American Nazis at Madison Square Garden, 1939 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/542499/marshall-curry-nazi-rally-madison-square-garden-1939/ <comment><USER2> I thought it was common knowledge that support for Nazis in America was widespread all the way leading to American involvement in WW2.

Here's another sample: [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis- of-los...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los- angeles-hitler-in-la-20171008-story.html)

 _What Lewis did not anticipate is that local authorities would prove indifferent to — or supportive of — the Nazis and fascists.

Within weeks of going undercover, Lewis' network of spies discovered a plot to wrest control of armories in San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego — part of a larger plan to take over local governments and carry out a mass execution of Jews. Lewis immediately informed L.A. Police Chief James Edgar "Two-Gun" Davis of the Nazi scheme to seize weapons and, as Lewis warned in a memo later, to "foster a fascist form of government in the United States."

Lewis was shocked when Davis interrupted him to defend Hitler. The police chief, he noted in the memo, told him: "Germans could not compete economically with the Jews in Germany and had been forced to take the action they did." The greatest danger the city faced, Davis insisted, was not from Nazis but from communists living in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. As far as Davis was concerned, every communist was a Jew and every Jew a communist._

<comment><USER3> if every white american spent a week as another race, i don't think a single one would be 'shocked' or 'flabbergasted' about any of this.

<comment><USER4> Did you just "white privilege" and undercover citizen trying to expose Nazi's ~80 years ago because he was shocked at how widespread support was? Your point is that if he'd been black he wouldn't have been shocked by Nazi support?

<comment><USER5> Do you disagree that being white, on average, causes one to be less exposed to racism? I don't think that is a particularly radical concept.

I also think that being a male, on average, causes one to be less directly exposed to cat-calling and other everyday-sexism. Do you take offense at my suggestion of male privilege?

<comment><USER4> On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of error, or is this now a political discussion?

And "male privilege" is dumb. Measure it - show me your science. Otherwise I'll think about how many men die on the job versus women, how women receive more lenient sentences for the same crime, or how women now receive the majority of degrees, and a women who never has kids or marries, will make significantly more money over her life than a similar man, and I think "Weird, it's like biology strangely enough, affects our culture in all sorts of crazy ways that having nothing to do with some nut job conspiracy theory about male patriarchy."

<comment><USER5> Cool, thats about what I expected but I wanted to make sure before I put much time into an argument. Good to see you aren't a hypocrite and provide sources for your highly specific claims as well.

<comment><USER6> 1)Male Deaths: [http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-04/business/fi-31566_1_w...](http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-04/business/fi-31566_1_workplace- deaths)

2)Female sentences: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women- prison-s...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison- sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html)

3)Women get more degrees: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women- surpass-men-in...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women-surpass-men- in-college-degrees/)

4)Never married women earn more: [http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/genevieve- wood/what-pay-gap-young-women-out-earn-men-cities-gop-p/)

Everything above is (somewhat) common knowledge. Notice how I picked mostly progressive liberal publications as initial sources, to avoid right-wing partisanship bias.

I don't want to come across as condescending, but were you honestly questioning the parent poster's assertions?

<comment><USER5> No actually I expected those were more than likely correct or at least supportable, I was being snide because the parent poster was being an ass about simple analogy.

>On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of error, or is this now a political discussion?

Is he fucking serious? We're talking about Nazi's, of course its political. If someone is seriously going to demand _laboratory_ tests on catcalling, that screams totally out of touch mens-rights "activist" to me. Not only that, I was _making an analogy_ and he had to dredge up whataboutisms that have nothing to do with the conversation occurring. Before this becomes an issue of why I'm not talking about men being catcalled, anecdotally speaking I don't know if I've ever known any men (even the most handsome people I know) to get yelled at by passing cars, told to smile more at professional conferences etc. I'm not saying it never happens because I'm sure it does but its an issue that disproportionately affects women just like nazi's are an issue that disproportionately affects minorities.

Claiming that its white-privilegey to say that minorities might be more aware of nazi/neo-nazi roots in America is needlessly defensive (and he had to be the one to say white-privilege, which is like Popeye spinach for angry white men I'm convinced). Yes, minorities are going to be more aware of nazi's in America because _they are targeted by them_.

I'll try to put a think-tank of the worlds best minds together to study these revolutionary claims I'm making.

<comment><USER4> Maybe you never talked to any relatives from that period, but I did. And to claim they weren't aware of Nazi dangers in the US because of their race is not only by definition racist, but insults their memories. You can't just piss all over an entire race/gender of people and then whine about being insulted back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a child.

The first one is the "banality of evil" view. The nazis were nothing special. One of many populist and racist parties. One of many hateful ideologies. The only thing that stands them out is the results. They actually won power through weirdness of politics in that time and place. They actually started a massive war (lucky timing). They actually went on the massive genocidal campaign implied by their rhetoric.

Normal people. Normal (if somewhat distasteful) party. Abnormal actions. It's kind of related to the "one damn thing after another" theory of history.

The other (more intuitive, and unavoidable) view is the pure evil view. Hitler & Eichman were uniquely evil people. The SS were evil people. They had an evil doctrine, evil symbols, evil political methods. Evil resulted. Watch out for this sort of thing. Know the devil when you see her. Never Again!

Anyway, in 1939 I'm not sure nazism stood out as a unique evil different in some way from domestic far right movements like the kkk. It's historical perspective that gives it the symbolic meaning that shocks us today.

<comment><USER8> Pure evil can in fact pass for normal, banal politics in certain times and places. That's the problem. Normal, banal people learned not to think thoughts like, "Are we the baddies? We've got _skulls_ on!" and, "But what would I think if they were doing this to _me_?"

Remember, the late 1930s also had Stalinism, Japanese Imperialism, the _British_ Empire sponsoring things like the Bengali Famine, and various American imperial/colonial efforts as well.

There was a lot of evil to go around.

The proper advice is: know the Evil Impulse when it appears _in yourself_ , and _then_ you can have a good idea of how to spot it in others.

<comment><USER9> "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

<comment><USER8> >And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Well, anyone with a measure of decency, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

-Lyndon Johnson.

<comment><USER11> That's a spot-on quote that captures one of the fundamental tensions of US History. Johnson is a enigmatic figure, as he grew up experiencing this, and did great things to bring justice to people, yet had his own personal and policy failings that stand in jarring contrast.

Much of the institutional racial and policy oddities in this country stem from this form of control, which was used to make and keep slavery an institution and keep the lower classes in check. One of the rallying cries of the draft riots (that is uncomfortably close to the modern Trump-ist white nationalist rallying cry) is that slaves were valued more ($1,000 for a slave) than the Irish ($300 to avoid war service) and were on the rise, and that rise would drag down wages when freed slaves flooded New York labor markets.

<comment><USER6> This is not an apples to apples comparison. The slaves were already in the US. Illegal immigrants are not.

I don't see much arguments from the right that it's the blacks and not illegal immigrants who are driving down wages, given the fact that black unemployment has gone WAAAAY up since the 50s. Black teenagers had a better employment rate than white teenagers back in the day.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, but you're dead wrong on this. The US and its predecessor colonies imported slaves by the shipload well into the 19th century.

You can literally go back to the original Virginia colony, where the landowners didn't like the high costs and turnover (due to malaria and AWOL) of indentured servants from England. So they started importing African slaves, who didn't need to be paid, didn't have a term contract, and often were resistant to malaria.

They started having problems with slaves escaping and joining up with frontier communities of former or escaped indentured servants. That's where the racial supremacy stuff started -- to keep people at odds and under control.

The illegal immigrant issue isn't the same, but isn't totally different either. There's a demand for cheap labor without normal labor protections, and demand for life outside of third world countries.

<comment><USER6> > African slaves, who didn't need to be paid, didn't have a term contract, and > often were resistant to malaria.

You still needed to pay someone to guard them and feed them. According to Larry Elder only 5% of whites in the US today can trace their lineage to slave owners. Majority of whites migrated into the country after the slavery.

And even with regards to whites owning slaves, most only owned 1 or 2 because they were expensive, plantation owners were the ones who owned majority of slaves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple of points of context.

The rally was organized by the "German American Bund," an organization that Nazi Germany had distanced itself from before the Madison Square Garden rally:

 _On March 1, 1938 the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization. This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions._

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

This was not a mass movement by any stretch, but seemed instead to be centered around a group of German-American immigrants.

The video depicts a Pledge of Allegiance ceremony that lacks the phrase "under God" because it was added in 1942:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_\(United_States\)#Addition_of_.22under_God.22)

<comment><USER13> Correction: "under God" was added in 1954, at the instigation of the Knights of Columbus. The Bellamy salute was retired in 1942, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And if you heard Chomsky he describes how growing up there were beer parties in US when Paris fell to the Nazis.

Those things was quickly swept under the rug later, and not talked about much. Also the involvement of American companies in supporting the Nazi effort including Ford and IBM and probably others.

I grew up hearing about Nazis. For the Soviet Union it was _the_ big war, a war of survival basically. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war. One drove them all the way to Berlin. Got wounded by them. I also heard stories from teachers about the horrible atrocities they've experienced. One jarring one was how their Jewish childhood friend was raped, dismembered and buried in the backyard by German soldiers. They watched through the fence in the back of the garden hiding in the bushes.

That is why it is grating to hear everyone use "Nazis" like a joke. "You are such a Nazi", "Everyone who doesn't agree with my political views is a Nazi". "The store clerk is a fascist cause they made me wait too long", etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Another weird moment in history:

Nazis attend the Nation of Islam summit, 1961 - [https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAAL...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAALfQ/Ss8iDFtDQYQDYTxngXc3uLVd4cz_rKBowCLcB/s1600/George_Lincoln_Rockwell_nation_of_islam.jpg)

Black nationalists and white nationalists coming together. Bizarre stuff.

<comment><USER16> Moar context: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x- met...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x-met-the- nazis-0000620-v22n4)

Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a highly-placed anti-semite, which made alliance with the nazis possible.

<comment><USER17> > Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a > highly-placed anti-semite

I'd be pretty surprised if the Nation of Islam had only one highly-placed anti-semite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (This is a tangent unrelated to the topic)

Three years after this rally, Pearl Harbor happens, which results in the US entering into the already-running World War II.

Virtually all people of Japanese ancestry are forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps - around 115,000 people, 62% of which were US citizens. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans)

At the same time, "the government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few [11,000 out of the 1.2 Million born in Germany and 5 Million with two German parents]. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans)

Of the 695,000 ethnic Italians in the US at the time, only 1,881 nationals were detained. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_American...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_Americans)

The justification of rounding up all ethnic Japanese into camps was "we're at war, we will do anything to protect our country". But that same logic was never applied to the Germans or Italians, even though their countries were bigger threats than Japan.

A government commission found the treatment of ethnic Japanese to have been racially motivated, and actually paid reparations to those that were interned. But even so, this practice was never made illegal.

I find this especially interesting since a certain US President seems to have some strong feelings toward certain ethnicities and religions. In the event we went to war with a country with such an ethnicity, we would probably see these camps again, because no law has made it illegal, and there is legal and military precedence for it. It's also a near-certainty that no Supreme Court will go against a President during wartime.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would like to point out that the raised hands / sig heil was normal American reverence to the flag, and had nothing exceptional to do with the event depicted.

It was an inspiration to the Nazi Germany sig heil just like a few other aspects of American culture.

The ritual around the pledge of allegiance was subsequently changed to simultaneously be distinctive from fascists and communists.

<comment><USER20> If you squint at the Reichskriegflagge- you can see the Coca-Cola Colours.

<comment><USER19> is that intended to be an absurdity in relationships?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, the swastika besides a giant George Washington is a really impressive image. Sure you can use the words freedom and justice for anything.

Who is the guy talking in the lectern? The one who is despised as a demon by the "jewish controlled media"?

</comment><comment><USER22> When the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited at the beginning, there is no "under God." I knew that it had been added in 1954 but it's interesting to hear it so clearly missing here given that the event occurred in 1939.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's kinda a freakish alt history look there with George and nazi activity.

</comment><comment><USER24> _it seems amazing that it isn't a stock part of every high school history class. This story was likely nudged out of the canon, in part because it's scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we'd prefer to forget._

Everyone is outraged that the 5 things they're passionate about aren't taught (enough) in school. The problem is that they're never same 5 things as the next guy.

Everything that follows the word "likely" is this guy crafting a narrative that fits his world view and appetite for rage much better than the more realistic answers: teacher's priorities pulled in a million directions at once and schools somehow have to fit as much as possible into an education program bounded by funding, timing, and classroom sizes.

<comment><USER25> That's a quite novel way of whitewashing the kind of whitewashing of official school (and even academic) history that countries usually do and has been studied and documented by historians and activists time and again.

No, topics like the Native American concentration camps or the history of the Japanese Americans in WWII, the gory details of the US racial and labour history, and other such things were not historically kept away from school books for decades on end because "too many things to teach, too little teaching time".

The same reason the Japanese don't keep their WWII doings in China out of their books because they have so much other stuff to cover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There seems to be some kind of issue with the video between 2:08 and 2:10. You can see the flags going back and forth as if someone rewind the footage. Maybe it's an editing error?

</comment><comment><USER27> It's all fun and games until 6 million jews die.

<comment><USER28> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm sick and tired of articles like that popping-up on this site. This is not Twitter. Why is irrelevant political content not flagged immediately.

<comment><USER28> The mandate of this site is intellectual curiosity. Take a look at the first paragraph of [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

I'd say this video footage easily qualifies as gratifying intellectual curiosity (it did mine, anyhow), despite the provocativeness of the material. Had the discussion gone haywire we'd have downweighted the thread, but it isn't too bad.

Actually we've downweighted it a bit, but before that we turned off an automatic software penalty that applied. Balancing act.</comment></comment>


The Future is Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/william-gibson-future-is-here/

<comment><USER2> I know plenty of people who loved "The Peripheral", but despite some clever contrivances in the settings, I found it to be a completely boring book. The plot unfolded with no help from the protagonists and nothing unexpected ever happened.

<comment><USER3> >The plot unfolded with no help from the protagonists

This was, I realized in hindsight, a problem with his Blue Ant books too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Future is not here. We are nowhere near nanobots.

<comment> mycroft-holmes Are we? [http://www.gizmag.com/nanobot-micromotors-deliver- nanopartic...](http://www.gizmag.com/nanobot-micromotors-deliver- nanoparticles-living-creature/35700/)

<comment><USER4> Those are more like nano-automatons:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else feel a comparison between this novel and Snow Crash? Some of the plot points are eerily similar.

<comment><USER6> Having re-read Snow Crash last year, I'd have to say that while the books have a bit of overlap (the deleterious effects of post-industrialization is something of a theme from the earliest cyberpunk, it's almost a defining characteristic), they differ quite a bit, both thematically and stylistically.

On style/tone, Snow Crash is a bit zanier, more satirical, and boisterous, while The Peripheral is by and large sharper, more grounded, and spare (typical Gibson).

In terms of story/plot (spoilers, obviously), while Snow Crash revolves primarily around a world-domination plot and a world-spanning chase to unravel that plot and the development of a seekrit cyber-weapon, The Peripheral focuses on a much more mundane, chance encounter that spirals out (unraveling much more like a whodunit, including the reveal) that takes place primarily in 2 "locations" (with the central conceit/twist described in the linked article about a historical/simulated world and the future-present) - so in other words, they're totally different, and I'm surprised you'd make any sort of plot connections from the article's description!

While it wasn't perfect (I also reread Neuromancer last year, so maybe The Peripheral suffers in comparison), it was a pretty fun read and had a bit to chew on so I'd certainly recommend it if you're an SF fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh boy. Another Gibson cyberpunk novel about how shit everything is. This will totally be worth spending money on, as opposed to some _other_ encouragement to get it over with and kill myself /s.</comment>


An Advance in Tractor-Beam Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/scottish-tractor-beam

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of the 3-d acoustic levitation demos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odJxJRAxdFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odJxJRAxdFU)

</comment><comment><USER3> While space is not a perfect vacuum how is any kind of accoustic-based technology going to work outside of an atmosphere?</comment>


Should I keep updating this iPhone app? Or is it complete crap? - <AUTHOR>

This was my first attempt at writing an iPhone app last September. It is now free and gets on average 150 downloads per week since 1 January 2011.
I have not updated the app since last October as I am not making any money from it. So now I am trying to figure out if I should update it - i.e. rewamp the interface and recompile to the most recent iOS.
Links:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/words-puzzle-1000/id395147842?mt=8
http://www.visiblestorm.com/
I seem to be leaning towards dumping it as I do not have any monetary incentive to continue working on it (i.e. I have to eat and do something more rewarding right now.)
This is my first post here. I am also finishing school next week (OOSD in Calgary) and I am looking for an internship/job right now. Some things I know: HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, C#.NET, VB.NET, ASP.NET, C++, Objective C, MySQL, Oracle, Java, JSP, Pearl. Linux, Windows, Mac OS. Apache. <comment><USER2> Nobody else has commented, so I'll give you my opinion...

You have a steady but smallish number of downloads. Given the bad ratings of your app, I think that indicates that there are people who want something like this - enough that 150 people per week will download a 1-star app.

If you're just sick of this app, then either abandon it or maybe sell it for some small amount of money to someone who wants to give it a shot.

But if you're just sick of maintaining something that's going nowhere, then make it go somewhere. There's some interest there. Listen to the complaints. Pivot. Clean it up a bit and make it $0.99 instead of free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I have not touched this app since last October. I did some rough calculations on the number of hours I will put in and a possible return. I will give it one more shot and do a complete revamp of the interface etc. when I find the time. I will implement the features people are asking for. This time I will try to build what the users want based on the feedback I received and see what happens.</comment></comment>


Your Facebook data is creepy as hell - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/your-facebook-data-is-creepy-as-hell-319ae47117e6 <comment><USER2> None of this is really surprising. The issue with picture meta data (esp location) is well known and not Facebook specific.

I was actually surprised how little information came with the data download. I would've thought they have much more information on me (e.g. profiles on usage times, scrolling behaviour, interests), instead they basically just show what I can access on facebook.com anyway.

Maybe they avoid disclosing that by not tagging it to one profile but to groups. I'd be surprised if that's really everything they save.

<comment><USER3> They also suffer from the needle in the haystack problem that a lot of big- data companies run into where they have become obsessed with invading peoples privacy with the hopes that someday they can make sense of it. But there is the caveat, sometimes even when you get a large and diverse population, you don't get trends you get static. because everyone forms a group equilibrium perpetually invalidating one another's thought to the point where no one knows whats right; static.

You are who you are and whether Facebook knows it or not doesn't change who you are and what you expose online. Data is how facebook stays in business, the really shocking part is that you just found out.</comment></comment>


Brilliant hack: Secure your checked bags by declaring a weapon - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/24/secure-your-checked-.html

<comment><USER2> This has been known forever to people who frequently travel with high-value gear (photographers, videographers, etc.)

It _is_ a good hack, but it also prevents you from easily doing kiosk bag check-and-drop stuff, so there is a lot of waiting in line. And I wouldn't recommend it for international travel.

I haven't kept good track, but I'm sure I've flown over 200,000 miles in the last decade, with all sorts of miscellaneous high-value gear. The only domestic baggage incident I've had was a Canon EOS5D and 28-300mm L lens go missing on a flight from SFO->BOS. Granted that was an ~$5,000 loss, I probably should have kept the gear in carry-on. I don't think I would have wanted to deal with the process of declaring a weapon in my bags on every flight where I had something work stealing just to prevent the 1 incident out of 1,000 where there was actual threat, that's why I have insurance.

<comment><USER3> It's also a good way to get arrested at a Chicago or NYC/NJ airport if you're forced to be reunited with your checked bags (say your flight gets diverted).

<comment><USER2> Why, are starter pistols illegal there? Are there no provisions for people carrying weapons through those cities?

Even in the case of checked luggage with a firearm, it is usually required (and a good idea in any case) that the weapon be unloaded and disabled (gun lock, etc.). My personal opinion is that the airline is not going to call the local authorities and tell them they just turned over a bag with a weapon to you. So, as long as you don't call attention to yourself, the likelihood of getting arrested is too small to worry about.

<comment><USER3> Not sure, but to my knowledge they arrest first and would check on those sorts of details later.

And yes, there is a "provision" for carrying a weapon through those cities, the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986, but it only provides a defense once you've been charged. You would spend weeks or months with your life in turmoil, perhaps locked up (you're obviously a flight risk, no ties to the community) and spending significant money for competent counsel to get the charges eventually dismissed.

And this does frequently happen (arrests at O'Hare, La Guardia (sp?), JFK and I think Newark), enough so that I don't see the ruse as being worth the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't even need the gun - you just need the case. We carry long lenses and tripods in a Pelicase - the only one that fits is the gun case design.

If you buy the camoflage pattern one it is generally treated as a gun by the airport - even if you don't declare it.

It means a trip to the luggage office at the destination to recover it from the locked secure baggage area but thats a small price to pay for a free armed guard.

<comment><USER5> You need to declare it to be able to have your case locked.

<comment><USER4> We just secure them with security cable ties. Any baggage handler wanting to steal from a case is going to have a knife or a pair of cutters anyway, all a lock does is stop a casual pickpocket.

The main problem in the US is that baggage claim is on the street side of the airport and security is limited to a mall cop who might check your ticket tags if he can be bothered. A nice shiny camera case going around the conveyor 10ft from the open door is the main risk.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you understand. When checking a firearm, the case must be locked. The TSA can't open it. If they see something suspicious on the x-ray, they call you and ask you to open it. To steal anything inside your luggage, the thief must either break the lock or take the entire case. They'll also have to deal with lots of officials trying to track down a stolen firearm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My hack is that I don't check baggage.

For my personal item, I use a backpack. I have a nice, big L.L. Bean backpack that fits a ton of stuff in it.

For my carry-on, I use a soft bag of the appropriate size. You might be able to compress more stuff into the hard case rollaways, but the nice thing about the soft bag is that it always makes it into the overhead compartment (unlike many of the hard case suitcases I've seen.)

But I guess if you're traveling with a _lot_ of camera equipment you wouldn't have that option.

<comment><USER8> You're not allowed carry-on on US domestic or flights to the US now.

<comment><USER9> Is that the directive in response to the guy that started his blanket on fire? I'm pretty sure that expired December 30, 2009. Or has there been a different change to TSA policies?

<comment><USER7> I think he's probably referring to changes on the carry-on luggage policy in response to the Christmas bomber. I don't know why they bothered, the bomb was in his underwear anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this qualify? - [http://www.amazon.com/G2-Full-Metal-Airsoft- Pistol/dp/B0026E...](http://www.amazon.com/G2-Full-Metal-Airsoft- Pistol/dp/B0026E2UW4)

<comment><USER11> How about Power Ranger Nunchucks?

[http://www.amazon.com/Power-Ranger-Nunchucks-Jungle- Fury/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Power-Ranger-Nunchucks-Jungle- Fury/dp/B001ASHY5K)

<comment><USER12> I boarded a plane in china once and they explicitly asked me if I had nunchucks. They do the spiel on sharp/flammable items, but nunchucks don't fit in an obvious category like that, so they spell it out (makes sense, but was hilarious at the time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could you do that if you look a middle eastern?

<comment><USER3> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [2006]</comment>


An unofficial EC2 outage postmortem - the sky is not falling - <AUTHOR> http://cloudharmony.com/b/2011/04/unofficial-ec2-outage-postmortem-sky-is.html

<comment><USER2> Postmortem? This damn thing isn't over. A client's RDS database is still not completely accessible, we can't make or restore backups and are waiting for the AWS clean-up crew to get to us and hopefully repair the damage.

<comment><USER2> UPDATE: AWS restored us after midnight last night. The sky didn't fall for us but it was pretty touch-and-go.</comment></comment>


Student Device Turns Phone Gestures Into Email - <AUTHOR> http://news.duke.edu/2009/06/phonepoint.html <comment><USER2> Cool tech, but why would I not just type that in to the note app on my phone? I imagine most people with an iPhone can use it with one hand, can't they?

<comment><USER3> Presumably because they have their hands full. But obviously they're holding the phone, so I guess they can't type one-handed. In that case, though, might as well simply record a voice memo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Next up: virtual graffiti. Your text is uploaded with GPS/orientation coordinates and made public -- so the next person to walk by (with their augmented-reality view on) sees your tagging.

</comment><comment><USER5> G 8 3 A T 1 D 3 A !

<comment><USER6> hilarious :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I do not see a use for this. Cool concept, but not practical for anything?</comment>


Show HN: CloudRail- Unified Cloud Storage API Extended by OneDrive for Business - <AUTHOR> https://cloudrail.com/onedrive-for-business-comes-to-the-unified-cloud-storage-api/ <comment><AUTHOR> After a lot of feedback (also from Hacker News) we added OneDrive for Business support to our unified cloud storage API. So you can now integrate Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive (consumer & business), Box and Egnyte via a single API. Looking forward to hear any feedback.</comment>


Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/equal-opportunity-our-national-myth/?ref=opinion <comment><USER2> A quote: "According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top."

That outcome statistic doesn't support your claim -- that there is inequality of opportunity. BTW I think it's true that opportunity equality doesn't exist or is seriously undermined, but the above isn't meaningful evidence for or against.

This is what's wrong with social science -- a single observation with no meaningful controls is put forth as evidence for or against a claim.

Those who deny that equality of opportunity exists will use the above result to support their view -- only 6% of the population moved from the bottom to the top. That's deplorable, yes?

Those who support the idea that equality of opportunity exists will use the same numbers in support of the opposite conclusion -- after all, a full 6% of those at the bottom made it to the top. Excuse me? It's only meaningful if 100% of those at the bottom arrive at the top? But that undermines the meaning of "bottom" and "top" and makes the entire exercise meaningless. Surely you don't think everyone at the bottom must end up at the top, do you? That confuses equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

See the problem? The argument in the linked article is meaningless because it can be used to argue for either side of the issue with equal justice.</comment>


Ask HN: What Do Hackers Eat? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I'm an omnivore. Chicken, eggs, beef, broccoli, carrots, peas, potatoes, rice, bread, cereal, milk, water, black coffee. Just about anything but this is what comes to mind.

Avoid deserts and sugary drinks.

Exercise is weight lifting. Focus on explosive lifts with lots of rest between sets to avoid lactic acid.

</comment><comment><USER4> Vegan. In the morning steel cut oats with soy milk nuts and fruits. Lunch smoothie with nuts, seeds, fruits, protein powder. Dinner stir fry veggies with tofu, maybe a homemade bean/barley chili. Dinner varies.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do paleo diet:

Raw or barely cooked:

\- 100% grass feed meat.

\- Chicken, porc, lamb

\- Organs: brain, liver, etc.

and followed by:

\- Good quality non salted butter

\- Cheese, eggs, milk

\- 0 carbs

\- 0 Grains, raw or cooked vegetables

\- Yes to fermented vegetables, but in low quantity

\- No sugar, no processed food

\- Watermelon or other local food, in moderate quantity (1 o 2 per week)

<comment><USER6> How do cheese/butter and paleo go together (serious question)? I thought paleo is about non-processed foods. Which leads me to my second question: Why so few vegetables/fruits?

<comment><USER5> Dairy is perfect paleo food. It's rotting process. It also contributes with good bacteria for our body. While a cheese can be technically a "processed food", it is not inside that group of processed food I'm talking: sauces, cookies, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Vegan with as much fruit as possible.

</comment><comment><USER8> I lean towards the mediterranean diet; loads of fruit/veg, fish, olive oils, grains etc.

Having said that I do enjoy a pizza on occasion :P

</comment><comment><USER6> Mostly a sports-oriented diet. I try to maintain a healthy balance between carbs, protein(2g per kg bodyweight) and fat(1-1.2g per kg bodyweight). Meat usually once a week. Loads of greens, fruits, eggs, oats, cheese/yoghurt and nuts. Also whole-grain bread.

</comment><comment><USER9> I do 95% carnivore, 5% cravings for ice cream and chocolates. To eat meat is the most efficient way to create meat. Also, I drink water, coffee and whisky.

</comment><comment><USER10> Pescatarian, but very little dairy or fish, really. I live by the sea and can buy fresh on the piers or I'd probably skip it.

More detailed fruit and bread for breakfast, salads or soups for lunch, and a highly variable dinner. Usually healthy but I like to buy what I feel like that day and make it, rather than plan the whole day out.

</comment><comment><USER11> I eat chicken, eggs and beef and limit drinks to water and coffee.

</comment><comment><USER12> Omnivore but limited to 500 calories 3 days per week (Tues, Thurs, Sun - <USER2> alternate day fasting), free feeding all other days.

</comment><comment><USER13> Protein, Fat, and about 15Grams of Carbs a day.

</comment><comment><USER14> poptarts, hot dogs, hamburgers spaghetti

<comment><USER15> I love pop tarts too... they are my main vice

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> pretty balanced diet, high on veg, beans, and grains, medium on meat, low on sugar.

I don't overly worry about it. We plan and cook and that really takes care of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> almost anything, but actively avoid sugar.</comment>


Show HN: I grouped 20M campaign contributions by first name - <AUTHOR> http://www.apprecs.com/vis/democrat-republican-name <comment><USER2> Last names would be so much more interesting, wouldn't they?

<comment><USER3> How come?</comment></comment>


The Power to Fight Eviction - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dataportability.org/index.php/2009/01/the-power-to-fight-eviction/

<comment><USER3> I don't think that holding services legal liable for short-notice service cancellations is the correct way to go, as annoying as the cancellation might for the users involved.

It would become yet another diversion of time and money away from the goal of improving and keeping the service running. It might be an absorbable cost for a company as large as AOL, but it might be the difference between living and dying for a small company just trying to get going. Even if they could survive though, it doesn't mean they should be held liable. Forcing them to spend money being graceful at shutting down one service might result in collateral damage of other services to offset the cost.

It's ultimately a question between corporate and personal responsibility. In the end, they are another data storage mechanism. And as with all means of data storage, you need to keep backups somewhere else.

Metaphorically comparing this to tenant eviction just doesn't work. One's livelihood is not threatened by losing some photos or blogposts, and the cost of maintaining backups is insignificant compared to the cost of maintaining an alternative place to live.

</comment><comment><USER4> _The power landlords have over tenants is overwhelming, unless restricted by law._

Wouldn't competition - the invisible hand of the marketplace - _also_ restrict abusable power? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Hand>

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Wouldn't competition - the invisible hand of the marketplace - <USER2> restrict abusable power? ..."_

How?

I didn't see this invisible behaviour ( _"an individual pursuing his own self- interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole"_ ) when stikkit, pownce shut down. They simply allowed you to download your data and suggested alternative services. Downloading your data while better than nothing, doesn't stop users loosing their subscriptions, disrupting their work flow. By having some sort of agreed plan at commencement might allow a smooth transition for users in the advent of closure or sale. The power unbalance is where at any time you can be evicted at short notice.</comment></comment>


Emerging Internet Giants - <AUTHOR> http://economist.com/node/16539424

<comment><USER2> "Authorities in Washington, DC are reportedly worried about DST's latest acquisition: ICQ, an instant-messaging service previously owned by AOL."

Living near Langley, I've heard from a few different people who work at the "state department" that one or more of the DST guys is less than squeaky clean, something to do with private user data. I don't really know. But they all dropped off Facebook or created new profiles with pseudonyms after the DST-Facebook deal went down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to note the market opportunity in non-Western markets</comment>


OSU Open Source Lab receives $300,000 donation from Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/OSU-Open-Source-Lab-receives-300-000-donation-from-Google-1621111.html

<comment><USER2> Good deal, congratulations to Lance Albertson and his team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now if they could donate to pdx.edu to keep their mirrors up... that'd be great...</comment>


Minimal Ubuntu – how small can it go? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/07/09/minimal-ubuntu-released <comment><USER2> When Alpine doesn't cut it, I use Debian's "slim" docker images. 55MB size. This minimal ubuntu is slightly smaller, but I don't see anything else novel about it - why should I be excited?

<comment><USER3> That would be the real question: considering Ubuntu is just a Debian fork, what is the benefit of using Ubuntu on a server?

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu Server comes with a bunch of nice quality-of-life improvements that make using it more pleasant than using stock Debian, and you get the predictability of Ubuntu's standardized release cadence (a new release every 6 months on the dot, alongside longer-lived LTS versions).

<comment><USER5> As someone who runs a tiny VPS with stock Debian, I'm interested (but skeptical).

It's not your job but what do you feel are some of the best QOL improvements?

<comment><USER4> Little things. UFW included by default, so you can set up a firewall without having to wrestle with iptables. do-release-upgrade to handle upgrades, instead of having to work through a list of release notes each time. Nothing earth-shaking, just things that sand down some of Debian's rougher edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am guessing that Alpine is gaining traction ( I hope it is anyway ), so Ubuntu had to respond?

For 24MB more than Alpine, you get the stability and long term support from Ubuntu. I think a third of the size difference are glibc and muslc?

</comment><comment><USER7> > The unminimize tool lets you 'rehydrate' your image into a familiar Ubuntu > server package set, suitable for command line interaction.

Nice 'Three body problem' reference they've sneaked in.

<comment><USER8> What's this? Please explain to the uninitiated

<comment><USER9> It's a reference to the sci-fi book The three body problem by Liu Cixin[1]. In that ta mysterious game about an alien planet where its population can be dehydrated to survive harsh conditions which could last millenia, and then re- hydrated when the conditions are right.

Although i think the terms hydrate-dehydrate are not unheard of in tech stacks for example in a django REST framework called tastypie to denote serialization-deserialization of data.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three- Body_Problem_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three- Body_Problem_\(novel\))

<comment><USER10> Yeah it's a pretty widely used term. ReactDOM has a hydrate() method[0] used to display something on the frontend that has already been rendered by the backend.

[0]: [https://reactjs.org/docs/react- dom.html#hydrate](https://reactjs.org/docs/react-dom.html#hydrate)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool! Alpine is a neat project, but I find package management on Alpine to be a uniformly frustrating experience. Having a tiny version of Ubuntu for docker is a fantastic idea.

<comment><USER3> What exactly is bothering you about Alpine package management?

<comment><USER12> Familiarity.

<comment><USER11> Precisely. It's yet another package manager to learn, and there are just fewer alpine packages overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the RFC comes true [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16292883)

</comment><comment><USER14> Except that it's not in Docker Hub... yet!</comment>


William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/vulture_transcript_william_gib.html <comment><USER2> The title does the contents a disservice - his views on global culture are far more interesting and make up a much larger bulk of the article than why he loves twitter.

<comment><USER3> I agree - but his view on Twitter is pretty interesting as well, namely the fact that Twitter is countless parallel groups and cultures that have little or nothing to do with each other.

I am using Twitter to follow friends - though, sadly, most of them don't use it anymore - and as a news aggregator. For the latter, it's brilliant. Following William Gibson now.

<comment><USER4> I actively disliked Twitter, but I've started using it recently solely for an online collaborative competiton I'm involved with (not programming/HN related). It's fairly useable for that since signing up is very easy, but there are plenty of times when a basic chat room would be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had no idea William Gibson was so insightful and urbane. I suppose I might have read Necromancer without any appreciation of how early it came in the timeline of cyberpunk literature, but I was never able to get into it.

After reading this interview, I feel pretty compelled to give Zero History a look.

<comment><USER6> Neuromancer?

<comment><USER5> Oh my yes. Where's my head at. Neuromancer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I loved Gibson's remarks about the Tea Party. I think he nailed at least a part of why it exists and got so many folks into it.

ps. Please fix the "Unknown or expired link" quirk when submitting comments on HN. So counter-intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER8> I asked William Gibson if I could help with the fact that following 87 people is more than he can take in (<http://twitter.com/#!/artvankilmer/status/9127501972381696>).

Just wanted to extend that offer to everyone here as well. I too have the overload problem and am passionate about the value of Twitter, which is why I'm building something that will help. Happy to share & discuss further: <http://slipstre.am/>

</comment><comment><USER4> _And that's why somebody phones in after every bomb and says, "It was us, the Situationist Liberation Army. We blew up that mall." That's branding._

<comment><USER9> But they don't. I did a whole comment there pointing to the statistics about how most bombs are unclaimed, hours ago.

<comment><USER4> Point is, you remember the ones who called in to claim them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i love reading interviews with william gibson- particularly his take on the tea party movement in this one.

<comment><USER11> "The tea party is a bunch of racists" is not an especially original, insightful, or accurate take.

<comment><USER7> he didn't say they all were. just implied that a significant subset were, at least in part. and I think based on the documented evidence any reasonable person would say that's accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> William Gibson is an insightful observer of social trends and a fantastic writer, but I was a little disappointed to see that politically he is a pretty standard liberal transnational elitist.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sorry but twitter is way to ghetto.</comment>


Ask HN: How does Saved stories feature work? - <AUTHOR>

I see "saved stories" link on my profile and when I click it, the stuff it shows seems really random.<p>Can anyone explain how this works? <comment><USER2> It lists the links and comments you upvoted.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it simply shows all posts on which you have commented...? Not sure though.</comment>


Practical and robust anomaly detection in time series - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2015/introducing-practical-and-robust-anomaly-detection-in-a-time-series <comment><USER2> Another good package to look at is Etsy's Skyline - [https://github.com/etsy/skyline](https://github.com/etsy/skyline)

Their introduction of the Kale stack (which includes Skyline) is a great read - [https://codeascraft.com/2013/06/11/introducing- kale/](https://codeascraft.com/2013/06/11/introducing-kale/)

I spent a month or so evaluating anomaly detection systems and I can tell you a few things the twitter post fails to mention

1\. You can get a long way with an ensemble of simple techniques. And it's always better than any single technique.

I wouldn't recommend trying to install skyline but re-implementing the ensemble of anomaly classifiers they have might take you a day or two and it will get you 90% of the way there.

2\. The False Positive rate is probably your most important metric.

Detecting anomalies is good, but your ops team already has plenty of alerts to deal with. If you throw false positives at them from a new system they will hate you and ignore the new system. Most papers report ROC curve data as the metric for classification, that can be ok too.

3\. Don't build something complex when a threshold will do.

If a point anomaly is obvious to a human, you absolutely should not build a complex system to detect it, just use thresholds. It's only when you want to detect anomalies _before_ they cross a threshold that you should start on this kind of task. That leads me to

4\. Almost all anomalies have a temporal component.

If your detector isn't ultimately looking at multiple sources of data and finding patterns that initially look like normal behavior (or odd behavior over time like a change in frequency) then its not adding as much value as it could. Slow trends, increased predictability, absent spikes which are still within threshold, _those_ are the kind of anomalies your simple systems will miss and which will add a lot of value.

Ultimately anything that makes ops life easier and alerts them sooner to real problems is good. But in anomaly detection it is easy to fool yourself into thinking you need something complex to start out with, and when you've built a complex thing that it is "working" because it finds 95% of the obvious outliers.

<comment><USER3> Why would you not recommend installing skyline? I would like to have something that watches metrics for me, and we're already using graphite for stats.

<comment><USER2> Getting the full package working was (several months ago) a painful process. It was much easier to just grab the algos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my responsibilities is to do post-outage reporting to estimate how much money we lost. Right now I use Holt-Winters to give a forecast starting just before the outage began. I then estimate the loss to be the difference between the forecast and the data points that fall outside of the forecast's confidence interval.

Is this a statistically valid method? I chose Holt-Winters because I'm inexperienced and it's appealingly intuitive. Should I be looking at anomaly detection methods instead? Would they be able to tell me what "normal" would have been for the duration of the anomaly?

<comment><USER5> I don't know if it's statistically valid, but I've used methods similarly based on this to do calculations like you're talking for a role similar to what you described.

There are more subtleties that it might be important for you to take into account - primarily:

1) need to sample fairly extensively before/after outage to calibrate more accurately against Holt-Winters (the Holt-Winters seasonal projection should accurately project the trend, but actual numbers are probably running at some slight or significant rate above/below projections)

2) When running those samples, it's important to sample data where you believe the data points are definitely not impacted by the outage. This is often quite challenging since outages sometimes might span low / peak traffic periods or ramp-up/down periods.

3) Finally, it can be hard to pinpoint the actual start / end of the event (the identify the time samples you want to consider in your measurement for the outage cost). Particularly the end, since there's often some pressure for queued operations (by software or by your users who are itching to complete what they were trying to do) that may make your samples fluctuate. That backfill pressure can be substantial and is important to not ignore in your measurement of the actual cost of the issue. Say you're a retail site - if you have a 15 minute period of 50% order drop but the first 5 minutes where service is restored, the total order rate was 50% above projections. Do you count that as 15 minutes of 50% order drop, or 10 minutes of 50% order drop? Both are legitimate but it's important to know what metric you're measuring yourself against so you're as correct / honest as you can be.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the reply!

1\. This is a good point. I haven't incorporated sampling after the outage into the analysis, but that should be a good qualitative measure of the accuracy of the forecast.

2\. I typically have good data from server logs of when an outage started. Outages during low volume periods are quite difficult to analyze though. I usually revert to just comparing the outage volume to the average volume for the whole outage period.

3\. The end is typically more difficult to determine, as there's typically a period of instability as servers are restarted sporadically, followed by a "recovery" caused by the backfill pressure that you mentioned. My solution is to count any samples _above_ the forecast's confidence interval as "recovery" and to subtract the total recovery from the loss estimate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An interesting complement to Etsy's Skyline project[1], which was intended to read data from the incoming Graphite data streams. The two do seem like they could be complementary, however.

[1] [https://github.com/etsy/skyline/wiki](https://github.com/etsy/skyline/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone have a clue what "ESD" stands for in this context? The article is too buzzword-heavy to be very meaningful, even to a practitioner (this is surprisingly common in data analysis, where there seems to be a culture of naming things in the most opaque way possible.)

<comment><USER8> The abstract in reference 3 says it is the "extreme studentized deviate".

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I searched all over the place but was guessing the "D" stood for "disaggregation".

In general things that depend on (approximate) normalcy, which ESD apparently does (unsurprisingly, given the name) don't count as "robust" in my personal lexicon. There is relatively little reason in this day and age to continue to use parametric tests of any kind, particularly for data that are almost certain to contain significant non-normal components.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any suggestions for a more robust method for anomaly detection in seasonal time series data?

<comment><USER7> Every case is different (as the article says, generalizing these things is not easy) but the basic approach always involves two things:

1) Build a model of the expected time series. There is no way of avoiding this. To find an anomaly you _must_ define "that which is expected", either in terms of the actual data, differences, or moments.

2) Measure the distribution around the expected values based on past data.

3) Apply some test that answers some version of the question, "What is plausibility of the belief that the new data are drawn from the combination of model plus distribution?" The trick here is that you aren't interested in _all_ anomalies, just "significant" ones, which may have different temporal behaviour, etc.

The important thing is to test relative to the distribution you actually have, which is never going to be particularly normal, especially in the wings, which you are going to really care about when attempting to be maximally sensitive to real anomalies. Normal distributions almost always underestimate the tails, which makes them prone to false triggers, which another poster here has pointed out: you really do not want.

Robustness against "unknown unknowns" in the anomaly distribution is one thing you want to be particularly careful about. Weird things happen all the time in real data, and you are generally looking for anomalies of a particular kind, with particular characteristics. The ideal anomaly detector will catch those without going off on every odd thing that happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Observation (1).

The data they are looking at is essentially a univariate stochastic point process, that is, an arrival process. The most important special case is the Poisson process. There the times between arrivals are independent, identically distributed random variables with exponential distribution with parameter the arrival rate. The number of arrivals in an interval is random with Poisson distribution (compare with the terms of the Taylor series for exp(x)).

See early in

E. Cinlar, 'Introduction to Stochastic Processes'.

There for the Poisson process there is a 'qualitative, axiomatic' definition -- an arrival process with stationary, independent increments. A cute derivation from this just qualitative description results in the details of the Poisson process.

One point about this qualitative approach is that commonly in practice the assumptions are obvious just intuitively.

Another solid approach to a Poisson process is the renewal theorem; there is a careful treatment in W. Feller's now classic volume II.

The theorem says that under mild assumptions a sum of independent renewal processes converges to a Poisson process. Arrivals at Twitter look like a nearly perfect example.

So, basically without any anomalies the Twitter data is a Poisson process.

Observation (2).

In part, the anomaly detector is based on the extreme Studentized deviate (ESD) statistical hypothesis test as in

[http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda35h3...](http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda35h3.htm)

but this test has a Gaussian assumption, not a Poisson assumption. So, there should be some mention of justifying using a Gaussian assumption.

Point (1).

The work in the OP, that is, an anomaly detector, is basically, nearly inescapably and necessarily a statistical hypothesis and, thus, faces the usual issues of false alarm rate (significance level of the test, conditional probability of Type I error given an anomaly), detection rate, and the classic Neyman-Pearson best possible result.

In particular, it is important and usually standard to have a means to adjust, control, and know the false alarm rate, but in the OP I saw no mention of false alarm rate, power of the test, etc.

On a server farm bridge or in a network operations center (NOC) with near real time anomaly detection, false alarm rate too high is a serious concern. With realistic detectors, false alarm rate too low means detection rate too low and is also a concern.

More.

There are some tests that are both multi-dimensional and distribution-free, with false alarm rate known exactly in advance and adjustable in small steps over a wide range. Such tests might be good for monitoring for 'zero day' problems, that is, ones never seen before, in serious server farms and networks.

<comment><USER11>
      > but this test has a Gaussian assumption, not a Poisson assumption.

In practice the Gaussian assumption might not be too badly abused (at least for Twitter) since the Poisson distribution approaches the Gaussian when lambda is large.</comment></comment>


Google admits data mining student emails in its free education apps - <AUTHOR> http://safegov.org/2014/1/31/google-admits-data-mining-student-emails-in-its-free-education-apps

<comment><USER2> Google and its NSA-esque tendencies. This is just the beginning

<comment><USER3> This is (yet another) Microsoft PR/lobbying outfit: [http://safegov.org/partners](http://safegov.org/partners)

I'm not sure about the affiliations of OP or yourself though.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Microsoft is just one of many partners listed on this page.

2\. Google has plenty of its own lobbyists and PR staff. It would be interesting to hear the statements from both sides of this issue.

3\. Do you have any evidence that the allegations presented in the article are false? If so, please argue against the article rather than casting ad hominem aspersions against its author.

(For the record, I have no affiliations with or financial connection to Microsoft.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fucking Microshat shill organization web site. These pieces of shit should be DDOS'd.</comment>


Toys from Trash - <AUTHOR> http://arvindguptatoys.com/

<comment><USER2> Great resource.

Discovered the site several years and helped in creating an offline version (only iOS) with all the content (as of 2012):

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toys-from-trash-arvind- gupta...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toys-from-trash-arvind- gupta/id561396478?mt=8)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I particularly like:

CD spectrascope: [http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/cdspectroscope.html](http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/cdspectroscope.html)

Using polarised light to see stress in plastic: [http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/seestress.html](http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/seestress.html)

<comment><USER2> My favourite is the Homo Polar Motor:

[http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys/homopolarmotor.html](http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys/homopolarmotor.html)

So simple yet so magical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is really cool. I feel the quote on the front page is apt for a lot of us here at HN:

"And somewhere there are engineers helping others fly faster than sound. But, where are the engineers helping those who must live on the ground?"

We live in a world where return on capital and/or time invested is the common measure of success, but someone like this is having untold impact on many people's lives simply by applying their brilliant mind in a less commercially incentivised way.

</comment><comment><USER4> These are great.

Always funny what these "make toys at home" folks think people have lying around their homes: [http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/Heartpuzzle.html](http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys/Heartpuzzle.html)

<comment><USER5> Wire is pretty common, sure you may not have any. I have plenty in my house, old coat hangers, wire for the garden, etc.

Wire and a set of pliers (to cut and twist the wire) is really useful stuff. Need to make a trellis for your plants? Chop a few twigs off a tree, tie together with a little wire. Need a little fence? Same deal. Maybe plastic zip-ties have made wire redundant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not trash, though.</comment>


Eigenquestions: The Art of Framing Problems - <AUTHOR> https://coda.io/@shishir/eigenquestions-the-art-of-framing-problems <comment><USER2>
      You run a grocery store and you'd like to increase the frequency of customer visits, what do you do?

      You are designing a game to teach kids math in a fun way, where do you start?

      You'd like to shift your company's communication patterns from being primarily "synchronous" to primarily "asynchronous," what do you do?

Anyone want to cheat and give me their answers? Because I am not sure I really grok it.

<comment><USER3> I'll attempt at the second one: You are designing a game to teach kids math in a fun way, where do you start?

First, I can brainstorm many questions:

• Is this a physical game or a computer game?

• Is this a solo game or a group activity?

• Is it a competition (with a winner and a loser) or a puzzle?

• Are we playing at school or at home?

• What kind of math are we learning?

• How old are the kids?

...

At this point, it feels like there may be a huge solution space. So I think the next step is to step back and look for relationships between the questions:

• There's a relationship between age and the kind of math.

• There's a relationship between physical vs. computer, home vs. school, solo vs. group.

• There's a relationship between solo vs. group and puzzle vs. competition.

Based on this, I think maybe we can simplify a 6+ dimensional solution space down to 2-3 dimensions:

1\. Let's call the x-axis "What grade level are we teaching?" From that, we can make solid guesses about both age and what kind of math.

2\. Let's call the y-axis "How large of a group is the game for?" I think this is the essence of the questions about where the game is being played, whether it's a competition, whether it's a group activity, etc.

This gives us a framework to start mapping the solution space. Near the origin of our graph (low grade level, small group) maybe we have a puzzle to teach arithmetic. If we go up the y-axis (low grade level, large group), maybe we have some sort of "math bingo" where the teacher shares basic arithmetic clues and students mark the corresponding spot on their board. If we go out the x-axis instead (high grade level, small group), maybe we create a math-heavy card game to explore probabilities. If we go out to high grade level, large group, maybe we need some sort of math-based scavenger hunt.

I don't think these specific ideas are actually very good, but I think the process helps take a very open ended question and start to dissect it along a couple of key dimensions to help focus on a more tractable problem; designing one game that works for all of those scenarios would be hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Eigenquestion is a question that's when answered, turns into the same question, but on a different scale.

<comment><USER5> From the article:

 _For a simplistic definition, the eigenquestion is the question where, if answered, it likely answers the subsequent questions as well. Great framing starts by searching for the most discriminating question of a set — the eigenquestion._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The explanation of 'eigenvector' is a bit unique (in the sense that I believe it is absolute wrong).

<comment><USER7> I agree that their explanation and association with eigenvectors is a bit of a stretch... By describing it as "maximally discriminating" I think they're trying to make an analogy with how PCA works - the eigenvector with largest eigenvalue "encodes" more of the variance of your data than other vectors.

<comment><USER8> Agree they are using this context for eigenvector without going into detail. Another way I have used PCA and/or cluster analysis as an analogy with a group is to get them to put all the questions, product or service features, or customer benefits on large sticky notes. Each person generates as many as come to mind in a 5 to 10 minute period.

Then taking turns each person gets up and places a couple of the questions or features they have generated on a wall or whiteboard, briefly explaining what they mean while also placing it relatively near or far in conceptual space from the items that are already up there.

As you get further along, you invite people to start reorganizing the sticky notes talking about why they think some of these questions are more or less similar to others. As they explain their reasoning you start hearing the underlying latent dimensions, the organizing vectors.

When the process is all finished you have what looks like a cluster analysis. Then as a group we name those clusters. This qualitative dimension reduction exercise often has the result of getting a group of people talking about the question or feature space in a common set of reduced labels and gives them a common framework.

I found these techniques very enlightening to use with product groups as we prepared to use research techniques to capture a Voice of the Customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wanted to read this article. There seems to be some kind of scroll jacking happening on mobile that makes it real frustating to swipe down. Page keeps moving up and down due to some overlay. Can't even go into article mode for this. Why dont developers test these things ?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps this helps you [http://gamesdev.com/temp/Screenshot_20200712_140535_org.mozi...](http://gamesdev.com/temp/Screenshot_20200712_140535_org.mozilla.firefox.jpg) views okay for me, not sure if the image size will cause issues for you.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for taking the time to make this screenshot but the resolution is so low the text is unreadable

<comment><USER10> I don't think it is: perhaps your browser or image view is struggling to display such a large image. I say this as for me it displays identically to how the website displays on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Problems are an under-appreciated part of the creative process. When Nobel prize winning scientists were asked what are the most valuable things for a scientist to have, a good research question came out near the top.</comment>


Twiddler 3 chording keyboard now available - <AUTHOR> http://www.tekgear.com/twiddler3.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone weight in on personal experience and if you felt wrist strain? As a pianist, I think the emphasis on finger-movement chording is misguided. Yes you can play chords on the piano but the entire point is to minimize finger movement - send as much movement as possible to the hand, wrist, forearm, arm, and body so as to minimize local movement. The reason is because if you try to do everything with your fingers, you increase your odds of getting tendonitis. Using a device that is designed to localize movement just to the fingers - through chording no less - strikes me as completely backwards ergonomically.

I see the benefit for those that already have movement limitation, but not really otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Around ~6 years ago I was intrigued by the idea of using a regular midi keyboard as an input device. I was having some RSI issues, and was looking for alternatives. I'm not a professional pianist, but I play both pianos and keyboards. Any regular midi keyboard doesn't have key shadowing issues, so it's very easy to implement chording mechanics. I remember I was only vaguely aware of stenotyping, and certainly didn't know about plover back then, so I just tried some random approaches.

The first issue with chording keyboards is the tradeoff you make between the amount of keys in a chord required to perform all permutations readily available in a typing keyboard. You can, optimally, pack all permutations only using ~10 keys, but you might require to perform either 6 key chords (3 keys per hand simultaneously), introduce sequences, or introduce trigger delays.

Now, while doable, doing a 6-key chord was quite hard for me. I couldn't remember all the required permutations, and it also required to setup some quantization in order to detect the chords correctly. Quantization in turns imposes an upper-bound on CPM you can attain.

Using more space with smaller chords (a larger set of 2 octaves with ~3-4 keys per chord) was easier for me, but the regularity imposed by the chords (jamming the required keys at the same time) was still unnatural.

I tried to setup some different mechanics, using a sort of tree dictionary where the keys enters the branches. An approach that worked well was to map the frequent character tuples in adjacent keys. Performing CDE, CDF, DEF, EDC combos would result the vowels, which were mapped repeatedly at other locations using the same musical intervals. Typing with this system felt much more "music style": infrequent letters were mapped sparsely on the keyboard, with vowels available in every octave. You could move left-to-right to type. It's also much easier to press keys in _fast_ sequence than trying to perform a perfect chord timing, or at least that was my impression. I didn't need any quantization this way.

Still, for anything but text (ie, programming), a regular keyboard felt so much faster. I remember attaining ~30 wpm or so before giving up entirely.

I wish I had investigated some chord/phonetic based system, but I'm not sure how much that could've helped with regular programming.

<comment><USER4> I developed a software demo (for single hand chording on the keyboard) that updates the character tree representation, possible outputs are shown as the chord sequence is formed. And the adjacent keys idea you have which I call "bigram rollover" works really well in this type of system, because you can tell what neighboring characters are.

The "bigram rollover" is key to reducing the number of key events, and the added bonus is that it should help ramp up the steep learning curve with getting the right sequence.

I am also investigating some sort of phonetic/bigram mapping system (maybe similar to the plover/stenotype system), seems it's the way to go, as shorthand seems to solve the main issue with chording which is high number of key events for a single output.

I am actually looking for help designing the mapping as explained above, it seems we have very similar ideas, perhaps we can collaborate?

<comment><USER3> I tried many keyboards due to RSI but in the end I'm currently _very_ happy with a kinesis advantage, which made me lose a lot of interest in chording keyboards.

In the end, there's nothing in stenotyping that you couldn't do with a regular keyboard. The advantage in stenotyping is not chording per-se (which is used to reduce the number of keys more than anything else), but the input/composition method, which is _highly_ specialized for text (and english text at that).

There's no convenient way to compose arbitrary symbols in a stenotyping machine. In a regular keyboard there are just more keys and thus the requirement for key composition is almost zero (you still "chord" with shift/control/alt if you think about it). More keys = more immediate symbols. On my S90, which is a full-length keyboard, I only have 88 keys with a key travel length of 1.2m! By comparison, I have (more than) 104 keys in 40x20cm right now.

<comment><USER4> I agree, stenotype's advantage is not chording and I think our insight is similar; it's the phonetic shorthand which is breaking a word down into syllables which is always shorter than the number of characters (for English anyways).

I think of it as a readily available syllable->word database, which any chording mechanism can take advantage of.

You're right, arbitrary symbols is not stenotype's strength, but chording is somewhat, at least when number of key switches is limited and the whole keyboard size is really small.

I suppose the question is whether chording in a confined space is any better than a full size keyboard, because there is zero or less wrist movement and fingers do not need to reach out (no positional issues).

The answer to that question is yes, chording is better in a setting like mobile phones, which by the way is where we do most of our typing these days, so you shouldn't lose interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site seems to be down (edit: it's back up), but [http://twiddler.tekgear.com/](http://twiddler.tekgear.com/) is up. If that dies, here's a direct link to the video on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG3SPSzWUv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG3SPSzWUv4)

I spent a few months learning to type with various layouts on the Twiddler 2, but never approached my keyboard speed. Also, the joystick was inaccurate and slow. A clickable trackball in the same position would be so much better.

I think one-handed chording keyboards could be very useful in some niches, but they're a waste of time for most of us.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping the Twiddler will provide some variation from regular typing to help keep my hands/arms/wrists more comfortable.

I'm also very interested in experimenting with wearable computing... I've built my own chording keyboards in the past for projects, but was trying to do it cheap/quick so the enclosure and buttons were not easy to use.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Sendgrid stack up on deliverability vs. SES? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a (mostly happy) user of Sendgrid for the last several months. As a startup, one of our big pain points is burn. And with Amazon's new SES, we're looking to spend 20x less on transactional emails than we're currently spending with Sendgrid. This seems like a no-brainer.
But before I make the switch, I'm wondering how SES compares to Sendgrid on deliverability. Sendgrid touts their credentials on getting emails delivered.
So how do they compare? <comment><USER2> Since they announced it today, it is probably a little early to know how it actually performs compared other services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, though I was hoping to see a breakdown of what one offers over the other in terms of deliverability. Actual performance is obviously asking too much, but I don't understand the ins and outs of deliverability (whitelisting, etc.) as much as others might. SendGrid may well offer certain services that Amazon doesn't that are currently discernible from their documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, I'm still having huge deliverability issues when using Sendgrid. Emails sent to Gmail accounts go straight to spam. I'm still not sure how to resolve that, and am hesitant to blame Sendgrid for the problem. We do, after all, own a 15-year-old domain name.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's still early to tell, but we believe it is likely that they will struggle with their deliverability. Delivery is as much an art as it is a science, and it takes experience and constant focus to stay on top. I work for JangoSMTP and we often have clients come to us from minimalist services similar to Amazon SES because of their deliverability issues.

</comment><comment><USER4> (arguably offtopic) What made you choose SendGrid over competing services like AuthSMTP?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to admit that I had just done a bunch of searching around to see what people said about solutions like AuthSMTP, and found more praise for SendGrid. It was cheap, easy to set up, and they seem incredibly knowledgable about deliverability.

<comment><USER4> The concern I had is that SendGrid seemed to simply be "better at Web 2.0" and therefore had more "hip web developers" talking about, whereas the few people I found who tried to do objective deliverability comparisons seemed to always favor AuthSMTP. SendGrid is also much cheaper, which again made me feel it was difficult to trust simpler "Google fight" comparisons.

<comment><USER4> (sidenote) I really wish users didn't get so critical of people and companies who are, well, critical. Like, I'd really love to see "our opinion of our competitors, no holds barred" right on these websites, so I can try to compare something other than a lot of marketing copy or sketchily done third-party statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hard to compare as I haven't tried SES. SendGrid works great. Love it.</comment>


An Introduction to Lock-Free Programming (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://preshing.com/20120612/an-introduction-to-lock-free-programming/ <comment><USER2> I ran into this problem last year, that ordinary mutexes were not working out due to various reasons.

Since I do embedded programming, I looked through the ARM manuals and documentation, to see what they have on offer.

I ran into the lovely LDREX and STREX instructions, which are just awesome.

It was pretty trivial to rewrite e.g. a custom allocator that used to grab a mutex, poke its internal freelists, and release the mutex so that it instead does the poking with _LDREX /STREX_, thus obtaining thread-safety while doing the actual work it wanted to do. Lock-free programming can be beautiful like that.

See [http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc....](http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0204f/Cihbghef.html) for the instruction reference on LDREX/STREX.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh man, now that lock free programming is such a hot topic I am dreading the code about to be written by people "teaching themselves" about it!

"This algorithm is much faster now that I've used some lock free programming techniques I just read about!!!"

Code that works correctly on x86 but fails intermittently on another processor. It's like a nightmare unfolding...

<comment><USER4> Code that works correctly on that particular programmer's x86 machine, you mean. "Works great on my PC at home and at work" does not necessary imply "Works great on the 64 CPU production machine in the datacenter".

This stuff is terrifying.

<comment><USER5> All the more reason to do our best to organize and share correct information about it.

<comment><USER3> Yes and at least the article makes it pretty clear just how complicated and subtle the issues are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always found this paper to be quite a good introduction to lock-free techniques:

[http://www.grame.fr/ressources/publications/LockFree.pdf](http://www.grame.fr/ressources/publications/LockFree.pdf)

In the music world, such issues have been solved repeatedly over the years - seems like a little cross-polination would be a good thing ..

</comment><comment><USER7> Raymond Chen has a pretty practical guide to lock-free algorithms on his blog.

[http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US?query=Lock- fre...](http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US?query=Lock- free%20algorithms&beta=0&rn=The+Old+New+Thing&rq=site:blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/&ac=5)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is perhaps the place to mention that Java 8 has memory-fence intrinsics (loadFence, storeFence, fullFence in Unsafe)

</comment><comment><USER9> Does side-effect-free programming with persistent data-structures on share- nothing, actor-based architecture, in other words Erlang is qualified to be lock-free?

It seems that Haskell also doesn't exist.)

<comment><USER10> While responses have well addressed the deadlock bit of this, and someone else addressed the side effect free bit, I wantedI wanted to actually make sure you saw why actors necessarily involve side effects.

      %Here is a function that rather idiotically takes a process
      %id, a message, and just sends the message to the process,
      %in Erlang, and then returns the atom 'ok'.

      send_message(Pid, Message) ->
        Pid ! Message,
        ok.

If this was side effect free, that first line of the function, Pid ! Message, could safely be removed by the compiler, because it either returns nothing, or we are doing nothing with the return; either way, if it has no side effects it is not doing anything. Much like if I were to replace it with something that obviously does not cause side effects, such as 5 + 7; we're not doing anything with the 12 that that returns, so why bother calculate it?

But obviously that is not the case; we are expecting the process that Pid corresponds to to receive that message, and to do something with it.

The very act of sending a message is a side effect.

<comment><USER9> Come on, when people are talking about a code without side effects they meant so called pure functions, which always produce the same output for the same input. Message passing is a way of communication which is about "causing effects" so let's not take it to absurd.

On the other hand, non-networking procedures in Erlang are pure functions, so they could be safely evaluated in parallel. Its spawned processes are isolated, they share nothing, not even a common stack, so they could fail and being restarted without affecting any other code or data.

It is much better to read Armstrong's thesis where he gives outline of the design of Erlang, hows and whys. It might has a bit ugly syntax, but semantics are fine.

<comment><USER10> My post wasn't a criticism. Just that saying that Erlang is side effect free (per the OP), is misplaced. Erlang is an insanely pragmatic language that I use daily, but it very intentionally does not bend over backwards to avoid side effects, instead allowing them in cases where they make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does unintended infinite message loop count as a dead-lock?

<comment><USER12> This is generally called livelock : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock#Livelock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock#Livelock)</comment></comment>


Ad Revenue as a Business Model - Eat Dinner First - <AUTHOR> http://www.perplexedlabs.com/2009/02/03/ad-revenue-as-a-business-model-eat-dinner-first/

<comment><USER2> What is a business model? It's how you make money. You can make money from advertising, thus it is a valid business model. See radio, TV, and PlentyOfFish for examples.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's different if your business is advertising - google, radio, and TV. The thing that bothers me with the idea of ad-based businesses is that the people buying your ad space are the ones making the real money. I would rather be them. And, guess what, they're actually selling stuff.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let's disregard TV and radio, since we're talking about web startups.

Of course it's possible to hit a homerun with a site like PlentyOfFish, but what are the chances YOU will be the guy to do it? There are always outliers in every set of statistics.</comment>


Why users should be scared of Apple's new notification system - <AUTHOR> http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9964040-2.html

<comment><USER2> FUD. What's next... my ISP has my browsing data??? Oh noes!

Look, I'm sure Apple will provide a privacy policy and TOS that dev's won't have many issues with.

<comment><USER3> Yes, clearly FUD. But also an interesting reflection on the mindset that the current business environment begets - namely that wherever there is data, there is also money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is clearly dead on. yet one more way that apple knows all and will find a way to profit from it.

<comment><USER4> oh no, profit! we're all gonna die.</comment></comment>


2006 Startup school notes by William Manegold - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattknox.com/startup.html <comment><USER2> Also see the notes and discussion at http://notelab.infogami.com/startupschool2006

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks!</comment></comment>


Updating Carbonmade's Finances - <AUTHOR> http://spencerfry.com/updating-carbonmades-finances

<comment><USER2> I've felt that Excel is the best software for managing finances for a while, but feared the scorn of more 'savvy' geeks. It's nice to see that I'm not alone.

It's easy, yet completely flexible, and it doesn't hide anything from you. I really think it is the best desktop app Microsoft ever created.

</comment><comment><USER3> All of that data entry of already digitized information ah!

Never used it, but is Mint a possible solution? I used to be a dev at a financial data aggregation shop (pretty much mint for wealth managers, wouldn't be a good fit for Carbonmade) so I understand the problem pretty well, and also understand the solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> You won't be able to do projections and budgets in Mint. And those are two of the most important things for planning out the next phases of your company.</comment></comment>


Google's graveyard: 8 products Google killed in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3131623/phones/googles-graveyard-8-products-google-killed-in-2016.html <comment><USER2> I will never forgive them for first neutering and then killing off Google Reader. After that, I've avoided relying on any Google service as far as I can. I'm still using Gmail, and I have to use Google Docs for work (though I'd much rather use something else), but I would never trust my files to Google Drive, and I thankfully didn't trust Picasa with my pictures. Same reason I'm not going to use things like Allo. There's a significant chance that it's not going to exist in a year or two, so why even bother?

<comment><USER3> You shouldn't any 3rd party service without a migration plan. The odds of a service surviving on Google are probably better than [insert random SaaS startup here] as the prevalence of "Our Amazing Journey" posts shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of these were just rebranded hangouts on air became youtube live, Nexus essentially became Pixel, Picasa became google photos, Chrome apps were nothing more than the website, MyTracks as they pointed out is Google Fit

<comment><USER5> This is an inaccurate oversimplification.

Youtube Live was a distinct product from Hangouts on Air [1].

Nexus -> Pixel can indeed be described as a re-brand or a rename.

Picasa and Google Photos have been separate for years [2][3].

Chrome Apps were exposed certain platform features that there's still no web- based alternative for [4].

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12490666/google- hangouts-o...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12490666/google-hangouts-on- air-september-youtube-live) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa) [3] [http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from- pica...](http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-picasa.html) [4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322791)

<comment><USER6> I disagree that Nexus -> Pixel is a rebrand or rename. It's an entirely different type of device. Nexus was a low-cost developer-focused device. Pixel is a high-cost consumer-focused device.

And the big thing with Picasa is the desktop app, which many users are upset to be losing.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I know no other program that does simple photo retouching and organizing as well as Picasa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google has a problem...they have too many god-damned products. The spring cleanings are a symptom.

They even have multiple products in the same category. Ars did an article on this a while back, they should do another.</comment>


Someone hacked Amazon's Alexa into one of those singing fish - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/04/finally-at-long-last-someone-hacked-amazons-alexa-into-one-of-those-singing-fish/ <comment><USER2> I love this. If there were a walk-through someday, I would definitely think about doing this with my old Billy Bass. And yes, I have a Billy Bass.

</comment><comment><USER3> How long before Furbies or Teddy Ruxspins are converted?</comment>


The new dot com bubble is here: it's called online advertising - <AUTHOR> https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/ <comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me the authors make three main points 1) Pay-per-action confuses correlation (action when seeing ad) with causation (action because of seeing ad). Hence click-through-rate maximizes correlation instead of causation. Google knows you were going to buy anyway, thus serves you an ad. 2) Marketers and ad networks interests' are aligned in that they want to maximize advertisement budgets. Hence marketers will ignore randomized studies showing ads of some type are not effective. 3) Even when these studies are performed, even major sample sizes are insufficient to support any conclusion

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873)

480+ points</comment>