Steve Jobs live from WWDC 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/07/steve-jobs-live-from-wwdc-2010/

<comment><USER2> Goodness. Just read about the iPhone using a "Backside illumination" sensor, Googled it, and found this Wikipedia article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_illumination>

At the bottom: "The new iPhone 4 uses this type of sensor in its camera."

I love the times we live in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Re: iOS 4 upgrade price, "We finally found a way to get them for free to our iPod touch users."

I'd guess the GAAP changes Apple lobbied for [1] made the difference.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting- rules-c...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/accounting-rules-change- could-end-ipod-touch-update-fee.ars)

<comment><USER4> Ah interesting.

I'm a cynic: I assumed their motive for doing this was to make their iAd platform more compelling to advertisers.

<comment><USER5> Though it probably helped as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This will probably get lost in the noise, but I want to make an important point about the WiFi issues: it's not because there were too many _users,_ but rather that there were too many _access points._ There were _570_ access points in the room, probably the result of people bringing along their MiFis and similar devices. Running a 571th device would not have solved that problem.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like my apartment in San Fran at any given point in time = ) Included in the long list of wifi networks here are several by a company that spam advertises through SSIDs.

From their website: "Freedom of Expression"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Video chat. It's been available in asia for ~5 years? yet no one uses it. Will it be different in North America?

<comment><USER9> Smart phones were available in the US for ages before the iPhone, yet Jobs' and Apple's star power helped them to become more widespread. The whole "reality distortion field" can be used for good if it's to help spread adoption of interesting technologies, imo. I think the fact that it's coming from Apple will help adoption, even if the implementation is the same or even worse.

<comment><USER10> Really? The iPhone success is a result of a "reality distortion field"? That is essentially what you are saying, that it has all been a result of smoke 'n mirrors and "star power". But it hasn't. For all of the criticisms you can throw and Apple decisions, the iPhone has been truly revolutionary, and the biggest revolution has been that it is a smartphone that doesn't make the average person want to cry when trying to use it, in fact, it makes the average person giggle with pleasure. That isn't hype, it isn't a reality distortion field, it is the result of real, hard, work.

<comment><USER9> That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that it can help. Yes, the iPhone is a good product. I understand that's part of the reason behind the fervent love of it. I think that Apple's image can help things succeed.

Look at the iPod and the iPad. Who the hell had an MP3 player or a tablet before they came out? Not many people. Apple is good at creating needs and good products where products already existed. I'm not saying their design isn't part of that, I'm saying that their image can certainly help. We don't know enough about this new FaceTime to say it's instantly better than previous products other than the fact that it's free, and gong to be an open standard. Since we can't speak about the design of it, I chose to speak about another factor that could cause it to succeed.

Edit: "Reality distortion field" was a horrible choice of words on my part by the way. I meant that Apple's success at marketing would help this product succeed, no matter how the implementation was, not that their implementation will be or has been poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Market share: iPhone 28%, Android 9%

Mobile browsing: iPhone 58.2%, Android 22.7%

Looks like Android is edging the iPhone in mobile pageviews per user. Or am I thinking about this wrong?

<comment><USER12> That seems right, but it's possibly because iPhone users are more likely to use the native-app version of popular websites.

<comment><USER13> Is that not true of Android users as well? Most of the sites I use on a regular basis have an Android presence as well (Facebook, Yelp, etc..)

I think the probable reason is that the web-browsing data tends to be a few months ahead of those gartner market-share estimates.

<comment><USER12> Maybe. We have an analytics client for both platforms, though, and we just don't see the same level of application usage per user on Android. Why this is I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere."

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

<comment><USER15> "Its really going to piss me off that my phone call isn't going through because some jerkoff is harvesting virtual cabbage."

<comment><USER16> Whoever said that must not be able to talk & use the network at the same time?

<comment><USER17> No, you missed the point. The point was that the people farming are going to be taking up bandwidth and this will (further) degrade network performance for others. And so when the speaker has a call fail and this occurs to them, it will be annoying, presumably due to how frivolous a use of bandwidth that activity seems to the speaker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The FaceTime thing is epic. That said, it just gets more and more dangerous to go out and get hammered and start drunk-dialing people . . . The number of post-bender apologies that I usually have to make will probably go up by at least 50%.

<comment><USER19> It's only iphone 4 to iphone 4 so it's basically useless most of the time.

<comment><USER20> Jobs: "we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard."

Should be interesting.

<comment><USER21> They have to. It will be dead otherwise, based on the current prerequisites (iOS4 to iOS4, only on wifi)

<comment><USER22> I seem to recall he said the "only on wifi" was a temporary thing - while "we work with cell carriers" (I noted the _plural_ : carrierS).

<comment><USER23> Hello from outside America; we don't have AT&T.

<comment><USER24> Hello from inside America; you don't really want AT&T.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> CNN is streaming the keynote 30 minutes behind real-time. <http://www.cnn.com>

<comment><USER26> Wow. You know you've got marketing down when CNN's top story is simply a feed of your product announcement.

<comment><USER27> I think that's more a reflection of CNN's lax journalism.

<comment><USER28> CNN is in the field of journalism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The good news: A Netflix client! The bad news: AT&T just cut your data plan...

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure I follow the "Retinal Display" name. Is this just branding on a 300dpi pixel resolution? Or is there something to do with multi-resolution support for apps (those coded in the old resolution will still get up- converted text resolution, it sounded like).

<comment><USER31> Let this be a lesson in marketing to all of you...

As geeks, we'd tend to say "New and improved screen resolution: 300 DPI!". Which doesn't mean anything to 99% of the general population. But "retinal display", withs its attached explanation, now that's really something.

Words matter.

<comment><USER32> You see this all the time on everything from advertisements to infomercials. There are two simple templates for every feature you want to pitch:

Problem First:

Tired of text that looks like it was built out of lego blocks? iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which is so sharp that the human eye cannot see individual dots on the screen.

Feature First:

iPhone 4.0 has a 300DPI Retinal Display, which means you will never see blocky pixels again: the display is so sharp that the human eye cannot see the dots.

...

Tired of working around the clock on a cool new feature only to have customers ask you "So What?" These two feature pitch templates explain why customers should care, which means more sales for you!

Or perhaps:

Reg Braithwaite's "World Of Go" uses gestures instead of buttons, which means the entire screen can be devoted to the board, making it look like a Go board instead of like a Go program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The antenna idea (the metal frame is divided, acting as multiple antennas) is really nice, and so obvious in retrospect. Yeah, everything's simple in hindsight. I wonder if Apple invented and thus patented that.

<comment><USER34> Won't your body affect the antennae when you hold the device though?

<comment><USER33> If you touch the two parts, in theory you short the antenna to the ground and you absorb most of the radiated power. But I'm sure they have thought of that. You see, RF (radio frequency) waves behave quite differently than DC (direct current). Your skin must have a high enough impedance to RF that it does not affect the antenna.

But then, what happens if you short the gap with metal ? That sounds a lot less nice. I'm sure the RF power amp must be shortcut protected, so you don't risk damaging it, but if you short the gap, and thus the antenna, bye bye outgoing packets.

Maybe it's more complicated than that, and the other metal half is not the ground for the antenna, but it's insulated - floating - from the exposed antenna. Therefore shorting the gap would not short the antenna to ground but it would modify the physical characteristics of the antenna, therefore its impedance, therefore the radiating efficiency. This is all messy, as I have never practiced RF design, only took classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Looks like it's the year of bombing demos...even Steve's has been hit!

<comment><USER36> Steve couldn't get on that vaunted AT&T network. Someone shouted "Verizon". Haha.

<comment><USER23> Hurr Hurr but look at the pictures - it's on WiFi.

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple- wwdc-2010-187-rm-eng.jpg)

<comment><USER37> So the wifi is saturated because there are 500 people streaming photos and tweets from the hall.

C'mon. Can't Apple just live stream these keynotes from here on out? Everyone on all sides knows these announcements are in the public sphere 250 milliseconds after Steve says it.

For being so controlling of their media message, why let the bloggers run the final leg?

<comment><USER13> It's a really nice way to get a lot of really influential people on your side I'd think. By letting the media outlets have control over the dissemination of information it gives them a lot of incentive to stay on your good side (see: gizmodo not being invited to the keynote).

<comment><USER37> But the media outlets that really matter to Apple (Newsweek or WSJ/Mossberg for example) get access way before the launch so they can write their articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Looks like we're not sparing any hits today. First a shot at Google Ads, followed by an indirect shot at Adobe.

Actually I found the shot at google ads amusing. The quip about how (Theo? I can't read his first name) Gray earned more money on the app store than in 5 years of operating Google ads on his website periodictable.com, appears to have taken down his site

(The slide I'm referring to is [http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple- wwdc-2010-089-rm-eng.jpg))

<comment><USER20> I think those were fairly light shots, at least compared to what was said at Google I/O.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not really clear on what the gyroscope adds that wasn't there before, can someone clarify?

<comment><USER35> Accelerometers can only detect orientation relative to gravity, gyros can detect it relative to themselves.

This is the same thing that Nintendo added to their controllers a few months ago.

For example I wrote an app that calculates Horsepower based on weight and acceleration, however it's hard to determine if detected acceleration is due to the vehicle or gravity (if the device tips or tilts during the test). By having the gyros available, I can detect and compensate for the error-inducing influence of gravity.

<comment><USER39> Also, astronauts can now use the iPhone effectively in space.

<comment><USER40> ' "With Farmville on the iPhone, you'll be able to farm anytime, anywhere." '

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It looks like Apple now represents a very real and serious competitive threat to Google's #1 money maker: ads.

They now control a 3rd of the mobile market (iPads excluded) and are seemingly poised to continue this trend with the new iPhone packing several new and revolutionary killer features. Again this excludes the sold-every-3-seconds iPads. We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two.

Also, Jobs definitely didn't hold back when introducing Bing and iAds during the presentation.

I'm a little uneasy about all of this of course. I love the web and have devoted much of my career to building web apps that run on laptops and netbooks but I have to say, love it or hate it, Apple is bringing some serious game changing shit to the table and continues to iterate faster than anyone can catch up.

<comment><USER42> >We all know that they'll get the lion's share of what's left of RIM and Windows mobile in a year or two.

I disagree - I think Android devices will experience more growth than iPhone OS (or iOS) in a year or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> So with all this great stuff (amazing new features, great market share, etc.), I wonder how Apple doesn't open the iPhone to non-ATT carriers. That's the single reason I have been staying on my good ol'RIM BB. Any ideas?

<comment><USER44> There's an AT&T exclusivity agreement in place. It was for 5 years, set to expire in 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> gdgt coverage: [http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote- cover...](http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/)

<comment><USER46> This was submitted here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1410917>, but I wanted to comment to mention that it automatically refreshes with good pictures.

<comment><USER45> ye I also prefer it because the site scrolls easier, comments are better and there are more/better pictures

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> iOS 4 - do I sense another Cisco trademark battle?

<comment><USER22> Jobs said that Apple had worked out "an arrangement" or some such with Cisco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can't believe that the demo isn't being run off of its own network. Seriously, if you can't get good reception inside, at least run your own dedicated wifi network. What were they thinking?

<comment><USER48> You don't understand WIFI. All WIFI devices share the same 2.4/5GHz bandwidth and thus if you have too many devices in one physical location you're screwed.

<comment><USER49> Sure, but why didn't they use directional antennas to get a demo-dedicated network on the stage? Which would be a good permanent feature for any big conference room come to think of it.

<comment><USER50> That doesn't eliminate the problem of interference from all of the other networks on the same channel (or on the neighboring channel that shares part of the spectrum), which are all using omnidirectional antennas. It can help, certainly, but 570 Wi-Fi networks in one ballroom is going to be hell on any network chip trying to sort through all the noise.

<comment><USER49> No, I'm including all the antennas in that - why not use directional ones for all the networks in the room to keep the stage free of extra networks?

<comment><USER50> Because Apple had control over, maybe, 10-20 APs in the room (and those almost certainly only constituted one mesh network). The 569 other networks were from devices controlled by journalists and other attendees, the majority of which were MiFis (according to Jobs), which don't even have ports for external antennas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> HD display and movies, 5MP camera, increased battery life, folders and multitasking, gyroscope... I have all this on the Nexus One and that is a 6 months old phone. I think this WWDC is signing the end of an era: jobs has lost his famous innovative advantage and now he is running behind. Android/HTC had these features in their last generation phones and with EVO coming out they are going to make the iPhone 4 obsolete already.

<comment><USER52> You left out all the things you don't have on your Nexus One. An HD video camera, or any camera at all that captures at 30 fps. The Nexus One's display is lower resolution than the announced iPhone display, and some of the Nexus resolution is fake resolution from the novel pixel setup. Video calling. Guitar Hero, Netflix, and Farmville. iAd (you know that is going to be a draw for some developers). Universal copy and paste.

I'm currently using a Nexus One as my primary phone, but let's please make honest comparisons.

<comment><USER51> N1 has hd video at 20fps. display is better, ok. guitar hero, netflix and farmville I would not call them innovations. farmville is a way to overcome flash of course.

<comment><USER53> In that case my current iPhone has hd video at 1 fp5s. If it isn't at least 23.976 fps then it isn't hd video. Period.

<comment><USER51> Let me be clear because here it seems I get a waterfall of downvotes for daring saying something against an apple product.

Multitouch = innovation

Apple store = innovation

GPS = innovation

UI thought for mobiles = innovation

Apple came out first with those things. Then people catched up. This time what is the innovation? A bit more pixels on the display and the farmville client? Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER52> Your original claim was that it was obsolete on arrival and had little to do with innovation. You also claimed that Android had feature equivalency with the newly announced iPhone but were selective about the features that are equivalent. Finally, you claimed implicitly that the feature list is what makes the phone, which is obviously untrue. That's why you're getting downvotes.

<comment><USER51> My claim was that there is nothing innovative in the iPhone 4 compared to the N1 and that technically speaking __EVO __makes it look obsolete (EVO does 1280×720 @ 25 fps, front camera, hdmi output, supports SD card etc).

<comment><USER54> for the record. 720p is 1280 x 720. As you said, the evo is 25 fps the iphone is at 30 fps, with the same resolution.

This is being pedantic, and doesn't really help the argument that the iphone 4 is better, but, at least one of your points is invalid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This somewhat tangential, but I have to say that I've only seen one "live coverage" method that really worked well IMO: Lifehacker's LiveWaving of Google IO. I still haven't really used Wave at all, but that really seemed to work well for a live coverage event. It felt much less "hackish" than the auto-refresh and scroll down method.

</comment><comment><USER55> Here's something I wrote back in December based on no info: [http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.htm...](http://martin.drashkov.com/2009/12/iphone-4g-predictions.html)

Not that it means very much - changes like the screen, storage and ram/cpu were pretty obvious.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ars Technica coverage: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc- keynote-steve...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/wwdc-keynote- steve-jobs-liveblog.ars?comments=1#comments-bar)

MacRumours coverage: <http://www.macrumorslive.com/>

</comment><comment><USER56> no iPod touch update? I was hoping they will at least have a camera in the iPod touch added.

<comment><USER57> The iPod line is usually updated at its own event in September. I expect to see an iPod with a front facing camera then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> "Video calls" is one more thing of the day!

</comment><comment><USER59> Please just say its coming to Verizon already.

<comment><USER20> I think AT&T giving discounted renewals six months in advance is good indication that they will be losing exclusivity early in 2011.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Wouldn't it be an advantage for another network to leak that information to deter signing with att?

<comment><USER60> I would imagine there are HUGE penalties for this. Also, just because AT&T's exclusivity agreement expires in 2011, doesn't mean another carrier has agreed to carry the iPhone yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I am beginning to wonder whether iAds is the reason Apple don't want Flash on their mobile devices.

<comment><USER62> Actually, that makes sense. If Flash were on the iPhoneOS devices along with some kind of cross-compile dev environment, then Adobe could develop its own iAd clone. By controlling runtimes, and development environments, Apple makes it much harder for a competitor "ad within the app" framework to exist.

<comment><USER23> How does banning Flash stop DoubleClick from releasing an Objective-C library which loads small ads from their servers for in-app display, and gives developers a cut of the revenue?

<comment><USER61> How many advertising agencies and marketing houses do you think have objective C programmers with experience in flash banners?

<comment><USER62> Right, so that undercuts Adobe's developer base. That's also consistent with a strategy of favoring HTML5 over Flash.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Create Loyal Customers That Keep Coming Back For More - <AUTHOR> https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/2014/06/05/how-to-create-loyal-customers-that-keep-coming-back-for-more

<comment><USER2> Entertaining pictures :-) Nice article Marta!</comment>


Bullseye - strategy management tool for founders - <AUTHOR> https://bullseyehd.com/

<comment><USER2> it looks nice but how is this different from Trello?</comment>


Ask HN: Does US law apply to AWS data-centers located outside USA?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes, mozilla mentioned this in a blog post when someone here on HN pointed that they should move persona out of the U.S. Being a U.S. company they have to follow the U.S. law regardless of their servers' location.

<comment><USER3> I believe this is the relevant thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854813)

Its a bit short on specifics though. I'd like to know which laws give the US access to data held on servers that are physically outside its jurisdiction. What happens when they are in conflict with local laws (e.g. EU privacy laws)? I though there were international agreements covering this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if US laws would apply to foreign corporations entirely owned by US corporations? E.g., if Amazon set up an Irish corporation to own and manage a data center in Ireland, even though Amazon still exercised control, wouldn't that data center be outside the scope of US law?

<comment><USER5> According to US law, US law applies to any company with a presence in the US or that does business with US companies or serves US customers. Yes, that means pretty much every major corporation in the entire world.

How effective the US gov can enforce its laws depends on how much leverage the US gov can apply against the specific company. For example, it can bar other US companies from interacting with them. It can potentially seize assets. Or it can arrest company officers if they happen to enter US jurisdiction. All these have occurred in the past.

<comment><USER3> What if there is a conflict between US law and the law of the country in which the owned corporation operates?

To take @ratsbane's example, Amazon Data Services Ireland is the Irish company that manages the data centre that currently comprises the AWS EU West region. It does no business in the US, but its parent company (Amazon.com Inc) does. Amazon Data Services Ireland are subject to Irish and EU laws relating to privacy and data protection. They can't just ship personal/commercial data out of the UK to the US as this would breach local laws. If the US govt demands that Amazon Inc provide it with data that is located in Dublin, what do Amazon Inc _actually do_? Does US law really mandate that Amazon Inc must force its subsidiary to break local laws?

 _" It can potentially seize assets. Or it can arrest company officers if they happen to enter US jurisdiction."_

I know this has happened with on-line gaming companies - but that is a situation where the foreign company is doing something that the UK considers to be illegal. We're talking about the scope of laws relating to non-US companies engaged in lawful activities.

I suspect that the reach of the US government in these situations actually depends on international agreements with other nations (or groups, like the EU) and not US domestic law.

<comment><USER6> Ireland is not in the UK. Just to point that out mr andyjohnson05.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TOS mention jurisdiction? Im sure its US soil somewhere

</comment><comment><USER8> Depends on how much money is at stake :)</comment>


My Apology - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apology/ <comment><USER2> Non-fiction writing is entirely built upon trust. I have to trust that the author is attempting to tell the truth because I don't have the resources to fact-check every little thing.

Jonah Lehrer violated this trust. Big time. He has shown himself to be someone who lies and manipulates. And I think this is a cynical manipulation in an attempt to restore his career. (He should donate that $20k to some charity, btw.)

But he has forever lost my trust. There are too many other good writers and good books out there -- there will never be a reason for me to pick up a Jonah Lehrer book or pay attention to his words. Sorry.

Let's find some less well-known thinkers who deserve our attention and leave this guy out of the public conversation.

<comment><USER3> I see. And you've never needed a second chance yourself?

I am very grateful for the second chances I've received in life.

<comment><USER2> Being a wealthy, best-selling author is not a right. Of course he deserves a second chance as a human being. I'm sure he's not that bad of a guy.

But I feel he's forfeited this opportunity [to be a high-profile science journalist]. At least as far as I'm concerned. Plenty of other great stuff to read.

<comment><USER3> I've never read any of his writing, so I have no opinion about its quality.

But this was as thorough an apology as I can recall seeing from anyone about anything. I will be very surprised if he turns out not to have meant it.

It actually predisposes me to take a look at whatever he writes next. The process of confronting one's character flaws and addressing them deepens a person. I expect that whatever he has to say next will be edifying -- as indeed this piece was.

EDITED to add: it's certainly possible I'm being naive and accepting his apology too easily.

<comment><USER4> > But this was as thorough an apology as I can recall seeing from anyone about > anything.

I thought that at first too, but then I wondered what was with that story about the Muslim lawyer who was erroneously picked up and jailed by the FBI and it turned out they had it wrong. Is he saying he's a victim?!?!? That's what it started to sound like to me. So I'm not sure I believe it's an apology.

<comment><USER5> If that story is supposed to be an analogy, Jonah Lehrer is the FBI. The Muslim lawyer wasn't the one who made mistakes that had consequences, and the Muslim lawyer wasn't the one that needed explicit procedures to decrease the odds of it happening again. That was the FBI (and Lehrer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slate's take on this article is particularly interesting and has one strong perspective about Lehrer - [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/02/jonah_lehrer_apology_standard_operating_procedures_can_t_fix_arrogance_and.html)

(not a positive viewpoint)

<comment><USER7> Please submit this article as a separate submission to HN. I think it's a better article than the one kindly submitted to open this thread.

<comment><USER8> The Slate article slagging on Lehrer is of no inherent interest to hackers. His speech, self-serving and dishonest as it may have been, addresses some interesting and little-discussed aspects of psychology, work, and knowledge. That is something I appreciate on HN. Of course the GP provides valuable context for the speech, and I'm glad it was shared, but it doesn't stand by itself as a top-level post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was that a real Joan Didion quote?

Seriously, he's correct in many of the things he said, but he's probably the wrong person to be saying this. Perhaps in a couple of decades he might be the right person. Humans really are flawed creatures. We really do screw up all the time. It really isn't enough to be governed by a strong moral compass: that sense of morality must be assisted by the wisdom to avoid situations that will corrupt it. Strong habits, traditions, or even "standard operating procedures" assist the wise in this avoidance.

I still have sympathy for this guy. My suspicion is that those in the media who are really piling on, are doing so at least partially to avoid hearing what's being said. Lehrer is _bad_ , so we can't admit that most of what he did, we do if only to a lesser degree. Otherwise _we_ would be _bad_. This sort of binary morality is really primitive and pathetic, but many people don't have anything else available to them.

If's fine if you don't sympathize with Lehrer as I do, but I don't understand how people can complain that he brought up the FBI lab as an example. Why would they be above him? He didn't send any innocent people to jail! If you'd like proof that this is a serious problem, read up on the mess they have in Mississippi with bogus forensics. If Lehrer does anything to improve forensics in this country, all his plagiarism will have been worth it.

<comment><USER3> > Lehrer is _bad_ , so we can't admit that most of what he did, we do if only > to a lesser degree. Otherwise _we_ would be _bad_.

Yes. The technical psychoanalytic term is "projection".

There's lots of it out there if you look.

<comment><USER8> Oy! I intentionally _don't_ look for it, but still I see it _everywhere_!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The first phase involved a literal reconstruction of my mistakes. I wanted to have an accounting, in my head, of how I fabricated those Dylan quotes. I wanted to understand the mechanics of every lapse, to relive all those errors that led to my disgrace. I wanted to understand so that I could explain it to people, so that I could explain it in a talk like this._

This is basically doing a post-mortem. When I think about things I've done wrong, I go through this process. Then when I try to explain to people, I go through this process. However, when I do this, I fear that other people think I'm just trying to justify my mistakes.

As such, I don't often try to explain myself to others. I apologize, but I don't go into detail; and usually, people are willing to accept simply the apology and the high-level explanation. When I say go into detail, I mean a truly blow by blow account of every premise, piece of context, and minor decision that led to the big one. I think part of it is that a lot of people simply don't have the patience for such details.

To clarify what I'm talking about in terms of level of detail, I give the example of a time a girl asked me, "So do you prefer Vancouver food or Hong Kong food?". And I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question to better understand what the question was asking, because the answer could vary depending on the question's true meaning and intent. Then she got exasperated and said, "Wow, I just asked you whether you prefer this food or that food!!! What's the big deal???")

So maybe I have two fears when I want to give the blow by blow account. The stupid fear is that people will think I'm crazy for going into such detail. The more scary fear is that people will think I'm trying to justify myself when I'm in fact not trying to do that at all. And this fear keeps me from sharing my thoughts with others.

I have no idea whether this guy is sincere or not, and so it's funny that the fear I have regarding other people being suspicious of my sincerity, I am casting similar suspicions (though not aggressively, as it's not a significant event to me whether or not this guy is sincere).

<comment><USER10> > _"I responded with a 5 minute dissection of the question"_

I used to do this shit all the time. Turns out I was missing the obvious part: people ask imprecise questions, not because they're being intellectually sloppy, but because they're looking for _a conversation_ , not _an answer_.

And you can safely infer this, because the imprecise questions are almost always about things that simply _do not matter_.

No-one _really_ cares if you like Vancouver food vs Hong Kong food. (If your opinion on the matter was of objective interest, the question would have been far more precise.)

As phrased, it's pretty close to a nonsense question. So when you find yourself thinking "what on earth could they mean by _that_?" just stop and have the conversation _with_ them, not _at_ them.

That is: stop at your first (appropriate) impression, phrase it as open or closed based on your desire to actually continue the conversation, and toss the ball back. And always keep in mind that the _answers_ are irrelevant; what matters is how you pass the ball.

<comment><USER9> You've just unraveled one of the mysteries of the world to me. :)

<comment><USER10> If I can help just one other geek avoid the social grief I've suffered, it's all been worth it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The weird (infuriating?) part of this is that he was paid $20,000 by the Knight foundation to give this speech. We shouldn't be rewarding plagarisers, he should have given the speech for free out as an opportunity to explain himself.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some background on Mr. Lehrer's previous resignation from the New Yorker via the NY Times: [http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah- lehre...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehrer- resigns-from-new-yorker-after-making-up-dylan-quotes-for-his-book/)

<comment><USER13> What the hell book was it for? Why can't I find this most basic information?

<comment><USER5> Respectfully, it's not that hard to search Wikipedia for Jonah Lehrer.

Link for the lazy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be cool if he could go back through all the "defective" works he's produced, rewrite them so as to be accurate, and republish them for free. Those who have bought his work will be able to get the updated and amended copy without charge, and those who haven't been exposed to anything other than the drama around his transgressions will have an almost no-risk access to his works. It's easier to forgive when an apology is combined with action.

His work had so much promise and appeal. If anything, it would be a shame if we couldn't benefit from his ability to convey concepts in an interesting and engaging way.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an apology? "I screwed up, and I will focus on my mistakes by only discussing the FBI and forensic scientists."

<comment><USER16> He already did the official apologies.

<comment><USER17> Some people haven't even gotten that far. Ira Glass got right in front of credibility issues on his watch and it served him very well. Dan Rather, in comparison, was still sticking to the "I wasn't proven false in a court of law" defense as of last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the Navy, your career is over if your ship goes aground. Even if it wasn't your fault. The lack of justice for the one guy is way more than made up by a greater justice for everybody else when every captain makes sure their ship doesn't go aground.

Unfortunately, non-fiction writing is a system entirely built on trust. The system may be unfair, but Jonah Lehrer violated that trust, and now his career is rightfully over.

<comment><USER19> In the Navy, not necessarily: [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/16/admiral- nomi...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/16/admiral-nominee-rose- through-ranks-despite-illogic/?page=all) With regards to Mr Lehrer: if he could write a worthwhile nonfiction book, I'm guessing that he could find someone to publish it, and it would have the chance to rise on its own merits -- no one can really 'end' the career of an author, only damage their reputation, and most of the time (as in this case) that is self-inflicted. But his hopes for making the short list of lite-fare nonfiction authors who can sell a lot of books, alongside Gladwell et al, would appear to be well and truly dashed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hard to dislike a guy that writes so well, and I agree with the general premise of recognizing the human capacity, and necessity, for error.

But I do think it's a bit disingenuous to compare the "mistakes" of scientists to fabrication and deceit. Would Niels Bohr have been referring to the manufacture of evidence when he spoke of "all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field?"

</comment><comment><USER21> This was extremely well-written. It's a shame he had to sully his good name by taking the easy route and make up quotes, etc. Hopefully he can bounce back and revitalize his career.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone else feel like Lehrer is receiving more criticism than he deserves? The fact that he defended the fabricated Dylan quotes is regrettable, but it's so trivial compared to lies we hear everyday from people we "trust" (media, politicians, bloggers, friends). And I don't give a damn about the self plagiarism. It was sloppy, not evil.

I personally wish we could forget about the whole thing. After this debacle, I'd trust Lehrer over almost any other science writer. If he ever writes Frontal Cortex again, I'm sure it will be the most thoroughly fact-checked journalism available.

<comment><USER23> The thing is that when somebody lies about trivial but pointless stuff -- not little white lies like "Ooh, I'd love to come but I'm booked that day" or "No, that dress looks great on you" but rather, "Bob Dylan said this" -- then you can't trust the rest of what they write.

People criticize Lehrer _because_ they liked him and trusted him. Now everything they liked about him was cast into doubt, over something totally idiotic. It seriously calls his judgment and character into question. There was no compelling reason for him to fabricate what he fabricated. There was no enormous gain from that fabrication. It's a sign of either laziness, OR pathological lying.

Pathological liars are distinguished from the rest of us because they lie about pointless things, without a direct thing to gain from it.

We understand that politicians lie for gain… they are not, GENERALLY, pathological. Because they lie for gain, we can ferret out their lies because we can ask, "Gee, does xyz have something to gain here?" - and we understand them. That doesn't make it excusable, but that's probably part of why there's more uproar about Lehrer (we trusted him! WHY did he lie about THAT?!) than yet one more political lie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the article:

> Designers refer to this sort of rule as a forcing function. These functions > are everywhere and they keep us from doing all sorts of stupid things. Just > think of your car. There is, for instance, the reverse lockout, which > prevents us from throwing a moving car into reverse and accidentally ripping > apart the transmission.

> whatever I write will be fact-checked and fully footnoted.

I was interested in learning more about this "reverse lockout." From the Wikipedia entry [1] which is the top Google result for "reverse lockout" (I typed it into Google without quotes):

> a forcing function or poka-yoke, is a technique used in error-tolerant > design to prevent the user from making common errors or mistakes. One > example is the reverse lockout on the transmission of a moving automobile.

I don't want to spend time researching this further, but it's interesting that he came up with the same name and example of the concept as the Wikipedia article (without attribution). Wikipedia articles are supposed to be secondary sources -- "original research" is an explicitly discouraged category of content. But none of the links cited by the Wikipedia article mention "forcing function."

So here's someone, writing a _mea culpa_ about his past plagiarism, who uses a phrase and idea without proper footnoting of it (nebulously crediting "designers" with the idea); and a single Google search for the idea turns up a Wikipedia article which also mentions the idea without citing a source!

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-shaping_constraint>

</comment><comment><USER25> Who cares anymore?

<comment><USER26> It's a legitimate question the parent asks. In my book, the guy deserves oblivion, after he has been revealed to be a pathological liar and fabulist. If you love the field of journalism, this guy should disgust you.

Bonus trivia: Lehrer was paid $20,000 to deliver this speech. Ridiculous and a mountainous source of embarrassment for the Knight Foundation.

<comment><USER27> If we discount someone's current contributions and ideas because we are disgusted by their past mistakes, we risk losing some useful and insightful things.

This speech had a very important message: It's not enough to acknowledge or apologize for mistakes. You need to give yourself (and others) a reason to trust that you won't make similar mistakes in the future. Jonah goes into more detail: you need a standard operating procedure which prevents sloppiness, so that the routine ensures you don't make mistakes.

If you've not read this, because you feel he deserves oblivion, you should read it and pretend it was written by someone else. Also ... if someone deserves "oblivion" for mistakes, even egregious ones, what's the point of rehabilitation?

<comment><USER28> But his problem isn't that he is sloppy, it is that he is unscrupulous. This isn't some error in procedure, it is a deep character flaw. At best that takes years of self reflection and self refinement to remedy, not a simple list of rules. Rehabilitation for this is possible, but not probable and he should work in a different field that doesn't rely so much on personal integrity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm going to read this again after I post this comment. Everything he says applies equally to me.

Thought I had something more insightful to say. Guess not.

</comment><comment><USER30> This might just be me, but I don't like wordsy apologies. I don't like apologies with intricate explanations.

Lehrer's point is that a lot of people try to soften apologies and remove some accountability, as if the apology is just part of a status quo, and he's worried people will think he's trying to do that; really, he's just trying to make a record of his actions.

But honestly, I think he's got it a bit wrong. People don't distrust verbose apologies because they're intended to be excuses, but because they are excuses by design.

If Lehrer said something to the effect of, "I fucked up. I'm sorry. I understand you may never trust me again and I'll have to deal with that." I would trust his apology _much_ more than I do now.

But providing an explanation, however benign it is (especially in a highly media fueled instance like this where not much explanation isn't already _known_ ) garners sympathy from the audience and wraps the apology in something tolerable for the author.

I don't think it should be tolerable. But that's just my thought on it.

<comment><USER31> I think wordy apologies are a lot more appropriate when it's a for technical mistake "this is how the security breach happened and this is what we've done to prevent a reoccurrence" than a moral misjudgement "this is how I cheated and lied to everyone; please trust me again because I'm candid about it"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Good for him. I hope for his sake that he can win back some of the trust he squandered, and keep on the straight and narrow.

</comment><comment><USER33> Journalistically, there's a rather large asterisk that needs to be put out here: [http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the- error/204097/l...](http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the- error/204097/lehrer-falls-into-familiar-pattern-fails-to-face-his-reckoning/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Blogging has always been questioned and critqued by trained journalists. We should be questioning anything self-published that appears to be journalism.

For reference, this is the original article that Michael Moynihan wrote: [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and- politics/107779/jon...](http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and- politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions)

Q/A with Michael Moynihan: [http://observer.com/2012/07/michael-c-moynihan- jonah-lehrer-...](http://observer.com/2012/07/michael-c-moynihan-jonah-lehrer- bob-dylan-07302012/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I hope he follows it up with another apology about the horrible unreadable text on that website. Good luck with that career, though, bud. You're going to need it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just so that we don't feel left out, we have our own UK equivalent with a weirdly similar name:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_contro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_controversy)

</comment><comment><USER37> I could not even get as far to wonder what he was apologizing for. The type face is just too horrible to read.

</comment><comment><USER38> Bold paragraph text... awful.</comment>


Too much thinking 'can make you fat' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4043727/Too-much-thinking-can-make-you-fat.html <comment><USER2> It's as lightly to be that people see food as a reward or stress reliever as pleasure is derived from it.

So after a stressful session of brain work in a lab they have just one more plate of pasta.

Interesting work but there is obviously a long way to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a few issues with this study.

1) I thought that heavily using one's brain did use a little more energy than neither moving nor thinking hard.

2) It's not at all a representative sample. It's just 14 students. There could have been a lot of reasons that would have messed up the study when that few people are involved.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the article? In direct response to 1: "The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period." So, yes, it does, but apparently the change in appetite more than offsets the increased consumption.

And as for 2, this complaint is a pet peeve of mine. Yes, bigger sample sizes are (often) better, but sometimes you can't get a bigger sample. Size of sample and representativeness are kind of orthogonal, if all humans were homogeneous, sample sizes of one would be totally sufficient. (Basically, sure, there could be uncorrected bias, but please point to a bias that you think is unaccounted for, and not just "should have paid for more subjects".)

Honestly, it kind of sounds like you want the study results to be something since you have preconceived expectations that thinking hard should use more energy. I'm not trying to be combative here, but I don't really know of anything wrong with their methodology. I haven't read the paper in question, but presumably neither have you, so we're two people on the internet arguing about something we haven't even read. Whoo, yay internet!

<comment><USER5> I don't think this:

"The researchers had already discovered that each session of intellectual work requires only three calories more than the rest period."

Is correct. It contradicts everything else I've read on the subject. It also doesn't make sense based on how fMRI works (which detects increased glucose metabolism).

I know it's easy for me to sit here and bash some research I didn't do, but it just doesn't sound right at all.

<comment><USER6> It is possible that it meant three kilocalories instead of calories?

<comment> daniel-cussen I think so, but that still wouldn't explain things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this were actually proven, I would be able to say I combat the effects with cigarettes. Suddenly, smoking will be cool again! Huzzah!</comment>


Stack Overflow Homepage Changes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/stack-overflow-homepage-changes/

<comment><USER2> They mention that the original layout has served them well up til now, I wonder whether this new layout would have been as good, if it had been used from the start (it wasn't needed, but still).</comment>


The Hidden Benefits of Launching Your Tech Startup in Latin America - <AUTHOR> https://about.crunchbase.com/blog/latin-america-tech-industry-startup <comment><USER2> I'm a second generation Ecuadorian-Colombian living in Canada. I run a software development shop [1] helping startups and businesses build their software infrastructure. Would love to connect with devs in South America.

Alguien quiere conectar para desarrollar productos, servicios y aplicaciones? Mándame mensaje a michael arroba Sovilon punto com.

[1] Sovilon.com</comment>


A New Framework for Flexible and Reproducible Reinforcement Learning Research - <AUTHOR> https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducing-new-framework-for-flexible.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the source code

[https://github.com/google/dopamine](https://github.com/google/dopamine)</comment>


Why it pays to be a jerk (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-strategy/larry-ellison-why-it-pays-to-be-a-jerk/ <comment><USER2> > Accounts of former Oracle employees paint a picture of a boss with an > infectious energy, and a propensity to elevate his charges to incredible > heights only to dump them later. As one journalist put it, "He's like a > juicer, he squeezes people dry and then discards them."

> Ellison, who before the crash, was known to brag about playing tennis on > company time, and was so seldom at the office that, when he was spotted, > employees joked about "Elvis sightings,"

It sounds like he got good employees to run his company and then treated them like shit. It's the sort of behavior that can work well for a few ceo's if only a few of them do it. But if every ceo were to behave like that, the pool of experienced employees out there would be nothing but bitter, cynical dried up husks who had sworn to themselves never to get exploited like that again.

This isn't a fair comparison to Mr. Ellison, but imagine if you will, an article in praise of a mob boss. "Well, he was horrible and he murdered people, but he made a lot of money." And it's true, mob bosses can accumulate great wealth. But mob bosses can only thrive two conditions are met: 1) there are people who don't engage in those behaviors for them to exploit. 2) society doesn't fight back effectively against their bull shit.

So, no I don't think Ellison is the equivalent of a mobster. But I do wonder why so many people put up with that sort of bull shit.

<comment><USER3> Most shareholders of most companies are absentee landlords too; what's the difference other than ostenibly being CEO on top of owner?

<comment><USER4> That _is_ the difference. A CEO, unlike "most shareholders", is being paid to run the company. S/he is supposed to be an executive: one who executes: one who _does things_. A CEO who's never at the office is anomalous in a way that a shareholder who's never at the office isn't.

(Quite separately from the Larry Ellison question, it's worth observing that _working_ and _being at the office_ are entirely different matters. A hard- working CEO might spend most of his or her time sat at home thinking deep strategic thoughts, or touring around potential investors or customers trying to understand and/or impress them, or something. So a CEO who's seldom at the office isn't necessarily slacking off. Again, I am not claiming that this observation has any particular applicability to Larry Ellison.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> his office is plastered with Japanese art, certainly compounds his image as a wannabe Mongol warlord_

Japanese art to Mongol warlord! What a conclusion!!! This makes as much sense as saying he has an Eiffel Tower poster so he'd like to live in Greece.

</comment><comment><USER6> Being a jerk is not the success factor here. Without actual competence, Ellison would not have gotten far. It's being right and being a jerk in combination which is so powerful.

"he read a paper published by IBM, which outlined a way to make it easier to store and retrieve data — a prototype for the first relational database. 'I saw the paper, and thought that, on the basis of this research, we could build a commercial system.'"

<comment><USER7> That jumped out at me because I thought Bob Miner brought the paper and its potential ramifications to Ellison's attention. Ellison doesn't strike me as the kind of guy that sits around reading papers out of IBM research. Can anyone confirm one way or another? I'm pretty sure it's _technically_ true, but also a good example of how he lies.

<comment><USER8> From wikipedia: It was at this time that Ed Oates[4] introduced Miner and Ellison to a paper by E. F. Codd on the relational model for database management.

yet the PDF it references says ellison did it. i think this is one of those things that will always be up for debate, as everyone is going to have a slightly different recollection of it. it doesn't matter though - no question that IBM wrote it, but oracle as a _company_ decided to pursue it, meaning that everyone was on board.

the book "the difference between god and larry ellison" goes into a lot of this detail. it was basically 3 or 4 guys doing intense technical work for several years, including larry ellison.

in my opinion the book paints him as a fair businessman with a knack for over- the-top personal behavior. i don't remember it saying he ever tried to screw over his cofounders or run-of-the-mill employees.

also, i don't think i've ever read him claim that he invented databases or had the initial idea to commercialize ibm's ideas. that's something that the media projects onto him since he's such a celebrity compared to his co-founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The incredible success that he has enjoyed is a marvel to anyone familiar with the accepted literature on what it takes to make a great leader, qualities like empathy, mediation skills and humility. ..._

 _"It's very unpopular to say in today's world, where we have these Kumbaya theories of leadership," says Pfeffer, "but it actually doesn't work well."_

Exactly. The lesson here is that many management books contain mainly "leadership fantasies."[1] More from Pfeffer at the link.

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/03/leadership- fantasies.h...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/03/leadership- fantasies.html)

<comment><USER10> Being an asshole doesn't work with knowledge workers. It might for sweatshops and farm hands, but I've worked for a CEO that acted as an asshole while on the job. I was another C level.

When I left so did half the company because everyone knew he was being unreasonable and too much of a bully.

<comment><USER11> Sweatshop workers know very well how to subtly sabotage production for bad bosses.

Machines break more often, materials go missing, tools are misused or stolen, drawings are creatively interpreted, electricity supplies are disrupted, tea breaks take a bit longer.

People might be at their bench on time, and might look like they're starting work, but they will be doing more "preparation" at the start of the day and more "clean down" at the end of the day.

And once it starts with a couple of people it's hard to stop, especially with bad bosses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll take the risk of sounding like an overly-idealistic idiot, but if I could choose between billions of dollars and staying an effing human being, I'd probably choose the latter.

<comment><USER13> Being truthful and honest without sugar-coating is the fastest way to be called an asshole. I am not saying LE and SJ are that type, but in general - Assholes are the ones with less or no unnecessary nicety filters.

<comment><USER14> You're assuming that everyone are assholes, and that nice people just put filters on. Not true. And you should probably go see someone about that. Such a world view doesn't come out of nothing.

Lots of people are really nice without any nicety filters.

<comment><USER15> I think you're wrong, and you should go in therapy because I'm obviously right.

<comment><USER14> I am in therapy, so that's already covered. Any other ways in which you wanted to be funny?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You don't succeed by being a jerk. But if you're a smart entrepreneur, you may succeed despite being one.

</comment><comment><USER17> tl;dr - if you're rich and powerful enough, you can treat people like shit without consequence.

<comment><USER18> Sure, it's not called "fuck you money" for nothing.

<comment><USER19> Funny, I always think of it as money that enables you to tell mean people to fuck off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll agree and disagree. I have lost contracts to people who were willing to flat out lie to customers about their products, but since I moved to the bay area, I've also saved a life and got two people off drugs. That's what power is, you know.

</comment><comment><USER21> "This is an industry in which basically growth has slowed to a crawl. The only way … you as a company can make progress is by acquisitions."

What a load of bullshit. You can, I dunno, build products and services and _compete_.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can't we find even ONE leader who isn't a sociopath?

<comment><USER22> The Dalai Lama?

<comment><USER21> I wasn't thinking of that sort of Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Capitalism is the least bad system we've found of harnessing the efforts of sociopaths like Larry Ellison in a somewhat productive way.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does he strike you as a happy and fulfilled person, like you would want to be like him?

It's like with Jobs. No parent seriously wants their kids to turn out like Steve. They may mean they wish their kids to be as influential or as successful, but no wants to _be_ Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER25> The question is did he succeed in spite or because of this side of his personality.

</comment><comment><USER26> The "A" in Oracle says that. I say selection bias.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Following the ousting of HP CEO Mark Hurd, [Ellison stated], ...HP board > just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board > fired Steve Jobs many years ago

I don't know about Ellison's personal traits, but his thinking is correct here. Hurd was a great CEO - having brought in Palm - which could have been something. Instead, they fired him, hired Leo Apotheker, who completely and utterly mismanaged the company.

Say what you will about Ellison, but his instincts are right on the money.

<comment><USER28> Apotheker was a disaster -- everybody agrees about that -- but Hurd had serious problems too. He was all about cutting costs, with little product vision. He gutted R&D and fed, rather than pruning, the HP bureaucracy.

Meg Whitman is a vast, vast improvement over both of them.

(HP employee here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It doesn't pay.</comment>


Explaining RNNs without neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://explained.ai/rnn/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Vanilla recurrent neural networks (RNNs) form the basis of more sophisticated models, such as LSTMs and GRUs. There are lots of great articles, books, and videos that describe the functionality, mathematics, and behavior of RNNs so, don't worry, this isn't yet another rehash. (See below for a list of resources.) My goal is to present an explanation that avoids the neural network metaphor, stripping it down to its essence—a series of vector transformations that result in embeddings for variable-length input vectors.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for this. As someone who who understands linear algebra well, I feel the neural network formalism obfuscates the core meaning of these processes. It's good for describing composition, but not good for understanding the parts in-between.

Looking forward to your take on LSTMs and transforms ;).

Much thanks!

Great contribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is so easy to get bogged down in the mathematics of RNNs that new learners lose perspective of the dynamics. I love that you have flipped that around.

I favor the approach of understanding the dynamics of machine learning. The mathematics are then easily distilled from the nature of the process.

This is a very clear description of that process. Thank you for it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to be of service. Yeah, I just couldn't see what RNNs were doing through all of the neural net stuff. Much easier to think of it as just gradually transforming a vector. I also can't see linear algebra w/o visualizing different size boxes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really great. I'm so glad that someone took the time to explain what is really going on. Thanks...hopefully you'll do more!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great article, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> hella explanation! Even I can understand</comment>


Parrot Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/tag/parrot-secrets/

<comment><USER2> I'm weary of hearing how market success is demonstrative of genuine value. Parrot Secrets may be a valuable resource -- we don't know -- but a snake oil salesman can also be quite successful, and his success does not validate his product.

This is where Cringely's article falls over. The Parrot Secret's book is comprised entirely of information collated by a 'ghostwriter' from purchased books. Is the information accurate? Are pet owners causing their pet's unnecessary duress or training them poorly due to faulty information? The site claims that the author is a 12 year parrot 'lover' -- as a potential purchaser, you may use this information to determine the likely veracity the information.

Unfortunately for the purchaser, "12 year parrot lover" is a lie.

<comment><USER3> So, by that token, would you consider the latest Microsoft ads scammy (maybe even fraudulent)?

They feature Lauren, apparently a real person, looking for a laptop under $1000. Turns out she is an actress, which would also affect the likely veracity of the ad as well. <http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/165113.asp>

Advertising, by its very definition, is _only_ meant to promote a product. Just turn on your TV, you will see plenty of misleading advertising that's not really illegal.

Would you be OK with Parrot Secrets if the owner paid for a real American girl who owns a parrot to be a spokesperson? I just don't see the reason for the outrage when an Indian guy is the marketer instead of a multibillion dollar conglomerate.

<comment><USER4> _Advertising, by its very definition, is only meant to promote a product. Just turn on your TV, you will see plenty of misleading advertising that's not really illegal._

Ignoring the fact that there are various degrees of misleading, from the mild to the outright fraudulent, are you suggesting that people have no good reason to be disgusted with it because a lot of companies do it?

<comment><USER3> Disgusted is too strong a word, but I think people should be bothered. I know I am.

I was just trying to draw a parallel between false advertising on the internet by individuals, and false advertising we see through mainstream channels every day. I don't think we should give the latter a free pass because it's been around longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previously discussed:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215>

<comment><USER6> It's a different post...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow-up article on a previously discussed item. I posted it, as I found the follow-up interesting, and thought others might also.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this was about Parrot VM when I read the title.

<comment><USER8> Me too, but then I saw Cringely, and I know he doesn't cover that sort of tech.</comment></comment>


Glass and Facial Recognition - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+projectglass/posts/fAe5vo4ZEcE <comment><AUTHOR> "As Google has said for several years, we won't add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place."</comment>


The Rise of Extreme Daycare - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/rise-extreme-daycare-working-24-hour-children-school-93860/ <comment><USER2> The US looks more and more like a third world country. The descriptions of working situations in that article are horrifying.

<comment><USER3> This.

"working poor" is an oxymoron in comparable countries. Like it should be. I'd be laughing at it if it wasn't so bloody tragic. How is this not a top political issue?

<comment><USER4> Well, the people caught in this trap can find it difficult to take time out of their schedule on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, not to mention the many other hoops they may have to jump through in order to be counted politically.

<comment><USER3> This is just the next tragedy. Register in order to get to vote? People (100%) not having ID's? Why not issue ID's to everyone and just be done with it? Passports would be good...

Early voting seems to be possible in most states, and with at least 4 days of voting before the tuesday, most people should be able to do it. How can it not be a requirement for all states to provide early voting?

<comment><USER5> I am not from US, but as someone explained this to me - issuing everyone national IDs like we have in EU would be incredibly hard if not impossible,because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not, so a lot of people in US would perceive such attempt as being a discriminatory one.

<comment><USER6> "because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not"

Only about half the states require citizenship to vote, this can be trivially verified on wikipedia. Its technically illegal at the federal level to vote in a federal election if you're not a citizen but that's only enforced politically "making examples of" and voter intimidation purposes and so forth.

It seems among the young HN participants, or maybe foreign participants, there is culturally almost no understanding of whats federal and whats state level in the USA. I would assume this is an intentional goal of the educational system, to make control of the population simpler. There is also an undercurrent of those who actually understand this simple fact not saying much, because "everyone knows" that you get 50 states into a big pile, anything you say about them can and will be wrong in some minor detail in one state and your entire argument will be viciously attacked because being only 98% right is the same as 0% right.

There is also at least a three step game being played where the first step is "demand ID to vote" rather than the existing "we trust you" system. The second step is state ID is technically free if you have the documentation required. The third step is making the documentation required change annually and sometimes be very expensive, almost impossible to obtain and you can always blame the victim for not having all the right paperwork.

My wife doesn't have a "real id" because it would just cost too much and be too much of a PITA to fix, so when a "real id" level license is required to vote, she'll be disenfranchised from voting. Eventually it will be enough of a PITA for her to obtain the docs she needs and we can certainly afford it, its only $100 or so, but that's a weeks labor for other social classes... very much intentionally.

<comment><USER5> Like I have said in my own comment - I am not from US. For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre. Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre - when people in my country turn 18, they just collect their ID for free at the nearest government office, and that ID can also be used as a passport for travelling inside the EU, negating the need to ever pay for a passport for most people. It certainly does not seem to be difficult, because everyone is registered as a citizen from birth, unless someone becomes a naturalized citizen, so they are also added to the national database. In the States I understand the difficulty is that there is no such database - people can be Americans without having paperwork to necessarily prove it, and so demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory. Am I correct?

And no, as a European I very frequently do not understand what is governed on your federal or state level. In fact, this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education,and I only know of it because I frequent places like HN.

<comment><USER6> "For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre"

Its that taxation without representation thing, still an issue two centuries later, if you pay taxes, even just road taxes via gasoline for your car, you get to vote on who spends the tax money ... More practically we use voting as a propaganda technique to calm the voters... "we don't have an oligarchy or dictatorship, you get to choose between two carefully chosen (by us, not you) candidates, and they do have different PR firms... see? thats real freedom so stop complaining!"

"Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre"

We've historically had problems with J Random Criminal walking up to the counter and asking for someone else's ID and then doing very bad things with it. My own mother supposedly bought a truck in Texas last seen at the border crossing to Mexico, that's only 1000 miles away. Culturally we have a lot of people who work on commission and don't really care about much other than collecting that commission check. We could have .gov bankroll the substantial costs of identity paperwork, but 1) technically you're not supposed to throw away your birth certificate, so the guy who "lost" it should have some skin in the game, so bill them $100 and 2) Obvious voter suppression. At least poor voter suppression. Also aside from cost its a confuseopoly type of situation.. profiting off people being confused. Another thing we're really into culturally.

"demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory"

By a subset of the population with a political axe to grind, yes. Everyone else (maybe 80% of the population?) sees it more as common sense other than it has been used for oppression, stopping people on the street and only demanding papers from certain racial groups.

"this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education"

Join the club, which unfortunately includes most Americans who've lived here their whole life and don't understand which laws are local, state, or federal. If you think our laws are confusing, try the building codes some time (ugh).

This also is comical because there is a cultural meme on HN that "we" all live in SV or Manhattan even though most of us actually do not. Like us two. So someone will comment about electrical codes for 3-phase wiring for the NAS in their basement in Mountain View as if the whole country works the same way, which it certainly doesn't. Or voting, which is regulated by state.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for such thorough explanation.

I will add one more thing to this discussion:

" if you pay taxes, even just road taxes via gasoline for your car, you get to vote on who spends the tax money"

Interesting you say this, because this is one thing that should work like this in EU, but it doesn't. As a EU citizen living in a country that is not the country of my birth, I am in a situation where I pay all the taxes like everybody else, I pay income tax, I contribute to national insurance, pay road tax with my petrol, once I get old I will receive a state pension from this country, the whole deal - I literally don't pay anything in my home country anymore, so from the "tax" point of view, I am no different than any other "citizen" of the country I currently live in. However, I cannot vote in parliamentary elections of this country, because my passport has the wrong country on it, even though for all other purposes it doesn't(and in fact, it by law cannot) make any difference as long as we are inside the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Marisol works 29 hours at each of her jobs. This is common. If an employee works more hours, her employer is required to provide health insurance."

This is just one example of how poorly drafted the Affordable Care Act is. The lobbyists who wrote the bill (remember, the President provided almost no leadership on the detailed provisions of the bill while it was in Congress) ignored the certainty of elasticity of demand for labor by employers. If it becomes more expensive to provide full-time employment, because of a mandate to provide health insurance to full-time employees, then employers will offer fewer full-time jobs and more part-time jobs with few enough hours not to trigger the health insurance mandate. The drafters of the Affordable Care Act forgot Economics 101, or maybe never learned economics at all. "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

<comment><USER7> Or they knew exactly what would happen but went with it anyway so they'd have a bill that would actually get through the Senate. If you assume employer- provided insurance (which is bad but what the U.S. has), what's the alternative? Any part-time number you pick, some employers will schedule people just below it so if someone works even one hour, they get covered? How do you then sort out which of multiple employers actually provides insurance? Short-sighted, penny-pinching employers will always look for a loophole, if they couldn't get out of it by reducing hours, they'd do something like call each worker a "contractor" and not employee.

<comment><USER8> To answer the "How would you you...", you enable the employee to sue if they are artificially given less than full work-hours. It's not a hard thing to prove if there's a nontrivial part time work force. These being the odds, the companies don't try to pull it off too often, even if the court cases would mostly come from ex-workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have so many feelings about this article. I feel so much sadness for the parents who need to use these kind of places, but yet I feel happy that the kids have somewhere to go and that the parent(s) can pay for it.

I still don't like it much. The article's projections just left my head shaking.

Someone needs to tell these programmers/marketers that there's a wee factor called "humanity" that they need to use when creating their algorithms. I wish it was as easy as that. :( Could someone enlighten me around this? I'm not in the US, and I have a hard time even thinking about everything being open 24/7\. (New Zealand is where I reside)

Though, the people who run these wee centres are doing some selfless work. Absolutely amazing, and good on them for doing it. It makes me happy there's still people like that around. (I realise not everyone would be like the daycare in the article but I'd like to think so.)

<comment><USER10> _I 'm not in the US, and I have a hard time even thinking about everything being open 24/7\. (New Zealand is where I reside)_

I'm not surprised! When I worked in NZ for a few months, years ago, I found very few businesses open outside of "business hours". This made e.g. grocery shopping a challenge. A few touristy places were open on Saturday morning.

Please don't take this as a criticism; run your country however you want to run it. It's just that cultural differences go both ways, and the other side looks weird no matter which direction one is looking.

<comment><USER9> We used to have a 24/7 grocery store in Dunedin! ;-) Now it shuts before midnight. You'll find in the major centres like Auckland or Wellington that there'll be more of those open 24/7... but I can't think of anything else.

Mind you, banks that shut at 4.30pm are kind of annoying for many people and I can't blame them (even though my wife is a banker). There's only _one_ small branch open in a city of 140,000 people on a Saturday. No other banks open in the weekends here at least.

That being said, and on topic with the article... it'll be much easier for a single mum to stay at home with her kids and collect money from the govt, rather than to work nightshift at a supermarket most likely. I don't even think we have these extreme daycares in NZ. She may not get more money than someone who stacks shelves, but it's definitely much better than her losing out on her children growing up or the children missing their only parent from their lives.

Many parents like this will normally go back to work once the kids start full- time school, but still receive maybe $100 for accommodation help if they're not making enough. I like this a lot better than them having to be in the same circumstances as the women in the article.

(I know men fall into this too, I just used women as an example as the article primarily did)

<comment><USER10> _I don 't even think we have these extreme daycares in NZ._

They're not the norm in USA either. As TFA implied, this is not just a failure of the state (although it is that), but also of the social structure. The single parents described have no one to whom they can turn. I know a family (parents not married, but together for a _long_ time) that had a hard time over the summer. They camped in a state park for over a month. (The younger son loved it.) The good news is that now both parents are working, incidentally at jobs that allow them to still eschew daycare. (Not that daycare is bad for other families; this is just an indication of this family's views.)

My time in NZ was almost entirely in Wellington, and was over a decade ago, so maybe everything is different now. One challenge for me was living and working downtown without an automobile. When walking absolutely wouldn't work, I found the buses to be less convenient than buses I've ridden elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is a great tragedy that there is the need for such 24h daycare services. - Both for children and parents.

Speaking about parents: I really wonder how they got to this point. Clearly creating two children while in need of two low paid jobs seems like the opposite of a risk averse strategy.

<comment><USER12> I used to feel this way before I had kids, I'm now of the opposite mind.

Having kids is a fairly fundamental part of being a human being (imho, ymmv), just below keeping yourself alive.

If everyone had to wait until they could afford kids before having them, many people would be too old to reproduce by the time they could (if ever).

This is a function of the wealth inequalities in our society, not the fault of those parents specifically. While it's easy to blame some of them, we get need get societies house in order first.

<comment><USER13> Individuals not having a support-structure in place to help them take care of kids (i.e. family) is both a symptom and a cause of individuals having children that they can not take care of. If they struggle to take care of their children, then they'll probably struggle to help their children take care of their own children.

I'd posit that this is endemic to our "credit/loan" society, where everyone feels the need to have things that they can't (yet) afford. If they just hold off on their self-indulgence for one generation (or x-amount of years) until they can afford to have that item, then they will improve the lifestyle of their following generations by an unmeasurable amount.

<comment><USER12> For most people who struggle to afford their kids, its not other indulgences that cause it. There is a whole section of society who work hard but can't get by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you have a bunch of single people raising kids on their own, something like this is bound to happen.

"Diana and Ivette's mother, Marisol, for instance, is raising the girls on her own, working at a supermarket from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and at Home Depot from 6 to 10 p.m., six days a week. "

"This clock has highlighted weakness in our social networks. In 2013, 28 percent of children were living with a single parent; 77 percent of those single parents are mothers."

Sounds like at some point, people are going to have to make a specific choice between raising kids on their own (potentially) or not having them at all; and vote for Governments that favor the policy they prefer.

<comment> guard-of-terra How can we as a society survive if most people decide to not have kids at all?

<comment><USER14> Adoption? Immigration?

The US is supposed to be a nation of immigrants, after all.

<comment> guard-of-terra If you rely on immigration from 3rd world countries to replenish population, you'll become a 3rd world country.

Do you really want that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The United States has always relied on immigration from worse-off countries to grow strong as a country. The immigrants come here and become Americans. Only a minority of today's Americans are descended from immigrants from Britain (indeed, only a minority of my own ancestors were from Britain), but almost everyone here is English-speaking and American in cultural outlook. This is how immigration works: people become acculturated to the new country, even with very high rates of immigration.

<comment> guard-of-terra I would speculate that it won't work anymore. When economy is bad and only unsustainable wages are available for work, immigrants will stop assimilating and start to create 3rd world within 1st world. I think it already happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Notice the 29 hour-a-week job? Healthcare, anyone?

<comment><USER16> Terrible. People working 2 part time jobs at 54+ hours a week and still no health care benefits, while corporate profits and executive pay continue to increase.

I think this 29 hour per week loophole was supposed to be fixed in the ACA but it was one of the things that got left on the negotiating table.

<comment><USER17> what negotiating table? The dems didn't need (or get) any republican support. The whole thing was done behind closed doors "we need to pass it so you can see what is in it". All from the "most transparent" administration in history.

<comment><USER18> They needed every single Democratic vote to pass it in the Senate. Many concessions were made to get some of the more conservative Democratic senators on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something about psmag.com makes firefox very sad.</comment>


You're Distracted. This Professor Can Help - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Youre-Distracted-This/138079/

<comment><USER2> Alright, I managed to read it. I guess that makes me a hero in this thread.

The professor uses mediation to hone focus, then hyperfocusing on a task. It sounds a lot like a fancy description of the Pomodoro technique, except that the argument is that meditation can extend the amount of time we can give to a task. The other central argument is that we can't actually multitask, and it does more damage to try. The point of not being able to read a whole book seems like bunk to me, though, since I read for recreation, and it takes the amount of time it takes. I can't sit and read a whole book, just like I can't sit and watch a whole season of a television show.

I don't buy in to Pomodoro since I think it hurts to force a time limit in either direction, but I do believe that hyperfocus helps get tasks done. I notice this most of all when coding. I will fall in to a deep zone and just go. Eventually, something will bring me out of it (either hitting a wall, or finishing a block of functionality, etc), and that's it for a while. I will toggle out to Facebook or something and recover. Eventually, I'll go back. This cycle has been successful enough for me, just not forced to 25 minute blocks.

The one big point I did agree with is that, in a way, I have become a slave to my phone. I react when it dings, without much respect for what I'm doing. Just last week I disabled notifications for my work email, and have been much happier. I still see the badge count, but that's under my control to check, and I just don't. Same for desktop notifications - they're off. As important as I like to think I am, my email can wait, and I'm starting to think the same way about social notifications, although they are still more sparse and don't really hurt my focus.

<comment><USER3> I found meditation really did help me a _lot_ in graduate school. And I'm talking only 5 to 10 minutes a day.

It shouldn't be so surprising that an ability to concentrate is a skill that can be improved, and that the best way to improve a skill is to directly practice it!

> The point of not being able to read a whole book seems like bunk to me, > though, since I read for recreation, and it takes the amount of time it > takes. I can't sit and read a whole book, just like I can't sit and watch a > whole season of a television show.

I don't that's what the article refers to -- it's finishing the book at all, not just in one sitting.

<comment><USER4> > It shouldn't be so surprising that an ability to concentrate is a skill that > can be improved, and that the best way to improve a skill is to directly > practice it!

This is an important point that I feel many students do not understand. In my experience most people view focusing as a natural ability that you either have or you don't. I agree that one can be predisposed to getting distracted, but as with many predispositions, it can be overcome with some effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is really long for a subject that might interest people who have difficulty focusing for long periods of time.

<comment><USER6> For this exact reason I closed all the other tabs, closed my phone and made my browser fullscreen. It went well, but about halfway I kept grabbing my phone just to force myself to put it away.

I think I need help. :/

<comment><USER7> Acknowledging it is a first step. Also, this is another layer of distraction removal:

<http://readable.tastefulwords.com/>

<comment><USER8> Removing the clutter is a good solution. I've been doing that for a while to make it easier to read, but I didn't think about it having the side effect of eliminating distractions.

I use viewtext (similar results to the parent's solution, but less customizations).

<http://viewtext.org>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I read it just to prove myself I don't suffer from distractitis. Alas, while reading I:

* had an urge to check facebook

* had an urge to check e-mail

* had an urge to check linkedin

* though "man, this is too long, maybe I should read it later"

It's scary how I don't even notice these urges and just act on them when doing other, more important tasks.

<comment><USER10> I find it's a lot easier to get through longer articles if I print them and don't try to read them on-screen. Something about reading from a physical piece of paper really makes it easier to focus. You can't ALT-TAB to another application. No alert popups from your chat client. You can underline, make notes in the margin, etc. which also helps.

<comment><USER11> Just curious, I just can't understand how underlining in different colors and taking notes in the margin helps anything. I recall trying to take notes in university classes, but I just stopped, since taking notes at the same time as listening to a lecture makes it difficult to follow the lecture (that you're there for in the first place). In the end, I didn't take notes for 4.5 of the 5 years I was in school, and had good grades. But maybe it just worked for me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm currently at uni, studying computer science. I can very much relate to the problem of being unable to read a book to completion, however I fundamentally disagree with the reasons given in the article. In my experience, it's not a problem of attention, but simply that I don't have the time to read. I love reading, and wish I had more time to read; pre-uni I read, or programmed in my spare time, but now I'm at uni I find that how my time is distributed has fundamentally changed. today, my time is split between the masses of coursework I have, societies (computing, music and sport), and sleeping. I personally think that it would be far more powerful to study a group of young people who have far more time and fewer commitments. I sometimes feel that my generation has some of the highest commitments and workloads ever which is, admittedly, compounded by different forms of media, and this is really what is damaging the skill of long form reading.

just my 2c

<comment><USER6> If it is honestly true that you simply _don't have enough time_ because there are too many tasks with higher priority no including just leisuring time on Facebook or HN, then to me it sounds like you are a person with outright great time management abilities. For me, I spend 90 % of my free time doing completely useless stuff like browsing HN many times a day, hanging out in IRC, chatting on Skype etc. and it feels that I can't get things done which I should, and even would want to. This includes reading some books which interest me, programming and general tinkering with things which _once_ used to be the most interesting thing for me.

My point being, for someone who can manage their time almost perfectly, perhaps reading a book is just about managing the time, but for us who can't... It's not so simple. :(

<comment><USER12> I will admit, I don't manage my time tremendously; I get up late, I go to bed late. However, the time in between is spent doing the things I mentioned before, not on idly flicking between youtube, facebook etc.

I'm not sure - I may suffer from the same problem the article is describing, but I definitely feel that reducing (or changing) the workload (at least the mental workload) would allow me to manage my time better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I almost made it half way through the article before I went to go check the comments about it on Hacker News!

<comment><USER14> We need a hero. Will someone please read the whole thing?

<comment><USER15> I did. It is a good read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found the pomodoro methods helps with this. As the top comment mentions, this may be a crutch, but for me it's a useful crutch.

I've found one other tool helps. Some tasks don't require internet. For those, I unplug my router for the 25 minutes the task requires.

The added barrier of physically restarting the internet removes the temptation to check email etc. and means I expend less willpower while doing the task.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am in this thread instead of working.

D:

</comment><comment><USER18> Sorry, a distraction: is anyone else reminded of the copper bowl in Anathem?</comment>


Show HN: BoatFace, an Alexa skill to tell you what that boat is - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0725C6QCP <comment><USER2> So as a less-than-avid boater myself, I gotta ask – how serious is this skill? I could see the value to SAR crews, but that would require a lot more functionality than I think Alexa provides at the moment.</comment>


What Grant Achatz saw at El Bulli - <AUTHOR> http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/what-grant-achatz-saw-at-el-bulli/

<comment><USER2> Proteges of Adria are everywhere. My folks live in Washington, DC; I hope to visit Andres' Minibar someday.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am interested to see how Adria (chefs in general) don't feel a need to "protect" their techniques but are instead inviting in others to learn and reuse their discoveries.

Sounds like "open source" to me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > All of this high-tech kitchen tinkering feeds another of Dr. Myhrvold's > projects: a cookbook.

The book, still untitled, intends to be the authoritative reference for chefs wishing to employ so-called molecular gastronomy — adapting food industry technologies to restaurant cooking.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17prof.html?pagewa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17prof.html?pagewanted=all)</comment>


Developing Android Apps Right on Your Chromebook - <AUTHOR> https://chromeunboxed.com/develop-android-apps-chromebook/ <comment><USER2> Great guide for devs considering development on Chrome OS!</comment>