'fun'). A blog post every few months with as much in-depth research is something to look forward to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought Experiment 2 was a great example of the pain of trying to fit your users' feelings into an "ideal" model.

When we started LALife.com, it was with the idea of making a real estate site with lots of great statistics and quantitative data. We gave grades for how safe things were, how good the schools were, multiple heatmaps, assessor data, census data, nearby amenities -- a buffet of data. And sure, people who also fit in the mold of trivia collectors thought this was amazing.

But the more we talked to people, the more we found out that they really didn't use this data, even when they said they appreciated it. We had really overshot the market -- users almost never delved into the statistics, yet took our grades as absolute authority. What people wanted first of all was just insight about whether it was a "nice place" or not, a maddeningly vague concept.

Ultimately, we trashed countless tables and statistics and scaled it back to one number. Yes, one 0-99 number that shows you, well, how "nice" a place is to live. We were so afraid of generalizing things like this because everyone is different and has different priorities and so on. But trying to make things custom for everyone is a losing game, and it turned out "is it nice?" is something everyone already knew intuitively.

So insanely, we went from having 50 extra data points on a home for sale to having one "superscore". But a funny thing happened, which is it became much more successful in the site's actual mission, to help people understand a home's neighborhood without having to visit in person. And now we're providing an insight that is compact enough that we can put it everywhere and people can digest it instantly.

So although we would ultimately like to give people a more data-conscious mindset, the tool and the user need to agree on that commitment. So we're accommodating the user's actual mental model while we work towards expanding it.

PS: We have our scoring model working nationwide, but as you have seen from the Zillow thread, it's hard to get nationwide home listings. We're working on getting homes for rent on [http://www.padrank.com/](http://www.padrank.com/) so you can sign up there if you want to see how it works throughout the US.

<comment><USER14> This phenomenon is actually quite common. In retail, it's called the customer funnel: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel). The idea is you want to capture as much awareness with something really simple, usually it's a brand name, e.g. Apple. When customers express more interest, by coming in Apple store/website, they are presented with more design/technical details. Finally, only when they show purchase intent, they are shown price/configuration/delivery options.

</comment></comment><comment> andrey-p I really enjoyed reading this.

On the flip side (as an OKC user), I've also had moderate amounts of fun trying to figure out their algorithms by trial and error.

For a while, I discovered I could figure out who scored me highly on their Quickmatch [1] feature by visiting it repeatedly - the ones who gave me a high score always came up first. This doesn't seem to work anymore.

[1]: If you haven't used OKC, the idea is: you score potential matches 1-5. You can tell if someone scored you highly (but not who) and if both of you give each other 4 or 5 you get a message "introducing" you both. If you're an A-list (paid) member, you get to see who scored you highly without scoring them.

Edit: tweaked phrasing as per comments.

<comment><USER15> I believe you are supposed to get notified when rated 4 or 5 regardless of whether you rated the other person at all.

<comment><USER16> Didn't they recently remove the 4-5 star system in favor of just a like button? I've been using the mobile version lately but it just has a star now for like and no longer shows a 1-5 rating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> OKC experimented with the matching process -- the express purpose of their site. Facebook experimented with mood manipulation -- something they have no permission to do -- regardless of the fine print. Facebook is a very bad landlord, but people don't want to move.

<comment><USER18> Facebook didn't experiment with "mood manipulation" any more than OKC. Facebook experimented with changing the site layout and which content and how much to show. Exactly the same stuff as all sites test.

Facebook did theorize that the changes it was making would affect people's moods in a certain way. That might make it sound like intentional mood manipulation.

But OKC's changes _also_ affected people's moods. More than Facebook's, I would guess.

All these sites are constantly experimenting on humans. That's what changing the site content means. Everything that affects us affects our moods and everything else.

<comment><USER19> I'd also note that the proxy they are using ("apparent mood of subsequent content") hasn't been shown to correlate with the subjects'/users' actual mood.

All the FB experiment actually shows is that by manipulating the mood of content seen, you can affect the mood of content produced.

Here's a couple of contrarian hypotheses: "when some users see more 'happy' content, they feel worse about themselves in comparison, but post more 'happy' content to pretend that isn't so." Or, "when some already-sad users see more 'sad' content, this does not affect their mood directly, but does give them tacit permission to share how they are already feeling. Subsequently, their mood actually improves."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel very "bearish" towards dating sites. People convince themselves they are saving time meeting more possible "matches" in less time but they forget that meeting online is not the same as in person, "turn-based" chat is different than "real-time" chat.

Some years ago randomly I met a girl online, that most of men (based on her picture) would wife up. I was living abroad at the time and we were only able to meet in person some months later. After few minutes in the date I could see that we would not go anywhere. There was a lack of "real-time" empathy and I hated some details in her personality that I couldn't realise before meeting her (not her look, surprisingly she was even more beautiful in person than at photos). If I had met her in person instead of online, I would have saved months of my life.. I will not do it ever again.

edit: Because of her I met my gf of 5 years, but that was just serendipity working, not because of a dating site.

</comment><comment><USER21> For the record not _every_ site does these type of experiments. I've been programming websites since the 90s and I've never experimented on my users like this. The most I've done is swap in and out user interface features to see which one has a better response in a typical A/B test. It's not the same as telling a lie to a user no matter how you split hairs about it. They're overstating their case because they happen to be in the business of matching people up.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone surprised that only 1/5 people who are 90% matches have a "conversation"? I don't use dating sites, but I'd think that people who do want to converse, and who better to converse with than 90% matches?

But I guess there's a lot of matches, and you can't talk to everyone, which would explain the low numbers. Still a bit surprising to me.

Edit: What you guys said makes sense, thanks. My lack of knowledge of dating sites lead to a bad intuition.

<comment><USER23> Here's a screengrab of my okcupid inbox. [http://imgur.com/jsKVyCi](http://imgur.com/jsKVyCi)

One-liners and no picture are instant 'don't bother replying', and most people with more details tend to get weeded out for other reasons.

<comment><USER24> It is kinda fascinating how awful most guys are at pickup lines.

Be brief, be funny, and always as a question. That's how you do it folks.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, and spend hours and hours coming up with funny, witty, engaging prose, individually tailored, for people who are 90% unlikely to even respond. After awhile you start to feel like a putz, switch to simple one-liners, and discover to your surprise that it doesn't really affect the response rate by too much.

<comment><USER26> As a guy, this... this is pretty much it. I tried OKC for around half a year, starting out doing just that. After the first half I just said "Fuck it" and switched to bullshit two sentence intros that were fill in the blank types. My response rate was practically the same.

Thinking about it now, it seems like the numbers game recruiters play. Send out a lot of semi-decent introductions and hope for a response or two. Your best bet is getting out there and "networking", but in lieu of that, sending out a deluge of messages is the next best, albeit shitty, thing.

I'd be interested in hearing how women deal with the deluge of introductions and what makes them decide to respond to someone. Is it the intro? The profile picture? Do they read the person's bio or use that compatibility meter?

<comment><USER27> This is simple to come up with a couple tests for: switch a great profile picture for a bad one, switch a profile text you put effort into with an empty or horrific one, and switch thought out messages with really shitty copypasta.

I've done this, and the profile picture is what matters. Text matters a bit-- empty hurt, but the half-assed one, if anything, outperformed the one with effort, though they were basically the same.

As computer types, we like to focus on the text, because the text is all and controllable. Good pictures are more difficult, because they take soft skills. Note that, contrary to expectations, it's probably easier to get great pictures of an average looking person than a great profile from an average writer: just using a well-constructed photograph taken with a decent camera as your main photo puts you ahead of most people, even those significantly more attractive than you.

<comment><USER28> Does photo quality really matter that much? I have never found that the quality of the photo makes a difference in how attractive I find the person. It can be a cheap cameraphone or a DSLR, but it makes no difference, at least to me.

If it does to other people, then I should put more effort into my photographs...

<comment><USER29> Someone else posted this in another comment: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/7/](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/7/)

It turns out photo quality, and even which camera you used, matters a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't think the sticky point is whether or not we should be experimenting with people to find what works and what doesn't. It's about respecting users as humans and not simply data points. How does OkCupid know that conversations "went deeper" or how often emails and numbers were exchanged? Were the participants aware of that level of scrutiny or is that tucked away in the ToS? Most people I know aren't even comfortable talking about their OkCupid, they use it as a means to an end and place trust in the service to be discrete. Do these experiments fall in line with user expectations?

I'm not saying you have to find these experiments upsetting just that when people are upset it tends to be about treating users like honorable guests and not about whether or not we should be allowed to tinker with services to find the right solution.

<comment><USER31> For the emails and numbers, they can probably search for those in the messages quite effectively without many false-positives.

I'm all for the expectations of privacy, but if you type something into a search box on a website owned by somebody else, well, you get what you pay for.

<comment><USER30> Sure, my comment wasn't to say they're doing anything nefarious. I'm actually not taking a position here either way. I'm just pointing out that people aren't upset that services use data to improve their services which seems to be the tone and premise of OkCupid's post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >But we took the analysis one step deeper. We asked: does the displayed match percentage cause more than just that first message—does the mere suggestion cause people to actually like each other? As far as we can measure, yes, it does.

Hm, that is unexpected. Wonder how long it will last.

<comment><USER33> Nah, we like people who like us. So if a trusted source tells us someone else either likes or will like us, we tend to like them.

<comment><USER34> From Modern Seinfeld [0]:

 _George swipes right for every woman on Tinder. E: "What if you're not attracted to her?" G:"If she's attracted to me, I might be!"_

[0] [https://twitter.com/SeinfeldToday](https://twitter.com/SeinfeldToday)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I found a similar thing: once they got to the date, they had a good time > more or less regardless of how good-looking their partner was. Here's the > female side of the experience (the male is very similar).

I'm skeptical it was similar, at least if you were to measure the thing that actually matters: whether or not the person wants to go on a second date. ("Did you have a good time" is probably equating to "Did the person avoid doing something terrible" in the survey.)

It's ludicrous on its face to think that men, if they choose a blind date partner based on conversations and profiles, will want to go on a second date just as often with a beautiful woman as with a plain woman.

</comment><comment><USER35> Basically, people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be.

Just a quote that resonates ... The design and architecture of our online environments will affect our happiness as much as anything else.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm surprised no one has commented on the ethics of "Experiment #3". Feeding false data to users is not something that should be taken lightly.

<comment><USER37> I think the premise you are assuming is wrong: You assume that it is sending false data to them to say "this person (which our algorithm has deemed is a bad match), is a good match". The problem is that _until the experiment is done, you don 't how good a match that person actually is_. So you aren't sending them "false data," because you don't know that it _is_ "false data".

<comment><USER36> If it is being reported as known, but is actually unknown, that still would be considered as 'false information'. For instance, if I claim to be clairvoyant, and predict that the next coin you toss will come up 'heads', that would be a false claim, regardless of the outcome of the coin toss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> But you never did so with the intention of eliciting a negative psychological response.

That to me is a distinct difference, both in practicality and morality.

</comment><comment><USER39> TL;DR; people are shallow idiots. Cool article though.

</comment><comment><USER40> #clickbait

</comment><comment><USER41> Doesn't load completely in IE11.

</comment><comment><USER42> What a bunch of pointless data and hubris to prove that, yes, people are predominately fueled by the laws of physical attraction.

<comment><USER43> It might be hard to accept, _but people are shallow._ Everybody has an attractiveness threshold that must be reached before someone will spark their interest. It might be lower or higher, depending on the person, but everybody has one.

Obviously, sustained interest and the development of romance is more complicated and involves aspects of personality, shared interests, &c. However, that doesn't change the fact that if they weren't good looking enough for you in the first place, you never would have made the effort to find out about the stuff you actually care about.

<comment><USER30> Being able to relate attractiveness to a linear scale doesn't mean attraction operates on linear terms. In reality, there is no threshold nor is there a higher or lower. I agree with you in the sense that people will disregard personality or shared interests if they don't find the person physically attractive but there's no answer that's more correct than another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I suspect that the cavalier sentiment OKCupid has approached the discourse with will not go well for them.

Will be interesting to observe the sociological takedowns of this post.

<comment><USER32> Unlikely. Facebook went overboard with it after hiding it from their users. OKC has always done this with their data, although I am more than a little disturbed by them showing deliberately bad data to their users.

Also who the hell though it was a good idea to have a dating site without pictures (even for 24 hours?)

<comment><USER45> Unfortunately, while showing what we would consider "intuitively bad data" may seem like a bad idea, only actually empirically testing it can we measure and quantify the exact impact that bad data (either shown purposefully or accidentally, or unknowingly) will have on users.

It may have in fact turned out that what we intuitively think as bad data results in better matches or better experiences. I think experimenting is worthwhile, so long as it is done in the open as they have been doing.

<comment><USER46> I remember reading about this concerning Netflix. They used to have a competition on who can come up with a better recommendation algorithm. They eventually decided not to implement the best one because what they were getting was good enough, and since most people were streaming instead of getting a dvd, the more recommendations the better. They could just try and if they don't want to see the whole movie, rate it and instantly pick another.

<comment><USER47> I'm pretty sure they didn't implement it because it was an extremely impractical solution.

Edit:

"We evaluated some of the new methods offline but the additional accuracy gains that we measured did not seem to justify the engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment." \- [https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120409/0...](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120409/03412518422/why- netflix-never-implemented-algorithm-that-won-netflix-1-million- challenge.shtml)

<comment><USER46> >Streaming has not only changed the way our members interact with the service, but also the type of data available to use in our algorithms. For DVDs our goal is to help people fill their queue with titles to receive in the mail over the coming days and weeks; selection is distant in time from viewing, people select carefully because exchanging a DVD for another takes more than a day, and we get no feedback during viewing. For streaming members are looking for something great to watch right now; they can sample a few videos before settling on one, they can consume several in one session, and we can observe viewing statistics such as whether a video was watched fully or only partially.

I wouldn't say that this makes you wrong, but I'd say you are partially right.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deep in Human DNA, a Gift from the Neanderthals - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/science/neanderthal-genes-viruses.html <comment><USER2> Is it strictly correct to say Neanderthals became extinct if we carry some of their DNA? Or should we think of them as one of a few (sub?) species that fed into the origins of modern humans?

It seems odd to think of "them" and "us" as entirely different.

<comment><USER3> > Is it strictly correct to say Neanderthals became extinct if we carry some > of their DNA?

Yes. Neanderthals as a population don't exist anymore.

The house cat and tiger shares 95% of the same genes. If tigers disappeared, you wouldn't consider it an extinction because we have house cats around?

[https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0918/House-cats- and-t...](https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0918/House-cats-and-tigers- share-95.6-percent-of-DNA-study-reveals)

Also, the common ancestors of humans and the common ancestors of cats became extinct a long time ago. Are you saying those "creatures" aren't extinct because humans and cats are around?

Edit: An additional example for those interested. Birds today share same genes as tyrannosaur rex.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs- shr...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and- became-birds/)

<comment><USER4> > Birds today share same genes as tyrannosaur rex

Really? Surely this claim would require the sequencing of the T-Rex genome, which I'm guessing is an impossibility.

<comment><USER5> Strictly speaking, all liveforms on the planet share same genes because they descended from a common ancestor. You probably have 50% of common genes with plants and quite a few with microorganisms.

<comment><USER6> it sounds like quite a stretch to say everything shares the same genes. A lot of the genes have come into existence long after distant species split apart, and other genes have disappeared from one specie while continuing in others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neanderthals are an offshoot, not an ancestor.

<comment><USER8> Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are both offshoots from a common ancestor.</comment></comment>


It's Probably Not Okay to Send Naked Pictures on LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-14/it-s-probably-not-okay-to-send-naked-pictures-on-linkedin?cmpid=socialflow-facebook-gameplan&utm_content=gameplan&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> I completely agree that it was not right for the sexual misconduct to happen in the first place. Not debating that at all. That is wrong on all levels. But...

>LinkedIn is an extension of the workplace, similar to going into the office or attending a corporate networking event, the theory of the case goes.

I don't get how that could ever be legally enforced? Wouldn't a lawsuit like this would forever change LinkedIn if they won? Not even related to this sexual misconduct that started this, I could easily see so many people bailing from LinkedIn if it was somehow considered an extension of your workplace directly. This will be really interesting to see what happens next with this.

<comment><USER3> I too am curious about how they will define LinkedIn.

From a mannerism/general code of conduct - I agree that it should be treated like an office or work-related event.

Legally - it's a weird stance. If it's a direct extension of your workplace what will that mean for NDAs and corporate policies? Do they "own" the rights to all information you post while working there? What happens when you move on?

<comment><USER4> The owners of an office building or event venue don't get any of those privileges either, and yet the office and work-related events are unambiguously governed by workplace rules. The fact that LinkedIn is not your employer doesn't seem like a big problem.

<comment><USER5> Sort of - LinkedIn may combine things from different employers or seeking of a new employer, which your current employer may not at all approve of. So you can't really apply workplace rules to it directly.

<comment><USER4> You could say the same thing about hallways in an office building with multiple tenants, but I don't think it's legally ambiguous whether propositioning your coworkers outside the restroom is more appropriate than doing it in the office.

<comment><USER5> Definitely - heck, you could argue any interaction between coworkers like that could impact the job.

Just that many other such interactions that occur on linkedin might not, so job rules really don't apply just because it's work related but more because you're dealing with a coworker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most important part of the article is that the offender is a recruiter:

> Jane Doe alleged that a recruitment conversation on LinkedIn took a turn for > the inappropriate when she received sexual messages from a banker—using his > corporate account—who had been trying to recruit her. One of the messages > included a photograph of his genitals.

So "It's Probably Not Okay to Send Naked Pictures if you're a recruiter representing the company" would be a more accurate title, but it wouldn't be as interesting of an headline.

Similarly that if you're a recruiter calling someone or having a dinner with, you shouldn't attempt to seduce* the maybe-future-employee since that's clearly an abuse of power. Lawsuit or not, that recruiter should be fired.

I don't think the medium (phone company, restaurant you're at, or Linkedin) should be held responsible and Nowhere on this article it says the plaintiff is suing Linkedin, she's suing the company that recruiter works for.

* For some people apparently, sending a photograph of their genitals seem to be a "seduction" technique, but even if this was more tactful flirting, this is already not ok.

<comment><USER7> This is tangential but somewhat related. I'd like to see a day when if someone publishes something on their personal account (not official work account) whether it be social media, private conversation, etc. that those actions not affect their "life for hire" (work) life.

That's the way it has been for ages (what one would say in one's private time was detached and unrelated to public time).

I hope we can get there because humans are not perfect and we will always say regretful things. Things which if held to account as if representatives of a company would carry different weight. People should be able to voice their own opinion separately divorced from their "professional persona".

In other words, someone from UAL when in "uniform" should conduct themselves professionally --but once they go home and don their personal attire and their personal opinion (even if negative) should not affect their professional standing. For example, flight attendant has to deal with egotistical high profile passenger --as a professional they should be able to handle things gracefully, but once they get home as a private citizen they should be able to say "I had to deal with a nasty traveler today" without the company coming down and saying "don't demean our paying customers even if they mistreat you, that is unbecoming, you are fired".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unlike email accounts (email@example.com) or accounts at various services and vendors tied to those emails (such as Photoshop, Jira, etc), many, if not most Linkedin accounts stay with people across jobs. In case of Sales Teams or Recruiters, companies might pay or reimburse for the premium services that Linkedin monetizes, and the employees might use Linkedin in the day-to-day work, but they're also likely to look for other jobs, build non- work related professional connections, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> TIL: There's a niche opportunity for a LinkedIn for the adult entertainment industry.

<comment><USER10> That's called Twitter for professionals and Tumblr for amateurs.

<comment><USER9> I guess PornHub works pretty well as an IMDB analogue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When anybody pretends to be authorized by a company, and employee is in conversation with authorized person, than both the company and individual shall be held liable for sexual harassment

</comment><comment><USER12> Linkedin is failing big time to control spam and impersonation. Keeping these social media clean is next big challenge for the tech world.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article also states, a few other anecdotes.

A recruiter who uses LinkedIn to send unsolicited messages on the platform for professional gain was upset she received unsolicited social messages. She was unable to recognize the irony.

Another businesswoman was actually a reality TV star from Trump's the apprentice. She left the platform because the lines blurred from social/entertainment/career and she was getting harassed.

IDK, I feel for this woman but I am not convinced seeing dick pick entitles her to millions from a company she isn't affiliated with. Coming from the Susan Fowler thread, I really feel for her. This seems like a money grab

<comment><USER14> What is the connection between this and Fowler? Seems like two completely separate issues involving entirely different people and industries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I don't condone that banker's behavior in any way, I want to mention that I pretty much refuse to speak to any women where I work unless I absolutely have to. It's really the only way to remain safe in such politically correct environments.

I think something important is being lost in our day to day interactions with colleagues and not only that, but much has been taken away from our personal lives when we deal with overbearing rules. Again, not condoning the 'dick pics' that was way out of line, but merely observing that life in the US is just not any fun in or out of the workplace.

I can't even imagine trying to date in a an environment where your professional life is threatened merely by opening your mouth at all.

Also, there's a double-standard--women harassing men is overlooked by men, but when it goes the other way it is never overlooked. So unless a man's overtures of friendship are immediately warmly welcomed (and subject to later rejection, natch) that person's job is at risk.

Meanwhile, the C-Suite and higher echelon folks are all in bed with each other, which is the other double standard.

</comment><comment><USER16> Every place where people can communicate is a place where they can proposition. If you're thinking of changing this, give up now while you have your sanity.

LinkedIn is a social network which prominently displays professional credentials. I have dated women I've met on LinkedIn and it's gone just fine (granted, nobody I was doing business with, that is unwise even if not illegal).

The question of the case, in my estimation, is _Is it unlawful to send a picture of your genitals to a person who works with your company over a channel you might also use for business communications_. This gets into all sorts of complicated matters; for example, is it unlawful to MMS a picture of your genitals to somebody who does business with your company?

Is there a precedent for a similar case but with a different medium? If the precedent did not penalize the defendant, is there something about LinkedIn or another detail of the case which distinguishes it?

<comment><USER17> Did you start out the conversation with genital photos? Because I keep hearing about guys who do that, and it's just never made sense to me...

<comment><USER16> I don't think that's effective, I don't do it. Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam did some analysis which would suggest that dick pics are not effective, given that imagery of penises (and visual stimulus in general) is not a major factor in female arousal. From a personal "moral" perspective I don't see myself doing that.

Excellent question nonetheless. Nobody really seems to think much when they do things like this.

I think the reason men* send dick pics is because they (the men) are naturally aroused by imagery of penises, and think that women will be similarly aroused by it. It's probably a lot like a women giving complimenting a man on social stature, confidence, or competence, and maybe not understanding that he probably won't understand what she's getting at.

* _Edit: referring to straight men in this case_

<comment><USER18> I think you could have avoided the downvotes (edit: and be more correct IMO) if you just said that the men who send dick pics to women are the type that would welcome women sending intimate pictures of themselves.

Edit: I am not wondering about the motives of straight women sending nude pictures to men; I am just giving a more plausible reason than what I think you gave as to why some men might think the idea could be effective. (i.e. looking at how they might react to it). Besides, isn't the point that a person sends photos of themselves?

<comment><USER16> > _I think you could have avoided the downvotes if you just said that the men > who send dick pics to women are the type that would welcome women sending > intimate pictures of themselves._

But that would be nebulous, inaccurate, and entirely beside the point. I have no evidence of the statement you just suggested, and I would not suggest it. The fact is that no man, straight or gay, is currently litigating for the privilege not to see other sex nudity on LinkedIn InMail; thus it makes no sense to wonder about the motives of straight women who send nude pictures to men on LinkedIn for attention.

 _Aside:_ I don't care about _avoiding downvotes_ , I'm not an agreeable πerson (in the psychometric sense). I don't think life is worth living if you strive to only say things that people won't disagree with. For example, watwut on the other subthread is shocked, probably shocked enough to downvote and move on, that I would say that straight men are sexually aroused by imagery of penises. I don't care. If I look at my statements for the last month or so, there's a mix of positive and negative feedback, the balance happens to be roughly +100 karma, but I don't so much care as long as I have enough karma to upvote.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Sexiest Luxury Coworking Space in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://blenderworkspace.com <comment><AUTHOR> Came across this very cool workspace in Manhattan that just opened this year. Seems like they are filling fast, so NYC peeps get on it and tour while you can! I did and thought it was awesome.</comment>


A Brief History of Rules of Thumb - <AUTHOR> http://rulesofthumb.org/about.php#top <comment><AUTHOR> This is a fascinating topic, I'd love to know some of the Rules of Thumb HN crowd employs :)</comment>


Why Generic Machine Learning Fails - <AUTHOR> http://metamarketsgroup.com/blog/machine-learning-in-wonderland/

<comment><USER2> > I get pitched regularly by startups doing "generic machine learning" which > is, in all honesty, a pretty ridiculous idea.

Learned this the hard way. As an academic who used to think you could solve a problem (e.g., spam filtering) using a single model --- something we routinely do in academic papers --- I had to wait until I went to an industry internship to realize how "ugly" a real spam filtering algorithm has to be. Large mail providers see so many diverse patterns of spam that they need a complicated mix of ML models, datasets, labels, and sometimes even plain old blacklists to keep their spam under control.

<comment><USER3> Coming from a background of bioinformatics, my experience of academia was quite different. Combining multiple sources of data and results from different prediction algorithms is quite common.

As for generic machine learning being a ridiculous idea, I don't see why he'd think this. Nearly all specialized systems use generic machine learning algorithms as a submodule. They can very much be commoditizable like EC2. Even google has an upcoming framework for this. Although I would agree that by themselves they are not sufficient.

edit: I also think you miss the point of academic papers. The goal is not to build a product, but rather to understand algorithms. Testing algorithms in isolation of other boosters is crucial for this. If you are testing a particular combining framework, only then does it make sense to include multiple approaches within the context if the proposed idea.

In bioinformatics, you additionally have the researchers who actually want an applied answer for their studies and work. Thus, in that area you _do_ routinely get something more like a product being produced in an academic setting. The combined systems are often, but not always published.

<comment><USER4> The issue is that generic machine learning algorithms work ok enough as black boxes, but to squeeze top performance out of them you need to do feature engineering, architecture/model structure futzing, method selection, etc, and in practice there are far too many of these meta-hyperparameters to tune with cross-validation or something similar.

While the generic ML tools work really well, it takes domain knowledge to find the best way of applying them to the problem at hand, specially since it almost never fits into the classification/regression from IID training training data model that most algorithms are designed based on. At first this might seem counter-intuitive to you, but I've seen dramatic reductions in the error rate just from picking good features or a reasonable model structure in a way that's not easy to automate. And while deep learning or structure learning tries to address these problems, there are issues with nonconvexity and really long training times that make these algorithms unrealistic in many situations (and, consequently, make them underperform simpler methods with clever domain engineering).

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. In light of your comment, perhaps I am misunderstanding what the original article means by a generic learning algorithm?

The points you make are well understood in academics. There are probably hundreds of papers on feature selection and domain specific modelling in bioinformatics, for example.

In terms of boxed learning algorithms, I would assume that such a thing would provide for a way to supply models and inputs in a variety of formats. The latter allowing for users to do their own domain specific feature selection or other types of data reduction before applying a particular learning algorithm. In that sense, I could see things like Google's prediction API being useful in principle, even though it won't eliminate the large domain specific portion of the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate the practical aspects of the author's post. Too often on mailing lists for various machine learning groups, a novice will ask if they can "just apply [technique] to [big problem]"; usually something like stock trading or DNA analysis. The obvious answer is "Sure! Now go spend years understanding how your domain really works in context of the algorithm you're trying to use." You can't just feed in stock prices to a black box and get rich, sorry, doesn't work that way.

As for the idea of "general machine learning" not being feasible, it's worth noting that the No Free Lunch Theorem [1] applies here.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)

</comment><comment><USER6> I just want to note that article's main point is _that_ generic machine learning fails.

Why?

"The Netflix prize is a good example: the last 10% reduction in RMSE wasn't due to more powerful generic algorithms, but rather due to some very clever thinking about the structure of the problem; observations like "people who rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating movies they saw a long time ago" from BellKor."

That's kind of hand-wavy in the sense that you haven't produced the factor which prevents a generic machine learning algorithm from "being very clever" or determining the specific useful observation. Sure, there's an intuition we have about this but that's it.

And that is kind of inevitable - if we could get an exact measure of why current machine learning algorithms fail, we could probably build new one that succeeded.

<comment><USER7> The "people who rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating movies they saw a long time ago" example is wonderful, actually: it indicates _exactly_ the reason that humans can guide choices of algorithms in a way better than machines can: the data that a human uses to to come up with that hypothesis is quite literally unavailable to the machine. It's completely outside the dataset that's under analysis, and comes from a human's experience dealing with humans, and his assumptions about how they act. Most humans would probably mark that statement as "probably true" without even investigating the data, and that's an _extremely_ valuable prior that a ML algorithm has no access to (unless we explicitly program it in).

Sure, you might argue that the hypothesis is implicit in the data set, and (though I'm not familiar with the actual Netflix data, so I'm not sure) that might be true - if it's in there in some form, then it's even conceivable that some algorithm might eventually pick it up. But a human would likely never even dream of advancing that hypothesis without at least some vague sense that other humans would probably act that way, and in many cases, without that high prior probability that comes from our knowledge of psychology it wouldn't be proper to consider that factor. So in a sense, we're cheating every time we use our external domain knowledge to push our ML algos to a better spot in hypothesis space.

This doesn't say that generic ML fails; it merely says that "the sum total of human knowledge + ML algo applied to data set" > "ML algo applied to data set", especially when "data set" has something to do with shit that humans know very well, like ourselves.</comment></comment>


The Free and Open Internet - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2019/02/the-free-and-open-internet/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a terrific line:

"The truth is Dingell's family should never have asked the Washington Post to publish his last words. Even the Washington Post's owner Jeff Bezos knew to publish his words that he wanted everyone to read on an open platform like Medium."</comment>


Ask HN: ADrive offers 50GB of free storage. Why had I never heard of it? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.adrive.com/ Just wondering if anybody had heard anything about this company or used the product. Supposedly they offer 50GB free and operate sort of like DropBox. Today is the first I'd heard of it so I thought I'd ask HN if you had any experience with it. <comment><USER2> Though it seems they will give you 50GB free, you have to pay for anything but the basics (such as if you want to access it as a drive on your computer). Otherwise you only get a 14 day trial for these 'advanced' features. Where as DropBox is free.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, the lack of SSL doesn't help at all. I prefer to pay a bit more to SpiderOak and have encryption.

Of course, I could make a script to compress all my files with passwords, but the selling point of those services is being easy.

<comment><USER4> SSL is just the wire protocol, it does not protect your data when it is stored. So it's advisable to do your own encryption anyway, before sending it to the backup server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gave it a whirl and tried to upload a smallish collection of reference ebooks. The java app failed after the first file (of 50+). Cancelled my account 15 seconds later... Reason: "It doesn't Work!"

</comment><comment><USER6> Why? Well, first of all, the UI is confusing and complicated (a majority will call it ugly) compared to Dropbox.

<comment><USER7> Just signed up to check it out -- but yes, it looks a little shady

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.adrive.com></comment>


The publishers are not the enemy - <AUTHOR> http://andreyf.tumblr.com/post/143882829/the-publishers-are-not-the-enemy

<comment><USER2> There is no argument here. There is a lot of "but they're simpletons who don't understand the Internet" and "the CEO has to answer awkward questions from other simpletons if he doesn't insist upon the right to 'unpublish' a book".

Never mind that the whole _point_ of being a publisher is to _publish_ books. Never mind that a bunch of people, clearly, had bought these and were therefore paying more than the paperbacks for those cost in store for fewer rights. The whole foundation of ethics is that just because you can do something does not mean you should do something.

<comment><AUTHOR> _just because you can do something does not mean you should do something_

But that misses my point precisely: if this was your buddy Josh, an appeal to ethics would make sense, but a corporation isn't a person. Publishers _can't_ do anything else, just like moths _can't_ help but fly to light. Bringing up ethics here is like bringing up ethics when your car won't start.

In most publishers, if an "enlightened" CEO decides to give up rights, he needs to justify the business value of that - and "the 0.1% of our customers who know what DRM is and care will buy paper versions of our books instead of getting a Kindle" is just not enough business value to justify it.

A CEO isn't being paid to make his company an ethical actor in the world, he's paid to maximize the value of the company. If a CEO's ethics regarding DRM don't agree with maximizing the value of the company, he'll say "I can't do my job because it's unethical" and be replaced with someone else.

<comment><USER3> """A CEO isn't being paid to make his company an ethical actor in the world, he's paid to maximize the value of the company. If a CEO's ethics regarding DRM don't agree with maximizing the value of the company, he'll say "I can't do my job because it's unethical" and be replaced with someone else."""

That is wrong, and wrong in a way that is very symptomatic of the illness afflicting our society as a whole. A CEO or other officer of a company has a fiduciary responsibility to her shareholders, but she also has an ethical responsibility to the society in which her company exists; and without which it would not exist.

That the myth that fiduciary responsibilities trump all other responsibilities is so widespread that many here hold it up as an unquestioned truth should be disturbing to you. If you believe that your companies profitability outweighs any moral, ethical or legal obligation; then you are criminally insane and it is societies right and duty to limit you so that you do not harm others.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Wrong" meaning you wish it wasn't that way, or _wrong_ meaning inaccurate in describing the state of the world? The former I agree with, the latter you don't seem to give much evidence for.

If you wish it wasn't that way, how do you suppose we should define corporations? You can't just stick a "must has an ethical responsibility to the society in which her company exists; and without which it would not exist" clause in a law somewhere...

 _myth that fiduciary responsibilities trump all other responsibilities_

Again, this is like talking about the myth of gravity after a rock falls on your head. Fiduciary responsibility _is the law_ under which corporations like publishers operate.

If you don't like the law, it would be a nice exercise to suggest an alternative (which we can debate).

 _If you believe that your companies profitability outweighs any moral, ethical or legal obligation; then you are criminally insane and it is societies right and duty to limit you so that you do not harm others_

Let's simplify: a rock fell on a baby's head and smushed it. I point and say "hey look, a rock fell on a baby's head and smushed it, because it's really heavy". You say: "If you believe that babies should be smushed by rocks; then you are criminally insane and it is societies right and duty to limit you so that you do not harm others". See my point?

See, and this confuses me - in your last sentence, you used "fiduciary responsibilities", which makes me think you went to college. But this shows such a lack of reading comprehension... oooooh... are you one of those "globalization" majors?

        <offtopic>Geezus fuck, has news.YC really come to this!?</offtopic>

<comment><USER4> Your logic does not take into account the entire ecosystem in which these companies exist. If you take it as law that companies exist only to make profit and they cannot help it, then you should also take it as law that when companies do things people don't like, people will get upset, and this will, hopefully, reduce the company's profits. This is how people can try to make companies do what they want, and this is how markets work. So, using your logic, there is nothing wrong with people getting angry and blaming the company - it is part of the system to make the market produce what people want.

<comment><AUTHOR> But we were talking about morality, and I'm afraid markets aren't moral when it comes to externalities. Most people don't care if slaves picked their strawberries or if children made their shoes.

Business transactions are business transactions - I give you $$$, you give me laptop. Whether or not you dumped toxic waste on villagers halfway around the world to make it just isn't part of the equation for most people.

[AGAIN: Not saying this is right, or optimal, it's just reality folks, with no way I can see of changing it]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I bet it would gravitate toward his next meeting with the board, the part where someone asks, slowly:_

 _So copyright law gives us rights over our content that you decided to waive why, exactly?_

 _But that would never happen, because if there's one thing he knows how to to best, it's to avoid risk._

What about most obvious risk--the one the article conveniently overlooks--the risk of customers not buying your product? Would you buy a book that included a remotely operated kill switch which could dissolve the pages at the wishes of the publisher?

<comment><AUTHOR> _the risk of customers not buying your product_

I agree that the world would be better off if this were true. But considering it's their careers on the line, I imagine they do a lot of research into customers' behavior and how it related to DRM. I imagine that the biggest competitor to a DRM-ed e-book is the dead-tree version of that same book, in which case, it's all a win-win for them.

But again, while I imagine people _do_ buy e-books, I agree that most of them don't realize the fine print of the transaction. Morally speaking this isn't fair, in a way, Amazon is facilitating a fraudulent transaction between their customers and the publishers.

But corporate law isn't written by ethics philosophers, it's written by lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians (hopefully). And so corporations don't behave according to a human's sense of morality, but according to corporate law.</comment></comment>


Elon says Tesla received 146,000 orders for its Cybertruck after botched debut - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/23/elon-musk-says-tesla-has-received-146000-orders-for-its-cybertruck.html <comment><AUTHOR> Personally I think the design is striking, but neither beautiful nor functional as a "Pickup Truck".

It will stand out on the streets and in a parking lot though so I'm not surprised at the number of initial orders. I suspect we'll see them more often parked outside a trendy restaurant than a lumber yard.

<comment><USER2> "nor functional"

Why? Doesn't it have a bigger bed, extra space, and a lot more than regular trucks? It even has an air compressor and outlets.

<comment><USER3> Well I don't think it's quite so black and white. There are some neat things you can get on this but it's not revolutionary.

But air compressors are a 250 add on to any truck and 500-700 for a really good one that can handle serious work.

The bed is the equivalent to a short bed, but a little wider. It basically has a built in tonneau cover.

The outlet comes standard on a lot of trucks too. What's behind it battery- wise is a lot bigger.

Frankly, it's a cool design, but it does feel like folks are overdoing the "better than existing pickups by a wide margin" part.

Can you imagine picking up your co-workers at 3:30 to roll up to a job site in this at 4:30am to do concrete? It's possible, but it's going to take a cultural shift. The one thing I have heard from folks who buy trucks for work that I know is that thing has city slicker dna in the current market.

Some probably can see rolling up to the job site... that shift may be underway... like I said... not so black and white.

<comment><USER2> I guess my point is: it has at least all the features that make other trucks functional. Why wouldn't this be functional? Because of the way it looks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He did manage to generate a whole bunch of press. I can't remember when I last read an article about a new Truck.

<comment><USER5> It's possible that anything Tesla introduces will be controversial because Musk and the company have created so much controversy, and that's what resulted in the press.

It's also possible the design was partly responsible, but I think even a boring-looking vehicle would've gotten just as much coverage.

I saw tons of stories about Rivian and its trucks, so I think people are hungry for a super-powerful electric truck.

<comment><USER4> Musk is all about Mass Marketing - larger the acquired audience larger the sales, and he clearly does that better than most.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple's new gender neutral emojis - <AUTHOR> https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/apple-emoji-update-miscellaneous-091017 <comment><USER2> I guess we lost the universal purpose of the original smiley. It's yellow and looks like nobody in particular, so that it could represent anybody...

<comment><USER3> Or even better, the original smileys such as:

:)

:D

;)

...and my favorite :3

These are gender neutral and timeless.

<comment><USER4> Or the older ones for the PLATO system: [http://www.platopeople.com/emoticons.html](http://www.platopeople.com/emoticons.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool, I like them. The mermaid and rock climbing ones are good additions too.

</comment><comment><USER6> On a related note, it's nice to see Mark Bramhill's Person in Lotus Position on this page. He has a nice 3-part podcast series on what it takes to make an emoji:

[https://www.macintosh.fm/episodes/emoji-1](https://www.macintosh.fm/episodes/emoji-1)

And 99% invisible did a nice summary interview with him:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus- position...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus-position/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can we go back to just making arbitrary pictures from text?

Nothing PC to get offended about and infinite possibilities (up to the limits of RAM of course).

</comment><comment><USER8> Aren't most emoji gender neutral?

</comment><comment><USER9> Are these in unicode already, or are they really Apple specific?

<comment><USER4> "Apple has revealed" is far different from "The Unicode consortium has decided."

<comment><USER10> Apple co-chairs the Unicode committee on emoji.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and how would new emoji become part of the Unicode standard in secret, such that the corporate reveal would be on the same day it was added to Unicode?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder who's actually going to use the breastfeeding emoji.

<comment><USER12> A huge number of people have children during their lifetime (89% according to one quora answer [0]), and since babies require daily breastfeeding multiple times a day for at least six months, that's a lot of instances of people needing to talk about breastfeeding.

[0]: [https://www.quora.com/Children-What-percentage-of-people- bec...](https://www.quora.com/Children-What-percentage-of-people-become- parents/answer/Anshul-Ranjan-1)

<comment><USER11> My point is emojis help us visualize things - try to give us an actual image instead of a word. But I imagine lots of people don't in particular want other people to visualize them breastfeeding.

<comment><USER13> lots of people don't want others to visualize them dancing but the dancing emoji just isn't for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did we finally get a dumpling emoji?

</comment><comment><USER15> Apple signaling its boundless virtue as usual.

<comment><USER16> Monochromatic signaling their boundless virtue as usual, with low effort comments. See how your comment is also meant to signal virtue to people who use the phrase virtue signaling?

The real question is: what harm has been done to you by Apple including trans and ambiguously gendered people? It makes them happier and feel more included, which is a moral good and a rare ethical low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER17> "Virtue Signalling" is just the new snarl word for "SJW".

Anyone relying on using this essentially meaningless phrase ( _SJW_ , _virtue signalling_ , or other snarl words) to label something is intentionally being dismissive in a derogatory manner, and is not really worth engaging.

e: see their intentional strawman below for further proof

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virt...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virtue_signalling.22)

<comment><USER15> >anyone who disagrees isn't worth talking to

Ok.

<comment><USER16> Want to prove them wrong, monochromatic? I'm listening.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ISoftStone, Microsoft team up brings HealthVault to China   - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/111110-isoftstone-microsoft-team-up-brings.html

<comment><USER2> iSoftStone = Microsoft's partner to bring health IT to China

iSoft = Health IT supplier that brought the UK NHS national IT program to its knees

Hmm, no potential for confusion there, then.</comment>


Going Too Fast - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2009/06/going-too-fast.html

<comment><USER2> Going fast is perfectly fine. Just make sure you slow down to think it through every now and then.

I know people who are trying to get multiple degrees within four years of undergrad and are taking 7-8 credits when most are only taking 5. I admire them for the hard work they put in, but I feel like some of them are clueless as to why they are doing it, except the fact that they want to just do really well and look _good._

I remember in high school I used to do the same. Now I keep on asking myself the same question over and over again. Is this really want I want to do? Things have changed drastically as well for me. Much slower, but more efficiently. Although, I really wish I had more time for my side projects.

And I totally agree - trusting your gut is probably the most important thing you can do. Just be sure to keep it in check from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you should listen. Going too fast can mean that some things that may be more important in life are passing you by.

After all, course-work and corporate-grind work are not very good measures of your life. But then, I could be a hippy freak that loves love more than pointless work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps you're right. But when I wrote the post, I was a grunt intern at a little known startup.

Fast forward just over a year, and I'm the CEO of an innovative education startup with investors that backed Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, etc.

Things have changed drastically in the past year, and it's because I'm going as fast as I possible can.

But you're right, there's more to life than work. I suppose it's all just a series of trade-offs.</comment></comment>


Long range license plate recognition from 500m - <AUTHOR> Last weekend I tested long range automated license plate recognition. Most exotic part for this rig was CS to EOS lens adapter. All other parts were laying around. With 300mm DSLR lens I could register bypassing car license plate number from ~0.5km distance.<p>More detailed description how it was build and what results did I get: http://kurokesu.com/main/2016/08/29/long-range-license-plate-recognition/ <comment><USER2> I didn't realize there are webcams that you can mount a DSLR lens on, nice!

Pretty impressive results.

Is there a problem with going below 3fps?

Could you miss some vehicles or is it something else?

If you still have that quick and dirty python script, I'd like to see it if possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link for convenience:

[http://kurokesu.com/main/2016/08/29/long-range-license- plate...](http://kurokesu.com/main/2016/08/29/long-range-license-plate- recognition/)</comment>


TechStars ruins your sex life - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/techstars-ruins-sex-life

<comment><USER2> If you get past the (awful) stereotypes of programmers as "geeks", you're left with a small data set and no analysis. I'd guess that a significant portion of the entrepreneurs moved to Seattle to participate. Moving to a new city probably cuts down on almost all social metrics (less coffee or drinks with friends, less sex, etc).

<comment><USER3> I think it's more likely that the cause is the initial high-engagement period that budding startups have. The infographic shows the _average_ workday being 9am-12am. when you're working 15 hour days you don't really have time for anything else, regardless of what town you're in.</comment></comment>


My Response to "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" by Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> Here's the link to my blog post: http://blog.myadversity.com/2014/04/my-personal-response-and-continuation.html
The link to the essay by Paul Graham is at: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
It's a lot to read, so here's the tl;dr version of my blog post: In his essay, "Why Nerds Are Unpopular," Paul Graham explains that the hierarchy of popularity in high school works well for jocks, but not for nerds. Nerds choose to be intelligent rather than popular. He offers some relief to young nerds by informing them that, in the real life hierarchy of success, nerds have the advantage and jocks don't.
In my response, I argue that a nerd who deviates from the status quo still meets relentless opposition to real world success; perhaps even more so than a nerdy jock who deviates from the status quo path to popularity. <comment><USER2> I think you would have done better to have linked directly to your blog, rather than making this a self post. If you really feel that a tl;dr is necessary, that's what a comment is for.

Anyway, here's my own brief response to both PG and your response:

1) "Nerd" and "Jock" are stereotypes. Given a large enough sample size, of course there will be popular nerds and intelligent jocks, and every shade of gray in between.

2) What about a "jock" who deviates from the accepted wisdom and take chances? For every high school football star who goes on to become an NFL star as an adult, I'm sure there will be a dozen has-been football stars who end up giving up football and find a boring job. I'd argue that there's not much difference between nerds and jocks when it comes to the probability of success.

3) In my interpretation, PG's central insight is _not_ that the real world places a higher value on intelligence than American schools do. The central idea of the essay, which PG repeats several times throughout the piece, is that school is a prison. When you graduate from that prison, you are finally free to find like-minded nerds and do interesting things together with them. Of course, as you said, the whole world might be just another prison that demands compliance with the status quo. But since this prison is several orders of magnitude larger than a typical high school, there are many more opportunities to do interesting things inside of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thank you for your comment. I didn't realize that linking directly to the blog post and adding the tl;dr as a comment would have been a better format. I'll remember that for the future. I do believe the tl;dr is necessary because I didn't want anyone to feel they'd wasted their time reading my entire post without having a preview.

1) You're very right. PG has likely seen more diversity than I have. However, I think his bias, when discussing the real world environment in the essay, leans toward culture that values the properties most nerds have. My bias probably leans the opposite way. So neither of us even considered a large enough environment sample as we generalized "Nerds" and "Jocks." Or perhaps PG did consider it, and that is why he alluded to the sense of greater freedom in real life.

2) This is an important idea in the essence of my post (perhaps inaccurately conveyed). Even though I considered myself a nerd, my status in high school was primarily "Jock." After high school, I was primarily a "Nerd." For me, deviating from the standard path to popularity was so much easier as a jock in high school, than as a nerd in real life. As for success after high school, I do believe nerds have a better probability overall, but anyone who disobeys the status quo in real life should expect plenty of headwinds.

3) I agree with you. My experience within a small sample of what the world offers in its entirety likely constricts my perception of the relative freedom between secondary school and real life. I only know what it's like struggling in the real world in a small farm town in MT, in a medium college-town with a population of a few hundred thousand, in Los Angeles, and in a large city in Brazil. I know what it's like to be financially successful only in that medium-sized town and in Brazil. I do believe that the lower you find yourself on the hierarchical ladder, the more imprisoned you will feel in both high school and real life.

Thank you for your insight and for both taking the time to read my blog and respond to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's my response: nerds focus on long-term optimization whereas jocks focus on premature optimization (in computer science speak, think "Big O" values for 10,000n vs 2^n).

As a result, nerds are seen as low value at the present and subconsciously remind jocks that their maximum values are relatively low in the long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. In a sense, nerds seem to focus on success within the adult society before they're even out of the high school society. Do they unconsciously plan that far ahead, or are they just serendipitously interested in gaining experience in areas that happen to be extremely helpful in the next society they're about to enter?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Suggest simpler tech for blog with members area - <AUTHOR> I built a blog that also has a members-only area. It's for a family member and the users of the website are mostly 50 years and older.
The public facing content is created and maintained in Contentful. The site itself is hosted on Netlify and built with Gatsby. I used Material UI so I don't have to spend too much time on UX and design questions. The members only area is built with Firebase auth and firestore. Firestore because they create events, and then other members (~ 50 people) can sign up for those events. They can also invite new members and I built some lightweight user management functionality (assign users to roles, such as admin). For signup emails I created a SendGrid account. This would also be used for emails sent to all members notifying them of new events.
This all worked out quite well but it feels like the opposite of boring technology and KISS. I don't have anyone experienced enough I could ask, so I thought I'd ask HN.
What would you have used? <comment><USER2> Wordpress.

I know that is a terrible answer for the vast majority of us on HN. But if this is for a family member, and dozens of others, who are not tech-savvy, don't re-invent the wheel. Just give them something that works.

</comment><comment><USER3> WordPress.

Technically skilled people, developers in particular, tend to look down upon it because of reasons such as its codebase and plugin API not being exactly clean.

It gets the job done, though, and it's pretty robust, too, especially given its long history and dynamic ecosystem.

In my opinion, WordPress doesn't nearly get enough praise for enabling people to create websites.

I deliberately chose WordPress for my business website because it allows me to delegate the nitty-gritty of running a website to developers who specialise in that sort of software.

Could I have done it myself using a static site generator and various supporting services for providing dynamic behaviour? Sure, but it'd have been much more work with arguably little to no benefit for something that's not my core business.

</comment><comment><USER4> This stack is aligned with a recent JAMStack trend and indeed involves a lot of different API/tech. If I built something like that with a "boring" stack, I would go with Django and host it in Heroku, for example. Still works pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> And how would you have handled creating and editing the public content (what's currently done through Contentful)? Some WYSIWYG editor for Django or hand- rolled forms? Also would you have used a traditional, relational DB for the members-only part?</comment></comment>


Boncuklu Tarla: Ancient site older than Gobeklitepe unearthed in Turkey - <AUTHOR> https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gobeklitepe-unearthed-in-turkey/1664156 <comment><USER2> Those interested in Gobeklitepe might find this debate interesting to understand the context:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk3xdMkwMsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk3xdMkwMsE)</comment>


Startup Quote: Andrew Mason, founder, Groupon - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/4392395093

<comment><AUTHOR> Hire great people and give them freedom to be awesome.

\- Andrew Mason (@andrewmason)

<http://startupquote.com/post/4392395093></comment>