These dolphins talk to each other. Why do we insist it isn't language? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/20/dolphins-talk-language-animal-communication-cooperation <comment><USER2> It's the same sort of thinking that used to say "the African does not truly think or feel, he simply exhibits reflex responses that can give the appearance of thinking and feeling". Given what we know of cetaceans their classification as non-human persons seems fair, and future generations may look at our treatment of cetaceans today as dimly as we now do early 20th century whaling.

Assuming that only humans are sentient is a arrogant as assuming only the white man is sentient.

On the note of how they communicate - I wonder if anyone has considered sonar holography - I.e. The clicks and whistles aren't words per se but are interpreted visually, as an actual sonar reflection off an actual object would be. I'm trying to find the paper but I seem to recall some research in which they realised a dolphin was mimicking the sonar echo of an object, with startling accuracy.

<comment><USER3> Definition of anthropomorphism (noun): "the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. "

A common example of anthropomorphism is in voles (and other rodents). [1,2] Very long ago, scientists noticed that bank vole pups frequently cry when their mother leaves the nest. The scientists assumed that the pups were afraid, and missed their parent. Eventually, it was discovered that the absence of their mother drops the temperature of the underground nest, and that the pups cries are actually a mechanism to generate heat. When scientists took their mother away, but increased the heat of their den to normal levels, the pups did not cry. The animals were not communicating or displaying anything resembling "human" emotion, but were innately responding to environmental stress.

No matter how much we want to believe that animals are sentient, have emotions, and communicate to each other via language, science indicates that's just not the case. In fact, there have been numerous studies that indicate anthropomorphism is a byproduct of our complex social structure.

Nice job bringing racism into a discussion about dolphin vocalizations, by the way.

<comment><USER4> How do we know that human infants don't respond that same way, for the same reason? Perhaps the voles reaction to heat signals a more sophisticated understanding in comparison to the child who cries regardless of temperature.

<comment><USER5> > How do we know that human infants don't respond that same way, for the same > reason?

Infants are known to lack forward-planning, object permanence, and many many other indications of reasoning. I don't think it'd be wrong to say that they behave quite like little finite state machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Former neuroscientist here. In grad school, I TAed for one of the profs who tried (and eventually renounced) to teach Nim Chimpsky language. I am well- versed in this.

For starters, we need to make a clear distinction between communication and language. Many animals communicate information to each other. But the hallmark of language is flexibility; the existence of grammar allows us to communicate novel sentences we have never spoken and others have never heard in a way that is clearly impossible with conditioning.

Second, anthropomorphism is a big problem; It's why the field ultimately rejected the project to teach chimps language, and why they are dubious about language in parrots and dolphins. The evidence was, and is, relatively weak. Many researchers heard what seemed like language from chimps (e.g., Washoe's infamous "water bird" for swan), but when they analyzed Nim's total corpus, the connection between utterance and meaning vanished.

Other than a few holdouts, the field largely concluded that all the chimp behavior observed could be just as easily explained with conditioning (utter that in this circumstance, get a reward, if no reward, try a new utterance, etc).

Regarding the dolphins, I looked at the abstract of the original paper. Nowhere do they use the word "language", and the lead scientist also says they don't know if it's language. It's not clear why the Guardian article's author wants to argue for more.

<comment><USER7> > It's not clear why the Guardian article's author wants to argue for more.

It's pretty clear why - sensationalism, as always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If dolphins had a human-like facility for language, I imagine some captive dolphins would have figured out (probably through a discussion among themselves) that humans also have language, and that it would be greatly beneficial if they could communicate with humans. With both parties sharing this goal, I don't think it would take long.

On the other hand, I don't suppose human language emerged fully-formed (I don't think there is much evidence for Chomsky's views on this), and these pre- or proto-language skills may provide a lot of insight into its evolution.

<comment><USER9> Or the dolphins are just as biased as we are and simply think that humans just appear to have a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We're still not able to break the whistles and burst pulses into meaningful units, the equivalents of words or phrases."

Seems like something machine learning could help with.

Of course it may turn out it's impossible to translate between human and dolphin languages in a meaningful way.

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129624-300-dolphin-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129624-300-dolphin- whistle-instantly-translated-by-computer/)

<comment><USER11> We might be looking for sentences and words that just aren't there. Dolphins see with sound, so maybe all those clicks and whistles are their way of sketching images for each other.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps to test this, you could have two sets of identical statues.

Two dolphins need to interact with the matching statues together to get food.

If you followed the 'five monkeys and a ladder with a banana' experiment and found two dolphins who worked it out. Replace one with another. Presumably one will try and teach the other.

With enough dolphins and statues, you might be able to use the similar methods you'd use to break simple cryptography to work out what part of the communication is about the statue.

Or, you'll find out every dolphin talks to every other dolphin differently. And then and then the government bans dolphins out of fear of being unable to intercept dolphin based communications.

<comment><USER13> > Presumably one will try and teach the other.

IIRC this has already been tried and demonstrated to happen. This is the first thing that google came up with, but I'm sure Scientific American has also covered the teaching behavior.

[http://www.earthintransition.org/2011/09/dolphins-teach- each...](http://www.earthintransition.org/2011/09/dolphins-teach-each-other- new-trick/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That fact it mentions Koko (A great example of Facilitated Communication) shows they have no real concern for science on the subject.

It's the one who "cried" when Robin Williams died, you can't make this stuff up (1)

But the original research looks interesting, but yes silly humans finding patterns to prove things they want to believe does not make science. Hence why intelligent people still say, there's no evidence yet it's language.

(1) [https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/koko-the-gorilla-cries-over- robi...](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/koko-the-gorilla-cries-over-robin- williams-94619476571.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Something I've always wondered about dolphins:

They are widely regarded as ranking among the most intelligent animals. At the very least, they seem to be much more trainable than a wide variety of other mammals.

But why? What about their lifestyle, diet, hunting methods, etc requires cognitive ability greater than that of (say) a shark or an antelope?

<comment><USER13> Same could be asked about humans. Quirk of evolution is my best guess.

<comment><USER15> Noone would ask this question about humans. Humans use tools, coordinate their activity by communicating detailed questions, statements, and commands, and contrive elaborate schemes for altering their environments to be more favorable. The ability to do these things is accepted without controversy as being essential to their success as a species.

But dolphins: what do they do in their natural environment that utilizes such intelligence? If they just swim around eating fish and mating, then they need not be any smarter than sharks, which do basically the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We call it communication as a broader classification. Then the system of sounds they make is the communication medium. Like looking in the eyes.</comment>


Billie Tweets - a Twitter tribute to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" - <AUTHOR> http://billietweets.com/ <comment><USER2> I love the fact that when the words "Billie" and "Jean" come up it's always somebody tweeting about the song, often with an MJ-themed icon. I guess it's a tribute to quite how popular the man was that people are still talking about him days later (Farrah who?).

<comment><USER3> A couple of times, I got references to Jean Michel Jarre for "Jean". Odd juxtaposition...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> easily, one of the more creative twitter uses.

turns out I didn't even know the lyrics to the song that well :-) 20+ years!

<comment><USER5> Ha! Me too... and I built the site :)

I actually had to triple check with the various lyrics sites when I was coding it. I kept thinking there was no way these were the correct lyrics.</comment></comment>


How Drones Help Smuggle Drugs Into Prison - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-drones-help-smuggle-drugs-into-prison

<comment><USER2> "it's going to be very difficult to stop these drones."

Couldn't you just cover the prison with a wire net? If this really is a big issue, seems like a fairly simple solution.</comment>


Ask HN: Hacking on THREE.js - <AUTHOR>

Context: trying to take THREE.js and use it to display conic sections.
Method: creating a mesh of vertices and then connect face4's to all of them. Used two faces to produce a front and back side so that when the conic section rotates it won't matter from which angle the camera views it.
Problems encountered:
1. Trying to find a good way to create a intuitive mouse rotation scheme. If you think in spherical coordinates, then it feels like just making up/down change phi and left/right change phi would work. But that requires that you can move the camera. As far as I can tell, there is no way to change actively change the rotation of anything besides the objects. Does anyone know how to change the rotation of the camera or scene?
2. Is there a way to graph functions that is better than creating a mesh? If the mesh has many points then it is too slow, and if the mesh has few points then you cannot easily make out the shape of the conic sections.
Any sort of help would be most excellent. <comment><USER2> Stackoverflow would be a better place to ask this question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5186868/working-with- thre...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5186868/working-with-three-js)

Caveat: I heard about THREE.js at HN first and multiple times it was top page. Stackoverflow returns only 15 search results for THREE.js and all of them are just people suggesting that people should use THREE.js. It seems like there is a better chance of finding people who know the answers here at HN than most other places.</comment></comment>


Firefox 4 first-day downloads doubling IE9's = Microsoft win - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/141199/firefox-4-downloads-doubling-ie9s-microsoft-win

<comment><USER2> A slower browser allows people to "savor" their Internet experience? Are you f*cking kidding me?

<comment><USER3> In case you couldn't tell, it's fake.

<comment><USER4> I was wondering that. They're a whole week early on April Fools??</comment></comment></comment>


Beginning to climb out of the software death spiral - <AUTHOR> http://tinyletter.com/programming-beyond-practices/letters/beginning-to-climb-out-of-the-software-death-spiral <comment><AUTHOR> This is a followup essay that continues the discussion from "The Sad Graph of Software Death" .. which was discussed here a day ago!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10826916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10826916)</comment>


End of the line for Code Quarterly - <AUTHOR> http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/end-of-the-line-for-code-quarterly/ <comment><USER2> Um, that was in the fall?

I have a hard time understanding his problems anyway. I have no trouble getting programmers to write for me. I wave money at them; they respond.</comment>


Emacs My Way - <AUTHOR> http://dev.mikamai.com/post/70585280775/emacs-my-way <comment><USER3> "I had to spend around two full years memorizing key chords"

Yet another user who thinks emacs is about the key cords. It's not, it's about extensibility. I changed most of the default key bindings, because they were inconvenient.

Remember: Emacs should adapt to you, not the other way around. That's what Emacs is about.

Some people even use VIM bindings in Emacs: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_0i27wYbg)

<comment><USER4> Yes, yes, yes! I came here to write exactly this: what is the point of having infinitely configurable and extensible editor if you don't configure it and extend it to your liking?

The very first thing I did after switching to Emacs was to rebind most frequently used keys to something sane. The next thing was to make the functions themselves sane - IIRC the first command I wrote was "comment-or- uncomment-region-or-line".

My emacs config is about 4k lines of my own code at this point, very little of which implements anything by itself. It's full of customize-options, hooks and defadvices, eval-when-loads and similar things, which make Emacs into _my_ editor. If I had to learn some defaults I couldn't change I would just use some IDE or another editor.

<comment><USER5> > the first command I wrote was "comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line"

verilog-mode (and I imagine others) includes something like this this. C-c C-c comments region, and C-c C-u uncomments it. It handles embedded /* */-style embedded comments intelligently.

<comment><USER4> I don't want to hit different keys for commenting and uncommenting! What I want is to have one key which does all this:

1\. if there is no region active and current line is not commented - <USER2> it

2\. if there is no region active and current line is commented - uncomment it

3\. if there is region active and it's fully commented - uncomment that region

4 otherwise comment the full region

And it's this easy to do this:

        (defun comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line ()
          "Comments or uncomments the region or the current line if
        there's no active region."
          (interactive)
          (let (beg end)
            (if (region-active-p)
                (setq beg (region-beginning)
                      end (region-end))
              (setq beg (line-beginning-position)
                    end (line-end-position)))
            (comment-or-uncomment-region beg end)))

So I see absolutely no reason for not coding this up and using it :) (Other than, heck, it really is my first ELisp function and it shows :D)

<comment><USER6> Evil-nerd-commenter does the same thing, but if I didn't use email I would have the same thing in my init. It's pretty great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea of emacs... Every time I read a list of plugins like this I get put off by it though. I want an editor that does editing well and helps me edit source code faster. These lists, for the most part, show how emacs has git integration that's better than the command line(not too hard a task), or rvm switching(how often is this really needed? Set it once in the .ruby- version file and be done with it), or some other external program that can be brought into emacs and have marginal utility.

Maybe I am just not getting it and this is a sincere query for the emacs people out there to show me the way. (Vim guy that wouldn't mind switching but hasn't seen a compelling case for it other than the fact that emacs lisp is the bees knees.)

<comment><USER4> Well, I switched to Emacs from Vim exactly because of ELisp. Or rather because of Vimscript: I thought that Lisp or whatever, even Forth would be better than Vimscript :)

After 3 or so years of using Vim heavily I started hit the limit of what can be done with defaults, simple options adjustions and even plugins. I honestly tried to use Vimscript, but I couldn't bring myself to do this for real. I knew some Scheme then, so I wasn't afraid of Lisps. I switched and I immediately started implementing things I wished I had implemented months earlier in Vim. My Vim config was ~700 loc and it had only a few custom commands defined in it after 3 years. As I mentioned in another comment my emacs config is ~4k loc now and defines a multitude of advices, hooks and plain commands after half a year. It grows almost every day and what's most important is that coding to Emacs APIs in ELisp gives me much more pleasure than coding in Vimscript.

Lastly, modality - somehow I'm not missing it. It's not that I've seen the light and now think that modal editors are an abomination, but I came to appreciate modeless-by-default model of editing. Emacs ofers many ways to enter modal mode, so when I felt that modal interface would be better for something I just coded it so it's modal.

In short - if you're a happy Vim user who doesn't feel the need to write your own Vimscript (or you're happy with Vimscript!) then I see no reason to switch (maybe org-mode or something, but that's a very specific case). But if you thought at some point that you'd like to code up something in your editor but didn't because it was too much of a PITA then give Emacs a try.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried the evil mode or whatever vim emulator suits your fancy?

Is your config out there in the wild?

<comment><USER4> > Have you tried the evil mode

I did. It's nice - it actually emulates Vim instead of Vi, which makes a huge difference. With proper plugins you get even things like surround and increment/decrement number at point. I stopped using it temporarily because it didn't work well on my Windows machine and when I moved to *nix-only Emacs I forgot to enable it back. It's great for reducing the shock of switching though :)

> Is your config out there in the wild?

It somewhat is, although it's not the greatest thing in terms of organization or portability. I'm telling myself that I will move to el-get and stop having all the plugins in this repository and so on, but I didn't do this yet. My own code is here: [https://github.com/piotrklibert/dotemacs_reloaded/tree/maste...](https://github.com/piotrklibert/dotemacs_reloaded/tree/master/config)

<comment><USER8> > I stopped using it temporarily because it didn't work well on my Windows > machine

Just to set the record, I use evil-mode on Windows and haven't had any problems. I also use it on Mac/Linux and haven't noticed inconsistencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a recent CS graduate, who only used IDE-s and Sublime Text so far. I have only heard about Emacs and vim when I started my internship. I tried it but it didn't really felt good using it.

Can somebody tell me what are Emacs' benefits over IDE-s and ST for example?

<comment><USER10> Emacs is extremely extensible. Some people use it as-is out of the box and are happy with it, others treat it more like a framework for creating text editors.

Sublime has plugins, but it's nothing compared to the Emacs ecosystem. I can edit code in one pane, manage my git repository in another, have a terminal to run tests in a third pane, chat with a co-worker with Jabber in another, and look up documentation in a browser (w3m) in yet another pane. The merge conflict resolution capabilities in Emacs are also pretty excellent. I'd say they're at least on par with Vim's excellent Fugitive plugin.

Org mode is a thing of beauty. You can write notes (and enable spell checking in the buffer), create TODO lists, spreadsheets, calendars, handle time tracking, and even embed executable snippets from various languages. The coolest Org mode story I've heard is about Avdi Grimm. He wrote a Ruby book in Org mode and embedded his code right in it. With a single Emacs command he could extract the code from the book and run specs against it, and also package the whole thing up as an ebook.

The learning curve doesn't have to be as brutal as depicted in the blog post. I've only been using Emacs for 4-5 months, and I'm already very efficient with it. I've changed a lot of the keybindings to match what I'm already familiar with, so I didn't learn Emacs as much as I made Emacs learn me.

I used Sublime for years before my switch to Emacs (with a 3 month layover in Vim Land). Sublime is really easy to use, and I still recommend it for designers who write a bit of code, people new to programming, and people who just aren't interested in learning new tools. That said, I spend 90% of my time writing code, and it's great to have an editor that can trivially be made to do whatever I want it to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The default-installed package management system on emacs is fantastic. You generally have to include more sources to get a lot more packages (marmalade), but it's way better than Vundle/Pathogen.

Also, IMO the real driving force behind why emacs is the best browser is the rejection of modality that was the norm (of the time).

I think a lot of people would find it ridiculous if they entered their favorite IDE and were forced into a modal scheme for text entry.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice shoutout to ag but doesn't link to it: [https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el](https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el)

Search the current project, the scope of which is automatically constrained by git/subversion metadata. Awesome sauce!

This is one of the things I love about emacs. I've been using it for over a decade now and I'm still regularly discovering new hotness.

</comment><comment><USER13> After using vim for a while by recommendation of acquaintances, I decided to give Emacs a try on Windows and GNU/Linux. I've found that it's quite enjoyable, even though I'm too lazy to customize it extensively. It has a lot of nice things already built-in. I would say it's the best FOSS text editor on Windows, at least.

</comment><comment><USER14> "go-mode, because the cool guys program in Go now, don't they?"

Way too opinionated for my tastes, I'll stick to using [https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude) with a few custom settings.

Optional packages should be the way to go for these configuration bundles.

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried emacs a few years ago when the peepcode on it came out. It's a full blown OS with a text editor! I managed to get my work done, but it wasn't for me. I went back to Textmate for another few years, and am now happily using vim with tmux. I might try emacs again in the future.

</comment><comment><USER16> for the minitest users, I created a minitest-mode that has being really useful [https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest- emacs](https://github.com/arthurnn/minitest-emacs) .

The mode is pretty similar to the rspec-mode, however it works on minitest.</comment>


Breakup, as captured by my fitbit - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/iamkoby/status/689521611611971588 <comment><USER2> Getting a puppy, as captured by my fitbit: [http://i.imgur.com/j9FTleb.png](http://i.imgur.com/j9FTleb.png)

I love my Charge HR for this sort of stuff. It gives me data to double-check my sense of "Something seems off, am I always this stressed?" Days where I'm antsy all day tend to be days I have a higher resting heart rate. Days when I have a higher resting heart rate tend to come after a couple nights of less- than-stellar sleep. It's easy to guess that being antsy all day is nervous energy from work, but if it only happens after 4 days of 6.5 hours of sleep... the fix isn't to work on my resting heart rate via meditation, it's to get more sleep.

The great thing for me is that I have concrete actions that help fix specific biometric anomalies: going to bed earlier, drinking less/more alcohol/coffee, exercising more/less. I know I should do all of these things all the time, but being able to see the effectiveness of specific actions is really satisfying.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to my sleep-apnea life. The CPAP is only partially effective due to (surprise, surprise) a new allergy to... well, everything airborne, seemingly, including house dust... and even though Allegra does a decent job, sometimes I unconsciously take the thing off in my sleep, and proceed to have a much shittier sleep: [http://i.imgur.com/f9oHjqQ.png](http://i.imgur.com/f9oHjqQ.png)

<comment><USER4> Do you have the latest CPAP machine? The latest generation is a dramatic improvement over the older generations, especially with the exhale relief, this yields less discomfort and more compliance. I can't recommend it enough.

<comment><USER5> Any particular suggestions? I need to go shopping soon.

<comment><USER4> I swear by my Resmed AutoSet S10. They have too many S10 models, so be sure to get the AutoSet (or higher), as it dials the pressure up and down. I'm kicking myself for sticking with an older S8 model for far too long, all the misery I endured was entirely unnecessary!

Proper pressure is the key to compliance. This machine has auto-set, so the minimal required pressure is used; it has better algorithms for it (compared to S8); and it has exhale relief (it drops the pressure when you start exhaling). It's easier to exhale, thus reducing the overall pressure.

An additional way to reduce the pressure is a neck pillow. I use one with a silly name of Dr Dakota. Aside from keeping your chin from falling down, it keeps your neck straight, and so it opens up the airways. It's a big deal if you have bad posture, like I do. This was a _dramatic_ improvement for me.

Further, reducing the pressure will reduce leaks, and thus reduce pressure further, as the machine won't need to compensate as much. A virtuous cycle, if there ever was one.

And lastly, reducing the pressure allowed me to use a nasal pillow mask, which is very comfy, easy to maintain, and has the lowest leaks of all designs I have tried. I can't use it at high pressure due to mouth leaks, but I can handle it at the low pressure, and due to mostly zero leaks now ... the pressure goes down even more.

Combining all of these, I brought my leaks to zero (like, 90%th percentile), and AHI to less than one, like 0.6 is in there most of the time. That's only one event per the 90-minute sleep cycle.

Good luck!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the extensive answer! I did an at-home CPAP trial after a sleep and they gave me some POS machine and I hated it. Unfortunately getting anything more fancy is going to require jumping through insurance hoops. _rolleyes_ Pretty new to this whole thing.

My posture definitely makes a big difference, I'm at 9 AHI sleeping on my side but 50+ on my back untreated. I'm gonna duct tape pillows to myself or something. Glad you found something that works for you!

<comment><USER4> Pay cash. You can get a refurb at $600. It's totally worth it.

Speaking side-sleeping, I have sewn a sock with a tennis ball to the back of my sleeping tshirt. It worked well, but it's hard to wash. So I bought this contraption: [https://www.amazon.com/stream/ref=nav_upnav_mobile_T2_Detail...](https://www.amazon.com/stream/ref=nav_upnav_mobile_T2_DetailAW)

Side-sleeping is a big deal, but it's even better with a neck pillow.

<comment><USER4> Better link, I hope. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00DTLLYQ6/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00DTLLYQ6/)

<comment><USER3> Believe it or not, I also snore on my side. sigh

<comment><USER4> Of corse. But a better question to ask is if your AHI takes a plunge. If it goes down from 20 to 10 for example you are halfway there to control your apnea.

A good CPAP machine will tell you what your AHI is. Even the S8 does, though you have to get to the system menu (hold down and right arrows for five seconds).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once left my fitbit in the wash (and then dryer) and was wondering why I was suddenly getting all these "congrats on hitting your steps goal!" alerts on my phone.

<comment><USER7> Got a badge for climbing 33 stairs + a plethora of others, while in actuality I was riding my motorcycle.

<comment><USER8> Mine has never registered a stair climb, despite my office being on the third story of the building, and I typically park on the 4th or 5th floor of the garage.

Its sleep stats are also laughable. It's shown me as sleeping right through the time I was showering and cooking breakfast.

<comment><USER9> That's not normal. You may have a defective unit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's always interesting to see qualitative stuff associated with quantified self; it seems like ultimately the goal is to lead a (happier|better) life, which is a very qualitative notion, but we end up turning as many things as possible into quantitative criteria and looking post hoc for some pattern.

Koby's tweet shows what a breakup looks like, and it's tragic, but if you imagined someone retrospectively posting a screenshot of their heart rate readings from the day they met their current partner, we might see a similar pattern of elevated readings as well, wouldn't we? It seems like it would be just as plausible (to me, anyway).

I'm not saying that we should find better dimensions to measure (I think we'll always find ambiguous, confusing results absent context), but that whatever we measure should get qualitative context if we want it to really mean anything.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps if everyone tagged their breakup moments on their fitbits then fitbit could mass-process the preceding few months / weeks to find a common pattern.

You show up a few minutes early to the restaurant and your fitbit can just let you know what's about to happen.

<comment><USER12> That sounds like an excellent way to freak people out and preemptively break up.

<comment><USER13> It absolutely could. This past weekend I was really worried about getting broken up with. My gf had been withdrawn and was communicating less and acting awkward in various noticeable ways that I interpreted from experience as an impending breakup, especially since she was just about to leave for a week to go to Brazil for a week with 3 single girlfriends who want to party.

I was pretty sure that I was toast when she asked if I wanted to get dinner on Sunday and talk for a little while.

If you had looked at my readings that day, I would have looked like a breaker- upper, I'm sure.

Turns out that she was stressed about work and travel and after we talked about it a little, everything was fine. But damn. I really thought that was over for the better part of three days.

<comment><USER14> She probably chickened out at the last minute. Don't worry, she'll work up the nerve one of these days... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not a Fitbit, but I do have a Microsoft Band, which tracks, among other things, your galvanic skin response. I still haven't found any real use for this data, but I have noted that resistivity definitely plummets in response to stressful events, even if I'm not sweating enough to consciously notice it. I once looked at the daily graph and noticed a dip right when our application started throwing errors while I was on-call :)

Again, I don't know what use this is, but physiological data is just fascinating in its own right.

<comment><USER16> Isn't that basically what scientology e-meters are? I didn't know they had any relation to real life events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Breakup, as captured by my fitbit aria scale [http://imgur.com/ePX7o8m](http://imgur.com/ePX7o8m)

It gets better and life goes on :)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is fascinating (and sad), but it makes me wonder, could police use your fitness tracker as a sort of poor-mans polygraph? i.e. interview a subject normally, and then get a warrant (or not get a warrant) to view the online data and correlate them after the fact? Wikipedia mentions "blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity" as parameters for a polygraph [1], and while fitbit only supports 2/4 right now, the goal of fitness tracking is to have all of those. Whether or not polygraphs even work is another question, but being able to do them secretly and without consent is scary none the less.

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

<comment><USER19> It'd almost certainly require consent or a warrant to get the data (in the US). But it would have a problem that polygraphs (presumably) attempt to handle. You have no baseline questions and timeline. A stressed individual (being interviewed by the police would be stressful) will look different from an unstressed individual. Without the control questions at the start, you have no basis to draw conclusions from.

<comment><USER20> > You have no baseline questions and timeline.

I don't think that this will happen, but one can imagine solving this problem by subpoenaing your past FitBit data and social-media record, and correlating the two (by time stamp, which, if maybe not now, then I am sure eventually will be sufficiently fine grained to allow this). I'd imagine that it would be far more accurate than whatever calibration they do now.

<comment><USER19> Yeah. Protomyth made the point about aggregating biometric data with other data (shopping, akin to the Target pregnancy notice letter, browsing, etc.). That could be effective, if the sensors and social media, shopping, other data were available.

I know everyone (or most people) get hunches about what's going to happen by observing other people's behavior. Whether it was predicting a break-up, guessing that someone was pregnant, or in a new relationship. The glut of data available now would likely reveal a lot if we allowed it to be aggregated.

I guess I shouldn't have thought so narrowly about just biometrics (and heart rates, in particular).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My heart rate data has been similarly interesting. For example, I'm a musician for my church band. You can see the spike when I'm doing the lead vocals on a song I don't know that well.

It repeats in each of the three services. :)

<comment><USER22> That would be a great ad for this kind of device: the heart rate of <famous singer> before/during <awesome concert> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm beginning to warm up to the idea of a civilization-destroying EMP.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hm, I should post "Secondary screening at immigration, as caught by my Apple Watch"

</comment><comment><USER25> This just reminds me on how no one has made the killer app for all these sensors. It's just data, no one has shown me how to make myself better from all this data.

<comment><USER26> [https://exist.io](https://exist.io) is attempting to solve this problem (no interests, just a happy user).

<comment><USER27> Looks neat - will have to see how it compares against [https://gyrosco.pe/](https://gyrosco.pe/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Doesn't say which side of the breakup he was on.

<comment><USER29> I'm thinking the receiving end. I would expect a sense of relief in the person doing the breaking and not the lingering effects.

<comment><USER30> Um, did you see the guy's photo? I'm going to guess no one breaks up with that guy unless he does the old trick of acting like a jerk until the other person wants out.

<comment><USER19> Plenty of people that are attractive and good (or at least non-jerks) that get broken up with. They don't necessarily have to be a jerk, just not a good match for their partner. Politics, views on marriage, mismatched libido, kids, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> See also [http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-clues-why-women-get- broken-h...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-clues-why-women-get-broken-heart- syndrome-1451932640) for occasionally fatal and measurable symptoms of psychogenic (or vagus mediated?) heart attack.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looked like 'got up at noon, haven't been to bed yet' to me.

Surprising lack of difference between sleep and waking if the only change was the breakup. Not doubting it, just interesting.

</comment><comment><USER33> Went back to the UK over the holidays - perhaps drank a little bit too much - my fitbit tracked my resting heart rate over the trip. It drops 10 bpm after I came back to HK. [https://twitter.com/jamiewildehk/status/689726514959495169](https://twitter.com/jamiewildehk/status/689726514959495169)

</comment><comment><USER34> Would an Apple Watch also capture these interesting moments the same as a fitbit? I don't have either, but find it quite interesting.

<comment><USER35> Yes—Apple Watch records your heart rate every 10 minutes during the day, and every five seconds when you put it in workout mode.

For example, here's what my heart rate looked like during the Game of Thrones finale: [https://cardiogr.am/c/gameofthronesfinale](https://cardiogr.am/c/gameofthronesfinale)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Something similar happened to me when I lost my laptop. For the hour it took to retrace my steps and find it my hr spiked.

</comment><comment><USER37> I recently moved from a one-story apartment to a two-story house. You can't really see it in the number of steps my Fitbit says I took, but the number of flights of stairs I did in a day suddenly went way up.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Had to break up with boyfriend over lunch, he was just too obsessed with his tech gadgets to give me attention."

\- Corresponding Facebook Post, Presumably

<comment><USER39> relevant xkcd - [https://xkcd.com/523/](https://xkcd.com/523/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: send letters from beyond the grave - <AUTHOR> http://absenceletters.com

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to think of this.

I can appreciate why you think this is a problem that needs to be solved. But I can't help feel a bit wrong about it.

From a technical standpoint also, I feel it is heavily flawed: So I write some sentimental notes, forget to check in one day or change my email address or some other very trivial reason not to get the notifications and boom, it thinks I'm dead and sends out messages that should not yet surface.

I think it's one of these things that is a 'good idea', but should never actually be followed through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

I know what you mean. It's not quite what you'd expect from a web product these days. I actually had doubts about making this available to the public, at first. It was just a tool I wanted for myself, and a grim one at that.

Still, when it was done, there was no reason to keep it locked away. You never know. Writing all the copy took me longer than the actual coding, but I saw it as good training.

Anyway, this doesn't have to be as grim as the title suggests. It can be simply a kind of insurance: if you go on a trip and get lost, for instance, this thing can shoot important information to friends and family that helps bring you back. I could see this being relevant to people who live alone and travel a lot.

On the technical side, yes, the email warning system is weak by itself. That's why my first order of business was having it check your twitter feed. I just uploaded the feature.

In the future, it'll also check your facebook and foursquare activity. And send SMSes if you get really close to the timeout. Between social media monitoring, email and sms, it should actually be quite reliable at knowing whether or not you've disappeared.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 5am. Slowly, I woke up. There was an idea in my head. The room was dark, even though the shutters were open. Dawn wouldn't break for another hour. I crept out of bed, out of the warmth of Her presence, and tentatively stepped away. My idea needed to be made manifest quickly, lest it be forgotten. Treading lightly on the cold wooden floor, I made my way to the living room, sat on a couch by the window and picked up the laptop.

As dawn came, the preliminary work was done. It was nothing but a sketch made of computer code, but it was enough. My idea had taken root. As I went back to the bedroom, my thoughts traveled a year into the past. In that same house my grandmother still dwelt. In another city, one of my dearest friends still lived. How could we possibly have known.

Less than a week has passed since that chilly Saturday morning. Work has progressed swiftly. I just uploaded a little website, in fact, and created an account for myself in it. Every once in a while, a program will run on its server and send me an email. I'll click a link in it and nothing will happen. One day, though, I won't click on that link. I don't know when or why. Surely it'll be in the distant future. But it will come. And when it does, another little program will take the letters I've stored in its database and send them one by one.

And hopefully the people I love will find some comfort in them.</comment>


Google is now officially evil - <AUTHOR>

<http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=64de7d408b32e021&hl=en&fid=64de7d408b32e021000461f9a382cc7a> A spam storm of SMS replies from the google SMS service is driving people crazy, not to mention running up their cell bills and google is doing nothing to stop it. <comment><USER2> From the link:

> Hi everyone,

> Thanks for responding so quickly. We are looking into the > issue, and as > soon as I have an update, I'll post it > here. If you don't have an > unlimited SMS plan, and > you're worried about SMS charges, please let your > carrier > know about the situation.

> -Zeke

Shit happens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> btw, on Digg too. [http://digg.com/programming/GOOGLE_FAIL_Don_t_Be_Evil_Slogan...](http://digg.com/programming/GOOGLE_FAIL_Don_t_Be_Evil_Slogan_Taken_to_Ironic_Height)

Digg it and help wake up the google techs asleep at the (off) switch. Still going on after many hours. Some people getting 60 sms messages per hour.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> shit happens, but responsible companies do something about it, not just say "shit happens"</comment>


Algorithms take control of Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/algorithms-take-control-of-wall-street.ars <comment><USER3> This article is very poorly researched. For example, it refers to high- frequency traders as "flash traders". I have never heard that term before. The cited Wikipedia article discusses flash _orders_ , which was a quoting mechanism that DirectEdge experimented with in 2009. Flash orders are not some most automated market markers even care about.

Also, the article mentions Harold Bradley as "among the first traders to explore the power of algorithms in the late '90s", completely omitting much earlier pioneers such as Peter Muller and David E. Shaw.

And of course it goes into depth about the Flash Crash without once mentioning Waddell & Reed, a discretionary (non-quant) fund whose errant trade started the crash to begin with.

Reading this was like watching the 11-o'clock news discuss a medical discovery.

<comment><USER4> Nothing unusual then. Pretty much every tech article in the WSJ is of this caliber.

<comment><USER5> Except that I see no indication this is a Wall Street Journal article. The site is Ars Technica; the by-line says "By Felix Salmon (wired.com), Jon Stokes" and the end of the article says "Felix Salmon (felix@felix salmon.com) is a blogger for Reuters."

<comment><USER3> I think what @w1ntermute means is that we can expect Ars to screw-up finance stories just as the WSJ screws up tech stories. Kind of an admonition for when journalists choose to venture beyond their expertise.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, sorry I didn't make that clearer. I made the comment while this[0] poorly researched/written WSJ tech article was still on my mind.

0: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2086738>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Automated trading systems will follow their coded logic regardless of > outcome,"

Of course, so will humans. They won't make the absurd trades referred to, but a system of trading humans can still, say, get stuck in a positive feedback loop. Of course, they aren't pure trading algorithm, so they may notice the problem, but actually putting a stop to it requires coordination and is hard. Mostly the loop just occurs more slowly.

<comment><USER3> Yep, which is precisely why economic bubbles happen. Algo traders weren't responsible for housing prices in the last decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comforting to know that the economy is being gambled on a roshambo programming competition.

<http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/rsbpc.html>

<comment><USER8> Why do you think this is true? For every trade, there is someone on each side. The market as a whole does not care if you make bad trading decisions. Someone else makes up for it.

<comment><USER7> I think our money needs to be working towards things that we actually care about: advancing science and technology, creating art, socializing, and so on. Putting it all into a big game of craps is not going to improve the human condition in the long run. I mean, it's an interesting game, but not interesting enough to justify the entire economy revolving around it. And people don't play because they find it interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Even if each individual algorithm makes perfect sense, collectively they obey an emergent logic—artificial intelligence, but not artificial human intelligence. It is, simply, alien, operating at the natural scale of silicon, not neurons and synapses. We may be able to slow it down, but we can never contain, control, or comprehend it"

I can see algorithms being used to automate decision making in almost every other industry, not just Wall St. It's both scary and exciting to see what happens with the resulting "emergent intelligence".

<comment><USER10> The systems dynamics folks point out that systems with more rapid feedback often have more variability.

The classic example is a car dealership deciding to order cars from the factory. When should they be ordered, and how many should be ordered?

Suppose they decide that every day they place orders based on the 7 day moving average. Then they get a busy day and over-order for a week. That's an expensive mistake.

Next they decide to shrink the window to 3 days (more rapid feedback). Now after another busy day they find stocks dropping precipitously and order big to make up, follow by drops, followed by big orders. In an attempt to stabilise the system, they've made it worse.

The modern stock market has extremely short feedback times, on the order of microseconds. When a feedback loop forms on the market it can spiral out of control within seconds and minutes -- hence the 'flash crash'.

Two ways to deal with this might be to develop some kind of balancing feedback loop (for example, higher prices for more trades-per-second, or a progressive price for trade based on delta with the last trade) or to reduce the feedback rate. An economics blogger I host, Nicholas Gruen (you may know of him as Australia's Gov 2.0 inquiry leader), has suggested just that:

[http://clubtroppo.com.au/2010/08/07/a-modest-proposal-to- rem...](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2010/08/07/a-modest-proposal-to-remove-the- more-ridiculous-waste-and-some-corruption-from-our-financial-markets/)

[http://clubtroppo.com.au/2010/10/08/a-self-denying- ordinance...](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2010/10/08/a-self-denying-ordinance- for-exchanges/)

<comment><USER11> _The systems dynamics folks point out that systems with more rapid feedback often have more variability._

You've got systems dynamics folks completely backwards. Smaller, more frequent controls tend to stabilized systems, not make them unstable. A simple example we've all seen: take a stable ODE. Now try to discretize it - if you are unlucky or uncareful, your discrete approximation can easily blow up exponentially.

The example you provide is different - you are describing two different control _strategies_ , one of which fails to correct for noise (and note: any HFT who makes this mistake loses money FAST). If you made orders every day based on the 7-day moving average, it would be better than making orders once per _week_ based on the 7 day moving average.

This is exactly what we saw with the flash crash - there was a large exogenous shock and the system self-corrected within minutes.

<comment><USER10> Good followup, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The neural network that Bradley was working on sounds interesting.

<comment><USER13> NB: This article (and several more like it) was in January's wired.

As an AI researcher, I get suspicious when I see anyone talking about Genetic Algorithms and Neural Nets. These are techniques that current researchers simply do not use (Neural Nets are used very sparingly, GAs should never be used at all). They make up for their technical failings by being approachable, particularly for journalists. In short, these methods intuitively sound like they should work much better than they actually do.

<comment><USER14> What techniques are now used in place of GAs?

<comment><USER13> GAs are just a really complex version of a local search algorithm. The problem with them is that they're just too complicated - you're trying to solve some non-linear problem, and your first step is to introduce several more non- linear problems that also need to be solved (picking chromosomes, mixing, population size, etc.)?

<comment><USER15> I'm kind of interested if you could point us in the direction of specific techniques. I always thought neural nets and genetic algorithms were interesting and I'm curious what other techniques are out there.

<comment><USER13> For solving local search problems, I use tabu search (hill climb with a "recently visited" list) or beam search (simultaneous hill search). Both are simple techniques that show remarkable emergent behavior. Many search problems are better phrased in terms of numerical optimization or what have you - <USER2> your problems maps a continuous space to a continuous space there's probably a standard numerical technique that solves it better than a local search hack.

For Machine Learning type applications, SVMs are very popular. Briefly, both sufficiently deep neural nets and sufficiently dimensional SVMs are arbitrarily expressive, but SVMs give you a better perspective on what is actually happening with your problem. If you're interested in Machine Learning, you should check out Andrew Moore's very well-written tutorials: <http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/list.html></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How is Git on Windows today? - <AUTHOR>

I have heard that git on Windows has been shaky in the past, but I am wondering if things are better today?
I will need to setup git on a Windows server, and then I am wondering what the best way for developers to use it on their Windows boxes would be?
Note: while you may think command line is the best way to use git, the people around me would prefer a Visual Studio plugin or something along those lines.
Also: how common is it to install git on a Windows server? Is it probably just best to stick with something like SVN? <comment><USER2> I use msysgit daily on Windows 7 against a github account. For the most part things work fine but there are a few things that annoy me:

\- Disagreements about case insensitive paths sometimes confuse git. Renaming a folder simply to change its case is the most common one that catches me.

\- I run everything through the bash shell which works fine but is a pain to connect to Windows batch files. This makes automation harder than required.

\- Line endings... I just turn off any automatic conversion and use a decent editor that doesn't mind.

I initially used the GUI that comes with it and that works fine but I find the command line faster to work with. The advantages of git make the above problems worth it to work around for me.

I don't run my own server so can't comment on that. From what I have read linux setup would be much easier to do.

<comment><USER3> I've used Git on Windows for over a year. msysgit is great, once you've worked out the line endings (the installation asks you for this setting)

Using the windows CMD shell works fine.

Git comes with its own SSH that works different to other SSH implementations. I've had problems where Git is earlier in the path, so its SSH was overriding the one I wanted. This broke cwRsync until I worked it out.

<comment><USER2> This is why I only use it through the bash shell, so it can't mess with anything else. Inconvenient though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do the devs already know git, or will it be a new experience for them? No matter what tool(s) you use, learning to use git effectively will be the hardest part.

I use TortoiseGit integrated into Windows Explorer for most stuff, and drop down to the command line in the odd situation where it's needed. I can't give much feedback about the server side, I'm using GitHub.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am pleased to see TortoiseGit, does it have any big issues? I remember hearing about it a while ago being very "beta" software.

<comment><USER4> TortoiseGit has been working fine for me, no crashes or problems. They've done a pretty good job of taking the most common scenarios and making them easy to do, even for a Windows user. (And I say that as a Windows user:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is so easy to rent a Linux server these days that I suspect the only reason someone is "required" to run it on a Windows server is because, well, they don't have a good reason, just corporate-bureaucratic IT bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER6> Git is usable on Windows - I've used it for the past year with cygwin. However my colleagues mostly switched to msysgit as they had issues with cygwin - msysgit looks like a better choice. Our server is on Linux though - I'm not sure how it will fare on Windows. We went through a few gotchas (crlf, case- insensitivity) but it was manageable.

Manageable is the most I can say though. I've come to the conclusion that going through the trouble of msysgit/cygwin is not worth it. I don't know if it's an option for you but have you considered other DVCS? From what I heard Mercurial is pretty good on Windows and you'd get pretty much the same advantages as with Git. Others might be able to tell you more about it.

I wouldn't go back to SVN on any platform though - I got addicted to local branches and the speed of having the whole repo locally.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using it daily for over three years on cygwin. If you don't depend on case-sensitive paths and don't have symlinks in your repository, it's great. I use it for work and for personal stuff, and I have zero desire to find a new tool.

Git is, given its heritage, heavily optimized for unix-style (especially linux) vfs implementations, so it is slower on windows than it is on osx or linux, however even with a fairly sizeable repository it's completely usable. It's not noticeably slower than the alternatives on windows and it's generally much faster on unix.

Go for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using git on windows exclusively for about a year now (I think), in an environment where the central repo is subversion.

The initial import took a ridiculous amount of time (so I did it on a mac eventually), but from that point on I've been flying. The only itchy bit so far is the autocrlf part.

I've found "gitk" and "git gui" good as well. You might find them more than merely adequate. I've used Tortoise with svn, but not with git, so dunno about that, but I'd recommend git gui without hesitation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've used msysgit on a daily basis for about six months now and have had very few problems. The biggest one is that Visual Studio locks files while updating intellisense, so anything that updates a large number of files at once while the solution is open has a decent chance of failing on at least one file. This is only really a problem when doing complicated rebases though, and even then at worst you just have to abort it and start over.

I've never used a gui for git, so I can't comment on how well they work.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been keeping tabs on TortoiseGit and it has become a lot more usable. I usually shy away from command line on windows and my git usage on windows is very light. TortoiseGit seems sufficient for day to day activities not involving any git magic.

For setting up a git server on windows please check out gerrit ( <http://code.google.com/p/gerrit> ). It is a pure Java implementation so should work reasonably well on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER11> msysgit is quite good, provided you turn off linefeed conversion. I wrote about some ways to make it easier for day to day use, if you're interested: [http://mullr.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/configuring-msysgit- fo...](http://mullr.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/configuring-msysgit-for-improved- awesome/)

Avoid cygwin git; it appears to work at first, but it gets very slow when you deal with large repositories.

None of the end-to-end GUIs I've used (I've tried about 5) do a respectable job. They all try to layer a svn-style view on top of git. Which is, of course, nothing like svn. Have them watch <http://blip.tv/file/4094854>, then offer to hold their hand while they get used to the command line. It's worth it. When you really need to click on things, git gui and gitk do the job fine.

<comment><USER12> Why should one turn off linefeed conversion?

I've used git on windows very briefly in the past, using this feature, and it seemed pretty nice. I'm planning on having some window-based coworkers use git soon, and does this really become a big problem?

<comment><USER11> In my experience, it tends to get confused and intermittently forget what it's doing. When this happens, it thinks that all your files are modified. This is very distressing. The workaround, which works great for single-platform teams, is to just turn off linefeed conversion altogether. The problem may very well have been fixed, but I still do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone accustomed to using git on Unix, I haven't had problems using msysgit on a (cygwin'd, etc.) system. I'm not sure how developers expecting Visual Studio and unfamiliar with the command line would do, but the many small, quirky "Windows is clearly an afterthought" issues present ~2 years ago seem to be gone.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use msysgit locally on my machine with a svn repository upstream. Everything seems to work fine for me in my daily work. Like another commenter noted, the initial import took a really long time, and would stop seemingly randomly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Iv'e found it having no problems with it. It is by far a secondary system for me, but I have been doing GAE, python, and web stuff on it without issue. Msysgit.</comment>


Perl is not dead – it was early web novices who gave it a bad name - <AUTHOR> http://techbeacon.com/perl-not-dead-it-was-early-web-novices-gave-it-bad-name <comment><USER2> A perfectly valid article (not sure why it go flagged).</comment>


A Look At MongoDB 1.8's MapReduce Changes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evilmonkeylabs.com/2011/01/27/MongoDB-1_8-MapReduce/

<comment><USER2> This is a welcome set of changes. It looks like with some clever programming you can finally map reduce across collections which was a huge limitation before.</comment>


Why are children in the same family so different from one another? (1987) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/1987-plomin.pdf <comment><USER2> (1987)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that much has changed since then! Non-sharedenvironment remains the largest source of variance after genes in most human traits, shared- environment remains largely trivial after childhood, siblings remain quite different from each other, and the sources of non-sharedenvironment relatively mysterious aside from more evidence that noise like somatic mutations and infections are responsible and IMO not so much peer-effects like Harris hypothesizes in _The Nurture Assumption_.

<comment><USER3> Shared environment is probably not created equal though. While the family environment is constant, parents are likely to vary (deliberately and/or not) in their resource allocation (e.g., attention and care) among their kids. An interesting recent paper shows that the non-inherited genetic material of the parents may _still_ have an influence on the kid. [0] What exactly accounts for that influence remains to be elusive, and it would be quiet astonishing if the majority of the influence can be explained by well-established (or rather, exhaustively studied) behavior patterns in psychology. For example: birth order, number of same-sex siblings etc.

[0] [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/14/219261](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/14/219261)

<comment><AUTHOR> > An interesting recent paper shows that the non-inherited genetic material of > the parents may _still_ have an influence on the kid. [0]

Yes, but that comes out of the heritability component, not the non- sharedenvironment component.

> For example: birth order, number of same-sex siblings etc.

Birth order, by definition, can't explain any of the variance in fraternal vs identical twins, and there's a lot of doubt about whether it exists at all and for which traits. Likewise, I haven't seen much credible research on sibling effects - most such sociological research doesn't even bother to try to control or quantify any of the relevant genetics, and is 100% useless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to write the first line of code in a new startup? - <AUTHOR>

My friends and I, are starting to create our own startup, we have no intend on revolution the world but some of our idea seems to be interesting enough to try.
My main goal, as a developper is to provide a great start for our idea. But I'm facing an interesting question.
How do I write my first php line of code. I mean, I'v started plenty of little project but what make a startup a great startup? What is the first thing you need to do when you'r the developper? And the secondary question, there probably many technological challenges so does startup rely on framework (and trust other) or prefer to use a custom solution? <comment><USER2> I can't speak to this at all from the standpoint of someone who's actually successfully launched a startup, so feel free to disregard this as you will, but my advice is just to start pick a framework[1] and maybe Twitter Bootstrap (even though people will probably complain, just change the colors around so it doesn't look _so_ bootstrappy) and just put the hard work into the interesting parts of the code, and avoid reinventing the wheel.

[1] I suggest Laravel 4 (<http://four.laravel.com>) just because I like it and happen to be playing around with it at the moment. It's already got a Twig package if you're into that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually value any kind of well writen advice & constructive criticism. "just put the hard work into the interesting parts of the code, and avoid reinventing the wheel." That's probably my real problem, what to do when I feel that I need to reinvent the wheel, to have a full control over my code.

<comment><USER2> I've been through the same thing, trust me, i've wasted years tinkering on problems that'll never see the light of day that have already been solved by other people. Learn to take advantage of Composer and existing libraries and frameworks. You'll save yourself an absurd amount of unnecessary work and maybe actually get something done.

And good luck with the whatever it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just do it as a if it was another application, then refactor when needed. The important thing is to ship, not to create the most beautiful code in the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have noticed the following often is an issue for people, which may or may not apply to you.

People starting out are afraid to start and get things wrong, pick the wrong way or whatever, so they don't start. Every person who wants to know whether their first language should be python or ruby, java or c++, etc instead of picking one and trying it may have this issue.

It's not about the right language, it's the fear of making the wrong choice.

(note: this has effected me too).

So for you, the way to write your first line of php is to write it. Break your idea down into parts, and implement them.

Have a goal. Find something that might get you there. Don't spend too much time avoiding failures. Instead, learn as you go from your mistakes. Pick something that might work and try it. Don't try to pick the perfect thing without having worked on your problem... That is a paralyzing impossibility.

If my advice is not applicable, ignore it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I reassurring that other have that kind of question. You'r right, I keep trying to avoid any failure, maybe I should embrace it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> first, open a text editor.

two, write

<?php

that's your first line of code.

<comment><USER6> Thats how all of my projects start. Little do I know how much of a Pandora's box I always open up between those opening and closing php tags.

In a nutshell, that is the joy, excitement and inspiration behind all great projects.

<?php //Pandora's Box ?>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't get so caught up in worrying about the future. Even if you do everything exactly right, things will change down the road.

Just be sure to write lots and lots of tests. You'll thank me later :)

</comment><comment><USER8> How? A text editor.

Stop asking stupid questions and go get something done.</comment>


IBM creates first commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/142881-ibm-creates-first-cheap-commercially-viable-silicon-nanophotonic-chip

<comment><USER2> One of these days I'd really like for one of these theoretical giant leaps in integrated circuits to actually make my computer go faster.</comment>


The Robotic Worm - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/11/the-robotic-worm.html

<comment><USER2> Direct link to the Youtube video to give you a good idea why this is amazing research: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWQnzylhgHc&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWQnzylhgHc&feature=youtu.be)

If you have interest in learning more or even contributing to this project, we're in need of Python, C++, Java, Javascript devs, as well as community support: [http://www.openworm.org/](http://www.openworm.org/)</comment>


Is Google fearing pg's call on reinventing search startups? - <AUTHOR>

I thought this deserved some attention.
In response to pg's essay on ambitious ideas for startups, Matt Cutts said: "Paul's #1 suggestion is reinventing search. I happily welcome competition in search because it keeps us on our toes, but his #2 suggestion resonated with me more: reinventing email."
Today, they said that, for first time, they are releasing a video about what they do on a search meeting. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-search-quality-meeting-uncut.html?m=1
I wonder what pushed them to post this video. It's not even very informative, it talks about searches of N-grams and spell corrections, it seems more like something to show how advanced the changes they make are.
I'm sure watchers must have thought that search is so advanced and hard seeing that video that they might give up. It must be so hard to catch up with them ;-)
Maybe google is afraid of a plethora of YC (or not) startups trying to reinvent search. One may succeed. <comment><USER2> people are already beginning to use other methods to discover, and find what they need. for instance, the app store. instead of googling, people are searching the app store instead. another instance is siri, or stackoverflow, or yelp. in a sense, it won't be 1 thing that will eat into google's market share but a bunch of other ways to find things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Probably in the future we'll start more and more to have specific search engines for different things.

I think that will be somewhat wiki, somewhat social, and somewhat search engine will eventually take off.

But not necessarily in a unique aggregator. I don't go to any scientist to ask a question about science. I go to the ones who are proficient at what I'm asking.

Same with search, I'm sure in the future it'll become more and more common to have completely different search engines based on what I'm trying to find. They are already out there, maybe just a few steps away since their inception, or maybe already around for a while, it's just that not too many people are using them. When it'll become unbearable to use google for everything people will switch.

Look at Youtube, lately there is so much advertisement that I can't believe they aren't afraid of losing users massively. I almost don't want to go on it anymore for how much time I usually have to waste.

And yes, I understand google is a free service paid by the ads. But I don't care. I'm ok with the ads on a side, on top, at the bottom. But I'm not ok with wasting time waiting for an ad to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google is less about search than it is about adwords and the network of apps - but yes, there is much frustration over the search results these days so that is an opportunity for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER4> No

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd say no. Like with Facebook, what replaces Google won't look like a search engine, or a social media portal, it will be... ?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why people keep saying this. I'm not reinventing either of these things but I suspect, like the services they each replaced, they too will be replaced with things that look strikingly similar to themselves.

For an oversimplified example, FB replaced myspace with a service that looked a lot like myspace did originally. One of the biggest things they had going was the simplicity of use and the cookie-cutter look of everyone's profile. Myspace, at the time, was full of 'pimped' profiles that made their experience suck.

Facebook will continue to add more and more fluff (games, etc..) until it doesn't work well as a tool to stay connected with people. Once this happens someone will show up with something that looks a lot like facebook did when it started. But because they're so dissimilar at the time, people will continue this adage of, "what ever replaces X won't look much like X". But it probably just will if you correct for time.

<comment><USER7> I think you are right in that if there is something that replaces Google for search, it will probably be like Google in its early days. Since the roll out of the Social Search feature, I have been finding myself wanting "classic" Google more and more (I am sure I am not alone here)</comment></comment></comment>


Matt Cutts is looking for scraper sites - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/439122708157435904 <comment><USER2> It's a funny quip but it's getting more attention than the important piece of news it highlights. Google is finally doing something about scraping sites doing better in search results than original creators. Good.

Many people don't write for money, to put ads on their website, or as part of some "content marketing" campaign. All they want is a little recognition. A boost in positioning on the SERP means we will be getting useful stuff at no cost.

And there are genuine replies there. Ryan Jones[1] even got the scrapers to confess their sins[2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/RyanJones/status/439123533349015553](https://twitter.com/RyanJones/status/439123533349015553)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=%20%22istwfn%22+%22stole+thi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%20%22istwfn%22+%22stole+this+word+from+noslang%22)

<comment><USER3> "Google is finally doing something about scraping"

I hope this is genuine and not a disingenuous diversion on Google's part. The fact that the Huffington Post still ranks very high for trendy searches makes me wonder.

As usual, follow the money: the scraping sites exist to make money, often through Google's advertising; Google gets a cut. The original content is often on sites with no advertising or real traffic, from which Google profits nothing.

EDIT: To expand on this: Google-search for any hot topic in the news, say the name of some misbehaving pop star. See the HuffPo result near the top of the page. Look down to see several results from real newspapers. This is where the original content can be found. Most of these newspapers are about to die because they're not making any money. HuffPo investors are filthy rich because they're gaming the search engines to profit from copy-and-paste.

ANOTHER EDIT: I apologize for my characterization of the Huffington Post. I was describing, accurately, the nature of that site as it was the last time I visited it some time before its purchase by AOL three years ago. The HuffPo I see today is utterly transformed. They use wire services, do plenty of their own reporting, and many of the links on the front page go directly to other news sites. They are no longer a copy-and-paste site.

<comment><USER4> Huffington Post isn't a scraper site. Aside from the original content they produce, they republish blog posts with permission from the authors. If you have an example of Huffington Post literally cut-and-pasting content from someone without attribution, please share.

I also assume that by "HuffPo investors" you mean AOL? Huffington Post is a fully owned subsidiary.

(Disclosure: I consult for Huffington Post)

<comment><USER3> You are right. Please see my second edit in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scrapers lift the full content, wholesale, without attribution.

You may as will just show [http://images.google.com](http://images.google.com) and complain that it's scraping. Or [http://news.google.com](http://news.google.com).

In general, do you think Wikipedia gets more traffic because Google exists, or do you think Google gets more traffic because Wikipedia exists? Meaning, which affect is larger? I'm pretty sure the answer to this is obvious.

And if more scrapers donated millions to the site they scrape from, the world would be a much better place.

[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_announces_$2_million_grant_from_Google)

<comment><USER6> That's one way of looking at it, on the other hand, they link to the original URL, passing traffic back to the original source. Most "scraper" sites take the content, wrap it in their own similar outer layer, and try to take ad revenue. E.g. I've seen my own StackOverflow answers copied, word for word, to a scraper site and presented under a made-up name.

<comment><USER7> StackOverflow actually allows this; all their data is Creative Commons licensed, and they publish the full database dump on the Internet Archive.

[https://archive.org/details/stackexchange](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange)

<comment><USER8> Do the terms of the license allow for this kind of abuse?

Just because something is CC doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they do; it's not abuse when you're given explicit permission. CC BY-SA means you can do whatever you want with it as long as you attribute the source as specified.

<comment><USER3> "as long as you attribute the source"

danielbarla said that they presented the material under a false name; this goes beyond copying and becomes plagiarism, which I can't imagine is an intended result of the CC license.

<comment><USER9> Is the source 'User X' or 'StackOverflow'? When you reference CC BY-SA code you don't reference the people who, say, checked it into git but rather the whole repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty funny [https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552](https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552)

<comment><USER11> Hah yep. See also this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7318203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7318203)

<comment><USER12> ARGH! INFINITE RECURSION!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bah, what would I possibly need with a scraped definition that

1) Hasn't been chunked into 20 pieces of varying grammatical structure which are automatically matched to corresponding questions

2) Hasn't been subsequently pasted over a slideshow of completely irrelevant stock photos in bold, white font

3) Isn't accompanied by a grid of ~30 vaguely related questions helpfully linked to similar pages and tastefully decorated with more irrelevant stock photos

4) Only occupies ~1.5 rather than 3 or 4 of the front page search results

5) Contains only closely related textual ads rather than a melange of casino, fast food, and online college banners

6) Has fewer than 25 trustworthy stock faces smiling back at me from any given scroll position

If this is the best google can do then I don't think wiki.answers.com has anything to fear.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

Seriously, how the hell does wiki.answers.com manage to pollute half of the searches I make with their algorithmically generated garbage (multiple times, at that)?! What kind of SEO catapulted them to the top despite 0 viewer retention and what surely must be about 0 reputable backlinks? How haven't they been sent to the 1000th page with manual penalties already? They show up before wikipedia itself, for crying out loud!

Google, if you aren't going to let users maintain a manual blacklist, you need to be on top of this kind of thing. It's seriously degrading my search experience and I suspect I'm not alone. This kind of inattention is the type of thing that can push even the most inattentive users to change default search engines.

<comment><USER14> If you use Chrome, there is a "Personal Blacklist" extension that does essentially what the manual blacklist used to do.

<comment><USER15> "If you use Chrome" is Internet Explorer ActiveX controls redux

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wikipedia's database is public and used by Google with permission. You can probably use it for your projects, too.

So this is neither scraping, nor against the rules.

Here are dumps in SQL and XML format:

[http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/](http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/)

Ps- Yes the original post was meant to be funny and it was; I do have a sense of humor. :)

<comment><USER17> He's talking about outranking the _true_ original source of the content in search results. You most certainly cannot create your own site that consists only of excerpts from Wikipedia, if you wish to remain on Google's search results. Copyrights are irrelevant to this.

What's bad though, is that Google isn't just lowering the rankings of non- original content pages now (including any kind of legitimate curation sites.) They're marking the entire domains of new curation sites as "pure spam" and de-listing them from Google entirely, and punishing anyone who's linked to them.

This is having the effect of sending a clear message to developers -- stay far away from Google's territory of recommending third party content to people, no matter how you do it.

<comment><USER18> Could you show an example of such a legitimate new curation site please?

<comment><USER19> Not new but a legitimate curation site - [http://hypem.com/](http://hypem.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cue damage control explaining the indiscernibly subtle difference between what Google does and what these evil, spammy scraper sites are doing

<comment> mkr-hn The difference isn't subtle.

There's this site called "News360" that sends a lot of traffic to my site every time I post something. It copies the post in full. Apparently it's a popular app for iPhone and Google Play. This is an aggregator.

Google copies my site so it can send people to my writing. This is a search engine.

Then there's the legion of sites that copy my stuff and send no traffic even though they link back. Most of these are scrapers, meaning they're adswill garbage dumps that get no traffic after recent algorithm updates by Google, but some are attempts to build new aggregators like Huffington Post or that News360 thing.

The scrapers are a nuisance, but don't harm me in any way. Google is free, relevant traffic. Aggregators find an audience and provide useful content to them with credit, probably using the RSS feed I publish for that purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google is taking Cognitive Dissonance to a new level: It's okay for them to scrape every single site, download its content and images, and cache it on their servers, and run their AD platform on top of it. but that's not enough, they would still like to impose their rules and punish people who do the same thing.

<comment><USER22> I'll concede that there's probably a middleground that's kinga gray, but are you really going to defend bona fide scraper sites? Like ones that simply grab all the text off some other site and repost it, adding no value? Google is obviously adding value by providing snippets from Wikipedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google seems less and less connected to reality the bigger they grow.

It's a shame that the search engine market share isn't split evenly by several different engines. I think it would be beneficent both to the users and website owners. Right now everyone tries to court Google and they seem to do whatever the fuck they want.

<comment><USER24> It's also worth remembering they're under continuous, distributed assault by human-intelligent agents (at least to a first approximation) trying to game them specifically. The miracle is that Google works at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are lots of places where Google decides to "help" me, but sometimes I just want search results. Other times, I actually like getting the curated content (e.g. search for "delta 3810"). Is there a way to disable this?

EDIT: I should also note that I'm one of those who switched over to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons, so I don't see these results as often now.

<comment><USER26> The content they do provide is often so bad it is almost embarrassing. Search for "Russia" and you get a completely useless map and a list of random facts. It may be useful to a child researching geography but for me it is just annoying.

I want content that is curated by people who actually understand the subject. I would pay for a search engine designed by someone who understands my industry. The Google algorithm only manages to grab at the low hanging fruit. I am a professional working on real stuff, I want something better than coffee shop suggestions.

<comment><USER27> I'm curious, what _should they show you_ if you type on "Russia" the term by itself seems pretty generic and open ended.

"I would pay for a search engine designed by someone who understands my industry"

What industry is that? And how would Google guess or know your industry unless you tell them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I'd love to see a response from Matt to that. If they think the Wikipedia article is most important and they will scrape it and put it to the top why not just put the wikipedia article as the top link and leave out the Google box.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how Google chooses which Wikipedia articles they scrape and which ones they don't.

In testing, they definitely don't seem to scrape every article:

[http://i.imgur.com/ujDqZhB.png](http://i.imgur.com/ujDqZhB.png)

<comment><USER29> This is a good question...I've long since surmised that Google has a set of heuristics for every site that has an API that allows for easy domain-specific ranking. With Wikipedia, you have number of page edits, frequency of page edits, and (to an extent) quality of recent page edits. StackOverflow provides an even easier metric for what's considered high quality, and Google appears to apply its own layer on top of that (and in my non-scientific perception, looking something up by Google is almost always more fruitful on the first search than by going directly to SO)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey guys you know this is meant to be humorous right? I honestly can't believe that people here are saying Google is a scraper site and complaining about "hypocrisy". No more caching! When I search Google I want them to freshly crawl the web and get back to me in a day or two with my results.

</rant>

</comment><comment><USER31> Google is most certainly crossing the line here.

1\. They are not only doing this with wikipedia, but with many, many sites: "what is the smallest cell in the human body", "what is the biggest planet in the solar system".

2\. The sites they chose to link are not always the highest quality sites, such as the two examples above- why are these websites being featured?

3\. Many times, the user will get their answer right then and there, and be done with the search process. The site misses a visitor. In spite of these type of questions being "facts", someone took the time to organize and give context to these "facts". Turning facts into useful, consumable, content costs money. Google should not be taking visitors away from these sites.

4\. There should be public information on the CTR of these snippets. See if it helps or hurts the user.

5\. Google is abusing its power as a major search engine to reinforce structuring rules, such as microformats. With these rules, webmasters are giving more and more semantic meaning to their content, which means Google has an easier time completing their knowledge graph. They might link to the source site for a while, but there is no good argument for linking back to wikipedia to attribute the fact that Jupiter is the largest planet, since it's a fact, just like 2+2 is 4 (no attribution).

6\. Google is all about ML/NLP/AI driven knowledge. But in reality they are turning all of the internet content creators into a giant sweat shop for their knowledge graph. This is not fair, and sooner or later it will come back to bite them.

<comment><USER32> All of your arguments are based on the underlying assumption that being a "pure web search engine" is inherently better than their current striving towards being an "knowledge engine" modeled after the Star Trek computer (of which web results are a just a subset). I'm not sure that can be taken as a given, if only because the later presents a much clearer model/metaphor in the mobile first technology climate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Google should be _very_ careful with this. They don't want someone in power to get the idea like "wait a minute...isn't Google mining whole websites too and _profiting_ from it? Maybe we should do something about that!"

</comment><comment><USER34> Scraper sites usually don't reference the source material, but yeah, you might want to get some ice for that burn.

</comment><comment><USER35> Of course, its not just Wikipedia these days - Movie theatres etc all suffer it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Indeed. Google is constantly doing things they punish other people for.

A happy DDG user, who still uses !g too often though.

<comment><USER37> [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=scraper+site](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=scraper+site)

<comment><USER36> I'm not sure which point you're trying to make. Did you look at op's submission?

<comment><USER37> I assumed you thought scraping wikipedia and putting it on top of the search results was unethical. (The other alternative - that punishing scraper sites is unethical - seemed unlikely). So the fact that you prefer DDG because of this seemed weird, considering DDG does the same thing.

<comment><USER38> DDG is clearly attributing to Wikipedia and is not cloaking the link behind a redirect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not." \--Matthew 23:3

"Do as I say, not as I do" \-- Google

</comment><comment><USER40> Cue Bing, DuckDuckGo and any other search engine (except Google, of course) being Google-killed for "scraping". It's the perfect plan!

<comment><USER17> Google recently flagged my content-curation startup as "Pure Spam", even though it only takes small snippets from the original sources, is 100% human curated, and always links back to the true original source.

Not only are the curated pages blocked, but the entire domain is blocked as "pure spam". People who use Google to find a domain instead of typing the full URL now can't find it anywhere.

These assholes are just being anti-competitive now.

<comment><USER41> Curious - Which site is that?

<comment><USER17> You won't find it on Google :) We're making a products recommendation site, focusing on goal-oriented decisions. We'll make the full announcement within the next couple of weeks.

This reminds me. Google is really killing the "release early and release often" approach, if people will now have to do a ton of SEO learning and tweaking to avoid having your MVP permanently banned at launch day.

<comment><USER42> "Google is really killing the "release early and release often" approach, if people will now have to do a ton of SEO learning and tweaking to avoid having your MVP permanently banned at launch day."

Judging by the downvotes this is not a legitimate concern? Why?

<comment><USER43> Actually, from an SEO perspective, the #1 principle Google follows is preventing "release often" from being effective for SEO.

Talk to anyone who makes money at PPC and they will tell you one thing. You make a campaign, measure the results, change it a little, measure the results, and make incremental improvements to make a profitable campaign.

If you could do that with SEO, SEO would be a lot easier. Google, therefore, has a number of mechanisms (some patented) that cause all hell to break loose if you make the kind of changes to your site that you'd use to incrementally improve it's SEO.

It's one of the reason we are stuck with crappy sites like answers.com, w3schools, and wrongdiagnosis, because once a site like that is successful, the operators are loathe to make any changes lest their rankings drop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Easy. Search for a programming related question. After the result from stackoverflow you'll find dozens of scraper sites.

<comment><USER45> If you read correctly, the task is to report scraper sites that rank HIGHER than the original site. Not the case in your scenario.

<comment><USER39> And in OPs context, not only does it rank higher, it's above ALL links. So you don't even need to visit the target page and in affect stealing traffic (and potential ad revenue) from the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> More evidence: [http://shadyseo.com/](http://shadyseo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I do not understand the Wikipedia definition of "scraper site".

By this definition webcache.googleusercontent.com qualifies.

It is a full copy of every site GoogleBot scrapes.

Google gives attrition to the original source, but if this isn't "scraping", what is?

They have been sued for this, and they've won. The benefits of a decent search engine outweigh the burden of infringing the copyrights of others. At least where Google and other search engines that cache websites are concerned.

<comment><USER47> s/attrition/attribution/

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not funny since it is a double post for the same wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scraper_site](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scraper_site)

Seriously that was just a stretch, but they both say the full url. So all of Google News is a scraper site and any other summery given is a scrapper site then. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER49> Joking aside, I see these people as the waste collectors of the web. Respect their work, but i wouldn't want to do it.

</comment><comment><USER50> That SERP should show only one result from Wikipedia instead of two. It should be on top, have a blue title link to Wikipedia, _and_ look like an answer to the user's question. That could be done by a general mechanism that lets every site customize their representation on the SERP, or by a special case for Wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER51> Who is deemed to be the scraper? The site that get crawled and indexed first, and ranks better, or the site that ranks well but has sites with scraped content that doesn't rank as well?

Matt is looking for scapers that rank better than the original, basically meaning that they have higher PageRank and more links.

</comment><comment><USER52> I would report Google to him, but I'm afraid he's not planning to act fairly/consistently ...

</comment><comment><USER53> Google should offer some kind of revenue sharing (Like Youtube) to the sites it's "stealing" visitors from by showing information directly. And you should have to opt into it through something like webmaster tools.

</comment><comment><USER54> why they don't just integrate this into the results page? what's wrong with having up and down votes or a report this link button for the results?

</comment><comment><USER55> I thought this was largely taken care of by Google Panda?

</comment><comment><USER56> I know one, Google.com

</comment><comment><USER57> Sensational.

</comment><comment><USER58> Ah, a whole thread filled with pseudo-intellectual discussion about what scraping is (or isn't) due to some silly snarky-joke which Matt is probably laughing at, too. Hacker News to the rescue!</comment>


Stratechery - Apple, ARM, and Intel - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-arm-and-intel/ <comment><USER2> The most important paragraph in this piece is last one, which plugs a $22.8 billion bill to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the USA and suggests the need for new entrants.

Semiconductor manufacturing is truly one of the few remaining manufacturing industries in which the USA has a competitive advantage (albeit quite eroded by TSMC over the past few years).

Especially with US aviation circling the drain, this is a sector we can't afford to lose. Removing semiconductors from US manufacturing statistics makes US manufacturing statistics go from "stagnating" to "extraordinary decline".

And it's not just the manufacturing sector. Semiconductors power some of America's most valuable companies (including but not limited to the FAANGs).

US economic and actual security absolutely depends on a robust supply of world-class semi-conductors manufactured on-shore.

Congress should take the advice in this piece and avoid making the same mistake with Intel that it made with Boeing (piling the bulk of all federal and state support for an entire sector into a single clearly dysfunctional company)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if falling to complacency is the fate of every formerly great company. Intel was so synonymous with semiconductor excellence for decades that it is hard to imagine a world where they are no longer relevant, yet here we are.

</comment><comment><USER4> The missing piece of Apple's "hegemony" in its own ecosystem: Web Search. They still depend on Google, and it's surprising to me that they don't seem to care that much.

<comment><USER5> They get paid a reported $8 billion a year by Google not to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538894)</comment>