The Case for More Intellectual Humility - a-smith http://nautil.us/blog/the-case-for-more-intellectual-humility <comment><AUTHOR> Intellectual humility is a key trait of great hackers and coworkers, in my experience.

Google's Laszlo Bock described hiring for intellectual humility like this...

"What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time."

<comment><USER2> How does a big ego and small ego exist in the same person at the same time? It sounds like a square triangle.

<comment><USER3> > How does a big ego and small ego exist in the same person at the same time? > It sounds like a square triangle.

 _personally_ i think, the person who can't change his/her mind in light of new facts (which is what seems to be emphasized here) is dangerous.

i have _heard_ / _read_ that steve-jobs was known for changing his mind instantly in the light of new facts.

not sure, why this would be misconstrued as _weak_

<comment><USER4> The problem wasn't Steve Jobs changing his mind, but rather pretending that he did so all by himself.

Whether that's weak, I can't say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whatever can be said on the matter was already neatly captured by Feynman

> The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the > easiest person to fool.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I take special note of people who can say "I was wrong and you were right" and usually these are rare and smart and often they become very good friends of mine.

Similarly, if you haven't said these words to anyone for a long time, it's likely you're not intellectually humble (or you're just always right :P )

<comment><USER7> It's also a good negotiation strategy. Admit early on in the negotiation that you were wrong about one thing, and you'll get a commitment to admitting being wrong later on by the other side.

<comment><USER8> Sometimes. That would be a losing bet when negotiating with the current presidential administration or its GOP allies.

I'm not being flippant or scoring a cheap shot. Intransigence was the entire strategy, the core messaging of their campaign and the reason for their popularity. They don't do compromise. Any concessions are simply treated as a sign of weakness.

<comment><USER9> The mechanics change, but it's still a good technique.

Negotiators like this often are really insecure. They're often playing some lame poker style bluff and brinksmanship strategy. If you have some insight into their insecurity, the counter is really easy. You introduce some minor "wrong", let them run and while they are busy puffing around making noise, you have an opportunity to screw them later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is a key trait of good traders/investors. The stockmarket is referred to as the "great humiliator".

</comment><comment><USER11> This is just 'wisdom' in a different wrapper.

Some folks have a knack for acquiring wisdom with age - some don't. It's not a matter of articles - I'd say it's mostly a matter of personality.

Some are curious and want to see how things work - others only want to know how to get that specific thing they want, come upon a stumbling block, rationalize it as 'outside of my control' and spend the rest of their days in complain-mode :)

I'd say the ratio of philosopher vs complainer is maybe 50-1? If not 100-1. Either way, they're rare birds, them folks who seek wisdom it seems.

</comment><comment><USER12> We should try these principles at our next job interviews and compare notes.

</comment><comment><USER13> What baffles me that it is still considered OK to indoctrinate children with provably false beliefs.

<comment><USER14> What's the alternative? A civil servant deciding what is allowed to be taught to children? Can you teach skepticism by saying "you're not allowed to learn this stuff over here"?

Seems to me that allowing science to win out in the 'market of ideas' is the healthiest solution.

<comment><USER13> Not fair competition when indoctrination is given a headstart. There is a difference between being allowed to learn this stuff and being indoctrinated since the days you are not even able to read.

<comment><USER15> So, should children be given to the care of the state at the earliest possible age? Or you'd rather have mass prosecution and re-education to stamp out beliefs that you dislike?

In the long run, maladaptive beliefs will die out and useful ones will survive, head start or no.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand. I'm not advocating for the state to stamp out beliefs I disagree with. But the believes that should win out and survive should be the correct ones, not the useful ones.

<comment><USER15> The person that I replied to seemed to be saying that certain beliefs should be disallowed, and that's what I was responding to.

As to what _should_ win out: Truth is a fine ideal to work towards, but one should never expect that it's what will actually win. "Should" is like "deserves". They're nice to think about, but not always realistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-compton Intellectual Humility doesn't go far enough. The goal should be to reap knowledge from all sources and to disassociate the emotional and intellectual self from that knowledge set.

I believe that the primary issue is the formation of heuristics about knowledge sources. e.g. Person B provides person A with knowledge of class "low-value in domain D" N times and knowledge of class "higher-value in domain D" K times in some time period T. At some time T_n A internalizes a heuristic about Person B's overall knowledge set. Depending on internal characteristics of A, all subsequent knowledge expressed by B may be ignored.

This is problematic. Not only does A ignore that the difference set of A and B's knowledge (even in D) is likely nonzero, it effectively assumes that A's knowledge is a superset of B, and that A's rate of knowledge aquisition is greater than that of B for all T. It ignores that A and B are dynamical systems.

In my opinion, formation of these kinds of heuristics and being dismissive of knowledge is a sign of intellectual weakness. It's akin to internalizing knowledge to the point of belief and belief is bounding.

<comment><USER17> >> ...all subsequent knowledge expressed by B may be ignored.

Given that we're human with a finite amount of time and attention at our disposal, it strikes me as intuitively sensible that we tend towards (but never firmly settling on) this outcome, especially where instances of N >> K...a sort of "survival of the fittest" feedback loop, if you will. I think Johnny Lee's analogy framed in the context of the user experience[1] is applicable here.

>> ...it effectively assumes that A's knowledge is a superset of B, and that A's rate of knowledge aquisition is greater than that of B for all T.

Sounds like narcissism. Surely we can have our pragmatic feedback loop without deteriorating into such a state.

[1] [https://youtu.be/kuhVfuhCcG4?t=220](https://youtu.be/kuhVfuhCcG4?t=220)

<comment> dan-compton > it strikes me as intuitively sensible...

This might be intuitive if A weighted each N of some class equally, and N>>Kevin for each _class_, but observation indicates this is not the case. Also certain N tend to be overweighted regardless of the knowledge class to which they belong.

IRL I have observed that B can work around A's bias by framing knowledge expressed as a question.

> Sounds like narcissism.

I think this is a common bias with implications in the "machine consciousness" question, but I'll have to wait ton finish that point. Look for an edit.

<comment><USER17> Why do I feel like I just failed a bloodninja-style Turing test.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Curl Wttr.in - old-gregg https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in <comment><AUTHOR> I use this all the time. I find this option pretty neat:

      curl wttr.in/Moon

Shows current lunar phase.

I use Termux[0] on my phone with curl installed. Pretty handy.

Also, check out rate.sx[1] from the same author:

      curl rate.sx

Shows information about current exchange rates of cryptocoins.

More similar console services: [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console- services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)

[0]: [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

[1]: [https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx](https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx)

<comment><USER2> shameless plug: [https://e.xec.sh](https://e.xec.sh)

<comment><USER3> another shameless plug:

      curl ipaddress.sh

<comment><USER4> also

        curl findip.win

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of those services that I love when I find them, use extensively for the next 30 minutes and forget about. But I keep coming back to it!

I even spent a time to make a simple function in my shell to cut off the output after today and accept a location name

        w () {
            curl -s "wttr.in/$1?M1q" | head -17
        }

and then I can just do

        w london

to get the weather for London today.

But, like most of the functions/aliases I create, I can't remember the last time I used it (except couple of times when I see someone talking about it and I remember about it)

<comment><USER6> Just add `F` to the options, and you don't need `| head -17` then

<comment><USER5> Oh, awesome! I don't know if they added this after I created the function or if I just didn't notice it.

EDIT: I just realised that "they" is actually you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A while back I made something along similar lines, though not quite as useful.

       curl https://poptart.spinda.net

<comment><USER8> When I type "cat" in the terminal, this is what I expect to see.

<comment><USER9> alias cat='curl [https://poptart.spinda.net'](https://poptart.spinda.net')

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This scared me the first time I tried it because the output was perfectly sized to my terminal. I couldn't fathom how it was possible for the server to know my terminal width.

It turns out my terminal was set at 125 characters wide and wttr.in outputs a 125 character width display.

<comment><USER11> Curious - wouldn't it be possible to output terminal escape characters to perform some "magic" like moving at the end of the line? Or does curl protect users by not outputting them? (I think not, because fetching a binary file by mistake sometimes garbles the output)

<comment><USER6> It is possible, but it brings nothing, because you don't only need to move to the end of the line but print something in between, and for that the server mush know the width of your terminal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will take this opportunity to offer some caution:

From what I understand, "curl example.com" is almost exactly as risky as "curl example.com | bash", since curl does not escape terminal command sequences, and those can include key rebindings; e.g. your Enter key can be rebound to "rm -rf ∗" or "sendfile ∗ firstname.lastname@example.com".

<comment><USER13> > those can include key rebindings; e.g. your Enter key can be rebound to "rm > -rf ∗" or "sendfile ∗ firstname.lastname@example.com".

oh my god. From [http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm](http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm) :

> Set Key Definition <ESC>[{key};"{string}"p

> Associates a string of text to a keyboard key. {key} indicates the key by > its ASCII value in decimal.

But I can't reproduce it; in my terminal (gnome-terminal), `print('\x1b[97;"echo foo"p')` just shows `cho foo"p`.

So it looks like not all terminals implement it, if any?

<comment><USER14> No modern terminal implements any of the dangerous escape sequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I also like how you can add zipcodes or location names as a path and it returns that. At least it works with zipcodes, cities, airport codes, landmarks. Not sure what else.

Using this, I found out it was currently raining in Paris. And then saw that the thunder was rendered as emojis.

I wonder what other options there are... for example, I'm in the US, so it returns temperature in Fahrenheit even if I requested information about France. Are there options to change this?

But, all in all, this is really nice and polished.

<comment><USER16> There are quite a few options, it is pretty cool. You can check them out by hitting the :help endpoint[1].

I usually call it with a few of them to make the output cleaner, and without colors[2].

curl --compressed [https://wttr.in/"$location"?QTAF](https://wttr.in/"$location"?QTAF)

Where `$location` is either the location you want the weather for, or an IP address.

[1] [https://wttr.in/:help](https://wttr.in/:help)

[2] [https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.loca...](https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.local/bin/weather)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been curling this for years but was not aware of the new v2 api that shows hourly ascii charts. Looks sweet!

</comment><comment><USER18> A good opportunity to remind everyone that we finally inboxed curl into Windows 10, so this works (with color output) from a stock Windows command prompt.

Better late than never, I hope.

<comment><USER19> No need for that. You can do this:

         (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri wttr.in).content

from Powershell. Why not use the happy path?

<comment><USER20> Serious question -- not a flame war :)

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. I've been typing `curl -O http: ...` into command prompts for decades, and that Powershell incantation looks awfully unwieldy.

In what way is it the happy path?

<comment><USER19> Because it's the native Windows answer. There's no need to make Windows look like Unix. It's great (really!) the way it was designed.

<comment><USER21> Any good resources for using Powershell? Is there ever a reason not to use powershell? Coming from OSX it doesn't really make sense to me that there are two terminals installed by default, and I end up just using WSL ubuntu. Also I don't really know the commands so it feels crippled to me (no ssh (still? idk), not many tools, etc)

<comment><USER22> > Is there ever a reason not to use powershell?

No, you should always use it.

Its maybe a problem when ultimate performance is in question, but you can go long way with Powershell - I recently had a web service SOAP client implemented in it that did millions of requests in an hour using threads in less then 50 lines of code consuming less then 3% of server resources (running entire country in single day actually)

> I end up just using WSL ubuntu

You can have basiclly anthing working without WSL (except maybe docker correctly).

> Also I don't really know the commands so it feels crippled to me (no ssh > (still? idk),

SSH is there. Learn commands along the way. You should def take a book like this one: [https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell- in-a-...](https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month- of-lunches-second-edition)

> not many tools,

All usual tools, linux and windows, can be used. You have majority of them hosted on chocolatey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's really nice but I started to use this a year ago and had to stop because they always ran out of resources. Hopefully this is fixed since it's such a nice and easy service!

</comment><comment><USER24> Has nobody mentioned, that this is just wego as a service?

<comment><USER25> Their github page explains this early in project page, so no harm done, I guess?

<comment><USER24> Oops, don't know how I missed that. Sorry!

<comment><USER6> To say truth, it is not just a wego as a service since many years, but is started like that indeed

Now it has a lot of additional features:

* one-line output for status lines

* astronomical information

* translation to 70+ languages

* geolocation

* full fledged multilingual location search

* HTML frontend

* PNG frontend

* Slack support

* scalable architecture (it handles 10M+ queries daily for the moment of writing, with avg processing time under 30 msec)

It took one weak for the initial wego-as-a-service wrapper implementation, and more than 4 years (and 99 contributors) for the rest.

But we of course honor wego, and mention it in the README, and on each HTML page in browser

<comment><USER26> Nice ! Did you contribute back your improvements to wego ?

<comment><USER6> No, because they are not implemented as a part of wego; wego is used just for visualization of one of the views (v1). The rest is implemented outside of it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Rendering a richer UI for curl users with terminal escapes is brilliant! Has this been done elsewhere?

<comment><USER13> [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console- services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very cool, if i could suggest improvements it would be another view that shows some sort of line graph of temperature and rain and sunshine hours. Also thanks for the T option - useful if your terminal has a white background( like Apple's default).

<comment><USER6> curl v2.wttr.in

and for the white background:

curl wttr.in/?I

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What I am most amazed of is how they manage to get my actual location always right...

I mean, we all now those "geolocate me" things on websites, but I've never encountered a _single_ page where it worked; it's always hilariously all over the place (shows the headquarter of my provider, or just locates me in Frankfurt at the DE-CIX).

But wttr.in is different. I wonder what the magic ingredient is and why no one else seemingly has it.

<comment><USER30> It depends entirely on the geolocation database being used to map your IP address to location. wttr.in seems to use [https://www.ip2location.com/](https://www.ip2location.com/) so maybe they have better mappings for your ISP. Bigger providers tend to use Akamai or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use this so much that if I start to curl something else I type wttr after it from muscle memory and have to delete it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Would be nice to have Sixel/iTerm output, but almost 40 years after most computers could do split text/graphics modes, nobody uses these and we're looking at ASCII graphics instead... Might want to look at using ℃ and Emoji though for people with modern terminals.

</comment><comment><USER33> Looks like lightning breaks the formatting a little, at least for me. Otherwise, very cool. Guessing lighting is a unicode char & not being counted "correctly", which I believe is a challenging thing

<comment><USER6> The problem is that it depends on the terminal, and you can render this character properly for all 100% of the terminals on the server side

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Welcome to my alias list. This provides better weather information than local news websites who have dedicated pages. That said, I'm in a developing country where it's just monsoon all the damm time :D

<comment><USER35> Been using it for years here in Ireland. I have the following: alias wett='curl wttr.in/limerick'. :-)

<comment><USER6> Try this:

curl ga.wttr.in/limerick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It would be cool to have a curl-able service directory of those services on the web, and also a standard way to know the quota of refresh, and some standard /help URL to know more about the options

<comment><USER6> curl wttr.in/:help

and the curlable directory is almost there

As an interim solution, you can use this:

      curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chubin/awesome-console-services/master/README.md

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> One of the downsides is that if you have curl set to not use a user agent, it (along with many such services) won't work.

So

      curl --user-agent "" wttr.in

just serves you unformatted HTML.

<comment><USER6> Just use

        curl --user-agant "" wttr.in?A

for that.

The `A` option enforces ANSI output (curl wttr.in/:help for more)

<comment><USER37> Oh nice, thanks! I wish more services would do that.

(btw there's a typo, should be --user-agent)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another cool command-line weather service:

finger firstname.lastname@example.com

also includes forecasts (try city+24).

</comment><comment><USER39> Any other similar services for the terminal out there?

<comment><USER6> curl cheat.sh

curl rate.sx

curl qrenco.de

and the rest from [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console- services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love this on Linux, but it is also a good example of how awful the standard Windows command prompt is at formatting :(

<comment><USER41> Works fine for me (Windows 10 1909 with Windows Terminal)

<comment><USER42> That's because Windows Terminal is not the standard Windows console. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It'd be nice to be able to point to be able to point this to my backyard weather station, via wunderground or such.

</comment><comment><USER44> Neat script! On a related note and something I use more frequently : curl ifconfig.me

Easy way to find the public IP :)

<comment><USER45> Shameless plug: curl ipaddy.net

Returns public IP address, ISO country code, User-Agent string, and a new line (to ensure the terminal prompt doesn't get shifted after displaying the response).[0][1]

\- [0] [https://use.ipaddy.net](https://use.ipaddy.net) \- [1] [https://github.com/oedmarap/ipaddy](https://github.com/oedmarap/ipaddy)

<comment><USER6> I hoe it is listed at [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console- services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Love this! Every day I find fewer reasons to ever leave my terminal.

</comment><comment><USER47> perfect command for a bash alias

alias godstatus='curl wttr.in'

<comment><USER48> Make it a shell function and you can parameterise invocation.

        weather ()
        {
            curl http://wttr.in/${1:-LAX}
        }

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Awesome! Resolves ambiguity pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER50> okay, thats pretty cool. this art and utility shouldn't have fallen by the way side</comment>


PHP-FPM vs. Node.js – The REAL Performance Battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.prahladyeri.com/2014/06/php-fpm-vs-node-js-the-real-performance-battle/

<comment><USER2> > So, moral of the story is that even the latest and greatest of PHP world > falls behind node.js

Curious why you wouldn't be using Hack + HHVM then?

<comment><AUTHOR> HHVM is not official PHP. Its a hack developed by facebook to specifically improve the performance of their web apps. The component isn't complete in all respects and one solution doesn't fit all sizes.

Node.js, on the other hand is officially supported and the core and node modules are actively developed by the community.</comment></comment>


Why Would You Tweet About Your Coup? - <AUTHOR> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/mercenaries-arrested-after-alleged-failed-coup-in-venezuela.html <comment><USER2> Surreal. One couldn't make this stuff up.

I mean, if I were watching one of those brainless action movies late at night and a bunch of tough mercenaries paused to post a tweet about their secret plan to overthrow a government, I would think the plot had turned so unrealistic that I would have to stop watching. There's a limit to how much one can suspend disbelief.

The thoughts on my mind now are:

Is this really _real_? Could it be a _hoax_? For humanity's sake, let's hope it's a hoax. But apparently, yes, this is real, and no, it doesn't seem to be a hoax.

So... _what, exactly,_ were these people thinking?

<comment><USER3> The very idea of doing your own private Bay of Pigs is incredibly dumb and hubristic, complete with all the "they'll welcome us as liberators" ideology that made Iraq such a mess. It happens every now and again; I remember Mark Thatcher got arrested for plotting a coup in Guinea: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt) (along with various other establishment criminals such as Lord Archer, who later received a four year prison sentence for unrelated perjury). The Guinea plotters didn't shitpost about it on the internet, but neither did they have any real opsec, making it easy for Mark to be convicted. While (correctly) assuming that the UK would take no action against their terrorist plot against another country, they forgot that post-apartheit South Africa might not see it that way.

People talk of "keyboard warriors". Here they are. There's an entire subculture that believes that individual ownership of firearms is going to enable them to carry out counter-revolutions. For most this is just a delusion that they talk about constantly. For these guys it was a delusion that they brought to action.

<comment><USER4> > People talk of "keyboard warriors". Here they are. There's an entire > subculture that believes that individual ownership of firearms is going to > enable them to carry out counter-revolutions. For most this is just a > delusion that they talk about constantly. For these guys it was a delusion > that they brought to action.

This feels like "bait", but I'll take it.

Perhaps the most confusing part of this is that the two Americans that were involved weren't "keyboard warriors". They were actually trained Navy Seals. Why they would go along with the apparent coup attempt makes absolutely no sense.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that this is exactly how it's being presented: Silvercorp was hired by the son of an imprisoned Venezuelan general to assist in overthrowing the Maduro government and presumably installing his father as leader. There are so many questions that have no reasonable answers.

Let's focus on the two Americans, Luke Denman and Airan Berry.

Why would they go along with a plan where it's obvious to anyone with any experience (or basic logic, honestly) that there is effectively no chance of success?

Why would they proceed, after reportedly being contacted by the CIA in Jamaica and informed that their operation was compromised and that the Venezuelan authorities were waiting for them?

Why would the CEO of the mercenary company be tweeting about an operation in progress?

What's up with the "gear" they were allegedly captured with?

The photos I've seen from this make absolutely no sense.

They had an Airsoft AR-15, still in the box? OK, maybe they were planning to use it to bluff their way to real weapons... but that doesn't make sense either, because the flash hider was orange.

Speaking of Airsoft, much of the gear photographed was designed for Airsoft. The masks, for instance, are on Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNWR2QK/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNWR2QK/)

They had three "Beta C-MAG" AR magazines. Those at least appeared to be real, but are a terrible choice! They're notoriously unreliable, and there are better, cheaper options available. A C-MAG is a 100-round drum magazine that retails for ~$250. Surefire makes the MAG5-100, a 100-round "stick" magazine, for ~$190. The Surefire is well-respected, reliable, and far better balanced. It also doesn't stick out a foot on each side of the rifle, so it's a whole lot easier to move around with.

They were captured with 14 pistol braces. Huh? The whole point of a pistol brace is to comply with US law - the National Firearms Act of 1934 requires that a rifle have a barrel of >16", and that a pistol be designed to fire with one hand. Pistol braces ostensibly are intended to sit along the user's forearm to provide support for the wrist; they're "not designed to be fired from the shoulder", the fact that they're the same approximate profile as a standard stock notwithstanding. What purpose would an accessory whose sole purpose is to comply with US law be taken to Venezuela on an ill-considered military filibuster? Pistol braces show up fairly often in northern Mexico in the hands of the cartel, sure, but that makes sense because those are obviously purchased in the US and smuggled across the border to be issued to their low-level soldiers. Here, though? They weren't even attached to guns! Either they were intended to be attached to guns already in country, or they were removed from guns earlier and carried along with them anyhow. Neither makes any sense at all.

They were allegedly captured by a fisherman, shown in photos with a handgun. The same series of photos show four ARs... with pistol braces. Why would four guys in a boat with rifles allow themselves to be "captured" by a random fisherman on shore with a pistol?

Finally, and honestly the weirdest part of all to me - who decides to pack along every form of ID they have ever been issued when attempting to overthrow the government of a foreign country? Passports, military ID, even expired VA benefits cards. There were multiple copies of the same ID cards photographed, along with individual passport photos (like you'd get at Walgreens in the US if you were getting your passport).

None of this makes any sense.

<comment><USER5> > military ID

That ID is expired and has been for years. I've got one like it, similarly expired. The certs on them don't work, and most military facilities are pretty diligent about checking the expiration date - that's why its in bold on the front. They're not useful for anything, should've been replaced with a veteran's ID, very unusual to carry.

<comment><USER4> This is what I mean - it makes no sense to carry it if you're in the US, right?

It seems like it would make even less sense to have it on you if you decided to take a dozen of your friends and try to overthrow a foreign government. What _possible_ purpose would that ID card serve?

I can see carrying your passport, and maybe a single piece of ID showing you to be a US military veteran. It doesn't seem wise... but none of this seems wise. I can't see even a very flawed thought process leading to "I should definitely bring this long-expired identification with me. Just in case."

<comment><USER3> Having slept on it I've concocted the following explanation, which should be regarded as "news fanfiction" rather than anything else, but would explain the incident:

Part Kayfabe, part vaporware startup, part grift, part the Producers. The guy spent a lot of time in the rightwing griftersphere, where selling terrible ideas to rich people is the norm. In North America this is easy; you can sell unlimited bullshit and the chances of you, personally, experiencing any consequences are near zero. Alex Jones ran the scam for years until he finally crossed a line, and his attempts to claim it was all kayfabe "entertainment" in the Sandy Hook libel case failed. This may not be true in South America.

I reckon these guys were running some sort of coup-for-hire scam. Getting paid to talk about coup plotting, getting to go to fancy parties among the government-in-exile. The problem came when one of the fish bit the hook and wouldn't let go. Someone gave him a chunk of money upfront. And that someone had narco connections (where the got the money from). And they start asking when he's going to make this coup happen. Possibly they make credible death threats if he doesn't.

Having made promises to organised crime, he finds himself having to .. organise a crime. He knows it won't work, but he wants to do the minimum to convince his backers that he tried while maximising the chances of it failing _early_ so the coup plotters can be arrested and bailed rather than shot dead. Hence the ineffective and toy weapons; bank robbers often use imitation firearms to reduce their charges if caught.

The large pile of ID is there to aid a "don't you know who I am" blag attempt against his captors. The tweet is also part of that: getting the president to retroactively approve his actions is a long shot, but it worked for Eddie Gallagher.

(Getting the co-conspirators along with this is harder to explain, especially as several of them were killed, but presumably they weren't told it was expected to fail...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dunno. People read "The Dogs of War" and think "I could do that. Hold my beer and watch this!"

</comment><comment><USER7> surreal beyond belief. well, would have been beyond belief pre-2018, or so, but who the hell knows anymore?

<comment><USER3> Prediction: some time in 2021 or earlier someone will livestream or at least livetweet their coup against the US or a state government. Their manifesto will contain the usual quotes from the usual sources, similar to the livestreamed mass shooting at the Christchurch mosque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Successful couping seems to be a lost art.

<comment> jim-jim-jim They pulled one in Bolivia just last year.

<comment><USER9> Paraguay a few years before as well.

The one in Brazil with extensive use of lawfare and the media was exemplary too. Very well played.

<comment><USER10> The one well played thing is the narrative that gets people to believe the "coup" nonsense.

<comment><USER9> Should I start linking all the leaks?

<comment><USER10> Those leaks that contain nothing of substance? Sure, why not. Waste of space if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is simply not believable at face value. The author's article history is a party-line, narrative-embraced point of view (Trump is ready to gamble with American Lives, Honor Labor by compensating it, Feminism should make you uncomfortable, et al). That doesn't make her wrong obviously, but it indicates an inclination towards group-think I find untoward.

Regardless, even if the presented facts are "true" (whatever that means), there simply must be more to the story.

<comment><USER11> "there simply must be more to the story" === "it's in conflict with what I want to believe"

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's what I explicitly said. This does not seem believable to me. Are you trying to imply something else?</comment></comment></comment>


Catching a ball in virtual reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxu_y8ABajQ <comment><USER2> Very interesting applications of virtual reality (and AFAICT it could just as well be augmented reality in this case): The user catches a ball based on visualizations of the ball, its predicted trajectory, its predicted target, and different combinations of those factors.</comment>


Ask HN: Is YC turning into the next Google, Microsoft, and IBM? - <AUTHOR> Saw some awesome companies with passionate founders rejected from admission to YC.  Wondering as YC becomes more successful, if it is leaving it's original roots.  Or was this the actual goal of YC?<p>Could Reddit and Dropbox still be accepted with the way YC works today?  Is the days of rogue startups being accepted into YC over as its pool of more "qualified" applicants keep growing? <comment><USER2> The other thing to keep in mind is that YC has an upper bound on the number of companies they accept. Just because a team doesn't get in doesn't mean they're bad, it just means that YC partners saw other teams they felt were even better.

You can see the evidence of this by the fact that companies going through YC are getting better and better. They're better at the start of YC, and they're better at the end of YC (than previous batches).

Is this a good thing or bad thing? For YC - definitely a good thing.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely not a straight-line good thing if you think about long-term game theory.

they are already hitting the limits of getting startups who shouldn't need their services... i.e. already proven traction and can probably go raise funding themselves.

at some point, it's like akin to business school for techies. hbs class i'm sure gets better and better every year; nevertheless, more and more top notch business people skip hbs b/c the roi (opportunity cost) is not worth it.

similarly, yc's main benefits are it's network, brand, and access to capital. if they only seek to reduce risk profile by taking premium companies that have already proven themselves, the roi to subsequent classes may not be worthwhile for that x% because top notch vc's have their own contacts and branding and yc is purely a bridge.

think about pg's own statement about yc: to help companies build a prototype to get funding... at this point, i'd say it's very few exceptional guys getting in with a mere prototype. but tis the way markets evolve naturally.

yc is probably going through its own product-market fit as they try to take on more groups per class, additional competitors are entering its space, and all the meanwhile trying to maximize its profit/minimize risk. the hard part is realizing that some of the biggest success to date are randomn at best b/c it was so early stage and pre-traction and the market steers toward reducing arbitrage scenario more and more everyday.

would reddit or airbnb make this year's class (if airbnb didn't have that election year thing to help their application)? and if not, how many of those can they miss before someone starts raising the eyebrow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't think of a single season in which they haven't "left money on the table" by denying one group or another that ultimately proved to be successful. Similarly, there hasn't been a single season in which there wasn't at least one failure.

Venture Capital is, at its very best, a gamble, and it's a gamble in which there are a near infinite amount of variables. Product, team, market, vision, future, government regulations, etc.

I don't really know how this would equate them to Google, Microsoft or IBM, especially as except at a very surface level, those companies aren't really all that alike. If the accusation is just that they're slow moving giants incapable of innovating, I'd warn that 1) that accusation isn't fairly applied to the references, and 2) that even if that were the case, isn't really a critique, except where it might be applied in the context of failing to make money.

Seeing the recent batches, it appears that the money-making focus has definitely been more B2B than in earlier batches, but that's likely as a result of B2B proving more profitable over the long run than it is to be attributed to a lack of innovation. As a money-making endeavor, I'd wager that betting for more companies to make less profit than in the hopes of finding one Facebook amongst a bunch of flops is the more humanitarian path of funding as well, but that's another topic altogether.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just because someone is passionate doesn't mean they will do a good job. It is much more likely that you don't understand what makes a startup successful and thats why you don't understand why certain companies are rejected.

<comment><USER6> I was wondering if there were any actual specific examples of 'awesome' and 'successful' companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They need to keep the number of companies to a reasonable amount in order to give the companies that do get significant value out of the program. So until they manage to figure out a way to scale the YC program to be able to accommodate more companies (which I'm not necessarily sure is possible) some good companies that could have been very good fits with YC will be passed on.

They will inevitably miss some awesome companies as well as select some companies which wont amount to much. This is just part of doing something that is speculative. But they need to limit the number of companies in order to actually help the ones they do accept.

YC is a good program that certainly helps a lot of companies, but by no means is it the be all end all. There are many very successful startups that didn't go through YC and many not very successful startups that do go through YC. So if a company doesn't get into YC it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of paths to success that don't go through YC.

</comment><comment><USER8> A few thoughts as an outside observer...

\- You won't know until 10 years from now. Even still, it won't be enough to say they missed a lot of firms. Of course they will. They can't possibly have 100% market share. A sign of the them turning into a large boring behemoth is if they miss all of them.

\- If they are too worried about missing a Dropbox, then that risk taking will cause them to miss the next big thing.

\- As long as it's entrepreneurs making the decision on who gets into YC, they have a big shot of taking risks. My sense is most of the YC crew is independently wealthy, and are keeping score by "great companies" rather than "minimizing variance of returns".

\- All this said, the amount of YC firms acquired by larger tech companies suggest that they are filling an important niche of being the R&D investment arm of large firms who aren't structured to chase ideas that seem too crazy.

</comment><comment><USER9> The goal of YC is to make money. It's possible they now know a bit more about what they're doing.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's possible that because YC is now a recognized brand, it has access to lower-risk companies - i.e. those that have pretty much everything figured out. As such, that will increase their success because a. self-fulfilling prophesy of more leverage in the future by being associated with YC, b. they are already low risk to start with. IMO, they are the next Sequoia, not so much Google/Microsoft/IMB.

Contradictory, however, is these lower risk, already figured out, companies are not really in need of an incubator as much as some younger companies. Anyways, I'm really interested in seeing the next batch of YC companies and where they are going with that.

<comment><USER3> completely agree with your statement. long term zero economic profit theory should state though as they move up the spectrum / take less risk (new entrants in their own space will enter to fill the space they can't fill anymore and they will have a new type of brand (e.g. fb was exclusive for college kids and now it's to connect everyone. so naturally college kids want something their age bracket want to use and fb is struggling to get those kids to continue to think it's cool. but for fb it works bc they created the industry they expand into). problem with incubators as they move up the spectrum is do they think they're as good as the guys that have been doing it for a long time / are they going to be perceived as threats and no longer synergistic alliances.</comment></comment>


Blender 2.63: with BMesh (N-sided polygons) - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.63

<comment><USER2> If you have used Blender some time in the past but you did not like it, you _really_ should give it another chance. Blender has improved a lot and keeps on improving very quickly.

The biggest change is the completely new UI in Blender 2.5. It's very nice and my favorite feature is the good keyboard accessibility. All actions in the editor should now be available through the UI and the keyboard, with helpful tooltips and all.

That being said, I think it's time for me to go and grab a fresh blender source from their repos and take it out for a spin.

<comment><USER3> I was pretty good with Blender BEFORE the UI change. Now I'm completely lost =-(

<comment><USER4> Heh, it seems the Blender devs just can't win ^^

Back in the day most people said they thought Blender seemed great and powerful but they just couldn't grok the interface. Now they've tried to fix that and still people complain about the interface, now saying they preferred the old one.

I'm not saying you are wrong, just that from the Blender devs perspective it must seem hopeless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blender becomes more and more impressive with each release. The lack of Ngons was, especially for architects using the software, always a bit of an annoyance. Now with BMesh, it should be a lot easier to create solid models. Sidenote, the featureset, UI, and Python-API of blender are so impressive that we decided to write the level-editor for our upcoming (non 3D) game as a blender plugin instead of going all the way and writing our own editor. This saved us a tremendous amount of time, and the editor is really good.

<comment><USER6> Did you consider using Inkscape as a non-3D game editor?

<comment><USER5> A bit, but we used blender before, so we already knew the ins and outs of it's interface, and we're using Macs and I don't like running apps in X. It's kinda sad that there's still no production native Inkscape. I know that people were working on that years ago, but somehow it never went anywhere (or I'm not smart enough to find it). Is Inkscape also easily extendable?

<comment><USER7> Agreed, Inkscape UX on Mac is really bad. The Windows version is much better in comparison. In my opinion, FWIW, a custom UI toolkit like Blender uses gives a much better UX cross platform and presumably a lot less maintenance too.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, or even Qt, since their UI toolkit is also highly optimized for all kinds of plattforms. The advantage of the blender approach, of course, is that the app feels the same on every platform, since it is not bound to platform- specific UI requirements. So it doesn't end up in an uncanny valley, where it is kinda like the native UI, but not quite like it.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget that Blender's UI toolkit is extremely well designed. Consistent user experience doesn't matter when that experience is consistently poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome!!! Blender has been improving by leaps and bounds to be a credible alternative to commercial software.

Kudos to Ton, Joseph and the entire Blender project team. Ad Astra!

Edit: Check out what BMesh is all about here -- <http://vimeo.com/41114412>

</comment><comment><USER10> Blender is one of my favorite projects. 10 years ago, I was one of the many who donated (long before Kickstarter was an idea in someone's head) to get the code base open-sourced. [http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender- foundation/history...](http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender- foundation/history/)

I've always liked the (original) interface. Then again I'm a programmer and a vim user, not a Photoshop weaned artist.

</comment><comment><USER11> BMesh sounds pretty cool. It is a feature which Wings3d (my go-to modelling package) embraced from the get go, and it sounds like Blender has added many of the same tools which were fantastic in Wings. Unfortunately Wings has fallen a little by the way-side so it is great to see Blender pick up this idea! Perhaps it is about time I had another shot at learning Blender because it is looking more and more powerful.

<comment><USER12> On this note does anyone have any recommendations to awesome intro to blender guides for a non-3D trained person? I've reviewed a few before just wondering if anyone has suggestions.

<comment><USER13> I would recommend starting with <http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with- blender/>

When starting from zero I don't think there exists any Blender tutorials that can really compete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does it handle a polygon with 3 coplanar verticies and 1 non-coplanar vertex? It must internally triangulate the polygon in order to shade, no?

</comment><comment><USER15> The real important aspect of the new BMesh stuff is that it's a non-manifold representation. It's crazy to see that level of technology in Blender. :)

[http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Modeling/BM...](http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Modeling/BMesh/Design)

</comment><comment><USER16> Why O why is there no obvious download link from the release notes! I had to hover on the top left link, follow blender.org, to find it: <http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/></comment>


Obama unveils gun control proposals - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21049942

<comment><USER2> In looking at the list of the 23 executive orders[1]: "It does not appear that any of the executive orders would have any impact on the guns people currently own-or would like to purchase- and that all proposals regarding limiting the availability of assault weapons or large ammunition clips will be proposed for Congressional action."

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/01/16/here-are- th...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/01/16/here-are- the-23-executive-orders-on-gun-safety-signed-today-by-the-president/)</comment>


This disgusting dating app lets nerdy guys bribe hot women to date them - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/21/this-disgusting-dating-app-lets-nerdy-guys-bribe-hot-women-to-date-them/

<comment><USER2> I would label it more sad than disgusting myself, but I think there's a lot of people out there (both men and women) who would find this as fairly interesting.

The dating market is kind of skewed. If you're a desirable woman and you go on most normal dating sites to meet men, you'll get deluged with more emails than you can realistically even respond to. If you're an everyday man who would like to meet new women, it's a bit harder to find somebody because every desirable woman on these sites gets a ton of messages. The short of it is that the experience for everybody could be improved.

I'm not saying that this specific idea is the ultimate answer but I think there should be more experimenting with different types of sites in the dating industry than the traditional "create a profile and send a messages site" to figure out better ways of connecting people. OKCupid for example is experimenting more and more with things like events and group "gatherings" to meet people. Maybe that's a better type of site. Hopefully people will continue to come up with and test new kinds of dating ideas.

PS: I think a lot of the outlandish statements by the founder are purely to generate faux media outrage and publicity. Right on cue, the media is obliging him

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "It's a concept so simple that even animals understand–give a dog a bone, and it will obey. Give a woman a present, and she'll…"

That is a quote straight from their pitch that went out this morning.

I'm not sure who approved this going out, but they should be fired. If the CEO approved the message he/she should consider another career.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately the CEO seems to be doing rather well in his current career. I despair at this. You would think that nobody would use these apps, but I guess some people get desperate. It's a sad world.

Their website contains some clues as to the kinds of marketing discussions they have, e.g. one FAQ -was- titled "The Bribed person did not go on an agreed date!" but was changed to "The Attractive person did not...!".</comment></comment>


How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/30/climate/how-much-hotter-is-your-hometown.html <comment><USER2> Seems like their data is a bit odd. I'm under the assumption that they simply curated well known cities.

They didn't have my hometown (Rochester, NY) stating that it is not prone to 90F days. I looked up the weather reports for the last 3 months and found there have been 15 days of >90F temperatures. Meanwhile, Boston had one third the number of 90F days and is included in their data. Nearby cities like Buffalo and Syracuse are included.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that the number of hot days hasn't changed. In fact, by the graph, the average has actually declined slightly since my birth year, but rounds to the same whole number. If I make up my birth as being in 1920, the earliest available year, the number of hot days at that time is equal to the number of hot days that are predicted in the future.

I was expecting a completely different result.

</comment><comment><USER4> I searched Boston and the number of hot days went from 5 in 1987 to 4 in 2018. Although this year we have had about 15 days > 90 degrees. Not sure what to think.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was born in Mitchell, South Dakota in 1965.

According to the site:

1965: 31 days over 90

2018: 25 days over 90

Interesting.</comment>


Private Intel Firm Buys Location Data to Track People to Their 'Doorstep' - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj454d/private-intelligence-location-data-xmode-hyas <comment><USER2> They claim to unmask VPNs, unless they have a 0day, this is usually done using social engineering (ip grabber link redirects for example), which intetestingly maybe perfectly legal, but I'd argue unmasking someone's VPN constitutes bypassing security measures, so depends on the lawyer?

If the computer that is behind the VPN is a "protected computer", regardless of the method used, unmasking a VPN would be illegal: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)

In the case they brag about, the person's computer was in Nigeria, if that computer is used for foreign commerce (e.g.:the guy buys stuff from US sites) it would be a protected computer and this company is bragging about a felony. Am I correct?

Of course, I can testify first hand, the FBI never prosecutes companies/execs unless it is a clear publicized financial white collar crime. Under this same statue, the FBI will raid you if a company files a criminal complaint against you even for disclosing an open FTP server vuln: [https://www.dailydot.com/debug/justin-shafer-fbi- raid/](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/justin-shafer-fbi-raid/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to see some data that proves they can track someone to their doorstep. I would think that a hacker that was trying to cover their tracks would have enough OpSec sense to evade some location data collected on a phone.

<comment><USER4> At least be smart enough not to login to any account from the hacking VPN'd computer.</comment></comment>


Perfectly Lossless SVG Converter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mattrberry/lossless-svg-converter <comment><USER2> Funnily enough, the left image looks blurrier on my phone...

Looks pretty awesome, though. I'm sure I could use that some day. A good pixelation effect is sometimes astoundingly hard to produce...

<comment><USER3> Sounds like that is upscaling working its magic on the left image, experience the same on a hi-dpi monitor

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> browser needs quite long for displaying svg image, as pixels are emulated via <rec> elements ...</comment>


Your Uber and Lyft rides visualized - <AUTHOR> https://pistats.io/ <comment><USER2> Privacy Policy: [https://pistats.io/privacy- policy](https://pistats.io/privacy-policy)

        We collect and store data which are provided by Google OAuth authentication:
        first Name, last name, gender, email, all your Lyft and Uber
        receipts, Google+ profile link, Google+ profile picture link

Read that again... email.

Sign-in with Gmail, and their privacy policy allows full access to your email. But it's OK, they're not sharing it with anyone (promise).

Elsewhere they say they're only reading the Uber and Lyft emails... but I'm not sure that matters as it's the privacy policy which counts.

<comment><USER3> Is there a tool that can analyze privacy policies of websites and assign it a score? Would be nice to have a chrome extension or something similar, if the website gets anything less than A, just close and move on...

<comment><USER4> [https://tosdr.org/](https://tosdr.org/)

Was featured on HN before. Far from totally complete, but it's a cool idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Giving away access to my Gmail account just so I can visualise my Uber rides is a bit too much I think!

<comment><USER6> This... I would gladly take the time to setup a filter that forwards all the receipts to the site.

<comment><USER7> Sadly, companies seem to actively avoid this kind of integration, with the notable exception of Trip It. I suspect the thought of setting up an maintaining and inbound mail server seems harder than handcrafting integrations for every provider?

<comment><USER8> Just use Mailgun[1] and you get incoming mail POSTed to your server for free.

I think Sendgrid[2] offers the same too?

[1] [http://www.mailgun.com/](http://www.mailgun.com/)

[2] [https://sendgrid.com/](https://sendgrid.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We only look at your Uber and Lyft receipts. Please see our Privacy Policy for further information."

Are you nuts? In a color barely different to the background?

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't a much better way to do this be to set up a random e-mail (e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com) that you can then send you receipts to?

You could either do it all at once or with a forward, and it would mean that people that don't use Gmail could do it too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do they want to look through all my emails to get this data? It's available via the uber api, is it not?

<comment><USER12> It would appear so - [https://developer.uber.com/v1/endpoints/#user- activity-v1-1](https://developer.uber.com/v1/endpoints/#user-activity-v1-1)

It doesn't seem to give the pickup / dropoff locations, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How to steal the identity of others. Just count on their stupidity to get their uber or lyft data.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool, but the gmail thing is a turnoff.

</comment><comment><USER15> Worked for me: [http://i.imgur.com/5T8TDFm.png](http://i.imgur.com/5T8TDFm.png)

I'm a bit reluctant to give access, but I already do for TripIt, the e-mail account these go to isn't particularly sensitive. With other accounts it'd definitely be a no-go, so an alternative means (i.e. a forwarding address) would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's an obvious privacy/trust issue that has already been solved by cloud photo sharing. I've seen it in Flickr and OneDrive: both of them allow one to select a bunch of items, or a folder/album, and generate an URL key that allows access to only those items.

Actually, having that in mail systems could be rather useful for many other work flows.

</comment><comment><USER17> I gave it the benefit of the doubt that this isn't anything malicious. It seems like you were even able to normalize the currencies and distances? Are you actually checking if the email has it listed in Kilometers or Miles?

</comment><comment><USER18> Lots of comments not wanting to give away full Gmail access to use this tool. Could this be done as a desktop app, which you can sandbox and ensure it isnt uploading your data off your computer

<comment><USER19> Probably not. As they will be fetching email directly from Google's server using your access token.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Giving access to my Gmail access is way over the line, but if at least this was working.

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting if the government used this data to expand the public transport system where appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was a bit disappointed that lines for the trips weren't displayed -- just pick-up and drop-off points.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does it also show how much longer the ride was compared to the shortest route?

</comment><comment><USER11> Any way to use the service without logging in with gmail?

<comment><USER23> I'm sure they could process exported gmail data dump: [https://www.google.com/settings/takeout](https://www.google.com/settings/takeout)

An analogy would be this social graph network analysis tutorial which walks you through exporting your Facebook social graph data and creating cluster graph on it using a tool called Gephi: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLFMObmLNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLFMObmLNQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I got a bunch of 500 errors and stack overflows.</comment>


Bush signs controversial anti-piracy law - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE49C7EI20081013 <comment><USER2> This is a disaster. Bush is an idiot for signing this, but just remember who controls congress. Looks like there's finally something both parties can agree on, and that's to use government resources to enforce sweeping, intrusive copyright laws.

<comment><USER3> Both parties get donations from the content cartels, and do what their paymasters tell them. Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.

<comment><USER4> Repubs only get token money from RIAA and MPAA and their members. They go along on this one because they're the stupid party. The Dems would probably go along for free because they're the evil party, but they're happy to take the money, and it's a lot of money. (The Dems big three donor classes are trial lawyers, wall street, and "entertainment", read MPAA/RIAA members.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's irrelevant. Copyright is dead (by which I mean that business models based on selling copies of a piece of information are becoming non-viable); the worst this bill will do is harm a few thousand individual file sharers. This will slow down the transition to the information-is-free-as-in-beer society, but it cannot halt it.

This is not to be read as a moral judgement: what I say is true regardless of whether I -- or anyone else -- approves of it. Bits are copiable, and the law cannot change that, any more than a law could make water not wet. The only way to stop filesharing would be to destroy the computing and Internet infrastructure, which no nation can do unless it wants to be as poor as North Korea.

In the medium term the main effect of this might be to stimulate the creation of new P2P software that is more robust against attacks, and which makes it harder for the MAFIAA to snoop on what files people are sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> I want limited government.</comment>


Old computer magazines - <AUTHOR> http://www.atarimagazines.com/

<comment><USER2> Wow! We got our first computer when I was 11 -- an Apple IIc my parents brought home over Thanksgiving weekend, 1986. The store they bought it from was also giving away free subscriptions to Compute at InCider magazines. I spent MANY hours pouring over these magazines and later when I learned BASIC, typing in the programs they would give away for free in the back of the magazine.

Anyone else remember InCider and A+ for the Apple II?

<comment><USER3> I had forgotten about them, but yes. Both were cool, but I had a subscription to "Call A.P.P.L.E." magazine - a regional Apple ][ mag. Lots of BASIC programs. (I'm amazed to find out just now that it's been revived as a Mac magazine!) I recently was throwing things away and ran across a stack of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was an old magazine called the C User's Journal a while back. Then it became the C/C++ User's Journal. Finally it either got purchased by Dr. Dobbs or it became Dr. Dobbs. I'd love to get a look at some of those articles in the CUJ. Dobbs doesn't seem to have articles online anymore from this era. I think my only hope is to make it to a well known university library..

</comment><comment><USER5> In Italy there was an old computer magazine called MCmicrocomputer. It was awesome: algorithms and data structures explained, for instance there was a great serie on compression, one on low level encoding of images in video cards, and so forth. Game programming, assembler, logic games, UNIX, science fiction! and many other advanced topics in their pages. I was 11 when I started reading this stuff, so it was more or less 22 years ago. I still miss this wonderful magazine.

There is a wonderful project to bring all the 20 years archive back online: <http://www.mcmicrocomputer.org/>

Edit: from the archives, an interesting article about anagrams. Very funny to read as there was no easy way to get a wordlist at the time, so a completely different approach is used. [http://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc048/37?zoomed=true&zoomP...](http://issuu.com/adpware/docs/mc048/37?zoomed=true&zoomPercent=100&zoomXPos=0.02781211372064285&zoomYPos=0.27390057361376674)

</comment><comment><USER6> Creative Computing was the first computer mag I ever bought, I remember it disappearing and by then I was onto Byte and Nibble. Of these shown for a while I subscribed to STart and even had a little article published in it, March 1990 ("GFA Basic Wipes & Dissolves). Good times.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not that related but still very cool <http://cd.textfiles.com/>

Contains all the old CD collections from 90s ! All the demoscene,Aminet archives , Black Philes .....

</comment><comment><USER8> Ah, all those long nights typing in countless lines of hex in DATA lines :)

<comment><USER9> And saving them to cassettes...

<comment><USER8> Then copying them with the double deck to give to friends :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amiga Power

The best part is the web-only follow-up to the deceased mag:

<http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/>

</comment><comment><USER11> What's really nice about these old magazines is, usually, the publisher (usually a small outfit now moved onto other markets) lets people put them up on the Web.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not listed: A.N.A.L.O.G. <http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/> A favored source of type-in games. I recall the James Hague that runs dadgum.com submitted some games to either A.N.A.L.O.G. or Antic, and possibly articles too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Many of these covers remind me of this: <http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers>

</comment><comment><USER14> Where's Byte? :-o</comment>


Find bugs from Mobile apps in production by tracking functions - <AUTHOR> An approach to keep an eye on functions in an app. This setup will inform developers when a function in an app fails in production. Data points like function parameters, return value, delay in execution etc will help a developer figure out the cause of failure fast. The setup can be implemented by using the SDK called Finotes. <comment><USER2> Finotes tells you precisely what went wrong during a function execution along with function parameters passed to the function when called. For example, let's say your function takes a number component from the database, finotes raise a bug report in case the number retrieved from the database is not within the expected range. Another situation is, finotes raise a bug report if the function execution takes more than an ideal amount of time. This could be because the function might be handling resource-intensive tasks in UI thread.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Learn how from this blog [https://www.blog.finotes.com/g/why-is-function- tracking-the-...](https://www.blog.finotes.com/g/why-is-function-tracking-the- better-approach-to-mobile-app-bug-reporting)</comment>


Capitalism is failing America, says a conservative Republican - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-failing-america-says-a-conservative-republican-2019-05-20 <comment><USER2> Weird title, most people know who Marco Rubio is.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find these discussions impossible because on capitalism, like so many issues, there's really no agreement on what's even under discussion. Depending on who you're talking to, "capitalism" can mean anything from the capture of political power by economic power, to just the basic existence of markets, trade, and private property. Every such discussion inevitably becomes two people talking past each other about completely different things. Same spectrum exists for "socialism".

<comment><USER4> Rubio's not up for re-election until 2022, so he can push these left-leaning ideas to try and pull fringe leftists into the party. Later on near election season, he'll take the hard party line every time.

On that note, I'm not sure this belongs on HN. I don't want this site to devolve into political editorial discussion every day. There are other sites for that.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully you flagged the post and others will as well. I always flag posts like these because I also hope this site does not devolve into political editorial discussions every day.

<comment><USER6> I read this article just before it got flagged away, and I'm glad to have read this. I liked this article because it brought me a new insight, or rather it put into words a feeling I have about the economy: that companies have turned traditional capitalism around by effectively providing loans to consumers, and returning capital to shareholders. A very intriguing insight.

As a European I'm not into US politics, it's too bad it has become so divisive that a discussion is no longer possible, even if it contains relevant insights that may lead to opportunities for startups.

<comment><USER5> The article was informative, and I don't believe " it has become so divisive that a discussion is no longer possible" but simply that hacker news is not the place for these types of articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ignoring the sensationalized headline:

> Over the last four decades, the financial sector of the U.S. economy saw its > share of corporate profits increase from about 10% to nearly 40% before the > 2008 financial crisis, and nearly 30% in 2018. During this period, the > capital that corporations returned to their shareholders tripled, while > business investment decreased by 20%.

> The report argues that since the 1970s, changes made by American businesses > and policymakers began prioritizing high returns to investors in the short > term, rather than investment in long-term capabilities.

You can completely believe in big c "Capitalism" and also believe that we are doing it badly. And I think blame going on everyone, the MBA class and lawmakers alike, is pretty fair.

<comment><USER8> What a funny coincidence! Lawyer and MBAs are the 2 highest paid careers by an order of magnitude according to another link on HN[0]

[0][https://www.zippia.com/research/dead-end- careers/](https://www.zippia.com/research/dead-end-careers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A healthy capitalism is expressed by G K Chesterton, and is an argument against liberal capitalism,which even Thatcher did not support:

"Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."

Like anything, capitalism must be humanised with restraint and constraint, the application of intelligent regulations and actively fighting the private monopolist (Hayek, The Road to Serfdom). For example, to avoid race-to-the- bottom competition by mandating certain features as non-optional. Or for safety. Obvious stuff really. And not burdensome regulations to please a Media campaign or emotional blackmail from the Left.

Liberal capitalism, totally free market capitalism, ends with monopolies as beast eats beast. It's what Marx criticised though he made no distinction between capitalism and capitalism.

And this is what has happened, with monopolies so large that their power to blackmail and bribe is undermining government, threatening free speech and disenfranchising.

</comment><comment><USER10> Capitalism says nothing about how to govern a society. The idea that you can trust a system of exchange with social welfare is lazy governing.

<comment><USER9> ...or trust the government with the education of your children. As much as the Left sneer at it, a voucher system would give people the liberty to choose the schools they want and not what they are forced to accept.

Meanwhile, governments support doctrines that have turned out to be false, even just basic things like diet. Animal fat and dietary cholesterol for instance, is no longer believed to be the cause of heart disease. And can aid weight loss.

Social doctrines also are arguably causing widespread misery for people trapped by government welfare systems at such a high cost that it depresses local economic activity.

Self-help rather than government help is the conservative way. And a healthy capitalism is part of that.

The problem here is that modern capitalism is quite evidently not healthy. With the historical profit margin on goods of 3% now at a mad 11% due to monopoly power.

<comment><USER11> > ...or trust the government with the education of your children. As much as > the Left sneer at it, a voucher system would give people the liberty to > choose the schools they want and not what they are forced to accept.

As long as everyone gets the same voucher, same amount for voucher, and has guaranteed public transportation to the same schools as others, with no regard for race, ethnicity, background, then sure go for vouchers.... if you can't guarantee those things then it's just another system that can be gamed.

> Meanwhile, governments support doctrines that have turned out to be false, > even just basic things like diet. Animal fat and dietary cholesterol for > instance, is no longer believed to be the cause of heart disease. And can > aid weight loss.

I agree on this because government can be bought and the sugar industry has done a snap job at turning diet industries upside down blaming fat instead of themselves.

> Social doctrines also are arguably causing widespread misery for people > trapped by government welfare systems at such a high cost that it depresses > local economic activity.

What about welfare that walmart gets? They not only get HUGE tax cuts, they ALSO get to pay their employees dirt wages because the U.S. government will pick up the slack.

Guaranteed basic income could stop that or alleviate it at least by giving them a guaranteed living wage. Another issue is runaway spending on executives who really aren't worth a damn in (many instances), and those who are still are NOT worth what they're paid.

Also how does welfare depress local economic activity more than taking money from the bottom, and funneling it to an offshore account? If A. makes $25k, and gets government help to raise that to $35k, that's $10k more they have to spend yearly. 60%+ will be spent locally propping up the local economy. If B. earns > 10 million annually and gets a huge tax cut that saves them an extra 100k, that 100k is just going to sit in the bank in the Caymen's -- it might be earning interest for the rich guy but that's about it.

> The problem here is that modern capitalism is quite evidently not healthy. > With the historical profit margin on goods of 3% now at a mad 11% due to > monopoly power

Pegging CEO pay to average of ALL employees including outsourced, freelance, and contractors (even janitorial staff), would go a long way towards making capitalism more fair.

<comment><USER9> "As long as everyone gets the same voucher, same amount for voucher, and has guaranteed public transportation to the same schools as others, with no regard for race, ethnicity, background, then sure go for vouchers.... if you can't guarantee those things then it's just another system that can be gamed."

Anything can be gamed if you are adequately cunning. That's the problem of the "public parasite". And your conditions are arbitrary and ride roughshod over private liberty and the choices of the parents.

A voucher system would induce the creation of local schools, so the transportation thing is irrelevent (and in anycase the responsiblity of parents not the State).

"Pegging CEO pay to average of ALL employees including outsourced, freelance, and contractors (even janitorial staff), would go a long way towards making capitalism more fair."

That would result in socialism. A healthy system looks for liberty based solutions, not coercions. More liberty intelligently applied (as with vouchers) requires politicans with backbone and brains. Able to withstand emotional blackmail and do the right thing for the long term instead of pretending to solve problems by banning stuff and throwing money around.

<comment><USER11> I don't think you understand what socialism means. It means government controls and OWNS (thereby we all own) all corporations collectively. My proposal is not socialism, it's reigned in capitalism.

I mean whether the CEO earns 50 million or is capped at only earning 5 million is up to him.

All he needs to do is raise wages across the board. Multipliers could be given also for increased employee#s year to year. --- CEO could still earn plenty, say it's pegged at 200 * average worker and average worker earns 60k - that's STILL 12 million per year, hardly anything to scoff at.

Then say you also get an extra 10% bonus allowance for every 1% increase in employees (you also get docked 10% per 1% decrease), and you increased employment by 2% over last year, so you get 220* average worker salary or an extra 1.2 million. Furthermore we could add bonuses based on u.s. to offshore worker ratio, more U.S. employees = higher CEO pay.

If I'm a CEO earning $10 million, but I want to earn $15 million, I'm going to have to get creative about increasing the average from 50k to 75k. When all companies are in this same boat -- wages across America will go up organically. There almost won't be a need for a minimum wage even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Conservatives use to be supportive of free market capitalism. But since the rise of Trump I increasingly see that their main platform is white nativism and weirdly argued protectionism.

It is worth noting that Trump's protectionism and views on immigration are nearly same as that of Bernie Sanders. (Motivation might be different but Trump and Bernie are likely to support exact same actions).

Marco Rubio's statement does not surprise me, it is the general direction in which Republican party is headed.

<comment><USER5> What is "white nativism"

<comment><USER13> Nativism [1] pitched specifically to appeal to whites?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_(politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_\(politics\))</comment></comment></comment>


Plupload - Upload files beautifully with HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.plupload.com/

<comment><USER2> From the docs: "Drag/drop support of files is currently only available in Firefox 3.5+. WebKit/Opera doesn't support this feature yet."

Is it true that WebKit doesn't support Drag and Drop? I'm pretty sure I drag and drop files into Google Docs using Chrome. Is this something different?

<comment><USER3> Drag and drop in Google Docs (and Gmail) is HTML5.[1] I don't think WebKit supports it fully, though. I am using Chrome 15 canary and when I visited html5test.com I got "partial" for the "dropzone" attribute under "Drag and drop". Same for Safari.

[1] [http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/04/google-turns-to- html5-for-g...](http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/04/google-turns-to-html5-for- gmails-new-drag-and-drop-attachments/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Enter your URL and view CVEs affecting your stack over last 6 months - <AUTHOR> https://secalerts.co/security-audit <comment><USER2> It's a pretty poor implementation that is basically matching on the lowest common denominator, by platform rather than by library or framework. An ASP.NET website is fully independent of a WCF vulnerability. They _can_ coexist but definitely don't have to.

Additional suggestion: many times the home page is a link to many different technologies. Crawl all first-level directory indices to see different techs. E.g. we have a xenforo-powered forum at /forums, a WordPress blog at /blog, a custom ASP.NET CMS at /store, a .NET Core web app at /foo, etc.

The domain index for most companies past a certain age/size not dedicated solely to a single app effectively turns into a static html page.

</comment><comment><USER3> My static site running on OpenBSD 6.5 httpd gets identified as Apache ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER4> Same here. It also thinks I'm running PGP 7.1.31 when in fact I'm running 7.1.32.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. We built this using Wappalyzer to detect the software given a URL and match it against our database of CVEs and thought it might be a fun little tool.

<comment><USER5> Is this released open-source ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I pointed it at my lighttpd server and all I got was "cannot detect software" or so.

<comment><USER7> yep that's what I got. Tried on a couple of my web apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a nice addendum to the "Let Us Identify Your Stack" style web services tho I guess some of them might already provide this.

It does have the somewhat negative effect of making potentially vulnerable websites more visible to lower order hackers (I'm assuming more proficient ones have automated discovery tools like this anyway).

<comment><USER9> There are browser extensions that do this same thing. It's pretty trivial to do.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.whatruns.com/](https://www.whatruns.com/) not so precise must say

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried entering a bunch of major websites. Looks like ibm.com is full of holes that need patching.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like it's overloaded - HTTP/502 on the API here.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Increased the thread size so hopefully that should save it from all these hugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally, a place that can gather IP addresses and associate them to specific security products to have them hacked later. Just what I've been waiting for.

<comment><USER15> Alternatively, secure your stack and _don't_ have it hacked later.

<comment><USER16> Those self-managing their machines and sites could doubt if a break change or update would cause downtime, LXD/Docker could simplify on that and reduce the risk to only containers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there an open source alternative that could be self-hosted and configured to run automated and periodical checks?

<comment><USER9> Metasploit? You don't even need to host it (why are we so obsessed with making everything a website?)

<comment><USER18> Metasploit isn't the best choice for webapps, you probably want nikto or similar. Here's the owasp list: [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:Vulnerability_Scann...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:Vulnerability_Scanning_Tools)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wasn't able to detect what software my site use, my server name was disabled.

</comment><comment><USER19> i don't need to provide my (potentially vulnerable) production URL to whoever- you-might-be in order to identify the last 6 months of vulnerabilities - I can just google for that.

Submitting your site to this is just asking for trouble.

<comment><USER20> This just seems like a mailing list for CVE alerts for popular software. If you put in HN, it'll say that it failed to detect the stack, and then ask you to choose your software and then enter your email to receive alerts.

It's kind of clever marketing, giving people a sense that they're going to get a security audit in exchange for an email address.

<comment><USER21> The first URL I entered (coop.co.uk) was actually pretty awesome, it detected Varnish and showed a critical CVE from last week. That's cool.

I hope that if you subscribe, the site regularly rescans your stack and realised if it's changed. Otherwise it's just a mailing list subscription that becomes out of date and therefore not useful.</comment></comment></comment>


Indicate your build status with programmable light bulbs - <AUTHOR> http://www.geckoboard.com/blog/indicate-your-build-status-with-programmable-light-bulbs

<comment><USER2> Next step: dim the house lights and redlight the desk lamp in the cube of the person that broke the build. Add a Battlestar Galactica-type klaxon alarm for extra fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice first step but ver 2.0 should have Kevo door locks. Maybe not on the fire exits, but the office fridge or microwave.</comment>


Entrepreneurs Beware: Where's Your Health Insurance? - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/hbreditors/2008/04/entrepreneurs_beware_wheres_yo.html

<comment><USER2> 150/month isn't a bad deal for health insurance (Kaiser) in california</comment>


Ask YC: How to evaluate a potential ad network partner? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am in early stage discussions with a potential ad network partner. I would really appreciate if anyone could give me tips on what we should look for, the right questions to ask etc. <comment><USER2> This is a poorly asked question. You don't give any details, and worse, I don't really know what your situation is, or at least the number of visitors your site gets. In addition, ad network partners are really dependent on the type of traffic you're getting. Is your site a niche car site, or clothing, or something easily monetizable, or are you getting traffic that more resembles myspace?

Re-write your situation and question with more details, and I'm sure a bunch of people can chime in with good advice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agree with Jyu. Reword the question. In general, you should evaluate the ad network partner on whether they can drive revenue with your inventory, especially with your type of audience. If your site has been around for a while and you know the traffic you're getting, then shop the deal around and inquire into other ad networks. At the very least, make sure it isn't exclusive so you can rotate those ads out.</comment>


Ask HN: Best examples of self-contained React/Redux component - <AUTHOR> I am looking for good examples of React/Redux based self-contained components. <comment><USER2> If it's self contained then wouldn't / shouldn't it be a react component _without_ redux? Redux is designed to manage state passing to properties in many components organized in your app, but you're asking about a single component.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what confuses me. How would I write a React based component that can manage the retrieving the data it needs and can be easily integrated into other React/Redux based applications.

For example, I wish to write a component that displays the weather for a given date and zip code. I also want to create another component that displays the local events for a given date and zip code.

I want a simple SPA app to include these two components along with a shared chooser component that allows users to select the zip code and date.

Finally, I want to share the weather and event components with other developers so they can incorporate them easily in their own React/Redux based applications.

<comment><USER3> This is a good read [0]. Been using this approach in several larger applications for a while (with great success).

By decoupling the selection of state from the actual state structure (using relative selectors) + defining a public interface for your features (your app will basically consist of smaller apps - fractally) you can achieve what you're after.

[0] [http://jaysoo.ca/2016/02/28/organizing-redux- application/](http://jaysoo.ca/2016/02/28/organizing-redux-application/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep a list of Redux-related addons and utilities at [https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem- links](https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links) . Within that list, the "Widgets" page lists a bunch of pre-written React components that use Redux to store their data. Probably the best examples of what you're looking for.</comment>


Show HN: My Static Page HTML App To Track And Recommend Books For Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://hn-books.com?ref=manual

<comment><USER2> That is a nice site. All the reviews are from you? You are using a custom tool for the static page generation?

Small thing: on the main page, you have a-links into buttons, for the audio- book, e-book and normal one. That doesn't work for me, a click just presses the button (newest FF under Ubuntu).

Do you want hints for the design?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! Email them on.

The site is almost 4 years old, and it's starting to show its age. I would do much differently were I to start over.

Yes, currently the reviews are from me. I let the site slide for a long time because I only wanted books that would still be good ten years from now, and you don't see a lot of those released each year.

Interesting problem I ran into with the site? Gushing reviews. Turns out if you only review the best stuff, you quickly run out of superlatives. That was the main reason I didn't finish reviewing all the entries.

The challenge I took when building the site was to do as much as possible without a transactional database or realtime back-end system. The site compiles from an MS Access database to JSON, which is then stored on the server. I found with a semi-static database and rich querystring, I could do a lot more than most people would imagine. It made me start deeply thinking about app architecture -- completely changed the way I look at it.

But the UX? Not so much.

<comment><USER2> I sent you an email

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Usage:

1) Find what people are saying about a book before purchasing. Example: [http://www.hn-books.com/Books/Slaughterhouse- Five.htm#the_bu...](http://www.hn-books.com/Books/Slaughterhouse- Five.htm#the_buzz)

2) Save a list of books that answer a particular question as a link to share with others instead of having to list your favorite books over and over again. Example: "These are the best sci-fi books I read last year: [http://www.hn- books.com/#B0=164&B1=166&B2=165&BC=3&EC=0&FC=0...](http://www.hn- books.com/#B0=164&B1=166&B2=165&BC=3&EC=0&FC=0&Q0=15&QC=1")

3) Read reviews

4) Create a "Countdown clock" that shows how long your startup has until you run out of money: [http://hn-books.com/EZ-Business-Model.htm](http://hn- books.com/EZ-Business-Model.htm)

There are a few more features. More functionality than most folks would expect from a static html page app.</comment>


YC Ad Innovation Conference Now Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/ycombinator#/w/1767843872

<comment><USER2> The list of predicted advertising trends from PG:

1) Tablets are important (apple is taking over the world), lots of potential for advertising innovation given technology like touch and gestures

2) All data will live in the cloud

3) More stuff happens peer-to-peer (Airbnb vs hotels)

4) There will be a lot more startups; you'll need to begin working with startups while they're small

5) Facebook is a big deal, sort of like iOS; they haven't tried to start making money yet. wait for the growth group for finance.

6) More companies are moving into the software business (how do I start a software company in the ad business?)

7) It will be possible to target ads very precisely. what would a super precise ad look like? assume you knew everything about the person, what ad would you give them? think about it that way.

8) Measurement is going to become more important. google makes a lot of its decisions using data.

9) Creative will fuse with generated; games are like branched movies. ads could be transformed similarly (executing a function where the user is an argument)

Summary: in the future, think of the world where more stuff is known about more people.

<comment><USER3> I missed the video, but I am surprised why the rise of predictive analytics, creative optimization and advertiser workflow automation is not on this list.

Making and targeting ads effectively is very time-consuming and error prone. There is tremendous room for innovation.

<comment><USER4> Advertiser workflow automation? Could you explain more about this, I'm quite curious!

<comment><USER3> Think of all the steps that go into setting up complex campaigns with proper split testing.

There is lots of hassle, inefficiency and errors that happen along the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry about the audio, we'll try to fix it in a second. Also, we'll be turning the stream off for some of the off the record companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the idea of sharing the event with the community.

However the video is 47 minutes long and has 20 minutes of an empty introduction, where nothing is going on (waste of resources). When PG gets on stage, he cannot be understood due to the audio quality. Minimal effort in cutting the video down to the essential interval and better placement of the mic would make the video contribution way more valuable.

Thanks for the text summary in this forum!

</comment><comment><USER7> The aspect ratio is jacked up, at least when played back on Chrome on OSX 10.7.1 It's like it is being shot in 16:9 and streamed in 4:3 without being cropped.

Also, your player seems to steal the keyboard in chrome and not give it back; presumably this is also a Chrome bug?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this livestream only, or will it be available for viewing after the event?

</comment><comment><USER9> Its kinda hard to hear the presenter, but otherwise thanks for the stream!

</comment><comment><USER10> Horrible audio.</comment>