I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/17554554409/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom-maps-so-i-learnt-by

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope that no-one considers it too spammy if I say that the app I am discussing in the post is entered into a competition that has a public voting segment. It's doing pretty badly, so if you found the post interesting I'd appreciate a vote:

<http://2011.nycbigapps.com/submissions/5832-taxonomy>

It's one of 95 entries, and there's a great panel of judges (Fred Wilson, Naveen@Foursquare, VC investors and more), so anything I can do to get attention is good.

Even if you don't like it, the competition in general could do with some more "organic" voting, so if you've got a few spare minutes, take a look through and vote for some that stand out. You can vote once daily for each app.

</comment><comment><USER2> I really liked the blog post. I really like the styling. It has a very strong brand. However, one thing on using your maps. I have an astigmatism, which makes tall narrow characters hard to read, especially at an angle. Here's my observations:

\- Look at WEST 8TH ST. Zoom in as far as possible, then zoom out one click. That was the easiest for me to read because it was higher contrast and the letters naturally had more space in and around the letters.

\- WASHINGTON SQ N is almost impossible for me to distinguish. All I could make out was WA...TON SO N at first. I couldn't tell that there was a Q in SQ and kept thinking it was an O.

\- I really, really like the map styling.

Hopefully that helps you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

This is something I'd thought about actually, but not really covered in the post: Google has, I'm sure, done hours upon hours of research into map clarity. Sizes, colours, fonts, etc. By switching away from Google I'm losing all that- and any updates they publish.

So it's a double edged sword. The good news is that I can keep iterating- I'm not happy with a number of the zoom levels as they are right now (labels not repeating often enough, too small text, etc) and in time I intend to go back and fix those issues. So thanks for the detail- I'll definitely keep it in mind.

In shorter term good news: If you're on an iPhone >=4, the retina tiles are considerably more readable.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A brief introduction to the world of map making from a total amateur. I intend to write some follow up posts going into more detail on making iPhone retina tiles, tweaking leaflet.js and so on.

<comment><USER3> You sell yourself short. The app and typography look amazing and it's pretty responsive, pity I'm not in NY, I would've enjoyed using it. You're selling your app for free, hope you find a way to make some money out of that; it's evident you worked a lot on this.

Question: Do you send the driver feedback to taxi company or is it just locally stored.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's great to hear. At the moment the app is an entry in an NYC- based competition called NYC BigApps (hence the NYC-and-nowhere-else coverage). Some of the judges are investors (inc. Fred Wilson), and there are cash prizes, so I'm treating it as a sort of litmus test of whether it's an idea worth pursuing, expanding, etc.

Right now, the feedback is just local. But I've spoken briefly with city officials (who regulate the yellow cabs) about passing the information back to them. I'm keen to highlight good and bad behaviour so it would be awesome to have a "taxi driver of the year" sort of thing, alongside handling complaints.

As for the monetisation side of it- that's tricky as the app currently stands. But if it became a going concern I would probably pivot somewhat and make bookings through private car services (right now, the one thing it doesn't do is find you a taxi), then take a commission from that. All pipe dreams right now, of course...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who spent the better part of the weekend hacking up all of the Mapnik style XML files, it is great to see how someone gets things done more easily in TileMill.

I decided to go the mod_tile / Mapnik route so that I could generate tiles on the fly, world-wide. I have to agree that map styling is a huge time drain! Not only is it difficult for a map novice, such as myself, to figure out what all of the different Rules mean, but then the OCD takes over getting everything perfect. :)

Great write-up and really cool map style! I haven't even looked into customizing fonts yet. ;)

<comment><USER5> TileMill has an export feature: You can design your map in TileMill, then export the style as Mapnik XML.

<comment><USER4> Thanks - yes, I initially tried this, but I believe the exported format is for mapnik2, whereas the mod_tile package I am using seems to be for mapnik 0.7. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time and figured that I would edit the XML files that already seemed to be working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey Alastair, great post! Understanding OSM labels and so on can be pretty time consuming. You might like the mapdig library for CartoDB that lets you drill down into your spatial data to get a handle on what's what: <http://vizzuality.github.com/mapdig/examples/osm_line.html> (OSM london lines demo). Maybe next time :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty awesome. I'll definitely play around with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or does that map functionality throw a wobbly in Chrome on Mac?

By using a magic mouse and a single swipe backwards/forwards - which is to zoom in/out respectively (similar to a mouse wheel), causes the page to freeze and for Chrome to kill it due to it being unresponsive.

This functionality works fine on the generic MapBox demos.

It's a shame because custom maps are a good idea, especially when you have so much flexibility over the styling, I just like using gestures to make zooming that little bit easier.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. What's odd, though, is the road layout. If you look at the interactive map, you'll see that it deletes major roads before deleting minor roads. If you go over by 23rd/11th and zoom in to the point where the transition between no-buildings and buildings occurs, you'll see the west side highway. Then, zoom out. The access roads to the indoor Chelsea Piers parking lots show up, but the the 6-lane highway disappears.

Odd. This happened the last time there was an article about make-your-own maps, too.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool stuff. A lot of value can be added by designing your own map, vs the typical dump in a Google map and drop some pins.

This inspires me to try out TileMill on one of my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks very cool.

You might want to look at tile caching projects which might make the initial tile-generation take less time in exchange for only pre-rendering some tiles. (Perhaps less important in your situation but would be beneficial when you want to cover a larger area.)

I had a quick look at some options, this might work with your set up: <http://tilestache.org/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for the introduction to TileMill: <http://mapbox.com/tilemill/>. It looks really handy.

</comment><comment><USER12> /ot rant

Sorry, breaking point with this particular UX anti-pattern reached.

What is with this new fad of useless and distracting menus appearing at some random interval when you scroll down? It's bloody annoying. I'm no longer bothering to finish articles it's so distracting.

I will never and 99% of your readers will never, ever search your site. So why shove the search box in my face at some random point when I'm scrolling down?

Pointless animations distract you when you're trying to read.

Stop doing it people, stop installing themes that do it and even sticky menus are bloody annoying a-la bootcamp. Remember frames? Ever stopped to wonder why no-one ever uses them any more? Cause it sucks. UX for blogs should be for reading. The only good reason for using a sticky menu is for an application where the menu is actually pretty important.

Sticky stuff on the side, absolutely fine, even useful. Sticky stuff getting in the way of the article? Bloody annoying!

/rant

<comment><AUTHOR> The behaviour you're describing wasn't my creation- it's part of the Tumblr theme I use. It doesn't bother me as much as it does you so I never looked into the options to see what I can do- now that I have, I see there is a checkbox that allows me to disable that behaviour.

So I have. Ta-da!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your map styling looks really great, nice job!

</comment><comment><USER14> very nice, i like the dark colour scheme however i would prefer to see a difference between the colours of the streets and the sea.

</comment><comment><USER15> leart -> learned</comment>


DigitalOcean reduced price by half for their VPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/blog_posts/now-offering-double-the-memory-solid-state-drives-for-all-plans

<comment><USER2> This is very compelling pricing. I'm curious as to what others think of them; anyone already have a VM there?

[edit] I did some quick benchmarks using <http://freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh> in a NY VPS and got:

CPU model : QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.0 Number of cores : 1 CPU frequency : 1999.999 MHz Total amount of ram : 490 MB Total amount of swap : 0 MB System uptime : 2 min, Download speed from CacheFly: 15.6MB/s Download speed from Linode, Atlanta GA: 7.65MB/s Download speed from Linode, Dallas, TX: 3.08MB/s Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 2.27MB/s Download speed from Linode, London, UK: 2.65MB/s Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 2.34MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.32MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 2.48MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 2.33MB/s Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 11.5MB/s I/O speed : 187 MB/s

</comment><comment><USER3> 512MB RAM / 20GB SSD Disk starts at just $5/mo now! =]

<comment><USER4> Cool! That's a very nice offer, the best of luck! I had a question, I wonder if digitalocean allows Tor Exit Nodes(noisy) and/or Bridges(no noise).

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

I'm looking forward hearing from you!

<comment><USER3> We've allowed specific customers to run Tor but made it very clear that all activity would fall under our AUP/TOS.

Unfortunately it has generated a bit of abuse so we are considering revising our AUP to no longer allow Tor traffic.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. Would you still consider allowing Bridges and/or Middle relays? These don't generate any abuse emails at all.

<comment><USER3> I dont want to steer you in the wrong direction and say yes and then all of a sudden there's a change in AUP/TOS and your account gets flagged.

With something like that you are usually best of running on dedicated hardware just to ensure everything is segmented. That's just based on what we've seen in the real world from customer usage.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, thanks for you're follow-up!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a Poker Bot: Part 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-3

<comment><USER2> There is speculation ( <http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/info/6mshv/comments/> ) that this is made up, so think twice before you dive head-first into the sad, sad world of C/C++ Windows programming.

Basically: ever use Java and think "I'm spending all this time on stuff that has nothing to do with my actual program?" That's what low-level Windows programming is all about. It sucks.

<comment><USER3> It is irrelevant if this series is "made up", what is important is that there is no substance in the articles at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I vociferously disagree. This is social hacker news. This article talks about the externalized costs of buying salmon that are not represented accurately enough, thus highlighting a huge problem/unmet need.

This is the community, if one exists that has the ability to create the technical hacks necessary to create social change. We can create tools/systems to solve problems like these, e.g., measuring externalized costs that prices do not/cannot account for. Until we more accurately represent costs/effects in our behaviors/purchases, it will be difficult to effectively promote positive behavior, i.e., solving the big problem.

<comment><USER5> Wrong story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm interested to hear Matt Maroon's take on this.

<comment><USER7> Why? It would just be a long, whiney rant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course, if people start building poker bots, then the real money is in finding which players are actually poker bots, reverse engineering their algorithms from their play, and making a counter-bot to automatically drain money from the first order bots.</comment>


Life before the web – Running a Startup in the 1980's - <AUTHOR> https://blog.zamzar.com/2016/07/13/life-before-the-web-running-a-startup-in-the-1980s/ <comment> martin-adams I think what really makes me appreciate building a startup today compared to the 80's is the low cost of entry.

They had to travel to editors of magazines to demo software, fax documents, manage a toll free number and of course, distribute on physical disks.

Growth hacking in the 80s without the web and mobile was a very different landscape.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favourite fact - it took 185 person-months to develop PowerPoint for Windows at a cost of $500,000 :)</comment>


Chicken chicken chicken - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk <comment><USER2> A link to the academic paper about this research: [https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf](https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf)</comment>


Yoda Is Dead but Star Wars' Dubious Lessons Live On - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/yoda-is-dead-but-star-wars-dubious-lessons-live-on <comment><USER2> Star Trek, on the other hand, consistently presents an optimistic view of our capacity for civilization. I love science-fiction, even when it's dystopian. But why does so much of it have to be dystopian?</comment>


Betting the Farm on the Drought (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2019/08/22/betting-the-farm-on-the-drought/ <comment><USER2> They seem to be doing well in the years after the article.

[https://www.facebook.com/coxlandandcattleinc/](https://www.facebook.com/coxlandandcattleinc/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _" Ethan didn't think much of the liberals' point of view. But he didn't think much of his neighbors' unbounded optimism either."_

Feels good to read this.

As a liberal-leaning farmer, I feel myself in between two worlds: many farmers around me see me as a depressing doomsayer, and insist in business as usual and are not really interested in adapting farming practices or leveraging conditions for long-term insurance; "city people" see me as a bunny killing, biodiversity ravaging agro-capitalist.

<comment><USER4> As a city dweller who is fond of "eating food" from time to time, I'm happy there are people out there trying to figure out better, more sustainable ways of producing it.

I don't think all of those are going to be pretty or quaint, or look like the family farm of my mind's eye.

I liked this article; it shows some nuance and insights that typical, shorter articles do not.

<comment><USER5> The corn fields here in Michigan are the shortest I have ever seen.

We had a drought this summer but our spring had way too much precipitation. So amny crops were basically ruined by floods.

Corn is in short supply. The grocery stores have it for 2 ears for a dollar, and it's very poor quality. It's usually so cheap you can hardly give sweet corn away. The fields have huge spots where nothing grew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is from 2015. The U.S. is NOT currently in a drought and in fact arguably had too much rain and precipitation this year:

"The U.S. just had it's wettest 12 months on record"

[https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-us-just-had-its- wettest-12-...](https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-us-just-had-its- wettest-12-months-on-record)

Meanwhile blaming every weather anamoly on climate change is rather tiresome. The climate has never ever been static, period.

<comment><USER7> Really sad that the top comment here is from a climate change denialist.

<comment><USER8> Why is it sad? Just because voters on HN and the USA agree?

<comment><USER9> Neither US national elections nor top position in an HN comment thread represents simple # of votes from voters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beautiful article, I don't have too much to add except to the unexpected conclusion:

> "So why is it," I asked, "that when I hear people talking about you, and you > hear people talking about me, the only thing they ever talk about is that 5 > percent?"

I feel like this is a solved question. There is a mathematical pattern present in our political system which says that a political party must either spinelessly focus on that 5% or die. The pattern says that few folks in the US are truly "conservative" or "liberal", most are "terrified of those crazy liberals" and "terrified of those crazy conservatives"—this farmer seems to be an example of the former. Focusing in the 5% allows you to do this; if you don't do this for Deep Principled Reasons then you lose your voters to a Spineless party which focuses on those 5% issues to demonize that other party.

The "spoiler effect" present in first-past-the-post voting and could be changed by building political support for moving to a proportionate House of Representatives: rather than endless gerrymandered districts, every state becomes one big multi-representative district: you vote for a party, not for a representative; your state's parties each publish a list before the election, "here are our representatives that we will put in the House in order." This is a very standard electoral approach in many parliamentary democracies; there is no reason that we couldn't use it here to relax some of this internal tension and actually get work done on that remaining 95% that we want to solve.

<comment><USER7> "terrified of those crazy conservatives" \- people who want to deny me my rights as a human being, including the right to life.

"terrified of those crazy liberals" \- people who want to ensure I have my rights protected, and my wellbeing.

Please don't pretend that both sides (or even the "extremes" of the sides) are the same.

<comment><USER11> >people who want to ensure I have my rights protected, and my wellbeing.

That's a funny way of saying "deny you of different rights you just don't happen to care about exercising so you're blind to the fact they want you to lose them".

Both parties cater heavily to the "there ought to be a law" type of jerks and only ever pay lip service to individual liberties and human rights.

<comment><USER7> What rights are you referring to? Are those actual rights, or make-believe rights specifically conjured up to discriminate against minorities and groups you don't agree with?

<comment><USER12> "All rights are made up" \- Thor</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I can't believe I'm praising Tcl - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/i-cant-believe-im-praising-tcl.html?

<comment><USER2> >>Lots of people have noticed that keeping your code short is extremely important. More surprisingly, many people fail to notice this, probably because "1 line is better than 5" doesn't sound that convincing. OK, think about 100K lines vs 500K and you'll get the idea. Oh, there are also those dirty Perl/shell one-liners that make one doubt about this. I've known a Bastard Programmer that used 2K bash one-liners as his weapon of choice. OK then, so the actual rule must be "short code is good unless it's written by a bastard". But it's the same core idea.

The key is _readability_ not shortness for its own sake. Generally, shorter helps, but not if it is made too concise for easy understanding.

As for "ad hoc scripting languages" you should read Fred Brooks comments on "The Worst Computer Language Ever", IBM's Job Control Language (JCL) in his new book _The Design of Design_.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a repost of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=170510> from about 3 years ago. I missed it the first time.</comment>


What Makes a Good Runbook? - <AUTHOR> https://www.transposit.com/blog/2019.11.14-what-makes-a-good-runbook/ <comment><USER2> The best runbook is the one that doesn't exist. Automating operational work vastly decreases risk, and gives you mechanisms to address many of the points in this article (you can write audit logs, tests to ensure your automation works when you need it, etc.).

If you need them, make them as short as possible. It's an architectural smell if your runbooks are long and complicated—part of good design is making sure you can easily operate your system.

<comment><USER3> What if the automation breaks?

Zero ops is a good goal as.it builds the right incentives but even the most mature systems need a good run book.

<comment><USER2> That's effectively the same as having an incorrect/out-of-date runbook. Except the likelihood of that happening with automation is much lower if you write tests to ensure they work when deploying.

There are always some break-the-glass mechanisms that should be documented (like, how to log on to a host). I'm just saying that in mission critical systems, you can dramatically reduce risk by minimizing the amount of manual work you have to do, which prevents mistakes.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Especially when you're using vendor platforms for things. Salesforce is a great example. Sometimes things just stop working. And it's a good idea to know which levers to pull and which buttons to press (and in what order) to get things moving again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your high IQ will kill your startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubeofm.com/your-high-iq-will-kill-your-startup <comment><USER2> The title is just flame-bait. The message is: (a) being lazy will kill your startup, (b) smart people are lazy.

But, well, all you really need to kill a startup is (a), and we already knew that. The next possible conclusion is that maybe smart people underestimate the challenge of starting a startup, but I think everybody does. What's more critical is how people react when they realize they're in over their heads.

<comment><USER3> My original article was 6 pages long, this is an abridged version. So I was not able to convey all the concepts I would have liked to as clearly as possible. That said, let me throw myself into the fray.

It's not about "being lazy". I know people who come in by 7:30 and leave by 9pm. They are not lazy. They work really hard. But they will never be CEO of the company.

It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder.

If I am a Django programmer, after 6 months the challenge in Django is minimal. I can work 10 hours a day on Django and it's not really a challenge anymore.

So it's not about laziness really. It's about not being complacent in your current abilities.

<comment><USER2> I see what you're getting at, but don't believe that it really has much to do with intelligence. It doesn't help that the analogy in this case is particularly bad. The guy who's a stand-in for someone pushing himself just went through the same training that everyone else from his country did.

I believe ambitious people find their way to things that challenge their abilities. I also don't believe that there's a strong correlation between intelligence and ambition.

It's that missing positive correlation that you seem to be getting at, and most people tend to assume exists, but by recasting it as a negative correlation it offends my sensibilities. ;-)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say that Ofer was pushing himself. He was superior to the guy with the knife, by virtue of his past training. It's like a brilliant lisp coder vs a mediocre C++ programmer. The C++ programmer will be much faster than the lisp programmer in achieving some task using C++, simply because he has past training.

So basically, the effort put in over time will keep you ahead of any competition, unless a person of superior inherent ability also decides to put in effort in the same area you are in.

Will an ambitious person always find something to challenge their abilities? I know many people who are ambitious - they talk about money all the time. But if you observe their actions, they are basically doing nothing, or doing something unimportant and easy.

I'm not convinced there is a correlation between ambition and an active search for things that are difficult to do. I'm sure there is such a subset of people, but the proportion compared to those who are content with not challenging themselves, I believe, is low. But I don't really know, that's just a guess.

<comment><USER4> Since when does talking about money all the time imply ambition? Usually the people who spend the most time talking about something are the least likely to go out and do something toward it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From Hamming's "You and Your Research":

      You observe that most great scientists have tremendous
      drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell
      Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or
      four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey
      was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and
      I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's
      office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much
      as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put
      his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said,
      "You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know
      if you worked as hard as he did that many years."

      I simply slunk out of the office!

      What Bode was saying was this: "Knowledge and productivity
      are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately
      the same ability and one person who works ten percent
      more than the other, the latter will more than twice
      outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you
      learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more
      you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much
      like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate,
      but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly
      the same ability, the one person who manages day in and
      day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be
      tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took
      Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my
      time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I
      found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like
      to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect
      her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect
      things if you intend to get what you want done. There's
      no question about this.

The entire essay is well worth reading and makes many excellent points. It's been mentioned many times here on HN, and is one of the essays on PG's site:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852405>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=915515>

[http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming?sort=by_da...](http://searchyc.com/you+and+your+research+hamming?sort=by_date)

Unsurprisingly, it's all over the 'net:

[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22You+and+your+research%22...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22You+and+your+research%22+Hamming)

<comment><USER6> Related, I think, to OP's point: Smart People Can Rationalize Anything: [http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-people-can- ration...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2006/12/smart-people-can-rationalize- anything/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me, this is the money quote as I pasted it into my fortune file

      I knew there were a lot of other people as
      intelligent as I was, and who had all [the
      same] advantages [as me]. The only way to be
      successful then would be to gain a slight
      advantage over them - I had to work and
      train harder than they did, I had to get to
      know more people than they did, I had to
      learn more about more things that they did.

      We started off equals, but at some point all
      the effort I put in started to pay off, and
      where they stopped improving themselves, I
      continued, and I got better and better.
      Where they were afraid to try new things
      because they would fail, I tried and I got
      better and knew more, till I was good enough
      for the job I hold now.

I recently figured out that compounding interest works for personal development and business just as well as it works for money.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's true that currently, some intelligent people can fail to develop a work ethic because they've found things easy.

However, this is not an inherent problem of intelligence; this is an inherent problem with one-size-fits-all schooling.

They found things easy because the difficulty level of their challenges were well below them, but that's hypothetically easy to fix; you make their challenges a little above their current level. Practically, though, it's more of problem.

<comment><USER9> Seems like a good problem for a more software oriented learning approach.

I remember daydreaming in class wishing I could just go through the book myself and be finished with a grade in a few weeks. I did get this experience in math for a while when I was living in Texas. You didn't have to take any topic upon which you could pass a pretest, and then you got to take a test on a topic as soon as you were ready for it. I was able to zip through multiple grades until I reached some material where I needed instruction. Of course, once I moved up to the next school, I was back in the standard classes, daydreaming.

<comment><USER8> Was it a public school? That sounds awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> people often come out of school thinking that life will apportion its challenges to meet their skill level. after all, that's the sort of designed environment they've been in since they were 5. intelligent people get caught in the trap of relative comparison: thinking that they're awesome simply because they were better than their immediate peers.

this is one of the big benefits of going to a "good" school. not that you're receiving a qualitatively better education, but because you're thrown together with some of the best and brightest. this resets your scale at a much higher level.

of course the most successful people tend to put in a supreme effort constantly without reference to any artificial scales.

</comment><comment><USER11> That Israeli soldier had balls to take on a guy with a knife. I thought it was kinda funny and ironic that he used that situation as an analogy for intelligence.

The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT risk being sliced open lol.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with you assessment, the individual could have intelligently reasoned that disarming the man would make him think twice before confronting another individual. If more individuals took that tack robbers would give more though to what used to be an easy crime. No to mention in certain parts of South America the punishment for robbery can be as sever as murder so if you are going to do it you might as well not leave witnesses. There are a lot of variables that go into the decision to fight and making the decision to do so does not necessarily mean that you have made a foolish or less intelligent choice.

<comment><USER11> Its nice to think that people factor benevolent principles into situations like this. However, when people fight back under high stress situations like a robbery, it is probable that the moment is not about defending society; its about survival.

Statistics say if you cooperate, you're less likely to be harmed. If you decide to push a physical confrontation, then you're more likely to be harmed. If you measure the cost/benefit ratio to each action, its a no brainer.

<comment><USER12> \--Its nice to think that people factor benevolent principles into situations like this. However, when people fight back under high stress situations like a robbery, it is probable that the moment is not about defending society; its about survival.

To some it is, to some it is not. I personally have been in a similar situation (assailant had a gun). As well, I have trained since a young age in defensive combat. I can honestly say that when that moment was upon me, the rage that ran through my mind was not for saving myself but the idea that a little old lady had most likely stood in my same position and that the people around me are being victimized. I think most that do decide to stand, stand for a sense of honor that is beyond them or their personal well being, because even to them, logically the money is not worth it, it is the principal of the matter. Given the original post's description of the gentleman as an individual who dislikes violence he sounds to me like he is a man that does not compromise his principles even if it costs him his life, which it looks like it eventually did. Being a man of principals in not unintelligent and that was the summation of my previous post.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, but the dude had a gun. Maybe you held it together enough to not pee in your pants and still have some perspective about the situation, but I'm guessing there wasn't much question about what you were going to do.

<comment><USER12> Contrary to popular belief in close quarter combat a knife is far more dangerous than a gun. A gun requires action on the part of the assailant while a knife can be dangerous with only reactionary movement. For example one of the key tenants of close quarter combat is explosive violence, basically when you go you go off. When you do the assailant has a small window of time to chose an action e.g. aim and pull the trigger. With a gun the slightest movement moves you out of trajectory which require a new action on the part of the assailant these calculations are not as fast as reaction time. Conversely with a knife it can be wielded in a reactionary fashion e.g I go to grab it the assailant flinches back and I get slashed. The weapon can be used without the assailant consciously choosing to do so.

Unfortunately the best (read safest) method for dealing with a knife telegraphs your intention and throws explosive violence out the window because the most assured way is to either pick up a longer instrument (bat, tire iron) or to take off an item of clothing to act as the item to trap the arm either of which let the assailant know what the score is.

Knowing this and reading that the gentleman still opted to use the element of surprise, gives some insight as to how confident this individual was with his abilities. The fact that he first used his feet to disarm the knife says that he analyzed the situation and decided that the element of surprise was more valuable than opting for a telegraphed safer method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Summary: People who breeze through school but are not hungry for knowledge are less likely to succeed than those who struggle but have that hunger.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ofer was a trained Isreli soldier dodging the knife of some local 2-bit thief...probably child's play for him. Though I think he reached a bit with the whole knife-intelligence analogy, I get what he was saying.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice analogy.

I think this is why Steve Blank talk so much about founders 'getting out of the building'. The first instinct of a highly intelligent tech nerd when faced with the challenges of a startup is to bury their head in code and not engage directly with the customer at all, i.e. focus solely on improving the product and not testing if there is a market for the product in the first place:

<http://startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/>

Fortunately, Steve Blank has designed his 'Customer Development' roadmap to mitigate against this. For a brief, free synopsis, see:

<http://www.socrated.com/courses/4?home=1>

This was posted on HN recently enough, and it's brilliant. It sums up the entire Customer Devlopment roadmap quite nicely. I'd still recommend buying the book too though, also excellent.

</comment><comment><USER17> Intelligence is hardly a knife. One can put a knife aside and try training without it to better improve the "other" skills, same is not true for intelligence. And also, isn't true intelligent people are more inclined to self-improving? I think that declining your experiences is NOT intelligence.

<comment><USER18> I disagree that you cannot put intelligence (which in this context means mathematics and language skills, hence 'IQ') aside and practice other skills. Developing a sense of empathy and charm can have almost nothing to do with how intelligent you are. Selling a product has almost nothing to do with this version of 'intelligence'. And building a decent level of physical fitness, learning a musical instrument, learning a trade or craft such as carpentry or painting a picture have almost nothing to do with intelligence as defined here.

Lots of mathematicians, scientists and academics are hard-working, 'intelligent' people who are completely underdeveloped otherwise - there's an argument for saying that I am one... - so I think that this analogy holds better than you give it credit.

I can't help but think that you are using the word 'intelligence' in a different manner to that intended by the post. The trait that you are talking about, applying your intelligence to as many situations as you can, is closer to wisdom, I feel.

<comment><USER17> Mybe your right. To me intelligence is how one processes information, definitely not how she cracks on problems (this is "smartness"). True intelligence in my view is when one pays attention to what the world tells her and reacts accordingly. It can finally lead to wisdom, probably the absolute intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I disagree that this is about IQ or intelligence. A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know. It is only those who think they are intelligent who have they ego to think that things will always come easy.

<comment><USER20> "A truly intelligent person understands how little they actually know"

This is one of those statements that really bother me, almost as much as someone telling me I need to prove the non-existence of God if I want to be an atheist. Yes, intelligent people should have a good understanding of how big and complex the universe is and how little they know compared to the total amount of knowledge available. And given that they are aware of such, it wouldn't make sense for them to walk around claiming they are a big deal. However, people do not always act rationally, even geniuses. There is no negative-correlation between claiming to be smart and being smart, in spite of the obvious contradiction. Claiming to be smart and being cocky about it, it's just a personality trait. Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not.

Just a thought though.

<comment><USER21> "Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not."

I don't know whether the two claims you made are true (the one about IQ may be, the personality one probably is) but "there is no way your personality can affect whether you are smart or not" doesn't follow. It's possible that your personality may often continue to develop after your IQ is mostly set, but only in a highly restricted way dictated by what your personality was before. In fact this seems to me likely to be a common outcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is definitely me, though I'm sure I'm not the only one. My laziness didn't come from simply being intelligent, but from everyone always telling me how smart I was. As a result, I was terrified to fail and disappoint. Straight A's were effortless, but I never tried anything 'risky'.

This all changed when I started doing start-ups. I learned to fail many, many times, but instead of quitting, I just kept trying again and again. I actually kicked my 20-something year old habit of being lazy, because the reward that comes with doing all the hard work is much greater than the fear of failure.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sigh... this is why including an interesting and memorable anecdote often isn't a good idea. The OP has an interesting article about the relative power of innate gifts (intelligence in this case) vs hard work and effort. It's one of the major focuses of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and certainly a worth topic of discussion on HN...

But all anyone seems to want to talk about is the damn knife fight story. Sigh.....

</comment><comment><USER24> This was said much better by ESR in _The Curse of the Gifted_. Yeah, I don't like ESR that much, but this time he actually said something insightful. See [http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20...](http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20Of%20The%20Gifted.html) for details.

</comment><comment><USER25> To extend the metaphor, you must also keep the knife sharp. It's not enough to just practice and work hard and be intelligent. We must also be insightful into our own lives as humans. At least in my life, my emotional and physical state impact my productivity more than anything else. Sometimes you will see a very dedicated, intelligent person flame out or they get into personal drama and cannot focus like they used to. For me, the answer is to workout 5 days a week and make time for family and women.

</comment><comment><USER26> To extend it to a number of recent articles about kids (summarized):

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Kids who were told "you must be smart" when they succeeded were less likely to take on harder tasks later because they might fail, and seem stupid.

Kids who were told "you must have worked hard" when they succeeded tackled harder problems later and ended up learning better, because they perceived greater reward for _doing_ better, not _looking_ better.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

If you're smart, but you don't do anything you can fail at, you won't learn. Try. Fail. Try _again_.

</comment><comment><USER27> I agreed with this, but then I thought of the scene in Indiana Jones with the sword expert...

Seriously though, while I think the metaphor is a little weak, the article makes some good points.

<comment><USER25> It fits nicely thinking of that scene as well. Every now and then an Einstein shows up and breaks the regular rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I do not see a correlation of level of intelligence and ability to work hard, especially it cannot be said of verse correlation. I do not believe that Intelligence cases man to be lazy and less prepared for challenges. On the contrary, intelligence helps man to cope with challenges and problems if he chooses to do so and has a strong character and mostly important desire and ambitions. Intelligence helps dealing with challenges efficiently and successfully.

</comment><comment><USER29> Or your startup will help you learn how to work hard. I've failed at least 8 times by my count with mine. I'm getting better at this with each time.

</comment><comment><USER30> generally , peoples who fight to get everything done in life are more successfull than the rest, they learn really early, that life's hard, and you have to fight for everything, so meeting difficulties is just an everyday business, at the other side, peoples who always have access to everything will struggle when the first problems show up, and they just tend to give up.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well said. A very motivating speech to those of us without the advantages.

</comment><comment><USER32> "People who are born intelligent"....now that's a whole different debate

<comment><USER33> Yes, that would make it a better title. But the article is surprisingly spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe 15 years ago I was watching a knife defense course,

the only thing I remember from that course:

"Respect the knife"

it seemed hilarious at the time, yet at the same time very apt.

</comment><comment><USER35> [Smart people] focus on things they can't fail on, and ignore the other important things.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison

<comment><USER37> "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." --Nikola Tesla

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> smart people never start startups... due to the fact that they will rationalise the risk as being too great

<comment><USER39> I wouldn't say never, but I think there are times when ignorance can make you stay the course while rationality would have you quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is going to stay popular for a while...

"I have a high IQ" _click_

<comment><USER41> Also, it gives people behind computers the opportunity to opine on the intricacies of knife fights.

<comment><USER25> run away unless you have special training is solid

<comment><USER42> If you're confronted by guys with knives you're going to run away? It's generally safer to give them what they want and be done with it.

<comment><USER25> I put a detailed discussion of this in another post - if I'm getting robbed, I probably have some small bills in my pocket and more in my wallet along with stuff that can ID me. So I'll toss those small bills out and I'm going to bolt. Now, I am a damn fast runner, I'm big, trained in martial arts and in very good shape. If I don't see any way out then yeah I might just submit, but that puts me into a vulnerable position. If I toss some money out there, it's unlikely he's going to chase without grabbing it that gives me a few seconds lead and I'm probably faster than this guy in the first place, so by the time he reacts he has got $40 guaranteed and I'm at least a football field away. If he chases me and manages to catch up as I am getting tired, I'm going to do my very best to kill him. The vast likelihood is if I'm in a rough neighborhood I'm carrying a knife of my own, which he probably doesn't expect and I also carry one hand openers so when I feel I have an advantage I'll let him close get it into him and then take off running again. If no knife I'll go looking for a brick or a stick.

<comment><USER43> I'm glad I don't live where you do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FCC approves ATSC 3.0, a TV technology with better pictures but less privacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-television-technology/fcc-approves-tv-technology-that-gives-better-pictures-but-less-privacy-idUSKBN1DG2XF <comment><USER2> The whole notion of owning a TV is becoming ridiculous. The cost of ownership is simply not worth it. Fist, you have the cost of the screen itself. You buy a TV, spend lots of money on it, and then it simply spies on you. We've seen this already on Vizio and Samsung TVs already. This is another feather in the cap for this trend.

Then there is the cost of cable, which is absurdly expensive. To get all the channels you want, you end up spending a couple of hundred dollars per month.

Want to do the cord cutting route? Well that is trending to be even more expensive as each service charges about 10 dollars per month. That doesn't even account for live sports.

The TVs themselves seem to be going obsolete every two years. First it was HDTV, then 3DTV, then HDTV 4K. On the tech side it was LED, LCD, ULED, now OLED. Remember when your CRT TV lasted 10+ years?

Edit: Also they don't get updates after six months. Apps stop working as people have mentioned. But more importantly, they don't get security updates. So your Smart TV morphs into a Creep TV where hackers have their way with it to do their bidding.

Overall, it is easier to just not do the whole TV thing. You will save a ton of money and be much happier at the same time.

<comment><USER3> I purchased my Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV in 2007 for $3000 AUD. It's still going strong now. The only single thing I miss from it is a lack of HDMI-CEC support.

<comment><USER4> You don't WANT HDMI-CEC; it almost never works properly.

<comment><USER5> HDMI-CEC is great and works flawlessly if the equipment you have supports it, at least in my personal experience. On some older equipment, not all of the functions worked though. For example, my old TV could uses CEC for volume and power on but not power off. New TV does it all perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux One of the components (not yet finalized) of ATSC 3.0 is an entire web browser that runs as an overlay in front of the video [1]. Which itself supports LocalStorage, XHR, and all the goodies you've come to expect - and EME DRM, of course.

[1] [http://www.atsc.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/A344S34-230r1...](http://www.atsc.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/A344S34-230r1-CS-Interactive-Content.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard "the Holy > Grail" for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.

This doesn't tell us much about the "how". I assume how this works is that the TV set connects to your home network and phones home with information about what you're watching right now. If your TV set were to skip the part where it phones home, is it still possible to watch the show? Or do you have to divulge your location in order to get a key to decrypt the show? Will there be DRM preventing you from recording?

<comment><USER7> > connects to your home network

SoC hardware with LTE/CDMA/etc already exists. As soon as some "IoT" device manufacturer negotiates some sort of off-peak batch upload deal with the major wireless carriers, your TV will simply bypass your home network.

> do you have to divulge your location

In the late 90s[1], there was a brief attempt to enforce region locks with GPS.

[1] I'm not to sure about this date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is > turned off to send emergency alerts.

Uggh. I'd be very annoyed if, say, the TV turned itself on and woke my toddler from his daily nap because of something like an amber alert.

Honestly, stuff like this is part of why I'm still using an ancient CRT-style TV and haven't bothered replacing it yet. I think I prefer my TV "dumb."

<comment><USER9> Even the smartest tv gets obsolete really fast. I found chromecast to be wonderful. It's a dumb device, your phone is the smart one.

<comment><USER10> >It's a dumb device, your phone is the smart one.

No it's not, in the context of this article. It's just different owners. Instead of your TV and/or cable company, google gets the data. It's cheap and convenient, but no different privacy-wise.

<comment><USER11> Agreed.

I'm seeing a lot of outrage, especially on left leaning sites, at the direction the FCC is headed under the current administration.

But to me, it really just looks like a lot of the power that SV has amassed over the past 15 years is being returned to the more traditional media cartels and access providers.

To the little guy, it makes no difference - all our info belongs to some big corp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I fail to see the use case for street by street emergency or weather broadcasts. The weather forecast is unreliable enough at city level, let alone street level. And what emergencies would be so serious as to warrant turning on TVs on just my street or in my area? Seems like a thin veil for giving broadcasters more control over end user devices.

<comment><USER13> The National Weather Service offers localized weather down to the neighborhood level. My experience has been that it's pretty reliable as I live miles away from the weather station that gathers the official data for my city.

 _And what emergencies would be so serious as to warrant turning on TVs on just my street or in my area?_

I live very close to the evacuation zone for the recent Napa-Sonoma fires, close enough that we were on an evacuation alert: we didn't have to leave, but we had to be ready in case the situation worsened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What the article skipped over is that your TV will require an internet connection to watch broadcast channels. This proposal is terrible for freedom, consumer cost and privacy.

Also, it's a stupid reason to get every American to throw out their TV AGAIN (digital tv transition being first) to give the consumer electronics industry a revenue boost.

The industry has run out of features consumers will pay for (3-D tv, screen size, 4K, HDR) during a significant market maturity price erosion - taking 65" TVs from $2,500 down to $1,000 well equiped in only a few years. To reset the pricing scheme, they get the FCC to create a new mandatory feature so they can reset the pricing and sell millions of devices needlessly.

<comment><USER13> _it 's a stupid reason_

Free, over-the-air HDR 4K TV sounds like a _great_ reason. And where is it documented that an internet connection is required?

What's your alternative? As it stands now, if one wants 4K television, one has to get a cable or satellite connection, with all the user tracking that entails. If ATSC 3.0 really makes OTA UHD possible, then it's worth the cost of a converter box to implement it--no need to throw out TVs, come on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will > improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also > raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more > data about viewing habits.

I don't understand. The article talks about a new TV broadcast standard, ATSC 3.0. Most mobile phones and tablets do not include a TV tuner, so how is this going to improve quality on mobile phones and tablets?

<comment><USER16> It won't. No telco in their right mind is going to put ATSC 3.0 capability in their phones. The current ATSC 1.0 has a mobile standard and it went absolutely nowhere because of this same reason.

<comment><USER17> Some of the other digital TV standards support mobile device use, meaning that it is practical to implement it on a device that is changing locations during reception. ATSC is not, and is difficult enough to receive from a stationary receiver.

I don't see the new standard being very relevant anyway. The main use case for plain old ATSC is terrestrial broadcast. And now we're going to be pushing 4K over the air? I don't see that working out to well in practice.

The cable providers really want you to use their own box, and encrypt everything going over the wire, to make piracy harder. And at some point, it is going to be easier to just go pure data, rather than cram a bunch of 4K channels down the wire.

So who is really going to use ATSC 3.0 in the USA?

<comment><USER13> _And now we 're going to be pushing 4K over the air? I don't see that working out to well in practice._

ATSC 3.0 is rolling out as we speak in South Korea, in advance of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. I haven't seen any reports of how well it's working; as an enthusiastic antenna user, I'm dying to see how well it works over the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In fairness, that's the same data that Netflix, Youtube, and others have access to when we watch online. The broadcast system is just transitioning to more of a network model as well.

Not that I agree with this decision, but it's not a huge change in the state of affairs really.

<comment><USER12> But Netflix doesn't use their demographic data to shove ads down my throat. And, while they have the account holder address, they don't have precise location data on all the devices I use to watch - TVs are pretty static so will generally only be connecting from the account address.

<comment><USER19> Netflix can derive your location with network performance analysis and correlation with all of their network data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So many of the questions in this thread are "but how??" Folks, this is a Reuters article. It's not technical. If you want to know how it works read the standards:

[https://www.atsc.org/standards/atsc-3-0-standards/](https://www.atsc.org/standards/atsc-3-0-standards/)

Perhaps the standards themselves are worthy of a HN post, so folks can ask deeper questions on that thread.

</comment><comment><USER21> Compare me to _Don Quixote_ if you like, but this kind of crap is what makes clicking on that little magnet icon so damn satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER22> \---

The system uses precision broadcasting and targets emergency or weather alerts on a street-by-street basis. The system could allow broadcasters to wake up a receiver to broadcast emergency alerts. The alerts could include maps, storm tracks and evacuation routes.

The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard "the Holy Grail" for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.

\---

Another nail in the coffin of traditional broadcasting.

I find it amusing that these (evil) corporations are so brazen that they are not even coating their glee at these 1984-esque surveillance in the usual rosy corporate speak.

I do not know who FCC works for, but it's certainly not for the American people.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article just made me more confused instead of explaining what the technology is and how it works.

> would allow for more precise geolocating of television signals, ultra-high > definition picture quality and more interactive programming, like new > educational content for children and multiple angles of live sporting events

What?? What does multiple camera angels have anything to do with the signal quality? What type of educational content is possible that's not possible with current TVs? Don't current TVs already support 4k? So what type of picture quality is it talking about? What type of interactive programming is it capable of that's not possible with current TVs?

Someone please explain!

</comment><comment><USER24> This strikes me as an attempt by the broadcasting industry to get into that cool internet stuff the kids are all talking about. I doubt it really means anything. Most of this stuff will be ignored.

The ultimate problem for advertising supported broadcast media is and has been for some time the DVR/PVR. There is nothing preventing people from recording ATSC 3 to a hard disk so this ultimately changes nothing important for the industry.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's really cool. So you can detect if someone hasn't seen an advert for a couple of hours then remotely turn their TV on the next time their TV sees them and play the advert at max volume. Awesome.

<comment><USER26> I detect some sarcasm in your tone. But essentially I think you are right. We have seen similar development when W3C started mandating DRM for web content. Ad blockers can be quite effective when all the content is available to them. This probably won't be true for too long.

I guess the limitations of advertisement technology were seen as enough of a blocker that serious effort (and money) was spent on removing some of them.

There are, of course, some winners due to these changes. I wonder if this can be a net win for the society, though. Instinctively I would say that it won't be, but I'm not sure why I'd think so. Perhaps the historical examples from mass surveillance societies in the previous century give raise to some negative feelings.

<comment><USER27> > I wonder if this can be a net win for the society.

You don't have to be so coy about it. It's obviously not a win for anyone but the small set of people profiting from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Something left out in the article is ATSC 3.0 supports digital watermarking of the audio signal and video signal...

<comment><USER28> The watermark can encode the targeted geolocation, so that recordings can be traced back to an address?

<comment><USER23> Yup

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does a standard mean ? Other than connecting an antenna, does any signal directly reach a TV ? Isn't it all dominated by set top boxes anyway, which can do whatever they please ? Some TVs don't even have tuners any more.

</comment><comment><USER29> > _The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is > turned off to send emergency alerts._

Just what the world needs: the resurrection of Max Headroom.

</comment><comment><USER30> How does this play into cord cutting though? I haven't had "cable" television since 2005, and I haven't owned a TV ...well since then. I tried OTA with a Mac Mini for a bit, but it was just awful in general. So no TV.

<comment><USER31> Have you tried DirecTV Now? It's actually quite nice. My "cable box" is a Fire Stick. I can watch all the channels I subscribed to on my TV this way, on my laptop or phone. I pay $35 and they include HBO.

<comment><USER30> I haven't. Would I need a dish?

<comment><USER31> Nope. Pure streaming over the internet. Works on fire sticks, roku etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cut the cord works</comment>


Show HN: Cryptographically random strings with zero clicks - <AUTHOR> https://random.connorlanigan.com <comment><AUTHOR> Whenever I need random data for something (as a password, a token, a seed, a server-side secret...) and google for a generator, I always end up on random.org, entering the same configuration, clicking the same checkboxes and clicking the same button. This takes an unnecessary amount of time.

I built this website that uses secure defaults and immediately presents you with a string of random data generated locally in your browser. It uses the Web Crypto API [1] for obtaining strong randomness. It's running on Cloudflare to be as fast as possible.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_API)

<comment><USER2> You'd use a _website_ and a _web browser_ for generating random data for a _password_ or a _server-side secret_? What's wrong with "head -c 16 /dev/urandom | base64"? (Except that it assumes Linux.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I usually do for this is run the following command on shell:

        LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc [:alnum:] < /dev/urandom | head -c 20; echo

Works on both macOS and Linux. See [https://twitter.com/susam/status/1160420869862117377](https://twitter.com/susam/status/1160420869862117377) for a screenshot.</comment>


iPhone 5 – Learn marketing from today's most popular landing page - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kickofflabs.com/learn-more-dissect-the-iphone-5-landing-pages/

<comment><USER3> I'm not a marketing guy, so I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but shouldn't a call to action include an _action_? Something like (again, not a marketing guy): get yours today! If the iPhone 5 banner is considered a call to action by marketing people, the term doesn't seem that useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Complete bullshit. If Apple had put a shady HTML form it would have been the same. People in the east cost put their alarm clock at 3am, I don't think the design of the page made them change their decision

<comment><USER5> There's a reason they started putting their alarm clocks on; they were pulled in with marketing like this.

<comment><USER6> I think they were more pulled in by brand cachet than they were by this marketing specifically.

<comment><USER7> I think they were more pulled in my wanting the best phone out there as early as possible.

<comment><USER6> How can you make that statement with a straight face without realizing that you're purchasing pure marketing at this point?

Nobody's used it, reviewed it, torn it down, or broken it in yet. You're stating that it's "the best phone out there" purely on the value of the brand.

(That's not to say that it won't be, but I hope to point out that saying "it's the best phone out there" is ridiculous when there is literally no way to know that except for _the marketing that has been done around it_.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't they have sold out no matter what? I mean all they have to do is produce less devices than they have orders. It's not as if you can buy one today, or can you?

So wait one day, get 10 million orders or whatever, call Foxconn and order 9.9 million devices. Bingo, another headline for Apple.

<comment><USER9> Apple being sold out is not great, it's a failure of their supply chain. If Apple could, they would never be sold out (but they also would want to never have any stock). They want to make money after all. They certainly do not need to appease investors by lying about the demand they are getting.

(Though I maybe should add that the iPhone being initially sold out might be an inevitable failure of the supply chain. It's not like you can switch production on just like that and churn out new phones at full speed. There is some ramp-up. Add to that some pent-up demand, and iPhones being sold out quickly might be inevitable – though that does at least indicate that the new phone likely is no dud, beyond that there isn't much information in that.)

<comment><USER10> More headlines = more marketing = more iPhones sold.

Being (temporarily) sold out just adds to the mystique of _any_ device. Remember, people want what they can't have. Also think of the herd mentality - if millions of people are buying this, it must be good!

I don't think it is ever Apple's strategy to sell out, but there are reasons that this is good (as well as bad, like you say).

<comment><USER9> That's baloney. No marketing gain is wort it not being able to actually sell something, at lest if tons of people are crazy about what you are selling.

Yours is just a batshit insane conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER7> You're correct of course. Just folks projecting their irrational Apple hate. Naturally, no company wants to sell out of their product. Of course, no one considers that it's impossible to make an infinite number of iPhones - <USER2> and production capacity are the limiting factor.

But why stop to think for a second when you can fire off some nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great post and detailed analysis Josh.

Thomas - While the design/layout/marketing elements may not have had an effect on the loyal zealots setting their alarm clocks early, it certain did help convince those who were on the fence about the upgrade 9not saying it's right - I'm an Android/Linux user myself and will never buy into the heard mentality - but it keep making Apple money.

The key lesson here is what elements works well and how you can reapply them to other industries and products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for understanding the point of the post is to educate folks on how they could learn from best practices. They still had to execute on their marketing. If you compare their landing pages to the Samsung, Microsoft, or Nokia ones... it's no comparison.

<comment><USER12> This was a great examination. Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Visually the link is below, but the entire section and image is a link."

The only thing that will accomplish is inadvertent clicks. Are you going to sell something as expensive as an iPhone _because_ of an inadvertent click?

I get quite annoyed if I click somewhere to gain focus or something and is taken to another page because of it. I can't imagine it doing any good and cherry picking it as good design seems quite convoluted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mom and pop don't like hunting for links. Watch normal people browse the web. They try to click on anything they think will give them more information about what they want.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I watch them all the time. Nothing breaks their trust as much as an action they never even thought they initiated -> they barely dare to touch anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nope - this page could have been a MySpace or GeoCities page and they'd still have sold out.

<comment><USER15> [http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2...](http://wonder- tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=9&url=www.apple.com/iphone/)

I dunno...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. I'm going to have to use that tool more often. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazing how a couple of words in a headline can affect the discussion on the article. Read it as "Good analysis of Apple's iPhone 5 website marketing." Yes, they would have still sold out on day one if they'd had a page with just a "Buy Now" button, an "Under Construction" gif, and a "Netscape Now!" badge, but these marketing pages will be up for a year or so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone tests different titles. It's part of marketing.

I'll freely admit to:

1\. Writing a best practices post on a timely subject to grab more attention. "How to create a good landing page" wouldn't do nearly as well.

2\. Testing headlines to see what drives the most clicks. Although this one was my first try on Hacker News.

I'll bet over the next 6 months Apple changes the headlines on their landing pages as well.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Maybe just my opinion, but I don't think HN submissions should be used to test which headlines get more clicks. (Wouldn't that pretty much fall into the "Link Bait" bucket?) The HN Guidelines[1] has some pretty clear, simple text on submission titles. It mostly boils down to "use the original title... unless a few of the mentioned cases exist".

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You guys commenting seem to hate or be frustrated about online marketing.</comment>


Ask HN: Mysterious hacker news post - <AUTHOR> Just saw this post on HN and don't see someone associated with it. I normally see a username any ideas why this one does not have one?<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763172 <comment><USER2> That's a job ad.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

"The other kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down, then fall steadily, and only one should be on the front page at a time."

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just strange there is no user associated with it. Never saw this before so I was curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unsure why it is not visible in the HTML; the contributor is visible in the API response: [https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/16763172.json?pri...](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/16763172.json?print=pretty)

<comment><USER2> The post doesn't show up in the user's list of submissions [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=thedogeye](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=thedogeye) Those ads must be quite an exception (hack?) in the HN system.</comment></comment>


A more equitable statement of the jealous husbands puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://aperiodical.com/2016/11/a-more-equitable-statement-of-the-jealous-husbands-puzzle/ <comment><USER2> Don't make it a boat; make it an Uber and an audition? With only room for 2 passengers.</comment>


Searching the Sky for the Wobbles of Gravity - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151022-ligo-gravitational-waves-gabriela-gonzalez/ <comment><USER2> I hope they find something, but if not, there's a space mission planned for 2034 I'm looking forward to: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna)</comment>


If you think women in tech is a pipeline problem, pay closer attention (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996 <comment><USER2> Headline says it is not a pipeline problem and gives very few statistics about why it is not a pipeline problem. The articles DOES list problems in the workplace once women have a job.

I consider the pipeline to be college. When I studied electrical engineering in the late 90's the Circuits 1 class had 9 women out of 80 students. By circuits 2 there were just 3 women out of 90 students. (Circuits 1 is a weed out class so it goes from 3 classes of roughly 80 to 2 classes of about 90)

That seems like a pipeline problem to me.</comment>


Material Design: Why the Floating Action Button Is Bad UX Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/material-design-floating-action-button-bad-ux-design/ <comment><USER2> I also dislike the FAB. I already wrote about it in a previous comment, here's my major problem:

It is still the last place I look on the screen to perform an action. I look at the top first, then I check the hamburger menu and only then I realize it was BENEATH MY THUMB all along. I hold the phone with my right hand and my thumb naturally covers the FAB area.</comment>


Social Networking: The Future - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/05/social-networking-future/

<comment><USER2> _Once we're uber-connected and getting information online from people we've only met online we need to know more about the "authority" of the people we're following._

This comment was the most striking to me. His references to Klout, namesake, Quora, and HN imply that, for him, this is a central issue in the future of the web.

I think it's unclear what place "authority" has in the future.

Despite its personal problems Yelp has worked well because of it's democratic nature focusing on corroboration more than an individual's clout.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you enjoy programming? - <AUTHOR>

Why do you enjoy programming? Do you do anything in particular to make it fun? Do you ever feel useless, or that your little bit of help doesn't matter? If so, how do you counteract those feelings? <comment><USER2> Why do you enjoy programming?

The feeling that you could create something which has a sort of personality (program behavior), something that can evolve rapidly (next version, program collected more and more data), something that can reach millions of people in few seconds across the globe (hmmm... this depends on the type of program you wrote). All this is just amazing, there is no other creative field in the world which can have all these together. NOTE: For me programming is not about just 'coding', it is much more then that, it is a way of thinking, a way of creativity.

Do you do anything in particular to make it fun?

Keep learning. I just keep learning new stuff (programming languages, platforms etc). Almost 95% of worlds programmer build so called CRUD applications, which are your typical web/native apps which does these CRUD operations. This kind of programming is very very boring but that's what most programming jobs want you to do, unless you are very lucky to be working on some RnD project.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never feel useless, it's the exact opposite that makes me love programmaing. You have endless possibilities, you can do whatever you want, you just need a little of will power. I love keeping my brain active and I always try to learn something from everything I do. Also I love the users, I love the idea of being able to create something that people use every day and find useful/funny/nice. I think one of the things that give the biggest booster is the users feedback. Those few lines from a thankful user are worth a lot to me.

Anyway what I said might be also because I am in a different situation from you, from your post I suppose you are stuck in a company that makes you do the "code janitor" or something that seems not to add value. I can only suggest to try to find the something in what you do that gives you pleasure. I too work for a company but I enjoy every moment I work, each time a part of my code goes live and works I feel like I did a good job and I find a lot of gratification in it.</comment>


Quantify jobs across web based on your resume - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahasherpa.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I have used an algorithm to find me a job and now I am trying to make something that can help all the job-seekers like me in India so they can save their valuable time. Please do provide feedback</comment>


Thunder – Large-scale image  and time series analysis - <AUTHOR> http://thunder-project.org/ <comment><USER2> Be interesting to see whether some of these empty repos get populated: [https://github.com/thunder-project](https://github.com/thunder-project)</comment>


Megaupload Trial May Never Happen, Judge Says - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-trial-may-never-happen-judge-says-120420 <comment><USER3> From Kim's response [1]:

"This Mega takedown was possible because of corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood," he says. "Mega has become a re-election pawn."

The sad thing is, as flamboyant a character as he is, he's probably right.

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-lashes-out-against- corrup...](http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-lashes-out-against-corrupt-us- government-120420/)

<comment><USER4> I don't know about "re-election" pawn. But this whole thing is certainly a pawn in the game between popular media consumption and rights holders. I really can't see left or right taking a stand in favor of Mega's position in this.

<comment><USER3> I can quite easily see this as a move by the Obama DoJ to mollify the content industry after SOPA fell through, so they wouldn't follow through on their threat to not donate. Colour me jaded, but I can easily see him (or any recent US politician) doing that.

<comment><USER5> More than just conjecture, they openly threatened not to support the re- election campaign.

Procedural errors indicate to me that someone put a "rush" on the case and the results were sloppy.

<comment><USER6> The results were as intended, the business was destroyed. Bonus: the govt doesn't have to spend money on a trial, and risk an innocent verdict.

Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER7> This is far from ideal for the government.

It seems extremely likely the government could have proved that Megaupload was built on copyright infringement. But instead they're just going to come out discredited, making it harder for such actions to succeed in the future.

All that's happened here is that they've taken down one player among many, and their ability to get the rest is lessened. That's not what they wanted here.

<comment><USER8> On the contrary, one could easily overlook:

1\. the _intimidation factor_ of the US government willing and able to do anything to any company over "intellectual property", including foreign ones, even if it falls well outside the legal jurisidiction of _any_ state.

2\. forcing the hand of _foreign jurisidictions to expedite US government processes_ to carry out these types of activities on pain of economic issues, e.g. the infamous trade blacklists, or other on-going diplomatic relations.

3\. the _acquisition of assets_ and resources for the federal governments budget (this runs into billions every year that is siezed).

4\. _minimum total resource usage_ for highly effective results means that very little political or judicial capital risks being spent. Someone somewhere in government has likely benefitted greatly from this outcome or certainly will in future even just for the potential to recreate the same type of results.

5\. the _creation of precedent_ that causes jurisidictions formulating their own domestic rights and justice system around new technology to reconsider what is the norm or what is pragmatic based on global "standards" or actions. This is particularly strong pressure for English-speaking/Anglo countries.

All this without judicial oversight and no domestic political repurcussions because of the accepted plutocratic culture of the US.

If this had been the actions of China or Russia against a US company, e.g. against Google/Youtube, I wonder how people would have felt then...

TL;DR. One could say this is about as "ideal" as it gets: "we, the US government, can get you anytime, anywhere, for anything with little effort or reason - laws are irrelevant".

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, this has shown people that the Megaupload business model was very profitable (which was a surprise to many, certainly I didn't think it could be).

People who feel themselves sufficiently hidden from the US government, or just don't care, are going to come along and create a raft of similar services to fill the same space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I never quite understood how the government could have the power to completely shut down a business before a court had determined the business' practices to be illegal. It seems completely backward to me.

In other well known laysuits against major publicly traded companies, for example the anti-trust suit against Microsoft or AT&T, the government wasn't able to take any action against the company until a settlement or verdict had taken place.

Even in other torrent lawsuits, like the isohunt.com lawsuit, those sites weren't shut down even after being served the suit. In fact isohunt.com is still operational despite the lawsuit that was filed a number of years ago.

So I wonder under what legal authority the FBI operates to completely shut down an entire business without a court order or ruling?

<comment><USER11> USA has a reputation for trumped up charges: mentioning money laundering charge allows police to seize everything. There's no money to request lawyers. Judges in USA are known to do ex parte and default decisions in favour of plaintiffs. And a history of sovereign immunity which means no compensation because police can lie that they did it in good faith. There's no liability for police to lie in USA.

There's no justice in USA against government abuse except through some gun amendment I hear.

I'm not sure about NZ though. Join your Pirate Party to fight against the anti-Internet American government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since the sentence (taking down MU's business and confiscating all of their property and money) has already been carried out, I'm pretty sure the FBIAA doesn't care.

<comment><USER13> FBIAA might be one of the best, and most accurate, acronyms I have seen in some time

<comment><USER14> What exactly is it supposed to be an acronym for? MAFIAA at least has a clear meaning ("Music And Film Industry Association of America"), but FBIAA seems to only stand for "Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association", which doesn't have anything to do with copyrights.

<comment><USER15> I think it's an acronym portmanteau rather than straight up initialism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once you have looked behind the curtain of government wheeling and dealing at such multi-billion situations you tend to believe that what Kim Schmitz is telling might actually be the closest we get to the truth.

Now we should all think about how such a case would/will be handled in a few years time based on the changes to civil rights / Internet regulations / totalitarian powers currently in the pipeline across most western societies.

2015:

I guess you will not hear about it other that a few of those who lost their files and were not immediately constraint with gag orders will mentioning it on some low frequented boards. Sites like TorrentFreak will then immediately taken off the net / silenced by gag orders.

A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing in the moment and will eventually get better over time.

<comment><USER17> > A brave new world we are looking forward to - the .... are just practicing > in the moment and will eventually get better over time.

But of course, we don't care enough about all of that to bother using censorship-resistant technologies like Freenet or Tor hidden services because The Web is so much more efficient and convenient...

(Not trying to blame you -- I'm guilty of the same laziness myself.)

<comment><USER18> "Necessity is the mother of invention" -- paraphrase of Plato?

<comment><USER16> maybe more along the lines of "what can be done will be done"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From Kim's reply: ..."We have already been served a death sentence without trial and even if we are found 'not guilty' which we will, the damage can never be repaired,"...

That pretty much sums up what the US Gov intended to do from the start - <USER2> that they don't need SOPA or whatever. Hopefully, Megaupload can sue the US Gov and get some money out of them, although that's probably not going to happen...

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how many real criminals (murderers, etc.) are never prosecuted because of all these procedural errors.

<comment><USER21> Very few (although it does happen), because generally law enforcement takes a lot of time and great care to build a case. They may allow a drug gang to operate for months or years before busting them. This case seems rather rushed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So does this mean that all of the assets that were seized from Kim Dotcom were illegally seized (especially the assets in NZ)?

If so what does this mean for Kim Dotcom going forward? Does that mean he gets back all of the seized assets, and start rebuilding MU?

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems like another section of a businesses disaster recovery plan should be the one on how to resume operations after a government raid.

</comment><comment><USER24> Have they already wiped all of the Megaupload's HDDs?

<comment><USER25> Wouldn't that count as destruction of evidence? Even being the 'authorities', surely that would count as a strike against them.

<comment><USER26> The feds are trying to have the servers wiped and evidence destroyed. Dotcom has tried to stop this as he believes the evidence on the servers is crucial for his defense.

[http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-host-refuses-to-delete- us...](http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-host-refuses-to-delete-user-data- and-evidence-120410/)

The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.

[http://torrentfreak.com/us-megauploads-hosting-company- might...](http://torrentfreak.com/us-megauploads-hosting-company-might-be- sued-next-120415/)

<comment><USER27> > The government's reaction to server host Carpathia refusing to destroy all > the evidence that Dotcom claims exonerates him is to announce that they are > considering filing criminal indictments against Carpathia.

That is absolutely disgusting.

Let me get this straight - their logic is 'These guys did something illegal, and you have evidence that they didn't commit the crime in your possession. You need to destroy the evidence, because we're planning on charging you as an accomplice to that same crime.'

...I just don't even know where to begin.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design Patterns 15 years later: Interview with GoF - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1404056

<comment><USER2> Despite the flak design patterns get these days in some circles, these guys seem eminently reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out Erich's comments at the end:

> I'm in favor of dropping Singleton. Its use is almost always a design smell.

YES.

> Factory Method would be generalized to Factory.

Yes.

> The new members are: Null Object, Type Object, Dependency Injection, and > Extension Object/Interface

Somebody kill the term "Dependency Injection" - we have never needed an obfuscation of "late binding".

<comment><USER4> >Somebody kill the term "Dependency Injection" ...

Agree enough to take arms and post. Dependency Injection is really just a marketing term; programming via interfaces is mostly what the DI camp is after, and then selling tools/framework support to automagically "inject" implementations. In my opinion, esp. in the Java world, setter injection is code smell.

<comment><USER5> Who sells dependency injection tools these days?

I agree that setter injection is bad but unfortunately some Java libraries/frameworks/guidelines have a rule that enforce the developer to create a class with default constructor thus preventing constructor injection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They even give a startup idea - some kind of social network for pattern recomendation (design guidelines?):

"people that found this pattern useful have also liked this one..."

<comment><USER7> "4 girls in your area want to discuss Chain-of-responsibility." haha</comment></comment>


'We present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine' - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TYT-3WRC342-2N&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f868f1b89cd1a15b056abecaadcf7fb4

<comment><USER2> This paper is an academic paper, which, in our current system, means that to read it, we have to pay for it.

I would venture to say that all of our institutions of higher learning receive federal and state money. Each of them, as well, has an active program in place to seek out charitable contributions from alumni and other likely victims. "Help us teach the world", they tell us, as their hand reaches out for our checkbook.

There is a tradition in science of collaboration between institutions. Even countries that have political tension between them embrace, or at least succumb to, the notion of the importance of this collaboration.

Yet here we are, being asked to buy an 11 year old paper. Indeed, there's hardly an interesting paper written by anybody in academia that is easily available. Sure, you may be able to hunt it down, or go to the authors website, or pirate a copy. Why is this necessary? Why is this information sold to the world in small, hard to search doses, rather than being made freely available? Can you imagine the disservice done to mankind by this silly practice? How many inventions have not been invented? How many discoveries have not been made? This is not a drug company that's invested billions in R&D, and so deserves the fruits of it's labor. This is work by our young PhD students, funded using tax and charity money, in fields that claim to place a high value on the free exchange of knowledge, and we're still buying 11 year old academic papers.

I want academic papers to be free and available and searchable. I've already paid for them.

<comment><USER3> These days, if you get NIH funding, then any publications have to be freely available within 12 months of publication:

<http://publicaccess.nih.gov/>

It doesn't take care of these older studies, or work done without NIH funding... but its a step.

And, scholar.google.com is as good of a free, full text search tool as there is. Most journal sites give the googlebot open access to index their content, so it is a great way to find things instead of pubmed, which only searches abstracts.

<comment><USER4> _And, scholar.google.com is as good of a free, full text search tool as there is. Most journal sites give the googlebot open access to index their content, so it is a great way to find things instead of pubmed, which only searches abstracts._

That's called web spamming or spamdexing via cloaking. I find it incredibly frustrating because they point you to what you want, but then you're often stuck. Do you really want to pay $30-$50 for a paper that may or may not have what you want? And Google is complicit in this, it's not just the publishers. They know it's advertising, so they charge them for it, but the results are not presented as paid ads.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing>

[http://www.webreference.com/authoring/search_engines/cloakin...](http://www.webreference.com/authoring/search_engines/cloaking/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The paper for free, instead of $31.50:

<http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>

<comment><USER6> Or, 255 versions of it, including the original PDF: [http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=7...](http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=726238533241861127)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is the real paper:

<http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>

Elsevier will charge $31.50 to see the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> There this website I found that maintains a piece of history

<http://backrub.c63.be>

Those guys have a year-wise page. Enjoy history!

And the same paper is here too <http://backrub.c63.be/May1998/anatomy.htm>

P.S: you get "foo" when you visit <http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/> wondering where's the "bar"

</comment><comment><USER9> There have already been links here to the free html paper, but if you're more into PDFs, it's also available for free at <http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER10> I saw this in my feed reader... 11 years ago ;)

<comment><USER11> Yes, but until it reaches the famed Hacker News its nothing!</comment></comment>