Quora Keeps the World's Knowledge for Itself - <AUTHOR> https://konklone.com/post/quora-keeps-the-worlds-knowledge-for-itself <comment><USER2> Quora is what would happen if George Lucas tried to design a Q&A site. Brilliant in many ways, but it has all the signs of one single guy at the top refusing advice from people for years about a few core issues and consequently holding the entire enterprise back.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that how the Linux kernel evolved? Linus filling the role as benevolent dictator?

<comment><USER4> Torvalds is amazingly good at what he does, and if someone doesn't like his direction, the code is all there for the forking.

So, yes, a dictatorial model can accomplish good things, if the dictator, like Torvalds, is smart enough to delegate as much as possible and actively avoid making decisions. Torvalds being smart enough to pick smart underlings is the second half of that puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honest question does anyone still use Quora? It seems more about being an ego contest than actually answering questions. They are definitely not the "library of Alexandria"... they far far from that.

<comment><USER6> I've never actually used it. Every time I've followed a link there, I get a popup telling me I have to register before seeing any content, which I've refused to do.

<comment><USER7> Just add ?share=1 to the URL to remove that (ideally the person posting would have.)

<comment><USER8> No.

Sites should try to get me to use them, I shouldn't have to try to use a site.

<comment><USER9> The information you'll get isn't worth typing the params into the URL bar. You can find SF sushi recommendations elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> That's been my experience. The few times I've seen a link because someone actually set it up correctly I was disappointed when I got to the actual content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Quora is not a private communications network. When users contribute to Quora, they're participating in Quora's mission: to "share and grow the world's knowledge"._

Well, in many ways Quora (just like any other web platform) IS a private communications network.

And their mission is certainly not to "share and grow the world's knowledge". As with any company, their mission is first and foremost to make their investors happy, mostly by striving to make them richer every day than they were the day before. The dreamy tagline is just a way to make the pill more appealing to swallow for the users.

(remember Google's "Don't be evil"?)

I also despise Quora, and used to think it was terrible that huge swaths of human knowledge would be lost a few years from now when they inevitably get acquired/go bankrupt/etc.

But I'm not losing sleep over it anymore: they will be a mere blip in the history of human knowledge, and while some valuable chunks of knowledge will be lost, we can't do much about it.

I do wish the Wikimedia foundation set up an open Quora alternative. Wikipedia is about objective knowledge - it seems like there would be a place for a counterpart project about subjective knowledge. Properly moderated, it could be really, really interesting.

<comment><USER11> > And their mission is certainly not to "share and grow the world's > knowledge".

Well, I obviously agree that it's not their actual mission as executed. But I'm putting it in quotes because I copied it from Quora's official About page: [https://www.quora.com/about](https://www.quora.com/about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The way I understand it, part of the core value prop of Quora is that writers own their own content distribution. If you want to post an answer on Quora, and re-post it on your own blog, that's fantastic. If you want to post on Quora and mark it _not for reproduction_, that's totally your choice. If you think of it this way, it makes sense that Quora is not letting their content get automatically distributed, since once it goes to Archive.org, it's no longer under the users' control to revoke access to the answer at any time. Not only do they not claim to own your content, they don't even let it propagate without express permission from you, the author.

Taking a stance like this just gains trust from authors. If you want your writing to get mass distribution, it's up to you to distribute it. If you want it to be archived, publish it in multiple places.

I don't necessarily agree with it, and I've pretty much stopped writing on Quora for a number of reasons, but I see where they're coming from. It might be the best way for them to get the trust of some pretty high-status figures to post honest answers on their platform.

<comment><USER13> > If you want to post on Quora and mark it _not for reproduction_, that's > totally your choice. If you think of it this way, it makes sense that Quora > is not letting their content get automatically distributed, since once it > goes to Archive.org, it's no longer under the users' control to revoke > access to the answer at any time.

This would be a totally reasonable explanation if copyright law didn't exist, but it does. Content you create is _already_ marked "not for reproduction", and if someone -- including the Internet Archive! -- reproduces it without your permission, you are legally entitled to ask them to stop. The Internet Archive won't even make you involve a lawyer.

<comment><USER11> > and if someone -- including the Internet Archive! -- reproduces it without > your permission, you are legally entitled to ask them to stop. The Internet > Archive won't even make you involve a lawyer.

That's right.

And this is important, because the Archive, like everyone else, is subject to copyright law. What Quora is asking for is something more: an API that allows them to go in, without any sort of human process or judgment, and sync up the Archive's records with what Quora wants those records to be. That's much different, and much worse.

<comment><USER14> Hey, I'm the random guy that asked you to answer on Quora. How I found you isn't very mysterious, I just asked all the folks listed here: [http://18f.gsa.gov](http://18f.gsa.gov) if I could easily identify a Quora profile.

I asked because a friend of mine recently joined 18F, I like what your team is doing, so I created the question as an attempt to get more attention for you guys. Just consider the resulting page a form of advertising ephemera. Sites on the Internet should aspire to be more, but Quora doesn't.

<comment><USER11> > Hey, I'm the random guy that asked you to answer on Quora. How I found you > isn't very mysterious, I just asked all the folks listed here: > [http://18f.gsa.gov](http://18f.gsa.gov) if I could easily identify a Quora > profile.

And hopefully it's clear in my post that I'm really glad you did! :) It really is a good artifact -- which is exactly why I get so mad that it's not being preserved the way it should be.

<comment><USER14> Oh good, so we're still cool. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The reason we opt of the wayback machine is because this decision lets writers change their mind whether to have an answer published, or change their mind whether to use their name in authoring an answer (i.e., vs. making it anonymous).

People share a lot of sensitive material on Quora - controversial political views, workplace gossip and compensation, and negative opinions held of companies. Over many years, as they change jobs or change their views, it is important that they can delete or anonymize their previously-written answers.

I know from first-hand experience that Quora writers sometimes decide to go anonymous after they've shared something sensitive. I do this myself from time to time, and I appreciate the option to make that change; this option gives me more comfort in sharing what I know about sensitive topics.

<comment><USER16> Maybe use the same solution as Hacker News: Allow users for a limited time to make changes, even delete their answers. Once that time expires make the question accessible to the wayback machine crawlers.

Other than that if users don't want to be associated with something they said in the past to an audience, maybe they shouldn't be saying it at all.

<comment><USER17> "maybe they shouldn't be saying it at all."

I agree with you in the general case (as a 41 year old). But as someone who was once a stupid teenager, I sure am glad that while I used the Internet back then most of the stupid things I said on it were/are pseudo-anonymized behind "handles", which is something that is far more difficult to do these days.

(Not sure how much this applies to Quora, though).

<comment><USER18> I know someone whose Quora account was disabled a while back because he refused to use his "real name".

No idea if they still have that policy; my own account is evidence that they don't enforce it across the board (and really how could they?), but if it's still nominally in place then that leaves active users forced to choose between using a pseudonym (and living in fear that access to their account will be stripped from them) or using a name that can potentially be used to identify them in other contexts (and living in fear that being candid will come back to bite them later in life).

Not a particularly good decision to force on someone, IMHO - even if you do promise them an "out" by letting them retroactively self-censor.

<comment><USER19> They still have that policy. There have certainly been issues with it because there are international users (Quora still struggles to cater for users outside US/UK/Australia, though their recent efforts to connect with Indian users are going well) who might have a 'western name' and 'transliterated' name, and the policy sort of breaks down.

I suppose Quora thinks that anonymity will be good enough, but pseudonyms might prove to better in 90% of cases. I think that probably 9 out of 10 uses of anonymity that I've seen on Quora weren't really necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "They block archive.org spiders" is like reason 329 on the list of reasons why Quora is a shit website.

</comment><comment><USER21> My experience with Quora is that it's mostly "pitch spam". Ask any question, like, "What's the best Ruby on Rails continuous integration solution?", and rather than get the wisdom of the masses, you'll get founders of CI solutions expounding. (To be clear, I'm more or less cool with content marketing, but Quora's value prop doesn't match up with reality often)

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe "there must be an everlasting, immutable record of everything anyone has ever written or shared on the Internet, regardless of when it was written, the state of mind of the author, or how that author's (or society's) views have evolved over time" is not a nuanced enough point of view.

</comment><comment><USER23> Speaking as someone whose writings as a teenagers are often dragged up by Internet trolls with no disclaimer about when they were written, I find myself extremely, extremely sympathetic to Quora here.

<comment><USER24> Are those teenage writings being dragged up specifically via the wayback machine? Did you try removing/changing them only to be thwarted by 3rd parties who'd made copies of the old material?

You may be sympathetic but I'm guessing that this situation is not really comparable.

<comment><USER23> Yep. Wayback machine specifically, on sites whose robots.txt I can no longer control, and I'm sure the trolls have hard copies by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _So, Quora 's rationale for blocking the Internet Archive is that Quora can't go back and automatically rewrite history whenever one of its users wants to._

It's the same rationale that EU courts used to make Google remove search results on user's request. Many people think like that apparently. It had defenders even here.

<comment><USER26> A rational could be perfectly legitimate for deciding to not give someone information, but horribly inappropriate for forcing someone else to not give out information.

<comment><USER25> Google ruling is not about not giving them information but about stopping Google from linking to already published articles for some keywords.

<comment><USER26> The link itself is information. The ruling is very clearly about preventing Google from giving people certain information in certain circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article argues (quite persuasively IMO) that Quora should be allowing the Internet Archive to index the site. It explores the validity argument that Quora makes on its robots.txt, that indexing would prevent question respondents to later turn their answers to anonymous answers.

I agree with the author that there is a real risk of this massive cultural trove of information to be completely dis-established on the basis of a management decision or financial collapse.

A possible response from Quora qould be to offer dumps to various archives, e.g. Library of Congress. This should allow them to maintain their commercial interests.

<comment><USER19> Quora did recently shut down the private blog feature they had, and a dump was exactly what they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A few years ago when Google was offering $1m+ stock to counter employees going to Facebook, some people leaked names on Quora but then promptly deleted it. This event is likely one that influenced Quora's interests in this matter.

Another factor that likely influenced this decision is that Quora has slowly made some content available to logged-out/anon users. Some sensitive answers written before this product change (e.g. answers on sensitive health issues) were likely written without consideration for these product changes and Quora wanted to ensure user trust could be retained.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not a huge fan, but I do like the content they email me sometimes.

I'm not sure what I'm missing, but I've seen tons of anti-quora stuff on Hacker News in the past month or so. There was this, another article about VCs who think quora is dumb, and some other posts that basically think the same thing as linked.

Are they arrogant or assholes in person? There are tons of companies who do nothing and have no value and are loved, while they have built something of value to users, or at least I've found great answers to things that I had questions on.

</comment><comment><USER30> The thing that initially attracted me to Quora (to the point of being one of their power writers in 2012) is that it's a way to publish things online that feel evergreen, without having to worry about maintaining or marketing a personal blog. My engagement with the site has declined a lot, but I still can see that people are reading the stuff I wrote several years ago, which doesn't happen with forums like this one, or with an untended blog.

<comment><USER31> Good point - the reason for that is probably that as indexing and search systems go, Quora has done an exceptionally good job in on site retrieval of information as well on SEO - their autocomplete+search feature is especially well done.

HN atleast doesn't have the same visibility into the discussion threads that thrive here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Funny how when I look for a technical answer to a problem on Google Quora never shows up ? while i get dozens of answers from SO.

Quora could have been so much more than it is, it doesnt look very successfull to me,because of stupid choices.

<comment><USER18> To be fair, Quora has made very little effort to compete in SO's area. In a sense, both sites were created to solve entirely different problems, albeit problems that traditionally occur in the same space...

\- SO is the answer to the question, "How can we keep useful technical information from being scattered among forum chatter?"

\- Quora is the answer to the question, "How can we keep interesting forum chatter from being scattered among... less interesting forum chatter?"

There are countless other takes on both of these ideas, of course. Sites like E2 and K5 could be considered spiritual ancestors, while ExpertsExchange clearly had a much more direct influence on the designs of both SO and Quora. It'll be interesting to see which one folks still remember in 10 years... And what then-current systems have learned from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just a note... Don't go to Stockholm to see that fancy "wall of knowledge". That image description is so deceiving. As a Stockholmer I instinctively thought to myself: WTF. Turns out it's a CG concept.

</comment><comment><USER34> How has Quora changed since they went into YCombinator recently?

</comment><comment><USER35> "and it's definitely not how the Internet works" \- how do you define how the internet works? Quora's been completely transparent and consistent about this approach from day 1. You don't have to like it. You don't have to participate. this feels like someone throwing a tantrum because Quora isn't behaving in the way _you want them to_. I kind of figure that "the way the Internet works" is it allows for a whole host of different sites, services and commercialization strategies and we engage with platforms and services freely based on the value vs cost analysis.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why use Quora when you have StackExchange?

Quora died the day they put the pay wall up. Also you can't post anonymously. It's fail after fail with me, it's unfortunate because I enjoyed the beta version of the site way back when.

<comment><USER37> Can you post anonymously on StackExchange (honest question)?

<comment><USER38> For most sites (Stack Overflow is one of the exceptions) you can simply ask a question without ever registering. Unlike Quora, SE doesn't have anything like a real name policy, you never have to give them your real name.

<comment><USER37> Thank you. I use SO a fair bit, so maybe that's why I didn't realize the other SE sites are more permissive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can somewhat empathize with the author of this article because in the end, transparency and willingness to share knowledge are historically good things to do.

However, I also respect Quora's commitment to user privacy and requests to delete content. Content creators power Quora's success, and to me it signals appreciation on Quora's part to watch out for them.

I have gotten a significant amount of utility from Quora for free in the form of it answering questions I had and thought provoking content. Its a bit hyperbolic to say Quora keeps the world's knowledge for itself.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think we're going to find (eventually, as people get bitten) is that [forever searchability] + [real name policy] + [non-deletable content] will = abundant caution to the point of self-censorship, reducing the overall quality of user-generated discussions.

I know I self-censor a lot on any platform that requires a real name (or on those like HN where I choose to use mine). Who knows what (today uncontroversial) opinions will be considered taboo, criminally weird, or treasonous in 40 years time? I need to make sure I can run for president one day, you know.

</comment><comment><USER41> IA's spider respects META tags in the HTML right? Quora should prevent archiving of a page using the tags until maybe a couple months after the last person has responded, then allow the page to be archived by removing any META tags related to archiving.

AFAIK, noarchive still allows indexing of the page, which means the robot should realize the page is there and archive it during its next run.

</comment><comment><USER42> I highly recommend Scott Hanselman's essay on the finiteness of the number of keystrokes you have in a lifetime: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DoTheyDeserveTheGiftOfYourKeys...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DoTheyDeserveTheGiftOfYourKeystrokes.aspx). Draw your own conclusions about putting knowledge inside walled gardens.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Quora is a free service built on venture capital that will need to monetize its users over the next couple years, and wouldn't you know, they really want you visit quora.com, and they really want you to create an account."

What are some ideas about what Quora's long-term business model might end up being? This is the context needed to judge this article.

<comment><USER11> > What are some ideas about what Quora's long-term business model might end up > being?

There's some good discussion on that on, how about that, Quora: [https://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term- business-p...](https://www.quora.com/What-could-Quoras-long-term-business- plan-be)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was an early adopter of Quora and consume a lot of content on it. I think it is a great place to get curated answers for questions I think are interesting. I have taken a lot of care in cutting out the noise in Quora and that has helped me a lot in getting some high quality content in my inbox.

</comment><comment><USER45> What I see is that quora cares about its users more that it cares about "how the internet works".

Is that that awful?

</comment><comment><USER46> Nobody should ever contribute content to proprietary resources. The community should own the content the community generates. Wikimedia stuff and Stack Exchange stuff is all CC-BY-SA licensed. We should contribute to those things! Screw Quora!!

</comment><comment><USER47> > Quora is not a private communications network.

Issues of marketing aside, if it has a login and a password, it is a private network.

If I publish on the open web, then pretty much what I say is public information. If I publish on a private network, I am turning that information over to them to do as they will, unless the ToS says I retain control.

I don't feel particularly bad that the Internet Archive is unable to catalog things that are behind closed doors, regardless of the reasoning behind closing the door.

And given the propensity for people to (rightly or wrongly) attack others by dredging up things long in the past, yet posted on the net, I'm not sure I disagree with Quora.

</comment><comment><USER48> I write a lot on Quora and respectfully disagree with OP here.

I like the fact that I can delete my questions or answers from time to time.

It's my content. Not the Internet's.

If I change my mind about something I wrote, I want to be able to edit it and delete it.

Some of my best answers are ones I edited many times over time. I use Quora and its readers to help me improve and correct my answers. The first draft is often not that great. Quora reduces the risk for me to submit my answer and post it.

I understand there are other sites where my content would be more public and permanent and I share on there too. But I often write and re-write on Quora before sharing my content to other sites.

<comment><USER49> This makes sense; but it's also not quite what's under discussion.

No one's asking for you to be no longer able to edit questions.

If Quora went offline, archive.org by default would show the last-archived version of that page -- i.e., your final, edited answer. It would also let people roll back and see previous versions of that page -- which Quora _also_ lets them do.

If you realize you wrote a response that on second thought you want deleted, you can currently delete it from Quora directly. If archive.org were allowed access, you'd have to _also_ request deletion from there, but you're allowed to do that as well.

I agree that it's your content, not the internet's, and archive.org generally agrees with that too; but they're interested in rescuing the data that should be rescued, if Quora goes offline tomorrow. With them currently blocked, if you don't have local copies of your best, carefully-edited answers, they'll just be gone if Quora's business model doesn't work out.

<comment><USER48> Wasn't aware one could ask archive.org to delete one's content, so thanks for that.

Still worth it for me to have Quora be somewhat "closed."

Because my initial answers aren't so public and the signal to noise ratio in the comments to my answers is higher than other places.

I get a lot of reverse inquiry from folks who find me on Twitter, where I share a lot of Quora content.

So I don't care that much that Quora isn't that searchable on Google, etc.

Quora works great for some of us.

Quora's not for everyone.

Neither is Facebook (teens dropping like flies), reddit (low percentage of women), etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A few times I've wanted to chime in with expert answers in my field and they didn't let me without giving my real name and personal data. So I didn't.

<comment><USER51> You can answer anonymously, that's the whole reason they're not letting the time machine index their site--so you can go anon later if you want to. You can also answer the question initially as anonymous.

<comment><USER50> Nope, you can tag yourself "anonymous" but they still want you to register with real data which I don't trust them to have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I currently use Quora. It's closed nature has some disadvantages, though writers clearly can choose to publish openly. Many of those can be mitigated.

Everything is logged. Changes, edits, whatever are all presented to all users, who can see what happened and who did it over time. I think that's a nice feature.

One thing Quora has going for it is the Be Nice, Be Respectful Policy.

In terms of technical knowledge, the site varies. In terms of advice, or something one might call wisdom, it ranges from good to really great. There are some garbage answers mixed in there, but it's not hard to see and have a dialog about the good stuff.

Notably, Quora is a place where people can share themselves and their experiences unabashedly. Women have had some trouble there, as have some other regular targets of discrimination, stalking, etc... Quora has dealt with those quickly and is very, very interested in people not having any worries about discussions related to minority, gay, women, trans, and other sensitive topics.

Some of those discussions, advice, information are very high quality, frank, real, and I've personally contributed to some of that dialog in ways that did some material good for people really struggling, or fearful, unaware of their options, or possible outcomes.

While not perfect, the actions so far have produced some notable results. I am eager to see how Quora plays out, because having that kind of dialog and the tools given to users to manage conflicts and provide themselves and others "outs" to what would otherwise be messy, troll ridden discussion is something many people would value, and it's something missing from an awful lot of discussion online.

Some of us do share technical information. A lot of us share insight and experience or perspective that can be coupled with technical information. This has value too, and it's a little different from the more structured and highly technical Stack Exchange, and from the more noisy, often difficult to pick through general message board or forum dialog. This niche is also something I'm watching with interest.

There are some nice things too. One is non-English speakers coming to add questions or participate in answers or comments. People can help by making edits, or in some cases, by translating for them. I've done a few of those. Quora has a few students learning English on the site, and they ask often intriguing, challenging and notable questions about the language and use. Over time, that could be a great resource.

I think "sharing knowledge" is somewhat misunderstood. In a general sense, who we are, what our experiences have been, etc... are knowledge as much as math, facts, technical data is. The overall norms for discussion at Quora allow for very frank, real dialog. This can be worth a lot.

Go and search on how to give an awesome BJ, for example. A gay man answered that with such clarity and perfection, it's kind of amazing really. Or search on women in tech. Ladies there are posting up a lot of real experiences and advice that might be hard to come by and interact around elsewhere.

I could give a lot of other examples.

So far, I like Quora. I give it some time, and so far, I've gotten some good value in return. Some time is going to be required to see the more subtle aspects of Quora play out and then we might better understand where the value is.

<comment><USER53> Looks like an even more elitist Wikipedia, if that is physically possible.

<comment><USER52> Maybe. It really doesn't come off as Wikipedia.

What it does do is allow for structured conversations about a lot of things. The question answer, and in particular one answer only per user, format seems to focus people into their primary thoughts about something.

This has some nice value. Great advice in the relationship section, for example. There are also some very good instructional answers dealing with concepts of many kinds.

There is some elitism, but it's not all bad. Like I said, the norms where people can come and share unabashedly is a high value norm, and it's somewhat elite on that basis. I find that notable and valuable personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I browse Quora occasionally - it is a great resource for trivial information and some entertaining content, but for serious work it is very far from being at the top of my list of destinations.

</comment><comment><USER55> To me quora has always been and will be the company that n Ed not exist. There might be some very niche need it fills but does not warrant the funding and hype. It could of cours b justifiable as a hobby project.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand why Quora requires signup to JUST VIEW the questions and answers? How do people doing nothing but viewing it affect the site in any way, aside from getting it more pageviews, which is generally a good thing? I understand having an account to contribute, but just to view?</comment>


Uber Is Doomed - <AUTHOR> http://jalopnik.com/uber-is-doomed-1792634203 <comment><USER2> Of course they're doomed. My signals are first the "self-driving" cars that strike me as, umm, not so self-driving. Second, and the clincher for me, was the "flying car" announcements. Now, I understand they'll need that flying car in order to jump the shark, but that announcement just struck me as a company desperate to keep their name in the news.

Pile on the internal problems, and $DEITY only knows their burn rate (or maybe it's documented somewhere), and IMO they're going to have to pull a rabbit out of the hat to keep going.

<comment><USER3> The self-driving car thing was dumb even if Uber could make it work. They have no advantage there. Uber's main thing is a network of freelance drivers with their own cars. Anyone else can build a dang app and market it.

And others have huge advantages in the kind of infrastructure and technical expertise that would be necessary to build and run a self-driving cab company. Uber can beg for VC cash, but that's about it.

<comment><USER4> Having a massive happy userbase that likes to pay you for rides places seems like a pretty good advantage, regardless of how the ride is executed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The belief that self driving cars are inevitable in X short time frame is shortsighted (literally.) It is quite possible that fully self driving cars are incapable of safely navigating all the low speed edge cases, (human traffic directors telling you what to do when a light is out, construction, kids putting up fake signs that send you off a cliff.) for many years to come.

<comment><USER5> There will always be a ton of things you can do to purposefully endanger drivers (e.g. putting nails on a road) but self driving cars have the potential to make the vastly more common case much safer. I do agree that some of those edge cases (such as policemen directing traffic) will need some new solutions, though.</comment></comment>


Frequent fliers who flew too much (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506 <comment><USER2> Company sold tickets for the price they wanted. They made the rules. They excluded everything that wasn't allowed in those rules.

Time passes and company finds out the deal wasn't so good anymore (or never was in the first place). So they decide to go after those costumers who are using the tickets in unexpected ways, but that weren't forbidden.

When the company has an extra profit for your last-minute ticket, or your cancellation (even when very ahead of time, so that they don't loose some revenue), it's just business, for-profit, hallelujah. When company does something that isn't profitable, they try to stretch rules' limits, the costumer misbehaved, costumers aren't allowed to gain from the company just because the company miscalculated something.

Yes, it's good to be a company this way.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Hiring someone specifically to try to do an aggressive, audit hatchet- job on special, star customers that had spent six figures on golden tickets with them doesn't make this story read very sympathetically for American Airlines to me.

Perhaps it's naïveté on my part, _expecting_ a business to have some care for its reputation as well as its bottom line, but as far as I'm concerned, if you're going to promise an elephant, you'd better at least have a pachyderm on backorder and not try to wriggle out of it the moment it inconveniences you, because that just makes you look callous.

<comment><USER4> I can't help but feel that "they broke the rules!" is a hollow argument in a case like this. Most obviously, because it's not clear they _did_ \- Vroom's contract didn't prohibit ticket sales, but that was still the grounds for revocation.

More broadly, though, the issue of selective enforcement is a thorny one. If you write a contract sufficiently byzantine and ambiguous, any legitimate use will rub up against the edge of some prohibited behavior. At that point you have a totally broken agreement - you preserve it for anyone whose behavior you like, and revoke it for anyone who crosses you.

It's like the issue of selective policing. We live in a world where "don't commit any rules" isn't a viable answer, because there are endless lists of ambiguously defined rules on everyday tasks like accessing a computer. So if someone decides they truly want to pursue you, they can dig up a website where you mis-entered your birthday, declare it fraudulent misrepresentation, and try to put you in prison.

If everyone is guilty, the only question is how you decide what to pursue. And in this case, it's painfully clear that American didn't pursue egregious violations or frequent offenders, they went after anyone who had taken advantage of a product they regretted selling.

<comment><USER5> > If you write a contract sufficiently byzantine and ambiguous, any legitimate > use will rub up against the edge of some prohibited behaviour.

contra proferentem applies in common law, ambiguity benefits the party that did not write the contract

otherwise there's no reason to ever write a clear contract

<comment><USER4> I think this is why inter-company contracts tend to be clearer and often _simpler_ than company-employee contracts.

Your average EULA is impossible to follow or even understand because the company has so much more recourse to the law than the customer - as we see here, with American violating its own contracts and trusting their legal weight to make good. The law very sensibly attempts to punish willful lack of clarity, but (as with patent trolling, and asset forfeiture) it only holds when everyone can fight a legal case.

<comment><USER6> A complementary analysis:

A company-company contract is actually a much simpler, self-defined, and symmetric relationship. Whereas an employer-employee contract must take into account the huge lump of complexity that is employment law. The company doesn't really _like_ employment law, so they make every attempt to nullify it, paralleling its complexity.

EULA drafters are similarly trying to create a whole new body of law, bootstrapping it using copyright while eroding any consumer rights granted by copyright. Companies would prefer a much simpler EULA that said "we can revoke your license at any time for no reason, with no refund". But such a thing would be rejected by courts. So they attempt to construct such a policy by following the contour of the law (ie what courts won't reject) as close as possible.

Regarding the original post, I think American was really just doing the standard corporate stonewalling (I'm not endorsing this as being morally right). It seems as if the pass holders would have eventually prevailed in court, but what actually settled the question was American's filing of bankruptcy - which made the whole thing moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the lifetime unlimited AAirpass, which started at $250,000 ... In one 25-day > span this year, Joyce flew round trip to London 16 times, flights that would > retail for more than $125,000. He didn't pay a dime.

This is the kind of logic that always sound so wrong. He did pay, twice the amount, in 1994, which in 2012 is worth what, about twice again? So, in 2012 the company is repaying a $250k investment done in 1994.

If this person had spent $250k on air line shares, how much "free money" would he have been given by the stock market (stocks which is restricted and can't be completely sold)? Is it more, or is it less, than the marginal cost on all the travel that he made between 1994 to 2012? It would have made a very interesting article if it included that.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about airline shares, but given an S&P 500 index fund, you can look at it a couple of different ways.

\-- The $250K invested would throw off $20K or so (before taxes) each year on average without touching the principal.

\-- If that amount had simply been invested in 1994 and allowed to compound, it would be worth about $1.5M today in today's dollars.

<comment><USER9> Huh, then I wonder if it really was worth it then?

<comment><USER8> Well, if you're flying First/Business internationally every week anyway, you'll spend more than $20K/year pretty quickly. The question is what value you're actually getting out of it.

Tangentially, this is one of the reasons that reward miles/points are so hard to value. Your stay at that fancy resort would have cost $10K had you booked it on your own dime--but would you actually have done that on your own dime? Anecdotally, I find that I do get some incremental pleasure/benefit out of things that I use rewards to get but often not so much that I would have actually paid the cash value for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing that bothers me: Much of the value calculation assumes the seats taken by these lifetime pass holders would always be 100% utilized and never empty. I don't think the opportunity cost is nearly as high as the article states, but I think that AA losing tons of money is more a result of other poor financial decisions than issuing around 60 lifetime passes.

<comment><USER11> Taxes and airport fees are easily 20% (and that's just for US domestic) of the cost of a ticket which the airline had to eat every time these golden ticket holders flew (or even booked?).

These fees unpredictably and radically increased over the time since the golden tickets were issued as well. There's more in the soup than just the marginal cost of the physical seat occupation.

<comment><USER12> Do the taxes and fees scale linearly with the cost of the ticket? I would guess that as seats become more expensive, the amount taxes and fees comprise of the total goes down.

<comment><USER13> Are taxes a flate rate, or a percentage?

<comment><USER8> Fees and taxes are a mix though, at least with domestic coach, they scale to within a few percentage points with the price of the ticket--about 15% overall. International has quite a few more fees. Overall they added up to about 25% with a recent US-UK flight.

<comment><USER14> British Airways is notorious for its "fuel surcharge", which is not a government-imposed tax. It's just an extra fee they tack on to make sure the low advertised ticket price ends up costing you enough for them to make a profit.

The worst is when you use frequent-flier miles to book with them; you still have to pay the "fuel" surcharge, which guarantees they get an amount, in cash, equal to an economy-class fare even for your "free" ticket.

<comment><USER15> The first part is not true. When you look at flights on BA.com, in their journey planner, that price is the final price, to the penny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of the guy who gamed a pudding air-miles promotion to great benefit:

[http://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million- air-m...](http://gizmodo.com/how-an-engineer-earned-1-25-million-air-miles-by- buying-1339646546)

<comment><USER17> Wonderful read, thanks!

<comment><USER14> Obligatory warning that this wouldn't work the same way today, at least in terms of getting you frequent-flier status with an airline. Airlines have learned to give out two classes of "miles": one class is _only_ redeemable for tickets (or transferrable to rental cars, etc.), and those are handed out like candy. The other class earns the enduring status levels that get you things like complimentary first-class upgrades, and can only be earned by actually flying (the frequent-flier community calls them "BIS" \-- "Butt-In-Seat" \-- miles), or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card.

Also my favorite gimmick of all time, another now-closed loophole, was someone who realized the US Mint will sell you dollar coins at face value, with free shipping for orders over a certain amount. So buy, say, $X worth of dollar coins for $X with free shipping, charge to your airline-affiliated credit card, go deposit them in your bank and immediately pay off the card. For the cost of the time you spent placing the order and going to the bank, you get X frequent-flier miles.

<comment><USER8> > or in some cases by spending $20k+/year on their affiliated credit card.

There may be examples but I'm not aware of airlines that give you status through credit card spending today. The one sorta exception I know of is that United does currently waive their qualifying dollar spend requirement for some status levels given sufficient spend on an affiliate card.

<comment><USER14> They don't directly give you status, but in addition to waiving dollar-spend- on-tickets requirements, there are cards which convert part of their redeemable-only mileage earning into status-qualifying mileage earning when you hit spend thresholds.

Before the American Airlines merger, you could get to low-level status on US Airways this way. Sign up for or renew a lounge membership, and you got 5,000 qualifying miles. Then hit both spend thresholds on the Barclays affiliated credit card, and 20,000 miles from that would convert to qualifying, putting you at 25k for the year, good for Silver Preferred.

I believe it's still possible on Delta to reach Silver Medallion status, in the first year you have their top-end Reserve Amex, by hitting bonuses and spend thresholds that award or convert to qualifying miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite the interesting read. It sounds as if there was some rather questionable behavior on both sides. That said, it's a good lesson about a couple of things:

\- Be careful about grabbing revenue today in exchange for incurring not well understood costs more or less indefinitely into the future.

\- Characteristics like unlimited/completely free/etc. can lead to unexpected behaviors that are pretty far outside the norm.

<comment><USER18> This kind of reminds me of a couple of situations in the sports world:

Bobby Bonilla[1], middling former baseball player for the Mets, who cut a deal when being released by the Mets that they wouldn't have to pay him the balance of his contract now, but would have to pay 5X as much over 25 years, ten years hence. Thus a baseball player who hasn't taken the field in 15 years is making a cool $1.19 million.

In 1976, the ABA finally collapsed, and arranged a merger with the NBA[2]. There were six remaining ABA teams, but the NBA would only accept four. The Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs were chosen to join the NBA. The two remaining teams, the Spirits of St. Louis and the Kentucky Colonels, disbanded. The owner of the Colonels reached a buyout agreement with the other ABA owners for $3 million, plus another couple from selling off rights to his players. On the other hand, the Silna brothers, who owned the Spirits, cut a deal to fold their team in exchange for $2.2 million, plus a 1/7th share of the television revenue of the four remaining ABA teams, in perpetuity. This probably seemed like a bargain in the mid-70s, when NBA Finals games were being shown on tape-delay. However, as the league expanded in popularity, that TV money exploded, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars _a year_.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Basketball_Associatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Basketball_Association%E2%80%93National_Basketball_Association_merger)

<comment><USER8> And of course it's even easier to make a decision that makes you look like a savvy businessman today while kicking costs or potential costs down the road when they're likely to be someone else's problem.

<comment><USER14> 538 had an analysis of Bonilla's contract recently:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bobby-bonilla-was- more-t...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bobby-bonilla-was-more-than- the-patron-saint-of-bad-contracts/)

They concluded that, by the time his contract is paid off, he'll have received total compensation in line with the market rate for a player of his caliber. The deferred payments also opened up payroll space _immediately_ , allowing the Mets to make successful roster acquisitions.

<comment><USER18> I thought that they also thought that they were getting higher rates of return with their Madoff investments than the deferred interest of his contract?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Okay, so let me get this straight. . .

\- The program starts in 1981.

\- One of the executives that was there from 85-94 noted right away the customers were costing them money.

\- They raised the cost in 1991

\- They raised the cost again in 1994

\- And finally terminated the program in 2004.

The company ran this for 20 years knowing full well since its inception that it was costing the company money and did nothing about it? I have absolutely ZERO remorse for what the customers got away with, none. The fact they had to play dirty pool to revoke them just shows how incompetent the executives were that were running the company.

It's staggering to think they let a handful of customers practically bleed the company dry, while continuing to sell these in a sad attempt to generate revenue for the company.

<comment><USER19> I am not a lawyer, but these tickets look like a pyramid scheme to me. If I were an attorney and worked for American Airlines, I would consider claiming it was illegal for them to offer that to get out of it. I know that courts tend not to let companies out of bad deals, so that might make a bad situation worse.

It reminds me of the guy who has a life insurance policy that allows him to invest the amount covered in stocks at prices 1 week in the past knowing what the future performance would've. The insurance company that purchased the one that issued that really wants to get out of it, but they have been unsuccessful. I recall that it is estimated that by the time he dies, his estate will be worth more than the insurance company due to that policy.

At least American Airlines can take consolation in the fact that the total losses from their mistake will be limited by the ticket holders eventually dying naturally. In that insurance company's situation, the policy holders dying will ruin them.

<comment><USER20> His estate (or beneficiary) should just assume ownership of the insurance company then. Insurance is a good business, as long as you don't have any other policies like that on the books.

<comment><USER19> They do, but none are as large as liability as his as he is very good at maximizing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think any discussion of "misguided promotional offers" is complete without a mention of Hoover's "free flight" fiasco:

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3704669.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3704669.stm)

Worth reading if you have a minute and are not familiar with it. The story beggars belief.

</comment><comment><USER22> Clicking on the "past" gives the previous bigger discussions, one with 70 and another with 200 comments.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Frequent%20fliers%20who%20flew...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Frequent%20fliers%20who%20flew%20too%20much&sort=byPopularity&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER23> At school one class focused on analyzing cost of promotions... and a company this huge DID NOT calculate long-term profitability?!?

Wow.

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing that they did but they used bad assumptions. For example, I could see them doing a query to see how often their most frequent flyers flew and using that number or some multiple thereof. It likely never occurred to them that "unlimited free" would completely change the way that some people would use the service.</comment></comment>


Yahoo to stream every NFL game for free on Mobile - <AUTHOR> http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000891433/article/nfl-verizon-partner-to-distribute-mobile-access-to-live-games <comment> GCU-Empiricist I'm not a football fan, but it's nice to see such a national institution decide they have to get distribute their content on the small screen if they want to keep up with content people are willing to pay for E.G. Netflix, Amazon Prime, ect.

<comment><USER2> I'm betting its because their ratings are tanking right now. Americans generally became apathetic about the game when players and teams started disrespecting the American flag.

The NFL lost their audience and has to find a new one.

<comment><USER3> I think that and also most games are on Sunday when younger people are out and about combined w cord cutting. Very few people are aware that you can get HD over the air with a cheap antenna for free and even then, those games are generally the local team. A lot of young people follow players not teams. Lots of factors at play but the NFL wants eyeballs to get more ad revenue and getting on someone's mobile is a superpower for advertising purposes.</comment></comment></comment>


Google, the new arrogant kid on the block. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/google-gundotra-video/

<comment><USER2> This article's title is a little misleading and editorialized. The word "arrogant" only appears in the comments by some annoyed Apple fan.</comment>


Elemental UI for React.js - <AUTHOR> http://elemental-ui.com/

<comment><USER2> Does everyone think that wrapping almost each and every html element into a react component is a good thing? Why do I need a <Button /> element if I already have a <button></button> element? You're not really saving bytes here as much as creating confusion and new stuff to learn.

Take, for example, the <FormField label="Input name" htmlFor="input-name" /> component. It takes two props which have totally different meaning. _htmlFor_ is react's substitute for the native html "for" _attribute_ , but the _label_ is being created as an html _element_. So I have to learn this new mixed up syntax. Why? Existing html syntax is nice already and what everyone's used to.

On the other side, such elements as <Spinner /> are nice to have. We don't have any native html spinner elements, so it's a good unifying wrapper for arbitrary spinner html+css magic, which can be easily changed once someone on the project wishes to change how the spinners look.

<comment><USER3> Not defending this particular library, but there are some good reasons to use React abstractions even for simple things like a button. Some examples:

* If the form deals with state and validation, then <Button> (as opposed to <button>) can automatically disable itself if the form's input isn't valid.

* It can incorporate useful features like preventing redundant clicks (to prevent duplicate submits) and showing submit progress (eg., replace button label with a spinner while it's pending).

* You can more easily add features that you would have to manually wire with an HTML <button>: For example, let it take a "tooltip" prop that will automatically show a tooltip on hover.

As an aside, I should add that I wouldn't code up a "form with submit and cancel" like this. I would have the form component itself render the submit and cancel buttons, and call it something like SubmittableForm. This way, it can be in control of the UI (eg., validation, button placement, etc.) and submit logic.

As for that htmlFor thing, I don't know why this library does it that way. There's no reason it couldn't correctly wire up a "for" attribute itself on the HTML label element.

<comment><USER4> Just a guess, but it might be that because "for" is a JS restricted word, they picked an attribute name that wouldn't maybe trip up a syntax highlighter or something of that nature.

<comment><USER3> That's not what I was referring to. There shouldn't be any reason for the FormField component to need to know the name of what the label is referring to, since it has access to its children through the "children" prop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to criticize this project specifically but having done some Angular & React apps I wish these libraries would allow some kind of bridge for JS and jQuery plugins.

Do you need incomplete or lagging Bootstrap port for each new framework of the day ?

Especially when you're not doing a SPA and integrates in an existing website, it leads to duplication.

For example I've used Angular-UI and have encapsulate real Bootstrap components in directives and the advantage of the former was not that obvious because it leads to new and different bugs, incomplete features etc.

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, what is Bootstrap helping you with?

I'm trying to understand why you'd need bootstrap and jQuery when you're using Angular. I use Angular daily and have never felt the urge to use Bootstrap. In fact an older Angular project had been using bootstrap and I was able to completely eliminate it from the project.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying Angular and Bootstrap provide you the same things? I do not see in what world those two are synonymous, one is basically a glorified ui kit with some limited js backed widgets, the other is a framework for building applications.

<comment><USER6> No. Not at all.

Let me explain. I see two groups of bootstrap users:

1\. Those that use the framework for JavaScript tooling. Things like dropdowns, hamburger menus, tooltips, etc. They typically don't use any of the prepackaged bootstrap styling. This was me for a long time.

2\. Those that use the framework for both aesthetic specific CSS and JavaScript.

Angular helps Group 1 rid themselves of bootstrap. Group 2 is largely helpless.

<comment><USER8> So....asking for a friend. But why is using bootstrap for #2 a bad thing?

<comment><USER6> It's not necessarily a bad thing. What I meant was that it's much harder to convince someone already relying on prepackaged styling to abandon that for a custom UI.

The full-bootstrap-stack is perfectly fine for things like side projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a wonderful React-based alternative to the likes of Semantic UI, and a great start! A couple quick questions:

1\. I see a lot of "inspired by bootstrap" comments in the grid/scaffold... just wondering, are you porting their grid system in a reproducible way -- or are you finding these components don't change frequently enough that it's easier to just pull in pieces of the base code manually, as needed? As per the commenter below, there doesn't seem to be any indication of a dependency in your `package.json`

2\. Bootstrap 4 is finally moving to SCSS... any plans to follow suit?

<comment><USER10> Hmmmmmm. Semantic UI is honestly an amazing and under-looked alternative to Bootstrap/Foundation and the likes -- definitely more focussed on building web apps than just pretty web sites. It's good to see something similar coming together for React -- the controls are well worth it.

<comment><USER11> Are there examples for using Semantic UI for a basic CRUD workflow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's something wrong with the routing on that page. Whenever I open a link in a new tab it redirects to the home page. The same behavior when I type [http://elemental-ui.com/css](http://elemental-ui.com/css) in my address bar and hit enter, it opens the homepage. Only clicking a link on the homepage gets me to the css page.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for pointing that out - webre using react-router and it works locally, not sure why hosting on github pages breaks it. Will check it out.

<comment><USER14> If you're using the HistoryLocation in react-router then it expects a server with routes that renders the same index.html page, which github pages definitely doesn't do

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is a bug in the modal code. It scrolls to top of page when you click the launch modal button.

Annoying for the user to have to scroll down. Also visually annoying, personally I got very distracted when it scrolled to the top like that.

Not sure if Elemental UI is a competitor to bootstrap. But if you are happy with bootstrap, then the react bootstrap library is fine. And the modal is very concise and fluid. [https://react- bootstrap.github.io/components.html](https://react- bootstrap.github.io/components.html)

<comment><USER13> Elemental UI is a competitor, sort of, I guess. But it's not a zero-sum game, and we've learned (and borrowed) a lot from Bootstrap.

More specifically, we're not porting Bootstrap to React but building React- specific components from scratch to fill the same gaps.

Something in particular we're focusing on is building a modular IU toolkit - so you could use all of Elemental, or just our select component / buttons / date picker / etc; all of which would be available as standalone packages on npm, but can leverage a consistent thumbing system and play nicely together.

(And yes - we'll fix that modal issue soon with a pure css approach; a community member wanted to implement it with JavaScript but it hasn't worked out well)

<comment><USER16> (And yes - we'll fix that modal issue soon with a pure css approach; a community member wanted to implement it with JavaScript but it hasn't worked out well)

Can I ask what you mean by this? I'm just getting into react and that sentence is a pretty big red flag..... you mean you cant just do return false and it breaks react?

<comment><USER13> I phrased it badly - I meant the modal scroll handling that was implemented hasn't worked out well, no red flags for React here. position: fixed is a more robust way of positioning modals, the current version watches the scroll event and updates the modal's position which is pretty janky; and it does some not- great things manipulating overflow on the body too, which causes the bug mentioned. We'll be fixing that in the next release.

<comment><USER16> gotcha, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's another UI kit for React called Belle, I posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110956)

</comment><comment><USER18> Is this component based. Where I could pick the modal without all the forms. Or form elements without all the grid system. I'm dying for a pick what you need framework rather than all or nothing like everything else out there.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if you saw my other comment below but this is a major goal for us with Elemental. We're not there today, because we're working through the best way to componentize the CSS for each module while retaining a common base for variables & customisation (i.e themes).

The most likely outcome will be to go with the "css in components" approach (w/ Radium, I expect) and maybe a base / "foundational" optional stylesheet for typography / etc. Still working it out though - all today's viable approaches have lots of pros and cons.

<comment><USER19> You might like to look at how reapp [1] has achieved this.

It has default styles baked into each component, allows granular overriding of styles at a component level, as well as global theme support.

[1] [http://reapp.io](http://reapp.io) / [https://github.com/reapp/reapp- ui](https://github.com/reapp/reapp-ui)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool. It says it uses Bootstrap grid, Does that mean that bootstrap is integrated? Hard to tell from the package metadata.

Note that this is from the creators of KeystoneJS [1] and TouchstoneJS [2].

[1] [https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone](https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone) [2] [https://github.com/touchstonejs/touchstonejs](https://github.com/touchstonejs/touchstonejs)

<comment><USER13> It means we've borrowed the css directly from Bootstrap for the grid (as well as some variables and mixins) so, aside from giving credit, if you are familiar with the bootstrap grid it should be easy to get up and running with Elemental.

We're actually developing it first and foremost for use in Keystone's Admin UI - we needed a robust and flexible css + component library for that, which users could extend & build plugins on, so we started building one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks cool. I'm kicking my heels while I wait for react-bootstrap to be compatible with react 0.14-beta3. But I see this isn't compatible with 0.14-beta3 either... :-(

What's the weight of elemental UI once it's minified?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good analytics tools for startups? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Analyze your own web server log files with a tool such as analog.

Analytics servers such as google's employ single pixel transparent gif and one byte white space JavaScript source. I black hole them with my hosts file because I do not wish to be tracked.

I'm cool that you know I visited your website. I'm not cool with multiple websites identifying my gender, sexuality, political stance or income.</comment>


Rebuttal to Stallman's Story About The Formation of Symbolics and LMI (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://danweinreb.org/blog/rebuttal-to-stallmans-story-about-the-formation-of-symbolics-and-lmi/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if footnote 6 of [http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms- lisp.html](http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html) was added to address this counterclaim? The last revision date is 3/14, which seems suspicious.</comment>


Light Table Python Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://docs.lighttable.com/tutorials/python/

<comment><USER2> What do you think, is it usable in development ?</comment>


Why Do We Wear Pants? Horses. - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/q-why-do-we-wear-pants-a-horses/259696/

<comment><USER2> An oversimplified view of human history from a commentator who has too little acquaintance with non-Western cultures. (Well, all right, I've long accepted the point, which I read somewhere else long before the Internet existed, that European dress shifted from robes to trousers in large part to accommodate horse riding.) But with cross-cultural perspective, we would consider the trousers (often in the form of "pajamas") worn by women in China and southeast Asia developed in cultures where peasant women certainly did not have opportunity to ride horses. Rather, in those places agricultural work in paddy fields made clothing that allowed a wide range of movement with modesty very helpful. There isn't one single human story about how trousers developed as a form of dress.

For those of you who like to learn about how study of human cultural behavior goes awry from too little exposure to non-Western cultures, see

Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan (2010). "The weirdest people in the world?" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33, 61–135

doi:10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

<http://humancond.org/_media/papers/weirdest_people.pdf>

<comment><USER3> While I think your point is highly valid, and interesting, it doesn't necessarily invalidate the OP or render the piece "crap".

You yourself acknowledge that male European dress shifted to trousers due to the influence of horses. It's also fairly reasonable to assert that many modern dress conventions are _heavily_ influenced by European culture.

The OP may not have extensively covered the history of trousers, but it does a reasonable (albeit, short) job of describing why trousers are commonplace in modern society.

<comment><USER4> He did say, why do _we_ wear trousers, not why does anyone wear trousers, and he and most of his readers are in western cultures.

<comment><USER5> Great example of why I hate this usage "we" though. Whenever I read an article about something "we" do I often wonder who this "we" is, especially when I don't really think I'm personally part of "we".

<comment><USER6> I find this interesting. I mean, personally, I agree that the word 'we' quite often makes it sound like the speaker is (to me, offensively) including people they oughtn't in the group they are speaking of. Especially when talking about my company, I feel like I'm weaselling when I say 'we' - like saying "Mistakes were made" (I mean, sometimes I say that, but when I do, I'm saying it, you know, for effect. Making fun of the idea of trying to dodge responsibility for a mistake. I mean, after Reagan said it in all seriousness, I don't think the phrase could be used non-ironically.)

But, I often find that people that are better 'team players' than I am? they prefer the 'we' - one of the people I work with gets irritated when I try to break 'we' down into him or me.

"We're in it together!" is what he says. All our company activities are supported by both of us. And, while that's not completely true, it's mostly true of most things. His 'we' I think, is just as valid as my 'there is only you and me' - it's just a different way of looking at cooperation.

He just has a much more communal way of thinking, while I (I say in part because I have more experience with communal decision making, but I don't know how true that is) prefer to think in a more structured hierarchical way, where a person has responsibility for a task and they delegate off parts of that task.

<comment><USER7> While this is slightly off topic, using "we" instead of "I" when representing your company is a very important concept that goes beyond being a team player. The use of we vs I is a liability issue, and knowing when to use which is critical to not getting sued (e.g. - "I believe that the design is adequate" vs "We believe that the design is adequate" or "I would never hire a redhead" vs "We would never hire a redhead").

Internally, I agree with you that one should always take full credit for their work, good or bad (at least verbally...). Externally, one should always remember what context your statement may be taken in, especially the context of a courtroom.

<comment><USER6> eh, in the things I am worried about? getting sued is pretty far down the list. I am /far/ more concerned, for instance, about screwing up my taxes. (probably my biggest fear, as everything else can only take me to zero, in the worst case. Tax debit is forever.) Or, of, say, a serious security incident. That could kill my business and greatly damage my reputation in the process.

Eh, but really? I believe that this "avoid getting sued at all costs" attitude in general leads to suboptimal decisions being made in many different areas; and as a systemic force, it pushes all companies to do things the same way that other companies do them. "Industry best practices" - things like that which are usually code for 'expensive mediocrity' - I don't even think it makes sense for big companies that are worth suing, usually, but big companies are run by managers, not owners, and managers are far more concerned about avoiding blame than they are about anything else.

Really, I think this relative freedom from the fear of lawsuits is a huge advantage I have, and yeah, if I want investors or if I otherwise want to move into management in the corporate world? I'll have to change my tune, but for now? I get to enjoy my freedom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant Dinosaur Comics: <http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1908>

It seems like this "treating history as a science" movement that started with Jared Diamond has really caught on...and I love it! Evolution is such a hugely important field for the future, and looking to the past is turning out to be a really fruitful way of learning more about it.

Another example I like: how do you determine when humans first started wearing clothing? Trace the timing of the genetic divergence of human hair lice and human body lice (lice require a hairy/furry material, so body lice can't thrive until humans wear clothes). More details: <http://news.ufl.edu/2011/01/06/clothing-lice/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Supposedly, high heeled shoes are also related to horses.

Men's boots were heeled to make stirrups more effective. Heels then became a status symbol, as in "I wear heeled shoes because I own a horse, and therefore I am rich". then the fashion jumped over to women's clothing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- heeled_footwear#Precursors...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- heeled_footwear#Precursors_to_the_high-heeled_shoe)

<comment><USER10> I'm sure looking taller, with longer legs and defined calf muscles has nothing to do with it. ;)

<comment><USER11> You're right, it had nothing to do with it. It was a side effect that was predominant in male fashion before it came to women's fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about linking to the original work instead of this ripoff blogspam?

[http://socialevolutionforum.com/2012/07/10/cultural- evolutio...](http://socialevolutionforum.com/2012/07/10/cultural-evolution-of- pants-ii/)

</comment><comment><USER13> From wikipedia:

"Trousers first enter recorded history in the 6th century BCE, with the appearance of horse-riding Iranian peoples in Greek ethnography. At this time, not only the Persians, but also allied Eastern and Central Asian peoples such as the Bactrians, Armenians, Tigraxauda Scythians and Xiongnu Hunnu, are known to have worn them. Trousers are believed to have been worn by both sexes among these early users.

Republican Rome viewed the draped clothing of Greek and Minoan (Cretan) culture as an emblem of civilization and disdained trousers as the mark of barbarians."

So, while the Romans did eventually copy the trousers once the barbarians were overrunning and ruling Roman lands in the western half of the Empire, it's disappointing that the author didn't go further back. Back to the barbarians, which likely goes back to the central Asian peoples.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looking at in perspective, it makes sense. Every cool guy is pretending to be a cowboy.

Now, who is going to be the celebrity to go all Socrates on us and re- introduce the tunic.

Interestingly, Julius Caeser was supposed to be some kind of a rebel for wearing his tunic "loosely belted" with fringes. It was the equivalent of long hair in the 60's and 70's for our culture.

Wouldn't it be wild if things went around again--that far?

</comment><comment><USER15> The story I got told in school was that as the romans advanced through Gaul and into ancient Britain, they were appalled at the leather britches worn by the barbarian tribes. When they finally took (part of) Britain however, they realised that the extreme cold (compared to rome) meant that the trousers were basically essential.

All those barbarian tribes would have been horsemen, so the article fits with this idea I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER16> While cultural artifacts get input and evolve from their functional use, such uses can't explain anything, certainly not mass adoption. The main reason for clothes is cultural, and their main use is as a social code (e.g. [http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fashion_System.html?...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Fashion_System.html?id=jvpwygq9i3UC&redir_esc=y)).

</comment><comment><USER17> What about Native American cultures? They had not seen horses until the Europeans arrived, but they certainly had pants.

<comment><USER18> I think that point was made in the article--they wore kilts, not pants, before Europeans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another interesting tidbit is that Brazilian clothing and swimwear tend to be more revealing than Euro-American clothing, because the medieval Brazilian man was a sparsely dressed native, whereas the medievel European man was outfitted in heavy armor.

At least, according to this: <http://www.coolhunting.com/style/cool-hunting- vi-36.php> (nsfw? Girls in bikinis)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article. I'm perpetually fascinated by the causal chains that have influenced aspects of our lives that we otherwise entirely take for granted.

<comment><USER20> You'd enjoy watching James Burke's Connections.

<comment><USER21> <http://kottke.org/10/12/james-burkes-connections-online>

<comment><USER3> psykotic & johnbenwoo - thank you for the recommendation and URL. This is definitely something I would enjoy immensely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm given to understand [1] that cars, or at least buggies and coaches and other things like them, are the reason cloaks got replaced with coats and jackets, to the eternal detriment of cool. If you've ever tried driving anywhere with a full circle cloak on, this requires no explanation.

[1] Handwave, handwave... feel free to add [citation needed] there if you want to

</comment><comment><USER23> Lots of reasons for pants. Anyone who's ever lived/worked in a rural area knows what happens 15 seconds after you leave "the path" and that branch, bush, weed, rock, bee, deerfly, barbed vine, rattlesnake, etc. grants you pain. Thus pants - and boots.

Funny some of us are that removed from the human realities that existed for a million years.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why aren't capes still around, then?

(They were made for horseback riding, too)

<comment><USER25> Capes were (briefly) mentioned up the page a bit.

Capes are impractical if one is driving a car, dangerous if one is working around machinery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> To be read while listening to a Tribute to Pants (<http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Tribute_to_Pants>)!

</comment><comment><USER27> Pants in the UK = underwear. So why do we wear underwear?

<comment><USER28> Probably as a garment designed to be easy to wash (it's small, and not visible so wear and discoloration from washing is not seen) and be changed more often than pants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> None of this goes to explain Capri pants. Horses be damned...sometimes there just isn't an excuse...

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Or maybe it's just the cold climate? Where appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why Do We Wear Pants? Bicycles.

<comment><USER31> Why do we read? Reading.

<comment><USER32> Why do we fall? Batman.</comment></comment></comment>


Python Descriptors Demystified  - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/gist.github.com/ChrisBeaumont/5758381/raw/descriptor_writeup.ipynb

<comment><USER2> m = Movie('Casablanca', 97, 102, 964000, 1300000)

del m

Isn't ``m`` going to persist in the ``Movie.rating.data`` dictionary? It seems like this approach would cause a lot of problems for garbage collection.

<comment><AUTHOR> With "del m" you're asking python to delete the whole "m", including "Movie.rating.data" (as "rating.data" is an attribute of "m" that you've just asked to be deleted).

But your question isn't 100% clear to me...</comment></comment>


Gravitation shielding properties of composite bulk YBa2Cu3O7−x superconductor - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9701074 <comment><USER2> 1997\. I haven't heard much about it since. So... what happened? Was this refuted? Not reproducible? Explained as some other effect? Just ignored? What?</comment>


Travis CI keeps getting better: Now supports multiple PHP versions - <AUTHOR> http://about.travis-ci.org/blog/first_class_php_support_on_travis_ci/ <comment><USER2> I am mind blown by this service. Doctrine2 is being tested against SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well as PHP 5.3 and even PHP 5.4RC1.

<http://travis-ci.org/#!/doctrine/doctrine2>

Was green earlier today, guess someone will hopefully fix the red tomorrow morning :)

<comment><USER2> btw some more info can be found here: <http://pooteeweet.org/blog/2046>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why does Travis do for me that Jenkins or Gerrit doesn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey theatrus,

Travis is similar to Jenkins, but also very different.

For instance:

1\. Every build is run in a virtual machine sandbox so other projects tests won't affect yours (eg. files or dbs left over).

2\. The full infrastructure is distributed, the web frontend has been decoupled from the workers completely.

3\. All push information sent by GitHub is built by default, so no need to tell Travis to build a certain branch.

4\. We use web sockets so you can see the results in realtime.

5\. Hosted for free for the open source community.

The core goal behind Travis is to make it easy for open source projects to test against different environments (language versions, databases, services, env vars etc.) with the aim to increase code quality for everyone.

So comparing Jenkins and Travis (the service) is a little like comparing apples and oranges, even though they do have a lot in common.

Hope this helps,

Josh

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome project! I got Guzzle set up on Travis within about an hour. They even had node.js pre-installed, so I could use node.js as a test web server. <http://travis-ci.org/#!/guzzle/guzzle>

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome!!!!</comment>


How much is watching TV costing you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1692-how-much-is-watching-tv-costing-you <comment><USER2> The first comment nails it on the head:

> What most people need when building a side business is consecutive hours … > especially in programming.

> 30 minutes here and 1 hour there, in the programming word won't get you much > because of the huge time lag for developers when they have to context > switch.

My issue is that the cost of watching TV is easy to measure, and thus easy to target. The cost of reading fluff 37Signals articles, however, is not.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that you need 3+ continuous hours to program. I myself routinely take breaks every hour or so; and believe the context switch is amortized at that time-frame.

Also, the point is not purely about television. I've not watched ANY television at all for the past 4 years. However, random excursions into Wikipedia or reading blogs do cost time.

At the end of the day, I still wonder if it is worth reading all that-- I could contribute to some open-source project (reporting bugs) for instance.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if this depends strongly on the individual in question. Some people are very good at "reclaiming" small chunks of time--15 minutes here and there--that add up over the course of a day. Other people have a much more difficult time even getting started unless they have a large block of time.

<comment><USER5> To me it also depends on the task at hand.

20 minutes will get me through a chapter from Learning Pything (even if I'm not entirely sober), while 3 hours doesn't feel like enough to work on my ARM7 development board in Assembler (something totally new to me and not easy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An alternative to the "Don't commute" option for those who can't not commute is to take public transport. If you take a train or bus instead of driving you can do something else during the commute.

I'm currently doing this: <http://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1630137854>

<comment><USER7> I had the same idea until I actually sat down to figure out my commute via public transport. Shortest way was three buses and 3.5 hours.

Granted, my commute is 45 miles each way, but public transportation here is the pits.

As dangerous as it sounds, I try and do my drive with a legal pad next to me, brainstorming and making a list of what to work on when I get home.

<comment><USER8> Maybe something with voice recording could work better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I spend far less time watching TV than browsing HN submissions and comment threads.

</comment><comment><USER10> I found when I cut out my TV viewing I wasn't more productive. I do read more and spend more time playing my guitar, but I don't get more done. However, the big benefit for me was that I got more sleep.

Now if it is 9pm and I'm tired I go to sleep. Hell I'll go to be at 8pm if I'm feeling run down. I've eliminated the primary reason to stay up late -- note: I do occasionally go out with friends...

</comment><comment><USER11> Those numbers are ridiculous (and I say this as someone without a cable sub). Man cannot work all the time. Most people might watch 4 hours of TV a day, but it isn't blocking them from doing 4 hours of a part time job.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am not sure how much TV costs, but HN and Slashdot must give a quite impressive number...

</comment><comment><USER13> I have not watched TV for about 10 years. At home, I have a TV set, but the only connection it has is my home theatre.

</comment><comment><USER14> How about just focusing on getting things done? I find that when I have a list of prioritized tasks for the week, I usually get them done and when I don't , its never been because I watched too much TV. People may want to consider not taking vacation time any more at this rate , if we are trying to squeeze as much work as possible into our lives.

There is life outside the internet, and TV does a pretty good job of letting me know what is happening in the 'real world'

</comment><comment> d-rock I try to do most of my TV watching when I'm on the treadmill or the indoor bike.

</comment><comment><USER15> The funny thing is that the blogger (bobblehead?) wrote a reference to that Onion article and yet _still_ made the blog post. Very odd!</comment>


Sammy: JavaScript framework inspired by Sinatra - <AUTHOR> http://code.quirkey.com/sammy/

<comment><USER2> I wrote a server side version of Sinatra in JavaScript called Roundabout:

<http://github.com/boucher/roundabout/tree/master>

My co-founder also ported Rack to JavaScript (called Jack)

<http://github.com/tlrobinson/jack/tree/master>

Roundabout is in the process of being reworked to sit on top of jack, rather than requiring Jetty like it currently does. It's actually super simple thanks to the power of Jack.

<comment><USER3> Very cool. George Moschovitis, who created Nitro (an elegant MVC-ish Web framework for Ruby that came out at the same time as Rails, but always struck me as cleaner and more 'Rubyish' than Rails) is now developing it in JavaScript.

<http://github.com/gmosx/nitro/tree/master>

It, too uses Jack.</comment></comment>