How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=B3AA27688CB9AB211A9616FDF1273E32&gwt=pay <comment><USER2> First off this is terrifying. Additionally I was realizing the other day I thought of another reason fake news might resonate so quickly with people that doesn't get brought up as much (not that I think I've had a novel idea of course, it probably isn't true or has been brought up and I haven't seen it): fake news has little nuance.

Its part of what I think makes conspiracy theories so attractive, they give the impression that no matter what else is going on, someone is in control and things happen for a reason. I think the alternative that nobody is in control at all is even more scary for some people (maybe all people).

I don't think it is entirely that fake news fits into your own viewpoint already, I have some "friends" on facebook that sometimes share fake-right news that aren't even really right wing, they are just kind of gullible (I hate to say that but they also fell for the fake wireless-charger video going around. Luckily that one was a little easier to debunk). The fake news would be so simple and digestible, without any nuance or subtlety that it might subconsciously be immediately favored over a more nuanced story. I don't dispute any of the other analyses going around but I think the simplicity of fake news can't be ignored and we need to remind our friends and family that the world is complex and very few stories are so straightforward.

<comment><USER3> > I think the alternative that nobody is in control at all is even more scary > for some people (maybe all people).

But that's not true either, those two are not the only possibilities. The fact is that what happens in the world is usually due to the collective action of many different people and groups, with converging and diverging opinions. It's something like vector math, the resultant vector determines direction of decision making. The mass narrative which has been sold is that no one is in control, and things just happen. Which is also not true. Implicit conspiracy is common, when those interests converge.

The headline might as well as be mass propaganda techniques no longer working. HALP! Or maybe mass propaganda techniques have been democratized. HALP!

<comment><USER4> >The headline might as well as be mass propaganda techniques no longer working. HALP!

i read the opposite: the propaganda technology known as "clickbait" has become so widely disseminated that truth or factual information can't compete because it doesn't translate as smoothly.

the truth and the facts are always a bit less streamlined, and are always presented in a slightly more complex way-- slightly more cognitively expensive. the human mind takes the easy path whenever it can.

<comment><USER3> Human brain is easily hijacked by memes, propagandists have been doing it for a century, now the masses are doing it too -- and they are mad (are the masses mad? or the propagandists? why not both? what's the truth? i don't know!).

Richard Dawkins on memes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRggkkAIC5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRggkkAIC5A)

For instance this meme sunk Howard Dean's campaign: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q)

Dan Quayle and the potato incident: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdqbi66oNuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdqbi66oNuI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amount of attention that fake news are receiving from traditional media _AFTER_ the elections is astonishing... almost as if they wanted to blame fake news for the results of the election and the failure of their own forecast

Why were they not so active about this phenomenon during elections? I doubt they were unaware of it since even I saw many tweets that were obviously fake

<comment><USER6> Hindsight is 20/20, and that applies to everyone. Sorry to say, but not all journalist are incompetents like you suggest. Yeah of course after Trump "won" the election you can say "yeah of course he did it was so obvious, how come none of those stupid journalists could see it" yadda yadda. Same thing for this fake news phenomenon. Did _you_ realize it was happening before Trump won the election and gave us all a rude wake up slap?

<comment><USER7> I both realized:

1) Trump had a significant chance of winning because of a disgruntled American public voting against establishment candidates (the same reason Obama himself was elected in 2008).

2) There was "fake news" before the election.

Indeed, I know a number of additional things.

3) Right now there is a crisis in faith and credibility in the US domestic news. The reason for this is that the official narrative across the media industry - much of it literally state propaganda - has been consistently proving hallow and unreliable. People are continually confused, and their attentions are jerked around as the media needs the public to be outraged/motivated/mobilized at each subsequent juncture.

4) There is huge amounts of fake news and misinformation INSIDE the industry. If you want to focus on Trump rather than national security and propaganda, take the ubiquity of the "search terms spike for how to move to Canada after Trump won primaries" with absolutely no coverage giving the context that Canada had on that day finally passed a long-in-revision piece of legislature revising US-to-Canada patriation and such search terms would have spiked regardless of the candidate in the US primaries. (Trump is not and never was a candidate for president that I would endorse.)

5) The "fake news" surge is a grasp by establish monopolistic forms of misinformation distribution to maintain their domination and credibility as sole sources.

<comment><USER8> > the official narrative across the media industry - much of it literally > state propaganda - has been consistently proving hallow and unreliable.

> The "fake news" surge is a grasp by establish monopolistic forms of > misinformation distribution to maintain their domination and credibility as > sole sources.

This is exactly it. The following google trends graph makes this obvious: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=fake%20news](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=fake%20news)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree with something Ben Thompson said on his podcast Exponent — fake news is a problem intimated tied to Facebook as a platform and the filter bubbles that most people create for themselves. This material functions less as news, per se, and more as performative identity affirmation.

<comment><USER10> Somewhat true. There was a bit of this in the blogger bubbles of the 2000s too, but facebook does bring it to a larger audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's funny how the next big idea for the news media to get on board with starts at the New York Times and then filters it's way down the food chain through the less influential newspapers, CNN, and other mainstream news outlets, etc. It's sad that nobody is coming up with their own material much any more among the big networks. The agenda is set and it's all just a bunch or mstaphorical retweets.

It's like there's some board somewhere that comes up with the next big thing we are going to try and sell to the American people on and they publish it in the NYT and then the whole mainstream dutifully jumps on board and it gets pushed and pushed by all the networks until they give up or they move onto something else.

Searching news archives, one could build a nice directed timeline of the genesis and bloom through the media of these regular campaigns.

<comment><USER12> The NYT seemingly has written a well supported and fact checked story explaining how a verifiably false tweet from a person with few followers spread far and wide.

What exactly is being pushed on the American people?

<comment><USER4> >What exactly is being pushed on the American people?'

what about that time the NYT pushed the iraq war

or that time they pushed hillary clinton

or that time they pushed (insert whatever their paid PR "article" of the second is pushing for)

<comment><USER13> If I remember correctly, the NYT published a written apology for their role in popularizing the invasion of Iraq. Newspapers make mistakes, recognize them, and apologize publicly. That's journalistic ethics.

They were also forwards about their editorial support for HRC, having declared her their candidate well before she became the presumptive DNC nominee. You might not like the fact that pro-HRC opinion pieces made their way to the top, but there's no ethical dilemma there either.

<comment><USER14> There's not an ethical dilemma in pushing a candidate but an issue of trust. Lots of people don't trust Hillary. So when a publication goes out it's way to pump her up and writes biased hit pieces on the opposition are people who mistrust Hillary going to trust the publication?

The point is, you can't argue why people should trust you rather than the opposition. You have to provide reasons for them to do so.

It would be like building an app that wasn't getting positive reception and then trying to argue or shame people into liking it rather than giving people what they want. It plain doesn't work.

People want to know what is going on. Tell them to the best of your ability. Don't couch it in spin, don't support sides, don't appear biased. That is how you establish a reputation of trust. It's not a matter of what is legal or ethical in this case at all.

<comment><USER14> The irony of attempting to "argue" with my point is incredibly hilarious. I would suggest suspending ideological preference for a moment and re-reading my post.

It's about trust and human nature. Not nitpicking details to try to "prove" you are right. You will never win what you are trying to win like this. Ever.

But since you asked here is a sample:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/donald- trump-w...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/donald-trump- women.html?_r=0)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald- trump-w...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald-trump- women.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes- donal...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donald- trump.html?ribbon-ad- idx=2&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article) (the implication being of course that Trump is tied to racism).

Now lets oppose the outrage above with the treatment of Hillary's behavior.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27/us/politics/wh...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27/us/politics/what- we-know-about-hillary-clintons-private-email-server.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/hillary- clinto...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/hillary-clinton- fbi.html)

Look guys... it's not an ideological thing here. But you can't behave like this and have people who support a different ideology take you seriously. That's a simple fact.

When this happens people will get their information from elsewhere.

Last I have to say about this. Think about it or not. But I don't intend to argue.

<comment><USER13> Debate isn't ironic, and it's not productive to laugh at people who want to reason with you.

I'm not sure what you mean by "trust and human nature". These seem to be self- evident (read: mostly rhetorical), and not directly in conflict with what I've said.

I'm also not sure what details I've nitpicked. I pointed out a case that I thought you might consider a hit piece, and explained why dulling it down to just that has a chilling effect on journalism as a whole and operates against the public interest.

The articles you linked portray Trump in a negative light. Is the conclusion supposed to be that HRC must be portrayed in an _equally_ negative light? It's odd to have to say this, seeing how I'm not a particular fan of hers, but the media cannot treat circumstances as equals when they are definitively _not_ equal. There is no modern analog to what _either_ candidate has in their closets, but to equivocate between them via this fact alone is, bluntly, bewildering.

I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, and I hope you revisit this conversation (or perhaps the thoughts behind it) at a later point without immediately defaulting to a defense against "ideology".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Americans apparently don't learn how to think in their many years of compulsory schooling. They can apparently be shown pictures of unmarked buses and be told to believe anything you want. I really don't know how you combat that. How can you try to show these people the truth when they don't have the capacity to discern fact from fiction?

<comment><USER10> It isn't just that people aren't critical in their thinking, they just tend to be _more critical_ in their thinking about things that violate their experience (read: things they disagree with) than things that they expect.

For example, are you critical of the floor being solid when you get out of bed? You probably wouldn't spend extra milliseconds contemplating they hardness of the floor. Now let's say you get up and the floor is wet. You might take a moment thinking about what happened, looking up at the ceiling, whether the dog peed, did someone spill water, etc.

That is an extreme example, but many people find it very difficult to critically analyze everything they come in contact with. It _helps_ immensely that things like political opinions are controversial, so we are at least aware of other possibilities, but it is still very difficult to accept something that contradicts what is established in our minds, even when that which is established is wrong. So it isn't just that we need to be critical, it is we must be somewhat critical[0] of even things we believe when there is at least some doubt to their validity.

[0] I actually wouldn't call this being critical, but rather, being open- minded to being incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> read Ryan Holiday's Trust Me I'm Lying. He lays out the bigger manipulation of the media. False blog posts get picked up by slightly bigger media sites. Then larger sites like Huffington post pick the story up. There is no validation of these stories.

</comment><comment><USER14> In the absence of real news fake news will flourish. (turns out nature does indeed abhor a vacuum).

Censorship isn't a workable answer. The answer is for mainstream media to attempt to regain credibility by providing non-biased reporting and leaving off the propaganda.

This isn't an ideological statement either so please don't misconstrue. If you prefer, think of it as a strategy.

BTW.. I'm personally am sick of the "fake news" whining. I suspect I'm not alone in this. If it was a problem it was a problem a year ago.

I generally don't agree with Zuckerburg but in this case I do. Fake news didn't win the election. So please just stop it. Threatening forms of censorship isn't going to win more respect. Try behaving respectfully.

_Last article about fake news I intend to ever read or comment on_

</comment><comment><USER17> "Fake News" is a Orwellian double-speak for alternative news.

Mainstream media lost its grip on propaganda and now they're trying to push for censorship of opposing views (this past election is the proof of that). Read this interview with the founder of Snopes for the background of this [0].

Never mind the fact that "real news" organizations have been caught lying so many times and have collaborated, behind the closed doors, with Hillary's campaign, for example. [1]

And they're also grouping WikiLeaks under the "fake news" category as well. I guess that's the punishment for exposing how corrupt the mainstream media really is.

[0] [https://backchannel.com/according-to-snopes-fake-news-is- not...](https://backchannel.com/according-to-snopes-fake-news-is-not-the- problem-4ca4852b1ff0)

[1] [http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/meet-leftist-prof-who-wrote- hit-l...](http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/meet-leftist-prof-who-wrote-hit-list-of- fake-news-sites/)

<comment><USER10> The article is specifically about an event which was a mistake. Perhaps they are making a larger statement about alternative media by posting that, but that wasn't the point of the article.

<comment><USER18> I think the commenter is addressing the overall implication of the article (that "fake news" is common and widespread) rather than the specific instance they're investigating. If this was a one-off, it's not really newsworthy.

<comment><USER10> You're right. I think the article might be casting doubt on the sources after reddit which carried the story, but I feel the main issue the article addresses is false news _stories_ , not the credibility of news _sources_ , which Jerry2 seems to be talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember reading a great deal on Judith Miller, the Iraqi National Conference, and the selling of the fake news out of (originally) the New York Times that propagandized the American public into invading Iraq.

There's a number of ways that state narration becomes viral. The contacts that officials have with the media (the DNC leaks about media contacts pales in comparison to how the industry and government function together on a larger scale) coordinate messages, themes and ideas across distribution outlets - enabling large bodies of the American public to receive the same information (however fake it is or is not) in roughly the same time span.

This messaging is able to set the boundaries for the ideological debate. For instance, the Snowden Documents were reported across media outlets under the terminology "Bulk Collection" rather than Mass Surveillance, and they all made the same arguments provided to them by the state for what was going on, what was and was not legal and what data was and was not collected. Almost all of this was fake information that went viral immediately. American citizens had discussions about whether or not Merkle and Obama were upset with one another - rather than discuss the actual contents of the leaks, which the media broadly did no technical reporting on.

"Should we set up safe zones in Syria, or should we put boots on the ground?" is a safe ideological spectrum to coordinate for the American public, but it's difficult to see private-public partnership on messaging the American people to include, for example, criticism of American regime change, the US led coalitions' support of al Qaeda/Nusra/Fatah/Sham and the Islamic State Group. Both context and opinion are narrowly scoped to present particular fake perspectives that ultimately leave the American public uninformed and anxious.

Virality in general, of course, is studied by the Department of Defense, and it's Strategic Communication in Social Media (SMISC) research effort has sought to create the operating conditions and strategies to control virality of information in populations (strategic communication or "stratcom" is a DoD term for propaganda, replacing the older terminology psyops).

I think we're going to see evolving threats and technologies to detect, thwart and control virality more and more in the future - and people volunteering to be part of those networks of controlled information because its default, cheaper, has a better user experience, or just plain has all the other people.

</comment><comment><USER19> An anonymous blog entry titled 「保育園落ちた日本死ね」"Couldn't get slot for my child in nursery school, Japan should drop dead." got discussed in the Japanese parliament. The opposition party picked it up.

I wish political discussions were more evidence based, but I don't know how to do it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the original fake tweet author's response to this is pretty revealing. He essentially retracts his tweet, while reserving the right to repost it again, and to post such false things in the future. Let's read his own word:

"While there's no such thing as absolute certainty, I now believe that the busses that I photographed on Wednesday, November 9, were for the Tableau Conference 2016 and had no relation to the ongoing protests against President Elect Trump."

In other words, he is saying in that first sentence that he doesn't rule out that his original interpretation will eventually be proven correct. There's no such thing as an absolute certainty, after all! It remains possible that the 2016 Tableau conference and its 13000+ attendees were all an elaborate ruse to cover up an astroturf protest. We can't rule anything out prematurely! But he _currently_ believes that this might not be the case, in agreement with the overwhelming evidence. Currently.

"I don't know that Donald Trump was talking about me (posted 24 hours after my post), but he's among many with doubts"

Many people doubt this fact, in the face of overwhelming evidence, because people like Eric Tucker, Donald Trump and his campaign apparatus have spent the last year priming the public to believe crazy things that aren't true.

"Let's not be afraid to say things when we aren't completely sure"

Well actually yeah, let's just be afraid to do that.

"I value our ability to discuss with each other in a civil and respectful tone regardless of where our views may stand."

Except for that part where he gets up on Twitter and makes stuff up about people with whom he disagrees, and posts those made-up things as facts, he is totally 100% down with respect. Very respectful. None more respectful.

For reference the original tweet was "Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in. #fakeprotests #trump2016 #austin pic.twitter.com/VxhP7t6OUI"

<comment><USER20> Here's the news story that Fox News posted in its non-opinion, non-blog, supposedly-factual reporting section of their site.

[http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/10/trump-protests- intensif...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/10/trump-protests-intensify-as- doubts-swirl-about-spontaneity.html)

Here's some quality facts from that article.

""" But observers online are claiming that, in some cases, protesters were bused to the scenes - a telltale sign of coordination.

"Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem," one local in the Texas capitol tweeted Wednesday, along with photos offered as evidence.

[...]

Rumors have also been circulating that the new batch of anti-Trump protesters has been bankrolled by individuals like billionaire liberal activist George Soros and groups like Moveon.org.

"WTF, @georgesoros busing in & paying #protestors to destroy cities is domestic #terrorism. #fakeProtests #BlueLivesMatter have tough days," read one tweet in response to the viral picture of buses in Austin. """

Fox News runs pieces using these fantasy tweets as their primary source. They also run these stories on their TV network that your mom watches all day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The focus on the corrosive effects of money on the political system has hidden what looks like the real threat to the American constitution: the Internet. The founders understood the threat of monied interests pretty well--after all the problem was described by historians of the late Roman republic like Sallust. The mechanics of communication in social networks are completely different from anything in the classical world. It's a genuine paradigm shift.

Does anyone remember the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov? There's a point in the story where the calculations of the future developed by Hari Seldon are derailed by the arrival of the Mule, a black swan event that could not be predicted easily. It's hard to understand paradigm shifts when they are happening but it feels as if the US has hit a similar point where an unforeseeable event overthrows the stable equilibrium of the past 225 years. What happens next is hard to guess but the range of outcomes seems pretty broad. I don't think you can rule out the breakup of the United States.

</comment><comment><USER22> Snow Crash combined with Selfish Gene and infection theory provides a neat mental model of what's happening. Basically you get a constant bacground of competing memes all the time. But since the competition is fierce, none of them becomes too powerful. The elections made a lot of people more susceptible to infections and ideas become to spread. The social media provides the number of contacts necessary as well as increasing the transmission likelyhood as it forms echo chambers. It all makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER10> Something that can help people ferret out false news stories in addition to what has been discussed is to follow-up on stories or at least to be open to follow-ups. It is definitely as difficult as being critical of your own biases, as has been suggested here before, but this is at least one other step we can take to be less swayed by information which can seemingly confirm our biases.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have an hypothesis that I believe predicts very accurately how information will be treated in this segment of the American political right-wing (hard to define, but Fox and the WSJ editorial page to the right-wing blogosphere to talk radio to it's many participants on social media). I invite you to test it out:

The NY Times is asking the wrong question; they implicitly acknowledge that it lacks predictive power: The accuracy of information does not predict if it will spread and be believed.

* Ideology predicts it. If information matches their ideology, they spread it and believe it. If not, they don't. I believe this is now taken to its extreme: Ideological compliance, not factual accuracy, determines 99% of 'truth'. No matter how factually unsound, they will believe ideologically 'true' information. And no matter how factually sound, they will deny and attack ideologically 'false' material. Consider climate change, as an easy example - factually undeniable but ideologically unsound. It's a full-fledged ideological movement, which seems an anachronism in this educated age, happening right under our noses..

I've been reading about Medieval philosoph, and I recognized the pattern. It's a per-Enlightenment approach, placing ideology (back then it was mainly religious dogma rather than political) ahead of reason as the test for truth. Note also the attacks on sources of factual credibility, such as serious journalists, intellectuals, academia, scientists, education in general, etc. Those sources provide factual accuracy, but ideological 'falsehoods'. Again, it's in some ways similar to what was experienced in the Enlightenment. Finally, note that leaders of this political group prove themselves not by knowledge, leadership, good decisions, etc., but by saying things that are both crazy by normal standards but acceptable by the ideology's standards - their and their followers priority is that they prove their commitment to the ideology.

....

Finally a couple caveats: 1) In a way it might seem obvious because everyone tends to believe things that meet their preconceived notions, but this is far more extreme - usually accuracy does have a large influence on people, including probably most people reading this. 2) Yes, some people behave similarly on other parts of the political spectrum, but the reality is that in 2016 there is relatively very large and very powerful movement on the right - IMHO it just elected a President and has corrupted major U.S. institutions such as the FBI.

</comment><comment><USER24> How many posts about fake news and evils of Facebook will NYT write, and how many will end up on HN?

Yes, there are lying tweets out there and social media is designed in a way that makes spreading this stuff easy. As long as you have an audience that really wants to hear something, they will share your messages. But, really, this is neither new, nor surprising. And it's not exclusive to Trump supporters. It's not even exclusive to social media. Mainstream media also occasionally reposts each other's stories without fact-checking. (Remember Tim Hunt?)

Why is this suddenly a subject of almost daily articles? Did some editor wake up from a 10-year coma or something? (I'm being facetious, of course. It's obvious why.)

I remember several year ago mainstream media was singing high praise to social media during Arab Spring.

\---

Another thing worth considering is that the whole story started with a single Tweet from non-celebrity. It seems it wasn't even an intentional lie, just someone jumping to conclusions. Is that news? I don't think so, unless you want to count every blog post and every comment as such.

Does a re-post on Reddit or Facebook somehow make it news? I don't think so either.

At what point does a post from an individual become news? This question is important, because some people are already jumping on the bandwagon and demanding social networks to "combat" this, whatever "this" is.

The issue is that a lot of such stories are false, but some of them are true. No one in the pipeline is a journalist or an editor with incentives to do fact-checking. And everyone can always link to the original post, say "Joe Shmoe posted such and such on Twitter" and thus completely relegate responsibility for the content. (Modern mainstream media pulls these kinds of stunts all the time: [http://pressthink.org/2014/05/democrats-argue- republicans-co...](http://pressthink.org/2014/05/democrats-argue-republicans- contend-we-have-no-idea/))

<comment><USER6> It's almost as if there happened some event of global proportions less than 2 weeks ago that was perhaps in great measure directly caused by this phenomenon?

<comment><USER24> Do you really believe that seeing a picture of two buses on Facebook changed the candidate someone voted for?

<comment><USER6> No, not this case in particular, though I'm sure it changed quite a few minds. I'm taking about the "fake news" and "post-truth" phenomenon as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This entire thing is a fucking joke... Wait a second!

Ahhh... I see now, got your tin-foil hats on? Make sure you stock up because four years is a long time. Assholes.

</comment><comment><USER26> Strange, so many fake news about Trump and he still managed to win the election somehow.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Fake News"

Yellow Cake? Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

</comment><comment><USER28> Said the newspaper spreading cheap pro-Hillary propaganda the entire election cycle.

<comment><USER29> I'm curious what you would call Breitbart. Or is this a case of people saying things I don't like = propaganda?

<comment><USER24> I am amused by how often people these days defend NYT by comparing to to Breitbart. How the mighty have fallen... Breidbard is a right-wing propaganda outlet. There are facts somewhere in there, but they spin those fact to the utmost degree. Sadly, NYT is going down the same route right now. They used to be much more objective just several years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> already submitted here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000430) and here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999981)

<comment><USER20> And this one already has 15x as many points, so deal with it.

<comment><USER31> Actually, it's normal in HN historically to post links to previous discussions on the same link. There's no reason to get upset about such a comment.

<comment><USER20> There are literally zero comments on those other two, so they aren't discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> uh, no shit

<comment><USER6> Constructive as all hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> NYT = fake_news(newspaper)

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks like their site is using ads from Google, their party will be over soon.

edit: already banned by facebook, that was fast.

</comment><comment><USER35> The trouble, of course, is who gets to decide what is "fake" and what isn't. Even history books get constantly rewritten because people change their minds about what is accurate and what isn't.

It's why professional historians try to stick with original sources, for example.

<comment><USER6> What are your trying to suggest? This is _objectively_ fake. The claim (that protesters were bussed to this place to protest against Trump) is objectively, demonstrably, false.

<comment><USER35> It's not a big step to go from using obviously fakes to sell the idea that fake news must be stopped, to having someone decide if less obvious cases are fake or simply don't fit the agenda.

Censorship of news is always sold as keeping people from being misinformed.

<comment><USER36> Hold on a minute there, you almost disappeared down that slippery slope...

All this piece is pointing out is that the difference between 'fake news' and 'real news' is the act of verification prior to publication. The thing journalists do, which makes what they publish worth paying attention to.

<comment><USER35> I've been personally involved in some news worthy events, and then watched the reporting of it. The professional media was invariably sloppy and flat out wrong with many of the facts of the case. And these were events where there was nothing political - the reporters simply couldn't be bothered with fact checking.

It's made me skeptical ever since.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why hasn't Video Mail taken off as a communication mode? - <AUTHOR>

Ideally speaking video mail or video messaging should be a great medium for communicating with friends and family. It provides an extra element of emotion, which is clearly absent from text based messaging, which would be great for personal conversations.<p>However we still don't see many people using it. Wondering if this is an execution/technology challenge or a use case no one wants... <comment><USER2> Leaving videomail is worse than leaving voicemail, because you have to worry about your appearance, you have to worry about the lighting, and you have to look at the camera while you leave your message (no looking at notes).

Note that people use text based messaging even though audio messaging is available and provides an extra element of emotion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. Do you see yourself going through that for any specific use case?

<comment><USER2> I can see that video direct mail would be attractive to advertisers, but I'd opt out of receiving it.

I can see people going to the extra effort of making a video mail rather than a voice mail in circumstances where synchronous conversation isn't possible and meeting in person is out of the question. But I can't see what those circumstances might be, outside the sci-fi trope of "spaceship crew keep in touch with their families back on Earth". Keeping in touch with high-security prisoners?

I can see ambient video connections being useful --- when you have a screen covering a wall showing the view into someone else's room, and visa versa, so you can get an impression of how busy and what sort of mood faraway people are in without them having to explicitly tell you; and start conversations when you're not interrupting. But that's possibly more useful for business, and not video mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks that helps a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me, having headphones on to "read" my mail in private isnt ideal. I also like listening to music while i work, video would be annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> So its the extra level on engagement it needs, which is a challenge? Even if the video mail is from family or friends (aka people we care about)?</comment></comment>


In Latvia, young people discover new passions in bad economic times - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-latvia-young-people-discover-new-passions-in-bad-economic-times/2013/07/29/ac638cac-efbf-11e2-8c36-0e868255a989_story.html

<comment><USER2> A quick history lesson for those who haven't been to Latvia, this is a country that has been screwed by history in a way that is hard to imagine. First, they were occupied by the Soviets, with all that entailed, purges, gulags and so on. Then they were occupied by the Nazis, and things got a whole lot worse. Then after WW2, the Soviets again, keen to punish the Latvians for daring to "let" the Nazi war machine crush them beneath its jackboots. Stalin has some ideas about _lebensraum_ of his own, and instigated a mass programme of exiling Latvians and importing Russians. Even today, they are still finding pockets of Latvians deep inside Russia, relocated there by Stalin, cut off from the world, and asking them if they want to come home. Think about that for a second.

These people have a resilience that no pampered Westerner can really understand, they'll survive this like they have everything else.

<comment><USER3> In order to put this quick history in a broader context, you may want to mention that Latvia was part of Russian empire for 200 years before gaining independence around 1920. Soviets occupied Latvia 20 years later in 1940.

Statement about "Nazi war machine crushing Latvia" is not entirely accurate - on the contrary, Latvia was part of Nazi war machine: e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Legion_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Legion_Day)

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia article you are pointing at clearly says "The day has been controversial as the Legion is seen by some as Nazi and the Legion Day itself as a Nazi honouring, while others hold that the Legion was a purely military unit fighting against the Soviet Union that had occupied Latvia in 1940 and was not itself responsible for any of Nazi war crimes."

While you present that as clearly Nazi. That's not the case.

Still we can go even deeper in history and found some historic relations between Latvia and Germany.

<comment><USER3> Legion was not "purely military" unit, it was part of SS taking orders directly from Himmler. If that is not Nazi, then I don't know what is.

Digging deeper in history and discovering relations between Latvia and Germany will indeed lead to better understanding of Latvian mentality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Latvian here.

The so called "startups" that are mentioned in the article are just a fancy way of entertaining hipsters who are children of rather wealthy(by the local standards) parents. The Erenpreiss bicycles are owned solely by rich children. There is no way that can be called a startup.

> But last year, Davis Kanepe, 28, took matters into his own hands in Riga. He > leased a crumbling, Italianate music school building on a down-on-its-heels > corner in the middle of the city and, with some friends, turned it into a > bar and cultural center.

I have been there, guys. Its just a piss poor empty bar, with cheap booze, full of teenagers, and people who call themselves "artists".

The constant comparison with Estonian skype makes sick. Its like saying that "Maybe US will be as good as Canada, because Justin Bieber is from Canada" whenever you speak about music.

<comment><USER6> Ah, so my appraisal of the situation from the image caption was entirely correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "young entrepreneurs, freed from the prospect of steady, 9-to-5 employment"

That's an interesting choice of words. I know here on HN (and in the $100 startup book) a common theme is "I lost my job, and then tried this cool thing and now I have a modestly successful business" and I'm sure that's worked out for quite a few folk. But I'm also sure a large amount young Latvians would be eager to find steady 9-5 work (locally) and it seems a little bit cheeky to use such a euphemism in this context.

<comment><USER8> well it is a euphemism but it is also jail.

working 9-5 earning a decent salary is something that can hold you up.. - opportunity cost to try something new or take a risk is so much higher

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)

<comment><USER10> The boiling frog is about as bad as low hanging fruit.

(The frog would jump out of slowly heating water, and picking the low hanging fruit first is a sure-fire way to get fired from your fruit-picker job.)

<comment><USER11> What's the problem with picking the low hanging fruit first?

<comment><USER10> The higher fruit are ripe first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article reads like an advertisement, reminds me of this essay: [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Basically advertisment to [http://riga.techhub.com/](http://riga.techhub.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Something something potato. There, we got that out of the way, let's move on.

<comment><USER14> That's about as funny as someone making Borat references whenever Kazakhstan is mentioned. Can we stop it now?

<comment><USER8> yer but if there ever was a single place and time for that comment, it was in a thread about 'latvia passions'</comment></comment></comment>


Report: Chinese Government Assigning Han Men to Live and Sleep with Uighur Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chinese-government-assigning-han-men-to-live-and-sleep-with-uighur-women-whose-husbands-have-been-detained-report <comment><USER2> Every time I imagine that reached the absolute bottom of Chinese depravity they grab a shovel and dig.

I fully expect to ultimately see death camps eventually.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.foxla.com/news/undercover-video-reveals- brutal-t...](https://www.foxla.com/news/undercover-video-reveals-brutal- treatment-of-falun-gong-prisoners-inside-chinese-labor-camps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saw this comment on Reddit:

>I went searching for more reliable sources on this and found this story from AP: [https://apnews.com/9ca1c29fc9554c1697a8729bba4dd93b](https://apnews.com/9ca1c29fc9554c1697a8729bba4dd93b)

It's from 2018 but it does back up the idea that there is a program where China places party loyalists in the homes of Uighur Muslims in a program called "Pair Up and Become Family." It also briefly mentions bed sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> They misspelled rape</comment>


MIT's Scratch Team releases Scratch 2.0 editor and player as open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LLK/scratch-flash <comment><USER2> I've taught a few kids using Scratch and it works quite well. I'm happy to hear they're working on an HTML5 version, and hopefully it will be possible to install if offline like the current Adobe AIR version does. I teach with a few netbooks running Ubuntu, and can't always rely on having internet, so I had to install the last version of AIR that supported Linux to get it working.

There is also an unaffiliated app for Android called Pocket Code that is clearly inspired by Scratch. It works nicely on Nexus 7 tablets, and touch screens are clearly more natural for kids, but it is buggy and more limited than Scratch so I had to stop using it. Hopefully it will improve, or the Scratch team will provide their own mobile port (not a simple task, of course).

<comment><USER3> As I mentioned below, they are making a tablet version of Scratch aimed at 5-7 year old kids. Out this summer....

[http://www.scratchjr.org/](http://www.scratchjr.org/)

<comment><USER4> Just iPad or Android, too?

<comment><USER5> An Android version is planned for later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I played with Scratch for some time with my 9 year old son. They've done an excellent job with it. We ended up using Construct 2, only because they've done an even better job and it releases to HTML 5, is playable on all kinds of devices including iPad.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.scirra.com/construct2](https://www.scirra.com/construct2) \- not seen that before, thanks for the tip.

Edit: looks like it's Windows only. Will try with WINE.

Edit2: Pretty buggy on WINE over Kubuntu 14.04 - crashes when trying to start project from template or when run layout on empty project.

<comment><USER8> Tom here from Scirra (it's awesome to spot links to Construct 2 in the wild!)

Yes, Windows only for now. We stuck with what we knew to start off which was Windows development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We are hiring! [http://scratch.mit.edu/jobs/](http://scratch.mit.edu/jobs/)

Also, Scratch Day is May 17th: [http://day.scratch.mit.edu/](http://day.scratch.mit.edu/)

<comment><USER10> Is local a hard requirement for the Software Engineer position?

<comment><USER9> I believe it's preferred, but I am not the one to ask. You should ask through the email linked there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This (along with the existence of the HTML5 version linked elsewhere in the comments, [https://github.com/LLK/scratch- html5](https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5) ) is great news! I've always hesitated to point anyone at Scratch due to its non-open license. It's great to see that problem solved.

<comment><USER12> You'd point someone to an inferior learning tool because of your prejudice against non-free software? Really?

<comment><USER13> And it has always been free in cost

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Scratch is a multimedia authoring tool that can be used by students, scholars, teachers, and parents for a range of educational and entertainment constructivist purposes from math and science projects, including simulations and visualizations of experiments, recording lectures with animated presentations, to social sciences animated stories, and interactive art and music. Simple games may be made with it, as well._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER15> It's unfortunate that Scratch is built upon the Flash platform. Though Scratch has been released under the GPL, it requires nonfree software in order to run. Scratch looks interesting, but I cannot recommend its use until this problem is fixed.

<comment><USER5> We have a work-in-progress HTML5 version as well: [https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5](https://github.com/LLK/scratch-html5)

<comment><USER15> Well that is great news! Thanks for letting me know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Catroid is another cool related project [https://github.com/Catrobat/Catroid](https://github.com/Catrobat/Catroid)

<comment><USER17> This is great. Every time I visited the Scratch website I wished I could use a similar project on a tablet/smartphone.

<comment><USER3> They are making a tablet version of Scratch aimed at 5-7 year old kids. Out this summer....

[http://www.scratchjr.org/](http://www.scratchjr.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Scratch is really cool - my 6 year old daughter enjoys it a lot even though she doesn't grasp all of it yet. But I think it's a good start in that it starts introducing some of the concepts behind making a computer do things, and making things with computers. She has fun with it too, it's pleasant, which should help develop a positive attitude.

</comment><comment><USER19> Turtle Art (AKA Turtle Blocks) is another LOGO-derived educational language with aims similar to Scratch.

Turtle Art is free software and its block language seems more powerful and orthogonal. It can be extended with inline Python expressions or by loading Python scripts. I think it's a great way to introduce young children to the basic concepts of programming with a smooth transition to a mainstream language.

While Turtle Art is bundled with the OLPC-derived Sugar learning environment, it also works on a regular Linux desktop.

Get it here: [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art](http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art)

</comment><comment><USER20> There is also the Phratch version (Pharo based). [http://www.phratch.com/](http://www.phratch.com/)

This is more for grown ups where one can integrate all kinds of cools things.

A video with Lego Mindstorms EV3 controls.

[http://vimeo.com/82540943](http://vimeo.com/82540943)

And engineers have fun too. [http://vimeo.com/89912838](http://vimeo.com/89912838)

</comment><comment><USER21> Neat! It would be nice if README.md gave a little introduction to the project.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hardly 'open' but if you're looking for something similar that works nicely on an iPad Hopscotch is also worth a look [https://www.gethopscotch.com](https://www.gethopscotch.com)

Bit more limited than Scratch but the new editing interface they just released works really well.

<comment><USER13> I teach programming in the classroom using Scratch and just recently started using Hopscotch for younger learners (age 9 and 10). I really dislike many of the changes in the new Hopscotch release. they feel like UX designing run amok, out of touch with the audience of young learners.

The script blocks (the code) that were front and center are now buried behind a few additional taps.

They've replaced buttons clearly labeled with text with icons that are sometimes cryptic even to me (let alone a 9 year old). Would you guess that an icon with an "i" is how you edit your code? I assumed it would just be some kind of read-only display of extended properties, not an editing capability.

And the worst and most subtle change is the de-emphasis of the X/Y Cartesian- esque grid. Before you had clearly labeled X and Y value textboxes and a grid with matching color-coded horizontal and vertical guide-lines to make it easy to understand the grid, and labeled light gridlines every 100 pixels. Now nothing is labeled or shown except while long-tapping to move a sprite's starting position. Anything that ties into math curriculum is a win (Cartesian coordinates, ordered pairs), and they took much of that goodness away in favor of a more "streamlined" UX.

I do like that they fixed the problem of moving large chunks of script blocks inside of the repeat loops though.

<comment><USER22> My daughter is a bit too young still so i haven't tried it with any actual kids yet, except myself. I liked the cleaner visual style but it might indeed be less clear now..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw somewhere that (now their) App Inventor makes for 13 percent of language use for education purposes, while Python is at 14 percent. They must be doing something right.

[http://appinventor.mit.edu/](http://appinventor.mit.edu/)

<comment><USER23> This is great. I use it for prototyping app ideas, and it works good so far. Only thing I've found to miss for my particular prototype is a "wait" function, but there's ways to build a little procedure for that.

(Also I submitted AppInventor to HN a while ago [1], but it didn't get any attention. Bad timing maybe? Either way, I think it's excellent in it's simplicity)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715679)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> ISTR Scratch being available as a standalone executable, and then changing into a web app. The standalone tool made it easy to let my kid play around with while not having the whole internet there to distract him. Is the standalone app still available?

<comment><USER25> Yes, the old 1.4 version is available and the new 2.0 version has a stand alone build that works without internet access. It requires adobe AIR.

[http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/](http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/)

[http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/](http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting project! Just a note--I got to step 3 of 13 on the Scratch tutorial and the language switched to Dutch or something ("3 Dansen maar Voeg een nieuw NEEM STAPPEN-blok toe. Klik in het blok en typ een min-teken.")

<comment><USER27> That's Dutch, and I did a double take when I suddenly saw Dutch in my Hacker News!

I can't wait to have my siblings try some programming with this tool!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Scratch is great for making animated comics. It appeals to girls as well as boys. I taught kids from 6 to 12 years last year. Kids older than that got bored with it. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER29> I'm 16, and I still use Scratch from time to time. It is well suited to creating simple 2D games, although it is not efficient enough for anything particulary complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We love and use Scratch a lot at Coding Goûter events. Recently we also started to use the HTML-based SNAP![1] that also has the advantage to let older kids create their own custom blocks (functions). It's open source, and seems to be evolving fast. (It started as a clone of scratch, but might diverge in the future if I understand the conversations right) [1][http://snap.berkeley.edu/](http://snap.berkeley.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I absolutely love Scratch. I get my six year old daughter to make all of the artwork and sound effects and I end up doing all the code. I've been really looking forward to Scratch Jr, just to see if she can do more of the coding.

One thing I'd love to see is an atan2 function in the math routines. Right now if you want to do anything a little bit tricky you end up having to implement your own.

<comment><USER32> I do the same thing with my 6 year old daughter. She feels like a game designer and comes up with super crazy game ideas. Shark Salon? Sure! Let's do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ah, Scratch. This is how I got started with programming (pretty late, my senior year in high school). I made a game[0] where you try and knock another player or a dumb AI off a disk.

[0]:[http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1108096/](http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1108096/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there a linux distro that is centered around Scratch that I can PXE boot on my media center PC for my son to play with?

I'm interested in getting him into computing of sorts. I tried Doudoulinux, but it was mostly not good.

<comment><USER35> Instead of using your media center pc could you get him a Raspberry Pi? I bought my nephew an RPi so he could use Scratch and have a computer of his own. The only challenge I had was figuring out an easy way to introduce him to Minecraft Pi edition.

<comment><USER34> I have one for him. I just don't have anything to set it up with, yet. The HTPC is an easier test bed since it's already setup for PXE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of the older versions of Scratch had support for Lego WeDo. Does Scratch 2.0 have support for Lego WeDo? Would love to introduce it to my kids!

<comment><USER37> Yes, Scratch 2 does support Lego WeDo.

To enable support, shift + click "More Blocks" and the "Add an Extension" button will appear. From there you can select the LEGO WeDo extension. [1]

If your kids are into robotics, you may also be interested in MOSS - a modular robotic construction kit [2]. MOSS also supports Scratch programming, and in fact we are releasing our extension to the public this week (I'm the lead programmer on the project.), which we'll be announcing very soon.

We've been experimenting with Scratch in classrooms here in Boulder, CO, and we're amazed at how fast kids pick up programming concepts with Scratch!

[1] [http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/LEGO_WeDo_Blocks](http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/LEGO_WeDo_Blocks) [2] [http://www.modrobotics.com/moss](http://www.modrobotics.com/moss)

<comment><USER36> > If your kids are into robotics, you may also be interested in MOSS

Ah, thanks for reminding me! I'd been keeping my eye on MOSS and they should be out now! Cool that Scratch supports MOSS as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I tried to get my son into Scratch, but he didn't like it. He loves hacking on Lua code in the Roblox game.

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://snap.berkeley.edu/](http://snap.berkeley.edu/)</comment>


How much is Facebook Connect limiting Quora's growth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-Facebook-Connect-limiting-Quoras-growth <comment><USER2> This is Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook.

The goal of Facebook for login is to improve signup conversion rates for your sites and make it easier for users (so they don't need to re-enter all the same information and re-find their friends on every site they use). This thread is really interesting for me and the rest of the Platform team at Facebook because it illustrates how far we have to go. Please keep the feedback coming, however harsh :)

I get the brand perception and trust issues - it is something we care a lot about and are actively working on.

Beyond that issue, we have internally been talking a lot about ways of making the user experience smoother, more familiar, and less intimidating. If all of you running startups have practical suggestions about how the experience of a user using Facebook for login could be improved to help out your site, we would be really eager to hear it. It is a great time to get the feedback, as we are actively iterating on ideas internally.

<comment><USER3> I have a major idealogical problem with this recent trend of sites using Facebook connect. Don't take this the wrong way, but Facebook is a toy. People use it to share party pictures and play Farmville. I would just as soon trust a circus clown to be the central authority on my identity as you guys.

And when I visited a site for the first time to see my Facebook contacts there, without ever having signed up for the site in the first place, I got angry. Really, really angry. And then I got even angrier when I went through the 30 step process of turning off this "feature".

I don't know how representative I am of the population at large, but this stuff drives me nuts. Please stop.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I find it pretty unnerving as well.

Two opposing viewpoints on my mind:

1.) Facebook is for all practical purposes, fairly ubiquitous. +1 for Facebook Connect on that front.

2.) As you suggest, Facebook is a toy and has no place providing this kind of service. -1 for Facebook Connect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Facebook Connect is a good feature, but has one big disadvantage: does not describe the interaction in a comprehensive way. I often connect and come up with the screen 'let publish on your wall' and, well, what does it really mean? That you'll post my every single action on fb? Some specific actions? A summary once per day? Will my wall get spammed? Should I trust you?

I don't like when things get complicated too much and that simple approach seems ok, but on the other hand, it lacks detail that would make users feel safe about using fbc. If 'publish on your wall' had specified settings for the webservices, it'd be much more effective.

<comment><USER6> Agree 100%! This is the main reason that I don't use Facebook Connect - I have no idea what a site will try to do in my name, nor do I have an intuitive understanding of what Facebook will let a site do in my name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The funny thing is that I was going to leave this answer: "And your categories aren't mutually exclusive: I fall into all three of them and would never use a service that requires Facebook connect," but when I hit "post" (or whatever), a login screen came up with a big "Facebook Connect" logo, and I shut it down.

Maybe the login screen is part of the problem: I might've posted anyway if it had four fields: "User name" "email" "password" and "retype password." As it is, signing up sounds too invasive or too tedious to bother for a short comment.

</comment><comment><USER8> What happens if you've created your account on lots of websites using Facebook Connect, and then one day you decide to completely delete your Facebook account?

I don't mean created a unique account on the site then linked your FBC (and Twitter, etc) to it, I mean actually created the account by registering on the site through FBC.

Do you lose all your accounts on the other websites too, or do they somehow remain even though you didn't create a unique userid, pwd, email for the account on those sites?

<comment><USER2> It depends on the site.

If you run a site that uses Facebook for login, when you log someone in via Facebook, you can ask for their email address via the "email" extended permission. Your site can then support a password reset page (like most sites already do) to enable those users to create a password via email if they decide to delete their Facebook account. Requesting email address is a good "escape valve" for users if you are concerned about this aspect of Facebook login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have Facebook fixed the problem where people can't log in to your site using Facebook Connect if they don't have JavaScript enabled? I find that enormously frustrating - no other feature on my sites require JavaScript (though I use lots of JavaScript for usability enhancements), so adding it as a requirement for logging in really annoys me.

<comment><USER2> Yes, we now are based on OAuth 2.0. See <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/>. You can just do a redirect to log someone into your site.

<comment><USER9> That's fantastic news, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to say I am a bit surprised that so many people seem to be upset about the Facebook signup.

Personally I love the fact that I can use FB, as I dont' really care that much about my facebook account.

Anyone got any theories on why that is?

<comment><USER11> I can't be the only one who doesn't have a facebook account, because I believe that Facebook is a (potential for) waste of time on a massive scale.

I do have a twitter account, but honestly I don't want to use it to sign-up at other pages. If you don't want to handle user names and passwords, use openid.

<comment><USER10> Openid is a mess. I really want to like it but it's simply too confusing IMHO.

<comment><USER12> Can you expand on what you find confusing about OpenID?

I ask as I like OpenID enough that at least for my services alpha, I'm only implementing OpenID.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't surprise me that Twitter is very popular at the moment, I think when the site branches out a picks up more users outside of the tech/ startup crowd then that will shift more back to facebook. Anecdotally from what I've seen, not many people I know use Twitter but most of everyone I have met in tech/startups do.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't even have a Facebook account yet I'm using Quora.. so surely they have another way to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER15> Facebook connect is essential to the overall utility of quora.

It isn't he same without identity.

</comment><comment><USER16> How can I sign up with Quora? I don't have a facebook or twitter account.

</comment><comment><USER17> error 500</comment>


Google Maps is now available for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-is-now-available-for-iphone.html

<comment><USER2> Just downloaded. Looks nice and completely re-done. iPhone is cool again :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like this "Here's a helpful hint for the new app: if you see something off, simply shake your phone to send us feedback. "

The next release will send feedback if you shake your head :)

</comment><comment><USER4> See main thread with comments on the new Google Maps for iOS here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4914089>

</comment><comment><USER5> Google Maps is just THE map out there. Never seen such a detailed version. Apple, TomTom, Microsoft and all the others are years behind... Great to have it on the iphone again...

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, partially available - I'm seeing "The item you tried to buy is no longer available" thanks to the wonky ITMS CDN.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't wait until they ship an iPad version.</comment>


Using Writing Smells to Refactor Your Email - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/30518925872/using-writing-smells-to-refactor-your-email

<comment><USER2> There are some good ideas here, but putting each sentence into its own paragraph makes for choppy prose. Split them out and consider each one on its own, but once each sentence is as tight as it's going to get, why not combine related ones into paragraphs?

The example email is, to my eye, three paragraphs:

      "Hey Ralph,

      I'm glad to meet another fellow Quebecois and lover of
      poutine last night at the meetup. If you're in town next
      week, let's meet up. I suggest Cafe Madeline for coffee
      on Tuesday at 3pm.

      I'm interested to learn more about example.com and tell
      you more about thoughtbot. If you haven't already done
      so, take a look at thoughtbot.com to see some of our
      recent projects. Also, take a look at our playbook
      (playbook.thoughtbot.com) for more detail on our
      approach to building startups.

      Looking forward to hearing from you.

      -Rolf"

<comment><AUTHOR> A fair point. For me, I find it's easier to read short, punchy sentences when they are on separate lines.

I also find (for myself) that _all_ lines get read when formatted this way, as opposed to scanning through a paragraph getting some of it.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I still try to live by this rule, and keep it in my signature:

<http://three.sentenc.es/>

Sometimes it's three paragraphs instead of three sentences, but I think that tends to work nearly as well.</comment>


Two new papers explore the physics behind bubbles and foams - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/two-new-papers-explore-the-complicated-physics-behind-bubbles-and-foams/ <comment><USER2> As a statistical physicist, the title of this article looks the way "Two new papers explore the complexity of neural networks" might to a working ML researcher. Bubbles and foams are, and have been, a topic of intense research in soft matter physics for decades. Foams, in particular, have myriad uses in industry and have many well-established models.

</comment><comment> semi-extrinsic So, as a scientist working in fluid mechanics, I certainly find these two papers interesting. But the interesting bits are highly technical. There doesn't seem to be either a common link between the two papers, nor a good reason why these specific ones are reported on by Ars. The only thing they seem to have in common, is that they were both posted to EurekAlert (which is a place where universities can post press releases) at about the same time. These press releases seem to be the basis for the Ars article, but unfortunately the Ars piece is full of pretty basic mistakes...

TL;DR: if you like bubbles and foams, go read the actual articles, please don't read the Ars piece.

<comment><USER3> That's basically all news reporting. Imagine all news is about as bad as this article and you'll suddenly realize how misinformed you are on just about everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This documentary contains rudimentary information and applications about bubbles - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Ub_r_GFZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Ub_r_GFZY) The same host had one on the same topic from the BBC I can't find, it was also great. BBC docs are very often very well done. Never overproduced or reliant on useless special effects.

</comment><comment><USER5> For the mathematically inclined, I strongly recommend Frank Morgan's book on Geometric Measure Theory, which is the math of bubbles, essentially:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128044896/geometric-m...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128044896/geometric- measure-theory)

</comment><comment><USER6> When I was in high school Scientific American published a paper on 'AntiBubbles', which are thin films of a gas suspended in and filled with a liquid.

I spent nearly a month in the science department of my school trying to recreate them to no avail.

<comment><USER7> There are a bunch of videos on youtube showing off antibubbles. Perhaps it'd be easier to recreate them after watching one.

<comment><USER6> Actually, I bet the invention of digital video cameras and computer post- processing makes the whole enterprise much easier. Because my most vivid memory of that time is a debate between my friends about if one had formed or not.

Being able to go back and look at a video that had been slowed down and zoomed in would probably help enormously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone has non-paywall links to the papers?

<comment><USER9> [https://citationsy.com/archives/q?doi=10.1038/s41598-019-414...](https://citationsy.com/archives/q?doi=10.1038/s41598-019-41486-6)

[https://citationsy.com/archives/q?doi=10.1073/pnas.181974411...](https://citationsy.com/archives/q?doi=10.1073/pnas.1819744116)</comment></comment>


Let's Stop Ascribing Meaning to Code Points - <AUTHOR> https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2017/01/14/stop-ascribing-meaning-to-unicode-code-points/ <comment><USER2> Excellent post, thank you!

By the way, I've sometimes heard that it was the popularity of emoji that finally made American and Western European coders learn about the particulars of unicode. Is this just a jokingly told anecdote, or did emoji really help?

<comment><USER3> Western European? I don't know - there are many languages in that part of the world which use some non-standard characters. Germany (not sure if it's still the case), France, Austria, Italy, Spain... Anyway, I always thought UNICODE ignorance is strictly an anglo-sphere thing - most of the rest of the world is _very_ aware.

<comment><USER4> Central European languages can get more or less by with Latin-1, although even there many characters are already missing, iirc French, Czech, Dutch and Finnish. Special characters of many regional dialects are missing as well.

FWIW (more or less proper) Unicode support seems to be pretty much an implicit, hard requirement today for almost anything facing users.

<comment><USER5> Many government databases still just use some codepage and won't be changing anytime soon though. You can't get your name in a Swiss passport without first changing it into something ISO 8859-15 can represent.

[http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/Les-noms-de-l-Est-mutiles- lors...](http://www.24heures.ch/suisse/Les-noms-de-l-Est-mutiles-lors-de-la- naturalisation/story/25231514)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent post.

> _Now, Rust is a systems programming language and it just wouldn't do to have > expensive grapheme segmentation operations all over your string defaults. > I'm very happy that the expensive O(n) operations are all only possible with > explicit acknowledgement of the cost. So I do think that going the Swift > route would be counterproductive for Rust._

I'm not sure I understand the logic here. How is Rust exempt but not, say, Python? Just because it's a systems language? I get why you wouldn't make it the default in Rust, but the logic applies to all languages, doesn't it?

Aside: I was talking about this with a friend just yesterday. Is there any language that separates the concept of a string and a user-facing string? Specifically for localization purposes, the way gettext works.

eg. I wish that in Python you could do this:

        err = "internal_error"
        msg = t"Internal error!"

error_msg would be easy to pick up for translation, rather than have to do some cludgy import as _ and _("Internal error!"). Hm, now that I'm writing this here, I guess it's still not a type you'd want to operate differently on than just plain unicode strings.

<comment><USER7> > Just because it's a systems language? I get why you wouldn't make it the > default in Rust, but the logic applies to all languages, doesn't it?

You deal with strings as bytes (opaque data) (edit2: didn't really mean bytes here. see child comments) more often than strings as text in systems programming, basically.

Also, you'll want to write stuff like fast parsers in Rust. For a parser you're usually doing ascii matching anyway.

Swift _hides_ the actual encoding of the string from the user. That's not something we can do in Rust.

> I get why you wouldn't make it the default in Rust

That's all I'm saying? I'm totally for having EGC operations there, I don't want them in the _default_ operations. "it just wouldn't do to have expensive grapheme segmentation operations all over your string defaults"

Basically, Rust tries to keep costs explicit, unlike languages like Python. This would be against that philosophy.

Edit: I'd also like to point out that indexing by code point or grapheme is a rare operation in Rust _anyway_.

<comment><USER8> In Swift you have access to the utf8 and utf16 views. For a string constructed from UTF8 the utf8 view is a view onto the underlying storage more or less. That said the String API is getting some revisions in Swift 4 to make it both faster and easier to use without sacrificing correctness.

Swift supports unicode in source code so its parser is unicode aware. I'm not sure there is a good case for parsing in a non-unicode-aware way.

If you're working with strings as opaque data why are you even using a String type?

<comment><USER9> Is the memory representation of Swift strings now documented as something that programmers can rely on for performance characteristics?

I read the Swift Book when Swift first came out and it bothered me a lot that the book didn't say what the memory representation of strings is. In contrast, Rust documentation is very clear about this stuff.

<comment><USER7> It's a tagged union of utf8 and utf16 IIRC. I had to look at the stdlib source when I was trying to figure this out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The main time you want to be able to index by code point is if you're > implementing algorithms defined in the unicode spec that operate on unicode > strings (casefolding, segmentation, NFD/NFC). Most if not all of these > algorithms operate on whole strings, so implementing them as an iteration > pass is usually necessary anyway, so you don't lose anything if you can't do > arbitrary code point indexing.

Another algorithm for unicode strings which wants to index by code point is unicode regular expression matching. I heard that you _do_ lose something here if you can't assume all code points encode to same length. Unlike other algorithms you mentioned which only iterate forward, depending on implementation regex needs to backtrack.

I once heard that complexity of implementing regex directly on UTF-8 is one reason why Python will not use UTF-8 internally.

<comment><USER11> If everything that can match in a regular expression is valid UTF-8, and everything the regular expression can generate is valid UTF-8, you can just run the regular expression on the byte string.

This requires that matches match UTF-8 substrings, only. That's easy for explicit strings, such as "abc". For more general forms, "." must match one rune, not one byte. But that's not hard.

Python's problem is that strings are random-access indexable by rune (in the Go sense). Python either needs a representation that's rune-indexable, or it needs to generate an index array for strings that need one. There's an argument for the second approach, because most loops don't need a random- access index. "for i in "abcdef: ... " does not, for example.

<comment><USER7> > Python's problem is that strings are random-access indexable by rune

Yeah, one of my points in the blog post is that random-access rune (code point) indexing isn't very valuable. Python is stuck with it, but if anyone in the future needs to make a similar choice, I hope they don't use O(1) rune indexing as a reason unless they have a very specific use case where O(1) rune indexing actually matters.

(I, for one, am very happy with the "rune" terminology, "char" is way too overloaded. It took me a minute to understand why they did that in Go when I first picked it up, but when I realized the reason I found it brilliant)

<comment><USER11> One approach for a Python implementation would be to store strings as UTF-8, and generate an index array as needed. For most operations, you don't need an index. Concatenation doesn't need one. Ordinary iteration (for c in "hello" :) doesn't need one. Regular expressions don't need an index. That covers most of the common use cases.

I like "rune" as terminology. A rune is one Unicode code point. A grapheme is a sequence of runes which should not be split.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that could work. You don't even need a full index array, it can be a binary datastructure (I am reminded of how skip lists work), e.g. you start off with just one index for the halfway point and fill in things afterwards. There are lots of optimizations you could do.

I'm a bit wary of this because I fear indexing in Python is currently used more than this scheme can handle (i.e. too much for it to be considered a win), if erroneously. I'm not too sure. I certainly have written bad python code using indexing in the past, but that's just me (and many years ago).

<comment><USER4> String indexing is pretty rare. Most of them are s[0] or s[:n], where you don't need an index.

Typically this is found when parsing something, eg.

        if line[0] == '#':
          # skip comment lines
          continue

Or

        prefixes = {...}
        for line in lines:
            prefix, remainder = line[:4], line[4:]
            if prefix not in prefixes:
                raise ValueError('Invalid prefix ' + prefix)
            parsed = prefixes[prefix](remainder)

<comment><USER7> Don't you need to index for `s[:n]`? You need to find the byte position of code point n. In current python this isn't a problem because the strings don't use a variable-width encoding, but we're talking about making Python use utf8 :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yep. On Apple platforms there is basically just ONE way to do this conveniently _and_ correctly: an enumeration function on NSString that visits composed character sequences individually, as substrings. And, it was only added in OS 10.6, which shows how slow the evolution of correct Unicode processing can be.

And, there is _still_ no completely reliable way to guess the cell/column width of a symbol just by looking at it, especially if your goal is to be consistent with any other interpreter of the string (like a text editor). Still heuristics at best for any case outside common tables like CJK.

</comment><comment><USER13> The flip side to this is you can render text several orders of a magnitude faster if its from the latin subset. A fast-path is extremely helpful if you have a lot of text on the screen.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if this has changed, but LibreOffice has I herit d the most amazingly complicated and bizarre text layout system you can ever imagine.

<comment><USER15> How so?</comment></comment>


NetworkManager 1.24.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2020-May/msg00003.html <comment><USER2> Support for Opportunistic Wireless Encryption mode sounds great! Encrypted communication without pre-shared keys: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8110](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8110)</comment>


Ask HN: Help with TEDx Talk? - <AUTHOR> I'm doing a TEDx talk about how to be future ready. The skills we need to thrive in the future (climate change, automation etc). What perspective would you like me to cover/talk about that hasn't been before? What would make a TEDx talk like this helpful for you? <comment><USER2> If you haven't already you should probably research IPFS. It seems to me like it'll have a big part in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended web framework for Python/SQL back end in 2020 - <AUTHOR> Hi,<p>I'm a self-learned programmer working in finance who primarily uses Python and SQL. I am a team of one which allows me freedom in choosing what I want to work with but unfortunately also comes with the downside of having no mentorship on the programming front. Right now, everything ends up in Excel and I want to start migrating things to a web app. I want to create some simple web apps for displaying (for now) minimally formatted tabular data and as a distant second some basic charts. I do not know any JavaScript but would be willing to learn if it would assist. I previously have tried out Flask and hated working with HTML/CSS each time. Is Flask still recommended for a minimal/easy to get started setup in 2020 or is there anything else out there? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> What things do you want your framework to do for you?

Django has a steeper learning curve than Flask, but takes care of more of the tedious and repetitive stuff for you. With Flask you'll have to build more from scratch or cobble together third party modules that were never really meant to work together.

When did you last look at Django? Modern versions are far more flexible and powerful than those of 10 years ago, but that flexibility comes at the expense of a bit more boilerplate and a bit more to learn. It's just about perfect for most CRUD apps; and if you want to use raw SQL for queries too complex for the ORM, it supports that too.

For charts, there are some Python tools for server side rendering, but you may want to look into Javascript frameworks like D3 that support live-updating charts when users adjust parameters. That said, you can also start with server rendered for MVP and add Javascript as necessary.

You're probably going to have to write at least some of your HTML from scratch, but a modern layout library like Bootstrap can save you the heavy lifting for CSS and provide some HTML boilerplate.

</comment><comment><USER3> HTML/CSS is the web, so if you want to develop web apps, you have to learn it/use it. To enable any meaningful front-end interactivity, JavaScript is required as well. But with Microsoft Blazor ([https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web- apps/blazor](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor)) there are starting to be alternative approaches via WebAssembly that allow you to use C# or other languages in lieu of JavaScript. If you don't like the flexibility of Flask, there is always Django ([https://www.djangoproject.com](https://www.djangoproject.com)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. HTML/CSS aversion was more from writing things from scratch. Agreed that I will have to learn some. Django always seemed like overkill for what I wanted but haven't look at it in years so will take a look at the new version.

Anyone know if something like DataTables ([https://datatables.net/](https://datatables.net/)) is still widely used?

<comment><USER3> I use it for my data grids on [https://pysyteline.boyden.us](https://pysyteline.boyden.us) (Flask is the framework I used for that site).</comment></comment></comment>


If you have two banks of desks, you're working remotely - <AUTHOR> http://garethrees.co.uk/2013/03/28/if-you-have-two-banks-of-desks-youre-working-remotely/

<comment><USER2> Damn it. The problem isn't location; the problem is concentration. Too much of management, and too many companies, are "solving" the wrong problem.</comment>


Rats, My Startup Just Got Googled!! - <AUTHOR> http://bashford.wordpress.com/2007/08/11/rats-my-startup-just-got-googled/ The consumer in me says: "I love Google!". I really can't think of any company which has given me so much cool stuff without me taking out my wallet!<p>The entrepreneur in me (a sometimes small, sometimes loud voice) looks at Google with a mixture of fear and envy. Why? Well, imagine you have poured your heart and soul into a startup project over months or years, to find out Google has launched a similar service for free just as your project is gaining traction! This is the stuff that makes people jump of bridges or tall buildings. <comment><USER2> The worst is <http://www.google.com/transit>.

They released a beta that works for a small list of cities. Years later there is still no released progress and in my opinion its killed a lot of competitors.

Its a great, though obvious idea. Local bus systems have the worst and least helpful web sites ever. A simpler global app would be invaluable. Except no one makes it because who would go out and start a mobile "When will my bus come to this stop" application with the probability of google transit launching at any moment? No one, and so a lot of innovation has been held back.

I get angry about that every time I sit at a bus stop. :)

<comment><USER3> Oddly enough, Google transit hasn't stopped the government. I use nextmuni.com nearly every day, and it's a life-saver. How did I ever use public transit without it? If even the government can compete in this area, a small startup could wipe the floor with both of them.

<comment><USER4> I agree. The "threat" from Google is highly overrated. Gmail didn't kill their competitors. Nerds use it, but most users still uses Hotmail or Yahoo mail.

The same can be said for "Froogle". This is a search engine from the world's most popular search engine company, but their competitors are still very much alive (and provides a better product).

Youtube was far more popular Google's alternative video service, so they forced Google to buy them

If you have an idea you shouldn't worry about Google. The real threat comes when Google buys one of your better competitors, then you might begin to worry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google _does_ have competitors with deep pockets. The post mentions being nimble. You don't necessarily have to be more nimble than google -- just the competitors in the market that would do better to buy you than build their own.

But M&A frenzy shouldn't gloss over the need for a way to monetize a product. If you're building a good user base, and have a way to make money, you're in good shape no matter what Google does...

... maybe.

</comment><comment><USER6> Having some time to think about it.

A) Google will trend towards a short-sighted bureaucracy over time, as most public companies do.

B) As a result, the opportunities for the small nimble players to succeed will still be great.

C) Having Google, a big public company with a big bank account, is actually a great thing for startups; it is a company that understands the market that it is helping to create, and can used its deep pockets to acquire companies that create a lot of value.

D) Strong adversaries (Google) lead to better products! Which is great for users!

</comment><comment><USER7> My point is: Can you do it better than Google? I think that in many cases the answer is... Yes! I got a lot of ideas from Katty Sierra's Creating Passionate Users. (<http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/>) This is a MUST read for me. Good luck.

<comment><USER8> If you can do better than Google, could you market it better? It seems like the best way to compete with the big guys is to stay out of their way until you've built a solid base.

<comment><USER4> Most of the "marketing" is done by tech people blogging about the new product, and other tech people read it and thinks that everyone uses it.

I would think that Gmail is the perfect example of this. I read about it all the time, but that's because I read slashdot, digg, reddit and other sites that most people don't read.

Even people studying computer science don't know about Gmail and has to be told that there is an alternative mail service. I bet that most of Facebook's users don't use Gmail or don't see the point when they have Hotmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not everybody wants to use Google. I am more than willing to look into competing products and chose them over Google if they are better.

A lot of people will choose the competition simply because the competition to Google is the underdog, and people often sympathize with the underdog.

</comment><comment><USER10> look at Zenter then</comment>


Last Week at Wellesley - <AUTHOR> http://alicedreger.com/Wellesley <comment><USER2> Best quote:

 _" A number of students came up to me to say they had really had their minds opened by realizing what they're told about someone might not at all be true."_

I thought that this was something that people generally learned long before they got to college.

(The student protest against the author was inspired by fake social media accounts that impersonated her on Facebook and Twitter, not by things that she had actually ever said.)

<comment><USER3> This is something that people generally need to relearn many times. Believing what we're told is the path of least resistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recognized the name because she also made the news for live tweeting her opinions when she went to her son's abstinence only sex ed class at school.

[https://mashable.com/2015/04/16/alice-dreger-sex- education/#...](https://mashable.com/2015/04/16/alice-dreger-sex- education/#rATp.73kjGqj)

I posit that part of why she is so controversial is because she is a woman. One of my comments today has a dead reply to it characterizing it as _redpill garbage._ My assumption is that the individual who said that thinks I am a guy with a lot of emotional baggage surrounding dating and what not. I did not specify that I am female, something I fairly often do just to try to avoid weird accusations based on exactly that type of assumption.

Women are not expected to have the kinds of opinions about human sexuality that she has or that I have. We are seriously not supposed to express them in public.

Given how controversial she is, I am pleasantly surprised by her diplomatic handling of the situation. My assumption is that she is younger than I am. I was a lot more controversial when I was younger. My opinions have not changed. My ability to express them less provocatively is the only real difference.

I intentionally kept a low public profile for a long time. I don't like drama. This has actively undermined my ability to establish a real career. Perhaps the groundwork I have laid will allow me to eventually make sufficient money without the kind of drama she is facing, but it has come at a cost of putting off having a public life. So perhaps the primary reason she is so controversial is she went ahead and pursued a career while still in the prime of her life.

I don't regret the choices I have made. But I also don't want to see it be some standard expectation that women can't speak in public until they have mastered doing so inoffensively or something. That sounds like a career killing double standard to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do not come close, to even 1% of understanding all the backstory and subtext behind this post, but 4 minutes of Googling strongly indicates that there is a _lot_ of it, and it goes quickly into the weedy intricacies of gender science --- something this author is authoritative on, but clearly not _exclusively_ authoritative on, since she's apparently controversial among practitioners in her field --- and which virtually nobody on this site is qualified to remark on and thus, as a basis for a discussion, seems pretty far outside the remit of Hacker News.

<comment><USER6> I think the story here is that the protesting students clearly didn't understand even 1% of the backstory either. They didn't come to the protest with a deep and sophisticated understanding of Alice Dreger's positions and history. Rather the protest was fueled by an inflammatory quote posted by a fake social media account under her name. Then the students blamed their confusion on her for not policing social media.

If you are against HN users commenting on Alice Dreger's story because we don't have the background, what do you have to say about 100 students from one of the country's top liberal arts colleges who showed up to a protest without even verifying basic facts about what they were protesting?

<comment><USER5> What makes you so sure they didn't?

<comment><USER6> > Earlier in the day, in a class co-taught by the Freedom Project's Director, > Tom Cushman, a student had read aloud to me something I supposedly have said > about transgender people. It was so comically bigoted, it was hard to take > seriously. But apparently someone somewhere said I said this, and this > "quote" from me was being transmitted in an email around campus, the one > calling for the protest of me.

The email organizing the protest was based on a false narrative, and the students who were receiving it were apparently unaware of this.

<comment><USER5> Why do you assume that one bit of false narrative was what organized the students? Dreger has said _a lot_ of controversial stuff.

<comment><USER6> Because it was literally in the email that called for the protest. An email that was circulating around campus prior to the protest.

Because some of the protesters came forth to say that they had been misled about her:

> A number of students came up to me to say they had really had their minds > opened by realizing what they're told about someone might not at all be > true.

This thread is a perfect example of why modern leftist criticisms ring so hollow. If this is such a complicated issue that HN readers are not qualified to even discuss it, why are you suddenly so inclined to give these students a pass that their protest was well-informed, despite strong evidence to the contrary?

<comment><USER5> I don't think you're presenting the evidence you think you are. What you've pointed out so far is a single sentence from this article saying that an email contained (presumably among other things) a reference to a fabricated quote.

You don't even know what I think about Alice Dreger; all you know is that I think there's a lot more going on than is apparent from this one story. But from that one data point you've allocated me a spot among the "leftists".

<comment><USER6> This sounds like an isolated demand for rigor ([http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated- demands...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for- rigor/)). Your initial message judged nearly all HN readers as unqualified to comment based on _no_ evidence. Now you can't hold the protesters to the same standard unless every element of their ignorance is proved.

What makes you think that my impression of you comes from one data point? This and other threads make it clear who you are willing to take to task and who you will not call out for their bad behavior.

<comment><USER5> And now, instead of talking about Alice Dreger, you've completed your pivot to addressing the entire argument to me personally.

I can't imagine anything productive coming out of this discussion anymore and so have collapsed the thread.

<comment><USER6> This whole thread I've been arguing that Alice Dreger isn't the point, the point is that a lot of people are willing to protest and tar the reputations of others based on flimsy (and in this case completely fabricated) pretenses. I wish you would be willing to see that this is a problem, but instead you spent the whole thread redirecting.

I addressed you because you incorrectly accused me of forming an opinion of your beliefs based on one data point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Remember Occupy Wall Street? Probably Not - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/421817/remember-occupy-wall-street-probably-not/ <comment><USER2> I personally know a number of people who are going to be spending the next $BIGNUM years _in jail_ fighting a list of made up charges.

A lot of the rest of occupy (at least in some areas) met some nasty strong-arm tactics. In Oakland, it is hard to get any protest at all going now without cops (without uniform) showing up to smash ATMs[1] and similar attempts to discredit the protest with false flag tactics.

Occupy was a wild success for one reason above all: the protesters successfully shifted the public debate into the proper class-warfare discussion they should have been having 20 years earlier. Unfortunately, when you land a successful hit on your enemy, they tend to fight back. So it's true that a lot of people probably don't remember Occupy; attention spans are distressingly short, of course, and there are several reasons for that, but the alrgest - and most important - reason you don't hear much about Occupy these days is thanks to the modern equivalent of COINTELPRO. The Church Committee never really finished shutting that program down, and just like "Total Information Awareness", it is clear some programs were rebranded and shoved into neighboring departments.

[1] to name just one example: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops- outed-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops-outed- attacked-at-Oakland-5951011.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> Improving economy, bountiful jobs and rising wages? HN accepts links from the Twilight Zone now?

</comment><comment><USER4> Remember the Tea Party? Probably Not</comment>


2013 Budget Proposal will triple dividend tax to 44.8% - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225493025537660.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't even believe this. What am I missing HN? Isn't this going to be a major damper on the economy?

<comment><USER2> I don't really think so, dividends are more like interest than capital gains, so why shouldn't they be taxed at the normal income? Even if you're aggressively buying high-dividend yield blue chips (6% APR+), with the higher tax rate you're still doing much better than you would with a CD or other type of savings/money market account.

I've been wondering what the effect would be if we restructured the short and long term capital gains period instead. I think the 1 year holding period is just too short in the perspective of economic cycles to provide the market with stability. What if we gave much more incentives for people to hold onto their stocks longer (more long term investment, less speculative):

Currently, the capital gains rate drops to 15% or so if it's a long-term gain. Short term gains are taxed at normal income rate.

What about?

Tax rate for holding period:

6 Months or Less - 50% 6 Months to 1 year - 40% 1 year - 30% 2 years - 20% 3 years - 10% 4 years+ - 5%

You could make the argument that a Roth IRA could accomplish something similar but there's a limit to the contributions. I know if this was the structure, I would convert more of my assets to stocks.</comment></comment>