GPS Trackers in Fake Elephant Tusks Reveal Ivory Smuggling Route - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/08/12/431908397/gps-trackers-in-fake-elephant-tusks-reveal-ivory-smuggling-route

<comment><USER2> If you live in Washington state and would like to do something about preventing further poaching, please vote Yes on Initiative-1401 which will be on the state ballot in this fall [0].

Furthermore, anyone can donate for example to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[1][2] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[3], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[4][5] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular orphan and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored orphan is doing. I've been giving these out as gifts with good successes. You can for example sponsor this little fella [6].

[0] [http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org/](http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org/)

[1] [http://www.iapf.org/](http://www.iapf.org/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti- Poaching_Fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti- Poaching_Foundation)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander)

[4] [http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org](http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org)

[5] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust)

[6] [https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.as...](https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp?N=337)

<comment><USER3> I can't vote for I-1401 and it's not because I am in favor of the trafficking of endangered animal parts. The initiative is fatally flawed, in my opinion, because it creates _yet another_ crime that is punishable with time in jail but has no elements of intent or willfulness. Just like the absurdity of finding a bald eagle feather on the ground and, not knowing what it is, taking it home and using it in a mural that is later "sold or distributed" then being convicted of trafficking in part of an endangered species, I-1401 continues and broadens that trend.

If only the new section 3, paragraph 1 had read: "...for a person, _who knew or reasonably should have known that the animal source is a covered animal species_ , to sell, offer to sell..."

Until then, I'm not willing to give license to criminalize any more accidental or unknowing behavior, _especially_ not with jail time and a mandatory minimum penalty of TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS, which is four-freaking-times the total market value needed to be convicted of "unlawful trafficking in the second degree." (Section 3, paragraph (4)(a).)

<comment><USER4> Also in terms of ivory it won't achieve much if the bulk of the demand is from China and similar places. Though I guess it might set an example for Asian countries to pass similar laws.

<comment><USER2> The US is the second largest consumer of ivory in the world. Illegal ivory comes to the US through China so by banning it in the US, you are actually reducing demand in China as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out the National Geographic article with much more detail: [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking- ivory/article.htm...](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking- ivory/article.html)

There's an interactive map too: [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking- ivory/map.html](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tracking-ivory/map.html)

<comment><USER6> Wow this is a much better version of the story. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a way of reaching future generations of Chinese effectively? A lot of Chinese antiques are, to my eye, quite gauche. Are they still status symbols for the new, rising middle class?

I believe Yao Ming has done some work raising awareness around the ivory trade. Any other revered Chinese celebrities?

<comment><USER8> Yao has been great for conservation - I think that's his project now - attempting to change cultural values via the power of his celebrity. Considering how big China is, any progress Yao makes will have global impact. We got to support him!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A GPS tracker becomes useless if it can't see any satellites; having worked with GPS before and seeing how effective even a thin layer of metal can attenuate the signal significantly, I'm curious as to how they were able to make this work. It seems highly unlikely that someone smuggling a tusk would leave it in clear view of the sky.

<comment><USER10> The full story details some of the tech. It was pretty well thought out. IIRC, the device communicated periodically via sat phone and would cache geodata so that if the sat phone ping failed, it could transmit previous location.

<comment><USER11> Iridium device locations can also be requested from the network based on what satellite/beam communicated through which is "accurate to within 10Km 80% of the time"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an ethical issue with flooding the market with replica ivory? It would at least raise transaction costs and risks for poachers and their supply chains.

<comment><USER13> > Is there an ethical issue with flooding the market with replica ivory?

It might lead to people being killed for knowingly or unknowingly passing off fake ivory as the real thing.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't sound like these people matter anyway. It's like saying "might lead to druglords being killed".

<comment><USER15> The drug war should already have taught us that it's counterproductive to view offenders as generic nuisances rather than people to be negotiated with.

The ivory trade, like the drug trade, is entrenched. There are a lot of people involved. There's a large, complex, long-standing, and covert structure to deal with. As law enforcement has so clearly demonstrated, you can't solve behavioral problems at scale with contempt and violence.

The really thorny problems in the world won't be beaten into submission. To negotiate our way out of this problem, it's necessary to see the offenders as real, valuable human beings.

<comment><USER16> Is the life of an African smuggler or Chinese merchant really more valuable than the life of an elephant? 500,000 elephants, 1 Billion Africans, 1.5 Billion Chinese. It is clear who we should be saving.

<comment><USER17> You really should stop thinking of people who do a bad thing as abstract, one- dimensional monsters. Poachers and smugglers aren't smirking Captain Planet villains; many of them are thugs, but many of them are men with wives, children, elderly parents, trying to make ends meet in a desperately poor part of the world.

What they're doing is harmful and needs to be stopped; sometimes violence may sadly be necessary to protect elephant and human lives. That doesn't mean that the life of a mere courier is worthless and can be thoughtlessly discarded.

<comment><USER16> I never meant to say that the life of a courier is worthless. I do apologize if it came across that way. I just meant to say that the life of an elephant is worth more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I read the article, I'm currently unable to listen to either the npr or nat geo articles.

Could anybody elaborate on how they pass off the fake tusks to the smugglers? Do they, for lack of a better word, install the tusks on the elephants and wait for the elephants to be poached or do they sell the tusks to the smugglers so the smugglers can flip the tusks?

<comment><USER19> My first guess would be flipping a caught smuggler, or an undercover agent at some level. I imagine they have to use a real tusk, though I couldn't listen to it right now either.

<comment><USER20> I listened to the interview on the radio; it was two fake tusks he had carefully made, good enough to get him arrested at the airport there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note the transcript of the interview: [http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=431908397)</comment>


Cuban Embassy Attacks and the Microwave Auditory Effect - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2017/09/25/cuban-embassy-attacks-and-the-microwave-auditory-effect/ <comment><USER2> Part of me is now wondering if this was even nefarious as I'm picturing over zealous Cuban pest control specialists, without strong regulation or laws, simply using termite microwaves with people around.

[http://pests.guru/termites/control/treatment/methods/microwa...](http://pests.guru/termites/control/treatment/methods/microwave.html)

<comment> xkcd-sucks Wow! Today I learned something truly fun and interesting.

What countries is this popular in?

<comment><USER2> I think they've mostly been developed and sold in the US but given the creativity of the Cuban people when it comes to reuse, it's not hard to imagine a few have converted old microwaves. It's also not hard to imagine that higher-end accommodations, in order to control termites with the least amount of 'impact' to customers in terms of smell or possibly even as a result of lack of access to pesticides are using exterminators who use termite microwaves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The health effects described are also similar to what you can get with a severe black mold infestation. Although if they've already taken apart the walls looking for electronic devices then presumably they would have noticed that.

(Specifically I'm taking about things like immediate and unexplained brain damage, bleeding, hearing and vision loss, confusion, pain, lethargy, etc.)

<comment><USER4> You would be surprised how the obvious can be overlooked if you have a conspiracy theory to prove.

<comment><USER5> But the attackers could have _planted the mold as a diversion_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One would assume by now that the State Department's protection people have already taken measurements of both ultrasonics and RF. It can't be hard to detect. Why so much speculation after a month?

<comment><USER7> It may not be happening any more.

<comment><USER8> I'm fairly sure that whatever they did was an accidental side effect of the surveillance they were doing and they stopped when they realized they were hurting people.

<comment><USER9> Even if that is true the media will want to demonize them to rile people up, and then politicians can further use Cuba as debate point for distraction for more serious issues going on domestically.

<comment><USER9> I suppose I needed to say "some media" will demonize them to avoid the downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to delve further into the "conspiracy" side of this, google "voice to skull" \- there's some interesting stuff out there...

<comment><USER11> I think it's good if people read about the supposed "voice to skull" phenomenon. But in my experience, someone who says they are experiencing voice to skull (a.k.a. "V2K") are actually experiencing schizophrenia, the disease that convinces the patient that they don't have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My personal belief on this is that there is no upside for the Cubans to be involved in this. I believe there was something but I would look at the Russians or the North Koreans for this. They benefit from allowing the Trump administration to have an outlet for theirs need to dismantle our Cuban engagement.

You want democracy in Cuba, given them Starbucks and Amazon. Our policy has been a complete failure.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree that it sounds like Microwaves from the brief descriptions I hear. I mentioned that two week ago on this forum: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256524)

<comment><USER14> Interesting. If you don't mind a conspiracy subreddit there was a post about it:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6y2417/directed...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6y2417/directed_energy_weapons_reminder_they_still_dont/)

<comment><USER15> In a universe of unreliable subreddits, that's a strong leader.

I'd look elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> I checked the reliable links, not every "conspiracy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Even Julian Assange has weighed in, stating "The diversity of symptoms > suggests that this is a pathogen combined with paranoia in an isolated > diplomatic corps."

No, it's just plain and simple paranoia.

A common disease they all caught is a bit convoluted, perhaps if it was cold season I might believe a few general illness might have amplified the paranoia.

<comment><USER17> Never take Julian serious. They are not even a wiki.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I found a way to find thousands of emails/pwds. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

While doing a bit of research for a blog article, I created a way to find thousands of new valid emails / passwords every day. The method I used and the scripts I wrote are actually very basic and common sense, and mostly rely on the fact that there is an easy way to find passwords that are poorly chosen. Now I am a bit torn about what to do. In a sense I would like to warn people (even though those warnings have already been said thousands of times) about this whole thing. But on another hand, putting out that information to the public would only be detrimental to all those people whose credentials would all of a sudden be out in the open for everyone to abuse. There is also the legal issue and I am in no way trying to get close to doing something stupid. Also this is not a case where I can issue a responsible disclosure as the information is found through 1/ weak passwords by random people, 2/ weak encryption by random organizations. Should I just let the whole thing go and concentrate on something else? Please advise. Thanks. <comment><USER2> First of all: congrats for finding it and kudos for asking for advice on how to deal with the issue.

If your doubtful about what way of disclosure would be the most prudent (and you sure don't want the disclosure to backfire on yourself) get in touch with someone who's bigger and has lawyers backing you up (like the EFF but that's just the first idea that popped into my mind, any tech news site might even pay you for exclusive coverage)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks i'll see what I can find in the morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great start-up idea, no? Your service shoots some kind of notifications (read, emails) to the owners of the accounts with poor passwords. When you are sure your emails are read, you start appending ads to your notifications :)

<comment><AUTHOR> well i did think about automating email notifications to warn users (but nothing ad-related though :). i'm not sure i wouldn't end up in the spam folder every time though!

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of users is and always will be clueless. Back in the days of dialup, with some ISPs it wasn't uncommon for those machines to be directly connected to the internet (rather than through a NATting router). It was AMAZING the stuff you could find by looking for (example) \users, or \documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where are you mining these passwords from? Private intranets? Cloud services?

<comment><AUTHOR> New indexed files by google every day.

<comment><USER4> I think you gave the game away right there. From an ethical point of view, if you can index these files, you can also automate contacting the site owners. Yes, users should use better passwords, but there is also an onus on system admins to at least TRY and keep information secure.

<comment><USER4> You might have to be somewhat selective though. Don't tell them that you can or have mined the passwords (some of them might decide that you 'hacked' them). Maybe point out that potentially sensitive files are popping up on google, and try and look as dumb as possible. Don't let on that you're automating this in any way. Having said that, I'm sure that there will be a number of admins and users that will be extremely grateful for this!

I've sent similar emails in the past, and where you don't always get a reply spouting thanks (or a reply at all), you will likely notice the file not being available anymore.

<comment><USER4> It depends on how much effort you want to go through. You could do a whois on the IP/domain, and contact the registered owner (if the information is available).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google bans family cafe for offensive content for posting photo of British dish - <AUTHOR> https://reclaimthenet.org/google-bans-fannys-cafe-faggots-peas/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty understandable that they'd get flagged for the word as a result of oversimplified heuristics. However, it should also be expected that there'd be an appeals process for (inevitable) mistakes like this. But of course Google declines to put any effort into that sort of thing, so here we are.

<comment><USER3> From the article it doesn't look like an appeal was even attempted, though. In fact, it doesn't even look like the journalist herself tried to get a statement from Google before publishing. Also, it's worth pointing out that the headline is wrong. The cafe wasn't "banned", Google rejected an ad purchase.

I think it's very reasonable to ding Google on bad customer service where they won't provide it. But you still need to ask for that service first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The irony of banning a UK ad because a word is offensive in the US, while letting other ads for the same place which name includes a word offensive in the UK (but not the US), is delicious.

The internet is American, apparently.

<comment><USER5> > includes a word offensive in the UK

In the UK, 'fanny' is pretty much the least offensive term for female genitals available, other than vagina, however vagina is considered a bit clinical. A friend of mine uses the term 'foo-foo' instead, which I find hysterically funny.

<comment><USER6> >A friend of mine uses the term 'foo-foo' instead, which I find hysterically funny.

Are they French by any chance? The French have the word foufoune. (pronounced foo-foon)

<comment><USER5> I didn't know that, thanks. That is probably where she has got it from. She's English, however her partner is French but grew up in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's pretty clear who will win this one. Google. Even though the word isn't a pejorative in England, it will disappear because online it's status in the US is what matters.

<comment><USER8> Faggot is still a pejorative in the UK, it's just _also_ a food.

<comment><USER9> And also (by way of `fascis`), a bundle of wood.

Quoting etymonline.com here,

 _The explanation that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an etymological urban legend. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (on the suggestion of the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, where parliament had made homosexuality a capital offense in 1533, hanging was the method prescribed. Use of faggot in connection with public executions had long been obscure English historical trivia by the time the word began to be used for "male homosexual" in 20th century American slang, whereas the contemptuous slang word for "woman" (in common with the other possible sources or influences listed here) was in active use early 20c., by D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, among others._

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/faggot#etymonline_v_1077](https://www.etymonline.com/word/faggot#etymonline_v_1077)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For Americans....

In this case Faggots are basically big meatballs made from the cheaper cuts of meat as well as some liver. I guess think meatloaf, but in ball form. Same sort economic niche, not a poverty food but something for people on a budget.

Usually served with peas and thick, brown onion gravy. Can be a pretty good, hearty meal. It's years since I've had it though, as it's not really from my region.

<comment><USER11> For some reason the HN software killed your other comment in this thread. This one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20920071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20920071)

I vouched for it, but I have no idea if my vouches count for anything.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty ironic :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Google algorithms could use some improvement... Searching for "faggots and peas" in Google correctly identifies the dish. Even the urban dictionary (linked by Google) describes the dish first. Looks like they went with a simple word list rather than use their own engine.

Or maybe Google finds the dish itself offensive, a recurring theme with British cuisine :)

</comment><comment> Digit-Al This seems odd to me. With products such as Translate Google is investing a lot of time and money into understanding context in language. (I imagine it's helpful for search as well.) It seems inconceivable that their "context engine" could misunderstand "faggots and peas" considering a Google search for that gives many valid results, and it seems unlikely that they wouldn't apply such context understanding across their product line.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting it's not true, I'm just puzzled as to how it could happen.

<comment><USER12> Even in a 200 person company there are often product inconsistencies. Think about how you'd build this thing in a minimal way. You wouldn't "integrate with the context-aware Translate or Search API", you'd "just build a blacklist and improve it if necessary". It's not at all unbelievable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the scunthorpe problem will never die.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting spotted dick.

<comment> Digit-Al Ditto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am reminded of the conference NIPS being forced to re-brand because the word "nips" is offensive apparently. It's not been used as a racial pejorative since the 1940s. A nip is a synonym for a wee dram, over here, if it means anything at all. Or an abbreviation of catnip perhaps.

<comment><USER9> and IIRC the hubbub was over "nip -> nipple" anyway.

<comment><USER14> Scraping the very bottom of the outrage barrel. Oops I said bottom!

It worked though, the NIPS organisers rolled over straight away. Just what you want in people who might need to make an ethical stand over abuse of their work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I read the headline, my first guess was that this was about Spotted Dick.

<comment><USER16> I bet Nigella Lawson has the similar problem on her cookery sites :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure I've ever seen a site that was more transparently a propaganda operation than reclaimthenet.org

</comment><comment><USER18> I would be infuriated if something like this happened to my business. Is this real? It looks like a joke.

<comment><USER19> See also (2013)

[https://metro.co.uk/2013/11/06/faggots-firm-fights-for- its-f...](https://metro.co.uk/2013/11/06/faggots-firm-fights-for-its-food-on- facebook-4176812/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reads like the kind of anti-European 'outrage' the Daily Mail has been spouting for the last 30 years or so. I suppose they have to find a new target now. Google is the new EU?

</comment><comment><USER21> In 2019, I have to wonder if in fact someone knew exactly what they were doing, and engineering this controversy.

OK, but probably not. (Is "faggot" not actually a pejorative for gay in the UK?) But the question should at least be entertained.

<comment><USER22> I think your original intuition might be right.

I've been to Fanny's and ordered this dish. It was nothing special, and definitely not ad worthy, unless some marketing company is literally making ads out of every single thing on the menu.

Edit: Apparently my pallet is wrong. The Faggots received several positive mentions on the Trip Adviser Page, so it may make sense to promote that as a featured item.

[https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g186463-d33610...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g186463-d3361001-Reviews- Fanny_s_Rest_Stop-Newport_South_Wales_Wales.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd be curious to know if this was found by a algorithm or a person.

<comment> mark-r Since we're talking about Google, it's 99.999% likely to be an algorithm.</comment></comment>


How to do a social media check up for your site - <AUTHOR> http://yurylifshits.com/how-to-do-a-social-media-check-up-for-your-si

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a 'leftover' from The Like Log Study (HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300300>)</comment>


Why Corporations Could Get Higher Returns Than VCs - <AUTHOR> http://rwrld.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-do-you-have-to-lose-why.html <comment><USER2> "These differences in how we value risk help to explain why the derivatives and junk bond and future markets are worth trillions. Smart investors will buy risk from people at a discount. Now that would just be interesting if it were not for something really fascinating that it suggest about how corporations could use behavioral psychology and the popularization of entrepreneurship to earn returns that venture capitalists would envy.

The prime candidates for entrepreneurial ventures are actually people in their 30s and 40s. Their startups are less likely to fail and reasonably so. They have more experience than people in their 20s and more drive than people in their 50s. They learned about processes and products and people. But they have one major disadvantage in comparison to the twenty-something crowd: they have so much to lose."

An insightful piece into Daniel Kahneman's life work. I've always had a fascination with his books and what he writes about socio-economics and the paradoxes we see in the shops all around us. If anyone is ever interested in how money is really made, I'd highly recommend reading his books.

Why else would his books be on the reading lists of so many intern / grad banking jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> >He had to pay, on average, $7 and some change to buy the mugs back from people. By contrast, he had to sell the mug for about $3 and change to get them to buy when they did not already own it. Kahneman's conclusion was that people put a higher price on loss than they do gain.

That's a weird conclusion. Let's say I value the mug at $5. Obviously I'm not going to sell it for $5, because the transaction itself is an effort, so I would lose! The opposite for buying, obviously I'm not going to buy a mug for $5 if I think it's worth exactly $5.

The price a rational person is willing to accept for a thing he owns must always be higher than what he values it at.

In a general case, probability of gain is obviously worth less than the same probability of loss, because you need bigger relative return to make up for the loss.

<comment><USER4> It's rare that I find fault with Kahneman but here - yes - also:

if someone is seeking to sell a mug to me, my perception of its value just went down.

if someone is willing to buy a mug from me, my perception of its value just went up. I might have been intending to throw the mug out before I knew that someone would buy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a big problem with these artificial "behavioural economics" studies (and it's a known issue that lab based decisions differ from real life).

But claiming that people have bad risk management (scenario : do you want the blue pill (risk of death 1/1000 or the red pill (2/1000). People pay upto 200 extra for blue pill. Or will you take part in testing the red pill for FDA (people refuse 50k to take part)

Here you are not comparing loss aversion to a 1/1000 chance - you are comparing "safe and tested pills" versus joining a human drug trial. Even non statisticians can tell we don't know that's a 1/1000 chance

So I do worry about basing predictions about VCs on poorly understood loss aversion from reports of studies that leave much to be desired.

<comment><USER6> I wish they would have picked a less dramatic consequence. Death as a consequence forces me to mitigate risk to the highest degree I know how to, which I think would skew the results, if folks are anything like me.

Death is just so final, and such a significantly different force in the lives of humans, that it can't really be compared to anything else.

<comment><USER7> The point is that people are told that the risk of death is the same in both cases, and either way, they're deciding between the same chance of loss of life, or certain loss of money, but they respond differently depending on how it is phrased - whether they would be losing or gaining the money in exchange for taking (or not taking) the risk.

What I see as the inequivalence is that in the first case, they're gaining a cure either way (if it doesn't kill them). (Although it doesn't say what would be cured - I wonder whether most people assumed a terminal illness vs. some minor ailment?) But in the second scenario, they're not gaining anything but the money. So it becomes a 99.9% chance of curing something that you want to cure (possibly terminal) vs a 0.1% chance of dying for nothing but money when you weren't even sick.

I wonder if death isn't the biggest skew though. When pharmaceuticals are mentioned, I think of weight loss, impotence, and cosmetics industries. It would be interesting to see the outcome of replicating the experiment for each of those compared to actual industry profits of each. If a group of people pay more to try to be attractive than they do to delay death, would their experimental responses to risk match the observed facts of their actual behavior? Are most people acting irrationally (in the Economics sense)? And if so, what would that tell us about the risk studies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Normal statistics don't really apply when losing puts you out of the game permanently (like dying) or any other one-time risk. By definition statistics are about expected or average results. A company, VC, or casino can take a lot of risks and get close to the average results - an individual can't.

<comment><USER9> Exactly! The concept of "expected value" is pretty meaningless when it comes to one-time events. For example, when insuring a 1 billion $ item with a loss probability of 1 in 1,000,000 at a premium of 10,000 $, the expected value of the profit is 9,000 $ – which is useless if the insurance case occurs and the insurer is bankrupt afterwards.

Similarly in life: For some events in life, there's just no time to recover afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> But all the money in a be portfolio is made in the extreme cases. I don't think selecting risk averse entrepreneurs gets one there.

</comment><comment><USER11> >"Countless employees who could be great entrepreneurs shy away from the prospect because they have something to lose. What a corporation would have to offer as a percentage of returns would be less – perhaps considerably less – than what a venture capitalist or traditional banker would have to offer."

That's why companies like Google do 10% time right? And didn't someone recently say Valve kinda does 100% time, everyone has the freedom to work on the project they find interesting.

<comment><USER12> Google pretty much ended 20% time. It requires management approval now and management is pushed hard re team productivity.

<comment><USER13> It requires management approval in that it has to be something that Google could use - needs not bear any relation to your team or product.

If a manager prevents you from doing a 20% project, we're instructed to get in touch with... someone, I forget who but there is a route of escalation.

<comment><USER14> If the manager is hurt when you take 20% time (and they will be if they are competing on productivity metrics that don't take it into account) I am sure they can find a way to retaliate (err, "communicate their priorities") that can't be provably identified in the escalation process. Besides, they wouldn't even have to be dishonest to say that you were underperforming on your primary project.

"Google gets rid of 20% time" makes a good headline. "Google revises peer evaluation incentive structure to effectively penalize employees for actually using their 20% time" doesn't, but 20% time is just as dead either way.

<comment><USER15> You don't work there? I just want to be sure I am reading it correctly.

It must be strange to work at Google. To have people who have never worked there argue and disagree with your experience.

<comment><USER16> I worked there. He got it right.

Some managers are supportive and want their reports to succeed and will encourage them to direct their own work. Some are not. Google's great if you get a good manager. It sucks if you don't. Not much of a different story than in other companies.

"20% time" means that if you do a skunk-works project and it succeeds (which is hard to do-- because Google places high demands in terms of reliability and internationalization before it allows a launch, and for good reasons-- if you're _only_ giving it 8 hours per week, so most people whose projects succeed will "cheat" a little bit) that you don't have to apologize and won't get fired for the mere fact of having a side project. That's important, but the idea that average Googlers get 1/5 of their working time to devote to anything that helps the company is a myth.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, sounds like every other large corp with deep pockets ever now in that regard. I've had this experience at large-ish tech companies and have actually ended moving cities to take a new position to work for a manager, and ended up moving on(from the company) after that same manager was re-assigned later on. Working with a great manager can be an awesome, motivational experience. It can really accelerate your career growth too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nearly always, a successful corporation has some expertise in some market. Then, the corporation can, and sometimes does, use that expertise to conceive of projects, evaluate them, and execute them. And the corporation can get the financial rewards from a successful project.

However, in US information technology, from all I've been able to see from looking at the biographies of hundreds of US VCs, only a few in the whole country have much expertise in anything technical, in any market in business, or anything beyond general management, marketing, legal, or finance.

So such VCs are not in a position to evaluate projects except in terms of 'traction' or accounting results or just a little of team or founder personality.

To be more clear, large and crucial parts of US _culture_ are really good at evaluating projects just on paper; such parts include Ph.D. committees, editorial staffs of leading peer-reviewed journals of original research in STEM fields, the NSF, NIH, and DARPA, and many corporations with their expertise in their markets -- GM can evaluate essentially anything having to do with cars and trucks; Exxon for oil; Boeing for airplanes; GE for airplane engines; Intel for microelectronics; etc.

So, net, in information technology, generally corporations have much more expertise to evaluate projects than do VCs.

For a more general reason, in recent years, on average the return on investment (RoI) of US VCs has been poor, and evidence is in, say:

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html#disqus_thread)

[http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional- limit...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limited- partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-longterm-returns-from-venture-capital- says-new-kauffman-report)

We have to suspect that, on pursuing new projects, generally corporations do better than the record of VCs.

</comment><comment><USER19> Corporations already get higher returns than VCs

[http://avc.com/2013/02/venture-capital- returns/](http://avc.com/2013/02/venture-capital-returns/)

<comment><USER20> Well, corporations are launching new products all the time. Each new product can be thought of as a VC investment in a new startup.

However, the VC investors have to share the winnings with the founders, while the large corporations get to keep basically all of it. Oh, sure, the corporation might pay out bonuses and promotions, but this is a small fraction compared to what startup founders get to keep.

Thus, VC investors start out with a built-in disadvantage that they have to overcome: call it "founder drag." It's sort of like the race between active funds and index funds. The actively-managed funds have to overcome their higher expense ratio just to get back to even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One quick point: No matter how different the sizes of different organizations are, they come with different DNAs more or less. Normally, one organization has very limited tolerance towards other DNAs. This alone will kill the new comers. Or the container will fall apart.

Resources are basically not a big issue for big players. It's their DNA and abilities derived that set what they are not able to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER22> The reason I would offer less for the pill that cures my ailment and has no chance of killing me is because I also have the option to live with my ailment. Anyway, I think agree with the article I just this analogy to valuing loss greater than gain was bad.

</comment><comment><USER22> If this article is correct then corporations could also obtain higher returns than ycombinator.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Research suggests that the average person will not pay more than $200 for the premium pill [over a pill with a 0.1% chance of killing them]._

I don't buy this. For a young person, a 0.1% chance of death is years' worth of death risk. However, I think there's a way to "trick" people into a result like this. Say that Pill A has a 99.9% chance of delivering a cure, and Pill B has a 100% chance of curing them. First, "99.9%" sounds very good already, and "100%" sets off our bullshit detectors because almost nothing in medicine _always_ works. The 99.9 figure is more precise and therefore more impressive.

Furthermore, there's a difference between (a) the pill itself kills in 0.1% of chances vs. (b) it's 99.9% efficacious. In (b), you can take the cheap medicine and try the expensive one if the cheap one does work. As for (a), that's not something we really face because no drug that kills 0.1% of patients at normal doses would be on the market. If it were used at all, it'd be restricted to hospitals and used only when the disease was severe enough to merit it (e.g. cancer drugs).

 _The prime candidates for entrepreneurial ventures are actually people in their 30s and 40s. Their startups are less likely to fail and reasonably so. They have more experience than people in their 20s and more drive than people in their 50s._

Adverse selection. Most 50+ who have their shit together don't want to deal with VCs and their bullshit. There are plenty of driven, 50+ year old entrepreneurs, but they're not interested in VC. Also, they aren't interested in get-big-or-die gambits _in general_ because getting back into the careers they left, at that age, is just much harder.

 _This suggests that corporations have a great deal to make by offering entrepreneurial opportunities to their employees._

I don't think that the concept of an "intrapreneur"\-- except at a small number of companies like Valve (which only has a few hundred employees)-- has legs. Would Google or Microsoft or Citibank allow it if everyone wanted to be an "intrapreneur"?

While the intrapreneur path will involve a lower risk of financial loss (because it requires no capital investment, except opportunity cost in the willingness to take a lower salary and a more interesting job) it probably has a higher per-month job-loss risk. Employees can avoid behaviors that will make them enemies. They can choose not to give a fuck when it isn't their turn to give a fuck. Intrapreneurs don't have that liberty. They have to fight battles, work hard enough that they lose social polish, and (if their managers aren't supportive) navigate a conflict of interest between their personal project and their assigned work. They can easily turn into overperformers and get themselves fired. Moreover, I don't think that the sociological issues that are in play here are going to go away easily.

None of this refutes the title itself, as presented:

 _Why Corporations Could Get Higher Returns Than VCs_

In fact, they already do. But that's another story entirely.</comment>


How to go from Dev to PM - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geekli.st/post/69127121125/how-to-go-from-dev-to-pm-a-guest-blog-post-by-gayle <comment><USER2> Article fails to explain why a dev would desire to become a PM. My best guess is an entry point to a management career in shops run by non-devs.

Edit: I imagine that's perfectly natural - when I was in backoffice IT I strongly desired to transition into project management so that I could transition into people management so that I could make meaningful decisions and get credit for them. It's probably the same in product companies except low-level devs will want to manage products so they can manage divisions so they can run big-name tech companies. Currently I'm working as a consulting dev in a small dev consultancy and I don't feel the same pull in that direction that I used to. I think maybe all we really need is to be taken seriously and to have some meaningful work.

<comment><USER3> "Article fails to explain why a dev would desire to become a PM."

(in most companies) more money, power, autonomy. Except in very early stage startups, it is the rare developer who has more of any of this than even the lowliest PM. e.g: I think Vic Gundotra makes more money, and has more power at Google than most (all?) engineers there.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure this is true, at least in the current climate. At our (Series B) startup, PMs make about half what engineers do.

<comment><USER5> Not to discount your experience, but at the large enterprises (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.), Program Managers make the same money as Software Developers at equivalent titles. Program Managers are not JIRA monkeys (I love JIRA, by the way), but generally have coded in the past and have a better grip on reality than some MBA candidates.

The tradeoff is this:

1) PMs get broader visibility across the org, which tends to result in faster promotions into management for "good" PMs.

2) PMs atrophy technical skills and become more dependent on the larger organization (they acquire more firm-specific skills in econ talk) than do equivalent developers.

So, sometimes if you like your company and want to advance quicker, you will be willing to trade away some industry or general skills for firm-specific skills to get faster promotions or more power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to be a dev who transitioned to a PM and now am the CTO in my own startup. My main reason for becoming a PM was to get more customer contact and be in a position to make customer-focused product decisions. Someone mentioned that PMs make more money than devs, this is incorrect at least in most top tech companies. Compensation bands for PMs and Devs are the same.

Obviously the day-to-day work of a PM is pretty different from that of a dev and the transition is not something that all devs would like or should even aspire to. For those who want to know more about what PMs are supposed to do (and no, it is not just project management :-) check out my blog on this topic - [http://avilay.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/what-does-a-pm- do/](http://avilay.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/what-does-a-pm-do/)

<comment><AUTHOR> great point avilay. thank you for helping clarify the difference between the two PM's. product vs project. i think this is an important differentiation and one which, when clarified, could help more developers excel in their careers without losing their coding edge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ugh. Don't do it. Someone find me an article on how to go from PM back to dev.

<comment><USER8> Most PMs don't have the chops and just enjoy a job thats less grunt-worky. They usually don't have a choice. I seriously doubt anyone with real programming chops would be happy being an overseer rather than an architect.

<comment><USER9> I've worked with several PMs who had technical chops.

Note that not everyone who has the chops necessarily love programming. Also, as others pointed out, in many companies a PM earns more than any technical person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No offense ... But this proposition doesn't sound very appealing at all ... I love how with hard work and determination, mastering technical knowledge, you too can become a middling middle managing bean counter too ... :) Perhaps that is a bit harsh but ... I dunno.

<comment><USER11> A good PM is an great asset that adds huge value to a company. Most are middling middle managing bean counters.

Advice on how to make sure you become the former and not the later would be more useful than this blog post.

<comment><USER12> I think the real problem is the company you work for as a PM. What kind of projects you are working on, who is actually holding the purse strings, who the clients are (internally or externally) etc. I know project managers who are boss hog and ones who are little more than account managers with a title. TINSTAAFL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These articles are almost as bad as the "how to become a CEO." First answer, why? Because of the desire for power over others? Weak, lame, not in the spirit of being a hacker. Flat management everyone, screw the PMs. Where's the book on how to bury your PM 6 feet deep?

<comment><USER13> I worked for a company with 250 people and only 4 "layers" from top to bottom. My project still had team leaders and a project manager, and believe me all of them would rather have been coding than managing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Take some management classes.

I'm not saying you have to take an MBA, but being able to code and being able to manage people are not the same talent. In many situations, they're quite the opposite.

And you had to show off your coding cred before being hired for it. The same _should_ apply for management.

<comment><USER15> I'm not disagreeing, but can you explain under which situations coding and managing are on the opposite parts of the spectrum?

<comment><USER16> Pretty much all aspects.

Have you ever sworn at your computer?

As a result of swearing at your computer did it refuse to work for you the next day?

Have you ever had to bring your computer into an office sit it down and ask it to come in earlier even though you don't really care what time it shows up?

Have you ever had to defend your computer making a typo and costing the company $100,000 to people who are so careless as to ignore the redlines under their misspelled words in the email regarding this issue?

As a manager you are a human shit shield for the people beneath you. In addition to being a human shit shield whenever the budget is cut you must pick who gets a paycheque and who doesn't when the budget is cut. At the end of the day after letting people go, you toss a coin walk into your managers office and then find out if you made the cut.

The only really good thing about being a manager is that when comically stupid decisions get made all you have to do is keep a straight face and delegate actually implementing it to someone instead of having to code the atrocity yourself.

<comment><USER14> _golf clap_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd totally grab her book if it wasn't almost $40. Cracking the Coding Interview was amazingly helpful during my job search.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does one overcome the Peter Principle?

<comment><USER19> In a previous job, the "title" came after you actually performed well in that job _and_ your current job. Worked pretty well most of the time. For anyone aspiring to start their own company, being a Product (not Project) Manager does make some sense as you get to tackle real problems with someone else's money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see many points about not wanting to manage being mentioned, but if you read into it more you'll find Gayle is suggesting this is about developers who want to drive product. Product Management is much more than just management roles and I know many coders who do product management while maintaining their coding space. It's not for everyone, but Product Management is not project management.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone else confused by "PM"? I assume the author means Product Manager, but I'm not certain.

<comment><USER21> Yes, it's Product Manager, as in the guy who is responsible for deciding what the team is going to build.

A lot of the replies here seem to be castigating the role of a _Project_ Manager, which is the often technically clueless PHB type responsible for ensuring that a waterfall project is completed by its deadline.</comment></comment>


NSA's Talking Points Defending NSA Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/17490723465/leaked-nsas-talking-points-defending-nsa-surveillance.shtml <comment><USER2> They are already trying to dirty Snowden with spin. Yesterday morning on ABC "News" they kept saying he is dangerous because might defect to China which is complete speculative BS considering all he has sacrificed (don't normally watch that disney-owned cr*p but it was on at the laundrymat).

Ha, look what source comes up for news when you google it: [https://www.google.com/search?q=defect+to+China](https://www.google.com/search?q=defect+to+China) (ABC "News")

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the "Snowden's girlfriend is a 'pole dancer'" news story that has been on CNN America, the Daily Mail, Washington Times, Telegraph, USA Today, the Huffington Post, ABC News, and a few others.

If anyone thinks that Western news isn't propagandist then there is your proof, right there, that they are. That isn't a real news story. It isn't in the public interest. It is just a character attack on the man and his family.

She wasn't even in the public eye.

<comment><USER4> Of course she is in the public eye: Friends and family of interesting parties always get pulled into the public eye, for stories having nothing at all to do with 'propaganda'. The same is true of so many other details that will always get looked up on people in this social media/online world time. There is nothing at all nefarious about it.

Indeed, it is getting bizarre seeing people outraged that some truth about people is reported. Ms Mills identifies _herself_ as a pole dancer. Snowden made banal online comments. Snowden dropped out of high school. These are not smears but are just interesting facts. They don't diminish either of them an iota in my eyes, but do add colour. A lot of people here seem to think these are deeply embarrassing facts that should remain hidden.

<comment><USER5> I agree these are interesting details, and I'm happier for knowing more about the people involved. However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.

When the war logs leaked, I doubted that anyone would take the initial smears against Julian Assange seriously. I'm Swedish and the sexual misconduct allegations were a big conversation subject here.

After a while, I realised that though I wasn't impressed by the ad hominems, they really did work on the general public. Older relatives and friends who were not in tune with the particular issues of the leak were much more interested in stories about the people behind it. These stories require no expert knowledge; they're relatable. It's daunting for a layperson to try to judge who's right or wrong in issues like war or spying, but it's easy and familiar to judge people over the perceived wholesomeness of girls they're involved with. Thus, to my disappointment, these friends and relatives categorically dismissed anything about the war logs by referring to Assange's personal affairs.

Things like this are published to create negative associations; to cater to personal vanity (better-than-thou) and focus judgement on Snowden's character rather than the faceless institutions he ousted.

<comment><USER4> _However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden._

When Snowden bravely outed himself, the media was in a race to find as many details on him that they could. If they could find people saying that he saved kittens, they would report that. If they find people saying he dropped out of high school, they report that. If Ars Technica discovered that he posted there, of course they're going to capitalize on that and post summaries of the sorts of things he said.

It required no conspiracy or concerted attack. It happens for spree killers. It happens for "hackers". It happens for politicians. It happens for heroes.

I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.

Now if the NSA suddenly claimed that they found child pornography on his workstation, or mysterious women appeared claiming to have been raped by him, a serious consideration would be in order. That hasn't happened (yet, at least), and instead people are seemingly acting knowing and world-weary about absolutely standard media reporting.

<comment><USER5> > I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus > far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.

In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _These_ are the kinds of leaks I would love to see far more of--be they from intelligence operatives, contractors, political staffers, journalists, etc. Talking points are a _huge_ game among the media, pundits, and leaders. Leaking the talking points as issues arise would make for excellent public discourse as more people become increasingly aware of their presence (hopefully) and become able to actually _notice_ the ways in which the _language_ surrounding issues is carefully constructed to shape public opinion.

</comment><comment><USER7> I always get annoyed when governments claims secret things they have done have "protected us from an attack". First off they will never ever give specifics "because its secret", but secondly prove to me that this attack would not have been thwarted anyway using more traditional policing methods.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actual sources:

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa- business...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa-business- records-talking-points-6-6-13.html)

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713592-nsa- internet-...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713592-nsa-internet- talking-points-6-7-13.html)

They're pretty much just defending that it's legal, which I think we can all sadly admit is true. I just don't think it's right, our government should not be keeping that kind of records on its citizens, or anyone.

Please, write to your senators, not all of them are convinced. If you are a foreigner, write to your legal representatives expressing your concern. If we are loud enough our government will listen. I believe that our government still listens to its people, but if we don't take action in democracy, our voice will be lost.

<comment><USER9> > They're pretty much just defending that it's legal, which I think we can all > sadly admit is true. I just don't think it's right, our government should > not be keeping that kind of records on its citizens, or anyone.

but that's the entire point. it isn't legal. the supreme law of the land is the Constitution and everything after it is inferior. I could careless what Congress passes or the NSA writes in its policy documents -- it's not legal. it's all very much illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a wrong strategy to defend that the data did not prevent the subway attack or for that matter whether it's useful or not.

You are standing up for liberties and constitutional rights. And you can't have it both ways.

It's a good test for anyone against NSA collection:

If NSA proves that the data did stop terrorist attacks, will it be ok to intrude privacy then or put it another way are you ok with a terrorist attack on your country in exchange for your privacy ?

<comment><USER11> There are so many things wrong with your comment, I don't even know where to start. I think you might either be 8 years old, or simply trolling. Based on that, I don't see any reason to invest any time and energy into replying factually. Instead, I'll resort to just shaking my head, rolling my eyes and moving on, trusting that nature will take care of itself.

Yeah, I'm cool like that.

<comment><USER12> From the Hacker News guidelines:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So IMHO there's a problem with this article, and its this

> Why, then, have so many people, both in the Congress and the public been > shocked at the extent to which the NSA is snarfing up data?

Because people ignore what they're being told. Eschelon and Carnivore have been around for a LONG time so none of this should be shocking.

<comment><USER14> No. It's because the majority of the population (62%) fully support it.

They want the US to be actively preventing the next Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11\. And are more than happy to give up a small amount of their own privacy in order to do so.

[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/nsa- spying-p...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/nsa-spying-poll- pew/66093/)

<comment><USER15> >They want the US to be actively preventing the next Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11\. And are more than happy to give up a small amount of their own privacy in order to do so.

The thing is that these surveillance tools are never enough. They enhance them, and a terrorist act happens, and they start saying that they need more power to prevent something like that in the future. It's baloney.

The only way for them to prevent future crime is to turn the country into an Orwellian dystopia. The thing is that we don't even know how effective these surveillance programs are, since the gov't doesn't release any data. Any time questions of efficacy rise, 'they' say that these programs help catch terrorists, but they don't give any concrete data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My question: Is there actually anybody prepping talking points for pundits who oppose these pro-government spying ideas? I suppose there are already few think-tanks working on opposing ends, but these tend to be "slightly" partisan (Cato, etc). Is the EFF active in these kinds of policy circles?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is an awful lot of effort to catch a "liar/criminal" (one precludes the other).

I think it's time for a "truth and reconciliation" committee where we remove every sitting congress-person, the Obama Administration at large, and at least the top-level of bureaucrats involved.

One other thought I had is, was the H1-B thing in the immigration act a "payoff" to the same tech CEOs selling the world out? A cynical thought, but a cynical time indeed.

</comment><comment><USER18> In a paranoia bout, I was connecting some dots. The US and EU are currently dealing a trade treaty. Imagine the treaty mandates that RFPs are to be open to both side of the pound. Then a US entity (private company or State entity) starts an RFE. The NSA as part of it's mandate can spy on any EU citizen without any limit of what it does about the data (yeah, not a US-citizen). So imagine if by pure luck an NSA employee stumbled on the proposal data of an EU entity before filling and passed it along to an US competitor of the EU entity. Now you have the perfect crime because _terrorism_ no investigation possible at the treaty level and _foreign citizen_ no law as been broken on the US soil.

There are suspicions that this game has been played between Boing and Airbus (I overheard that the US was the spy, but being in Europe, my environment is biased).

</comment><comment><USER19> I also noticed a lot of similarity between these talking points [1] and various statements by politicians and pundits as well as newspaper articles over the past week. However it is hard to track them down.

Does anyone know how to do automated text comparison? It would be interesting to know who (politicians, reporters, etc) are simply parroting what the NSA tells them. Google kinda works for this but is pretty inefficient. Something like a plagiarism system would be perfect.

[1] [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa- business...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa-business- records-talking-points-6-6-13.html) (click on text button in upper left for raw text).</comment>


Docz: It has never been so easy to document your things - <AUTHOR> https://www.docz.site/ <comment><USER2> It's sad that this site is so broken on mobile. Have to check this later on pc.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very similar to Vuepress.

[https://vuepress.vuejs.org](https://vuepress.vuejs.org)</comment>


Tapulous acquired by Disney - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/tapulous-acquired-by-disney/

<comment><USER2> The criticism of Tapulous' focus on one app is ignoring the economics of the app store ([http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full- an...](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of- iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html)). There are tons and tons of amazing, high-quality apps, and yet how many of them ever break into massive profitability?

If you have an app store hit, it would be foolish to try to diversify given the near impossibility of any single app attaining real success.

<comment><USER3> > If you have an app store hit, it would be foolish to try to diversify given > the near impossibility of any single app attaining real success.

Indeed - and keep in mind the Tapulous guys had an iPhone hit before the App Store. Back when Steve was trying to prevent app installs, Tap Tap Revolution was one of the first games available on the platform period.

<comment><USER2> They had a ton of apps back then. When they showed me some of the install numbers I didn't even believe that there were that many jailbroken iphones.

Like most successful startups, Tapulous was the result of brilliant pivoting much more so than a grand vision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, now Steve can feature more of his own apps! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wild guess: $15 million for a small company milking an one-hit wonder. With security and resources the dev team can finally move on and make something cool: Club Penguin for iOS!

<comment><USER6> They'd be a one hit wonder if they only succeeded with their first version of TTR two years ago when the app store first came out. They're actually many hit wonders. Smart move by disney here.

<comment><USER5> Not knocking their hustle. Every company needs cash money to keep the lights on but they've only been doing TTR and branded TTR for the past two years. Twinkle, the closed in network, was cute but didn't take off. Kerfuffle over Contacts made it disappear.

Point is the Tapulous team has experience and capability producing really high quality iOS apps. Now with Disney IP and security they have no excuses left to do something more interesting than dots that blip to a Hannah Montana beat.

PS. When are you coming back to California?

<comment><USER7> _Now with Disney IP and security they have no excuses left to do something more interesting than dots that blip to a Hannah Montana beat._

They have no excuses _not_ to do something more interesting…, right?

Anyway, one has to give it to them: they managed to create a huge brand based on a game concept that already had a huge brand attached to it outside the iPhone world, namely "Dance Dance Revolution".

I do feel that their website showing 14 TTR games out of 16 apps (apparently they had more but they are not showed there) shows that they've been milking the concept and brand to death, but in the end, that's still a major accomplishment. Especially with that kind of exit.

<comment><USER5> Yes, triple negatives and all that.

Actually Tapulous just remade a 13 year old Japanese game called BeatMania, which still has a huge following. So big that hackers can make decent living selling custom $200 BeatMania control boxes.

So the fascination with tapping on dots isn't that out of the norm. Their licensing contracts isn't so much a reflection on their tastes, I mean, the negotiation powers isn't with them when concerning record labels.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Victoria's Secret top-model has a StackOverflow profile - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/users/2274694/lyndsey-scott

<comment><USER2> What is the point of this being on Hacker News? In all likelihood, she just wants to interact with the community as a normal person and not have a bunch of undue attention from random other sources be put on her profile.

<comment><USER3> It's one small but strong exception to the rule that software development is for boys.

If she doesn't want to be recognized for her work as a model, I'd respect that, but she lists it in her SO profile, so it's probably not a big deal.

I'd love to see more examples like her, sending the message to young women that you can be a coder and still be feminine.

(...This is a touchy subject, especially on HN, so if the thread gets busy, I hope any replies won't immediately assume I'm somehow sexist or an idiot.)</comment></comment>


Text, Bytes and Videotape  - <AUTHOR> http://plus.maths.org/issue23/features/data/index.html

<comment><USER2> I can't believe he didn't mention Markov's chain models.</comment>


Fairfax Pizza Delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.vocellipizza.com/fairlakes_va Fairfax pizza Sub and Food delivery restaurant: best pizza and italian restaurant pizza specials, delivery menus, coupons. Party Platters,Catering Platters. <comment> simba-hiiipower uh, why exactly is this being posted here..?

<comment><USER2> Exactly. It's not even good pizza.

<comment> simba-hiiipower lol, agreed. props to FFX though!</comment></comment></comment>


Hidden standards make USB-C a pain to deal with - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/usb-c-was-supposed-to-simplify-our-lives-instead-its-a-total-mess-626bb2ea3688 <comment><USER2> I completely disagree. I can put a Type C plug into the port of any of my devices on the first attempt, the quality of the plug is much higher, the plug is more stable in any of the ports of my devices, I can charge all my devices with one charger, I have a docking station that just delivers 4k/UHD@60hz with both of my laptops (MBP, Pixelbook) and all I need is one Type C plug in my laptop.

I have a GaN 68W charger with 2x C and 1x A and it's the best travel companion I've ever had. It's lightweight, small and it just works.

I roll my eyes everytime people complain about Type C. The second Apple delivered Thunderbolt 3 via Type C it was clear that the dream of having one universal port for everything doesn't work, then came various ways of quick charge, some even proprietary. But you can rest assured that anything that's just Type C will work with any Type C and charging isn't always quick but it works.

This is so much better than anything we had before.

<comment><USER3> Charging is only _one_ of the things USB-C is capable of. But most people aren't complaining about that;[a] they're complaining about the "alternate modes" such as DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, etc. And if one wants to use those "alternate modes," you can't use any old cable; you need specific ones capable of them. It should be obvious why this is a problem: just because two cables look identical, they may not be.

And not even that! There's also the problem of bad cables. If the USB Consortium actually _cared_ about consumer safety, they would aggressively enforce their trademark against cables falsely advertising what they're capable of. But they don't.

Remember Benson Leung? The guy who was testing USB-C cables from Amazon so you wouldn't have to? And then one cable ended up being so bad, it _fried_ his Pixel Chromebook.[0] Not good.

TL;DR: USB-C was supposed to be "one connector to rule them all," and it succeeded at the expense of consumer confusion and possible _harm._

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XDBFUD9CTN2R/](https://www.amazon.com/review/R2XDBFUD9CTN2R/)

[a]: Except for maybe the people who don't understand the basics of USB-PD

<comment><USER4> DisplayPort/Thunderbolt requirements only affect a few people and occur in contexts where "the correct cable" was already a requirement prior to USB-C. The problem with USB-C cables from Amazon is they are from Amazon...same as for regular USB wall warts, SD cards, and many many other categories where Amazon willingly sells whatever crap it can take a cut of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 At least in terms of charging my USB-C devices the experience has been good for me. I know I can carry a single charger (ie: my Dell 100W USB-C charger) when travelling and it will charge my cellphone and Nintendo Switch as well.

<comment><USER5> Need to be careful about using the port on the switch. It isn't a usb C port even though it uses the connector. It has been known to brick or damage the device when used with certain combinations.

<comment><USER6> That really annoys me (companies using connectors without conforming to the standard). I have no idea what the state of the legislation is but I find that EU proposal to make everyone standardise around proper USB-C tempting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are just teething pains for an emerging, universal charging standard. I will take some incompatibility between USB-C even for the next decade, if that means that I no longer need to carry more than one wire and more than one charger to power all my devices.

<comment><USER8> Just dongles for any inexpensive / older hardware.

<comment><USER7> Older hardware will naturally get cycled out of use by exponential-like decay; it won't ever go to zero because of legacy requirements and retro device enthusiasts, but it will be basically zero for most people given enough time. Inexpensive hardware will just stay with the cheap subset of USB-C without fast charging, which is perfectly fine.

<comment><USER8> When is this supposed to happen? Lots of USB-A and micro USB devices are still sold today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Replace: USB-C with RJ-45 and his argument is just as silly.

It turns out both simplified our lives dramatically, and both require you to do a bit of research before plugging things in.

If you don't want to brick your expensive devices, buy approved chargers. No different than being able to buy cheap knock-off batteries for devices off ebay. Will they work most of the time? Sure. Are you risking bricking your device or burning down your house using that $25 laptop battery off ebay? Absolutely.

<comment><USER10> Why would you need to buy "approved" chargers? If the vendor gets to dictate which chargers I buy, I'm worse off than before the days of USB charging.

Also, a lot of official chargers are cheap, bulky and slow. Third party does not and has never implied "cheap knockoff". In this case, they aren't knock- offs at all.

<comment><USER7> You don't need an approved charger, just one that's well-made. It's easier to use a well-known brand name as a shorthand during the selection process, because it's generally not feasible for the end user to evaluate a charger on a technical level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aside from that, some manufacturers, for example a certain one named after a popular fruit, decided it would be prudent to save a few bucks and ship cables that are only able to charge devices, not for any form of data transfer.

Ok, maybe it wasn't to save money and instead force people to use cloud solutions for data sharing. This way we will end up with a lot of disabled cables where people wonder why they don't work.

<comment><USER12> What are you talking about?

<comment><USER13> The USB-C cables which come with MacBook chargers only work for power delivery.

<comment><USER14> This is simply untrue, and I have just verified this by plugging the cable that was plugged into my charger into a USB-C device and verifying it appears on the bus.

<comment><USER13> I believe it works at USB2 speeds only. It's called the "Apple Charge Cable". I can't verify right now as Apple's online store is down.

<comment><USER15> That's the default mode of most PD cables, as it is the required standard. USB 3 (err, 3.1 in USB-C-land) is an optional mode in the USB spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Man, so true. I'm still mad at LumeCubes for being USB-C, but only being chargeable from a USB-A to USB-C cable because making C to C charging would've required additional circuitry.

<comment><USER17> It's one additional resistor, I think. The first lot of raspberry pi 4s had that same problem, and I've seen it in other hardware that uses type-c to charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> usb-c is too fragile. blew out my macbook pro last week when i plugged in the charger. High power through such fine connectors is just asking for a spark / short. So sad. Poor design.

</comment><comment><USER19> My OnePlus 5t USB-C port wore out within a year, this never happened to other ports.

<comment><USER20> Mine didn't wear out quite that fast, but it is indeed finicky, no matter how much I clean it out. Same with the Nexus 6P it replaced.

My new PinePhone seems to be more solid all around, so hopefully the USB-C connector on it ain't an exception. It ain't exactly my daily driver right now, though.</comment></comment>