Jeopardy Champion Ken Jennings Q&A about IBM Watson - <AUTHOR> http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken-jennings.html?hpid=talkbox1 <comment><USER2> I was actually surprised at how funny he is - many times I find the personality type that supports being so good at that type of thing tends to be lacking in social skills (broad generalization of course) but he comes off as humble, personable and funny. His answer to the _Now do you know how people felt when they were competing against you?_ question was especially interesting to me.

<comment><USER3> Ken is super-great. He was a fun and friendly guy when I met him at a book signing. I've become a regular reader of his blog, where he shares random trivia and his love of cinema, hipster bands and the 1980's era of Games Magazine.

And if you noticed he's a computer programmer and you're wondering, the answer is emacs.

<comment><USER4> Of course it's emacs. He can actually remember all of the commands, functions, variables, and key bindings.

(Before people get their flamethrowers out, I spend more time in emacs than any other piece of software I own.)

<comment><USER5> And the rest of your time in a text editor, right?

<comment><USER4> I spend so much time in it looking for the "optimal" way to do what I'm trying to do. I know there's a command for it somewhere!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love how he handles the, almost guaranteed, defeat with great grace and humor. For comparison, Kasparov was in tears. Not the same scenario of course, but I truly admire Kennings' attitude and acknowledgment of IBM's (and humanity's) accomplishments exemplified by Watson.

<comment><USER6> I've never heard of Kasparov actually crying after losing to Deep Blue. Reference?

<comment><USER7> I don't know about tears, as such, but the NOVA documentary about Watson included a video clip from the end of the famous Kasparov-Deep Blue game. It showed him angrily storming away from the table after being beaten; the way the video was cut, in combination with the narration, gave the impression that he was something of a sore loser. Note, however, that it was a very short clip, and there was probably a lot of context that didn't come through.

<comment><USER8> Maybe he was angry because he felt like he wasn't performing at the top of his game, and that if he did perform at the top of his game, he might have won. I'd feel pretty angry if that were the case.

<comment><USER9> Sure. But that's the point of commending someone for handling loss with grace and humor: it's contrary to their immediate emotion.

<comment><USER8> True, but it's my understanding that he asked for, and was denied, a rematch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> """I AM PLAYING A PRIME-TIME GAME SHOW AGAINST A SUPER-ADVANCED ROBOT! This is the coolest thing I will every do in my life by a factor of a million. The future is here."""

My kids think I'm a little weird because I think this battle is so cool (I think the more you understand about the implementation, the cooler this is), but this statement pretty much sums it up.

<comment><USER10> I suspect you meant the word 'ever' not 'every' in your quote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ken Jennings is _FUNNY_.

        IBM: "There's a lot of you in Watson"
        Ken: "If it goes amuck and kills humanity and stuff so sorry lolz my bad!"

        Chat participant: "I read your first in practically a day, I loved it."
        Ken: "I'd like to thank my mom for taking part in the chat!"

<comment><USER12> Q: "There was an article in the Post the other day about trivia now being trivial because of the ability to look up everything in an instant..."

A: "...in a not-too-distant future where nobody knows their state capitals anymore, maybe trivia geeks will be revered for their even more fantastical- seeming abilities! We will be like gods to you, carried on litters to your feasts."

<comment><USER13> Or this one:

"Big congrats to @IBMWatson & the amazing team behind its Jeopardy success. Watson is the real deal. Now: rematch on Dancing with the Stars!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did you know it took 4 hours to film the episodes because Watson kept crashing? Seriously.

<http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/02/16/nova_610x363.png>

<comment><USER15> According to cnet[1]: "Correction at 12:04 p.m.: After this story was published, we heard from PBS producer Michael Bicks that it was not, in fact, Watson that crashed during the show's taping. He would like to make clear the following: "I missblogged last night--It was not Watson, but the system that was the interface between Watson and the Jeopardy computer, completely separate from Watson, that crashed during the taping."

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20032244-71.html#ixzz1EAdT...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20032244-71.html#ixzz1EAdTWjzp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's unfair that Watson is allowed to basically use it's robotic reaction to time ring in instantly when the light turns on, but all audio and video daily doubles are avoided because IBM didn't bother to add audio and video inputs.

If the show is catering to Watson's shortcomings, why couldn't they cater to human reaction time shortcomings?

Edit: punctuation

<comment><USER8> I don't think your understanding of the situation is accurate: [http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken- jennings.html#qu...](http://live.washingtonpost.com/jeopardy-ken- jennings.html#question-28)

<comment><USER16> _Watson can't do this: it only buzzes once it has an answer in mind and a sufficiently high confidence interval._

Well, they could have programmed it any way they wanted to. It would have been smarter just buzz in right away given that they knew it would be right most of the time.

Regardless, Watson dominated because it was confident about an answer most of the time before the light turned on. If a human also wants to buzz in right when the light turns on, he or she will always be beaten by Watson. So, the game again boils down to who buzzes in first, regardless of confidence.

<comment><USER8> I must have misread your original post - reading it again it makes complete sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Q: I have already read plenty of doomsday reports for the blue-collar workforce that this technology could replace customer service representatives, in-patient counseling, bank tellers, cashiers, etc. Do you think Watson could replace Alex Trebek?_

I'm starting to wonder what Watson could do with the database of Stack Overflow.

<comment><USER18> _Enter CLIPPY_

It looks like you're writing an algorithm that is O(N^2)! Would you like me to optimize it? Let me take a screenshot so Jon Skeet can laugh at you. _click_

 _PROGRAMMER frantically presses CLIPPY's close button_

<comment><USER17> I think Watson would kick Clippy's *ss.

<comment><USER19> I think a broken Etch-a-Sketch would kick Clippy's arse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      Three Words
      Industrial Strength Magnets.

Priceless.

The guy's pretty intelligent (duh) and funny. Fortunately, he seems to be accepting the challenge quite well.

Last thing we need after such an AI breakthrough is someone complaining about the fairness of the game.

<comment><USER21> Ken's answer was hillarious

"They give Brad and me bottled water during every commercial break. I think you can see where this is going if the machine starts to build a big lead."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm more interested in a Q&A with Watson about Ken Jennings

<comment><USER23> It'll probably read Ken's wikipedia page out loud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "But I wouldn't call this unfair...precise timing just happens to be one thing computers are better at than we humans. It's not like I think Watson should try buzzing in more erratically just to give homo sapiens a chance."

Wouldn't it be better to build a distribution of champion level response times and have Watson draw randomly from that distribution? That would seem more fair.

<comment><USER25> The first rule of competitive game playing is that anything in the rules is... game.

Illustrating that the computer has the advantage over humans is the entire point. Competitive game play is not about 'fair,' in fact, the best players specifically try to make the game as unfair as possible, within the rules of the game.

<comment><USER26> But the rules have already been bent to help Watson in areas where it's weak:

• receives question (and answers) as coded text, rather than having to sight- read or listen to them

• no audio/video clues

• no categories that require an extra Trebek-explanation

It may even be receiving a direct signal when it's OK to ring in, rather than assessing Trebek's cadence and the same light-indicator as the human contestants rely upon.

So other 'balancing' changes shouldn't be out of the question.

I particularly like the idea that the penalty for a moment-too-early buzzing could be eliminated, and/or treating all buzzes in a small window around the traditional earliest-allowed moment as simultaneous. That still rewards quickness, without heavily advantaging the computer's ability to perfectly synchronize with the buzzing-period.

Once two buzzes are considered simultaneous, the contestant chosen to answer could rotate in round-robin fashion, or (for maximum drama) be the one furthest behind.

<comment><USER27> AFAIK, Watson was just using the light signal to decide when to start buzzing in. Just the light, ignoring when Trebek was going to finish saying something.

Presumably a human could consistently beat Watson to the buzzer by predicting when the light would go on.

<comment><USER26> Not sure about 'consistently', though trying to predict the light seems a reasonable strategy to attempt.

There's a lock-out that applies if you buzz too early, and the variance of the 'beats' between Trebek's finish and the light, if that's a human-mediated process, may be far larger than Watson's light-fired reaction time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interestingly, Ken Jennings says about Watson what most people say about ordinary players:

       Watson sometimes takes some time to get acclimated to a category, so starting at the bottom gives me a chance to rack up some money before it gets confident.  In theory!

Supposedly that was Mr. Jennings' reasoning for jumping around during his streak, that the other players didn't have quite as long a time as him to consider the category.

Not sure how tongue in cheek that remark was, though.

<comment><USER29> I guess the difference is, Watson can easily retain the learning that is built up through a category, even if he hops around the board the entire round. For humans, the context switch is a lot more costly and a category change can catch you by surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A lot of this advantage is from correctly hitting the buzzer in time. When my college roommate was on the show, he said very often the trick was not buzzing in early and getting locked out. It was apparent that most contestants knew the correct answer for most questions. I imagine Watson would not have buzzer jitters.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great stuff. "An away game for humanity." Worth the read!

</comment><comment><USER32> Slightly off-topic: Is there anyway Watson could be used to fix Google's search results? /s

</comment><comment><USER33> Ken Jennings is cool. He's a pretty funny guy, too.

</comment><comment><USER34> To provide a better challenge for both the humans and the machine, you should be able to buzz in as soon as the question is visible. Watson no doubt is doing most of the work in the time it takes the humans to load up the question into their mind.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wait a second, did anyone else catch this?:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Quote: THE OUTCOME

My understanding is that the shows are taped and you obviously know the outcome. You made the recent comment on MSNBC that in order to win you had to play and bet recklessly. Do humans have an advantage in terms of betting (game theory) Your comment seems to be a tell that a human won, any guidance appreciated. – February 15, 2011 10:59 AM Permalink

A. KEN JENNINGS : I would say that Watson has the wagering edge--like you say, it's all game theory and math, and even a cheap PC is pretty good at doing math at high speeds. That said, a human player might be more willing to take risks that Watson is too smart to try. In the practice games I saw, betting big on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy seemed like the only way to cancel out Watson's big buzzer advantage.

* * * *

HE DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION! Is this confirmation that Ken Jennings wins?</comment>


Leap - <AUTHOR> http://leapmotion.com/

<comment><USER2> Please, for the love of Jef Raskin and Henry Dreyfuss and Don Norman and all that is human factors, no.

The film version of Minority Report was _not_ a model for practical or usable interface design. Millions of years of evolution have built our brains and bodies for interacting with things that provide physical feedback when we touch them. Waving a pencil in the air, "manipulating" an invisible item and looking for visual feedback from a screen, these are not good experiences. Even if you discount the "gorilla arm syndrome" that StavrosK quite rightly points out here, the fatigue of trying to perform fine and accurate motion without physical stimuli for your hands and fingers to respond to is significant.

I'm sorry to be a negative voice in the face of innovation, but this really does feel like a technology in search of a problem. What worries me greatly is that it has a remarkably high "cool factor" that would be excellent in short demos, and could be easily pitched to companies looking for a flashy feature to get a leg up on the competition. We were saddled with some dubious decisions at the dawn of the GUI age, and we're just starting to lose them as we enter the Direct Manipulation age of interfaces. Please don't let this concept of feedback-free hand gestures become a paradigm that we're stuck with in the future.

<comment><USER3> As an embodied cognition guy, I disagree here pretty strongly. Gestures are a powerful form of communication - consider deaf signers, scuba divers, even in time sensitive operations like military and sports. Gestures likely have a deeper evolutionary history than spoken language too. They are intuitive. Babies mimic long before they speak or manipulate.

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought of before.

The usual approach to a 3D gestural interface is the kind of thing that's shown in the video for Leap—writing in the air, using mimed actions in space to represent manipulation of objects on a 2D screen, et cetera.

Gestures as an abstraction, like sign language or even the everyday hand gestures we use like flipping the bird, the "A-OK" sign, and such make a lot more sense. If you move away from the idea of using hand waving as a stand-in for direct manipulation of objects, and look at gestures as a form of communication, it's a whole different ball game.

Thanks for that. I still look at the demo video for Leap with fear and loathing, but using that same hardware for a communicative gesture system like you suggest is exciting indeed. Now I'm going to be distracted all day thinking about ways to incorporate hand signs into a UI.

<comment><USER3> The big question for me is whether gestures began as a proto-language. Consider mimicry and the use of tools in social learning. That's animal cognition too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's too much focus here on the assumption that this will be used as a full-time computing input device. I don't think anyone is realistically advocating banishment of all keyboard/mice to the netherworld.

Let's be more creative than that. Think about using it as an alternate input in spaces that a physical keyboard/mouse isn't appropriate, and also 'short term computing'.

Will this replace input on your workstation? I doubt it- but what about a large map that's installed in a public place? What about some sort of restroom or medical computing device where you'd rather not touch the surface that someone else just touched? You're not going to sit there 12 hours a day. You're going to pull up the map in the hospital and zoom/pan around on it. Why do we need another surface to clean? And in 15 seconds- you're done. No gorilla arm syndrome, no pain, and no real learning curve.

<comment><USER5> Ultimately no this will not replace the keyboard and mouse but these guys seem to think it will. Check out the headline on the _about_ page:

> Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, I remember seeing a mouse demoed in the mid eighties and the fellow at the demo explaining that you'd never need a keyboard again. He then proceeded to write a short sentence by using the mouse to click on letters on the screen.

I think that every new HID comes with a marketer promising to get rid of your keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever I see something like this, I immediately think of gorilla arm syndrome. There's a reason I was saying they will never become widespread when all my friends were screaming about Minority Report-style interfaces (ever since Minority Report).

<comment><USER8> You are implying hand waving all around with such use case.

I, for instance, imagine it as replacement for trackpad - I type happily on my keyboard, and I just do some slight gestures for scrolling, switching, closing, minimizing and pointing. And all while keeping my hands close to home row. It's even in similar form factor as trackpads!

I don't know why everyone thinks it will be like signaling on an airport or doing any strenous activity at all.

It's a very delicate device for very delicate input.

And that's all not counting cases where wide space hand usage would be extremely useful (3D modelling, directing a virtual orchestra, interfacing with kiosks...)

<comment><USER9> Why is it more difficult to do those gestures on the trackpad? The trackpad is closer to your keyboard and it is very quick to switch between the two.

<comment><USER8> No. Trackpad device may be close to keyboard, but Leap is covering your entire working space. I.e. keyboard actually may be completely unplugged and Leap could detect what are you typing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002418>

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently learning Blender. It's an open source 3D-modeling program with one of the most non-intuitive GUIs ever created. It's like the Vim/Emacs of 3D-creation. Being able to just grab a 3D-object with your hands and kneed it to the shape you want would be freakishly amazing.

</comment><comment><USER12> More than one comment below mentioned the use of this device for 3D modelling. There are certainly scenarios when an artist could use LeapMotion, like sculpting and painting, but the actual modelling part is heavily keyboard- supported.

I image you'd need both hands to replace two mouse buttons and a scroller, and to me that seems to break the deal.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems developers can candidate for a _free_ Leap+SDK if they like your project idea and think you can deliver.

>How can I get a free developer kit?

>We're distributing thousands of kits to qualified developers, [...] register to get the SDK and a free Leap device first, and then wow us.

Apply here: <https://live.leapmotion.com/developers.html>

I like the small size and reasonable price. Might be cool as a 3rd input device, or for specialized terminals.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard.

This single line is enough to help me see through their flawed assumptions. The keyboard and mice aren't going away anytime soon, just because these guys have found a way to integrate gestures with computers. I personally hate the Applesque marketing promising users to 'Own the future'. Gesture technology has been here for long and I don't see it being the future by replacing the mouse and the keyboard. Think about developers like us...no developer would find it useful, because we need to code _efficiently_ , which is and never will be possible with gesture technology.

So, from a developer's perspective, this is something intended to be too cool, but fails to understand the basic underlying principle of the purpose of a keyboard and a mouse. Maybe, this would appeal to ultra Hi-Fi executives who want to flaunt to the world a new way of using their Powerpoint slideshows, but not the common man/developer who owns an average computer (Something like a c2d).

I was honestly expecting this to have some features like the Kinect, which developers have hacked to use it as a motion-capture system, especially for use in creating Animated movies (which is awesome because a standard decent mo-cap setup will cost you atleast $5k). This gadget is unfortunately too basic and solves a very small problem that no one really cares about, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4004420>

<comment><USER16> I don't know why but reposting seems to happen a lot on HackerNews. It's not the fact that they get reposted that's bugging me but the fact that the same people upvote them. Why would you still upvote something if you know you've seen it before on HN? It eludes me.

<comment><USER17> Probably because they haven't seen it before. This is the first time I've see this posted.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't really say that it _bothers_ me. I posted the link to the above discussion because I think if someone comes to the comment section they might be interested in it.

But it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick HN search before posting a new submission.

<comment><USER18>
      > ... it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick
      > HN search before posting a new submission.

Won't happen. I've been saying it literally for years, and I can tell you now, it won't happen.

I implemented the first-phase of a semi-automated duplicate detector to help people find previous submissions, and I got hate mail for it. Some people are actively against duplicate detection.

<comment><USER19> Plus dupe detection is trivial to defeat. Basically, the current set-up works in favor of people gaming it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think anybody, including Leap, thinks the keyboard and mouse are going anywhere. Also, this isn't minority report. If leap can deliver on the sensitivity of the input, then small, precise gestures can be made without moving your hands from the keyboard. That makes it useful in cases where switching from the keyboard to a mouse isn't fast enough for my taste.

I can envision opening certain applications with a gesture (save you from typing the name into quicksilver or finding and double clicking on the icon). Tasks that you repeat over and over could be assigned to a gesture with great effect, like swiping a finger left and right to change windows.

3D editing could be interesting, where you move an invisible object in 3 dimensions with your hand. Anybody who's done 3d modeling or game development in unity can attest that a mouse and keyboard are limited in 3 dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm. I feel like I'm in _that other news site_ with all the reposts.

<comment><USER22> I would imagine the number of people accessing the site from different timezones is likely to be the reason for it, an article can quite rapidly disappear from the front page before someones had the chance to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> First time I've seen this. Obviously the first time a lot of other people have seen it too, hence it making it all the way to front page.

Anyhoot, I can't deny it, this is very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think this has great potential for use in conjunction with wearable computing such as Google Glass. I'm not sure how the current interface for Glass works, but I imagine it's based on voice input and possibly some buttons on the unit itself.

Imagine wearing a smaller Leap controller on your wrist - you would be able to use gestures to control the Glass and mostly likely interact much more intuitively with your surroundings as seen through Glass.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can anybody explain how this works, ie: the technology behind it? The page itself doesn't disclose much more than that it uses some kind of secret algorithms to track hands and fingers, but I'd be interested in what kind of sensors and processing are used, and how such a small box can track 3 degrees of freedom so accurately. How can this work so well compared to the crude tracking that Kinect does with 3 cameras and a laser projector?

</comment><comment><USER26> I one day hope to be able to close an application on my computer by showing it my middle finger. It would make ragequits much more satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder what the constraints on the background are? If it's not too fussy, then hang one of these around your neck and hook it up to an Oculus RIFT VR.

Immersive VR + hand-tracking == ????

<comment><USER28> 1\. Immersive VR 2\. Hand Tracking 3\. Profit.

You've solved it! Congrats!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can imagine so many possibilities for this technology, but, please don't assume, people will write in space in the future, its just not happening :)

</comment><comment><USER30> So... does it run Android?</comment>


Startup Myth Busting: Marc Andreessen and Steve Blank Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtsonconsumerweb.com/startup-myth-busting-marc-andreessen-and-steve-blank-edition/

<comment><USER2> Sane advice but what myth is being busted here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Now is the only time to start your own company.

<comment><USER3> And that the current crop of plugged-in youngins are the only ones that can do it. An interesting role reversal from when PG first started writing his essays - that young people needed to apprentice at larger boring companies first and that older folks made for more experienced entrepreneurs.

In the end, no one else can tell you when you're ready to make the leap. As a 30-something, one thing I've gained solace from is that I'm not the only one that had the entrepreneurial lightbulb go on after my 20's, like Jessica writes here:

" _I spent 13 years in corporate America, mostly because I didn't understand what my other options were. I was hypnotized by the security of an established, respected company._ "

[http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/07/why-i-do- yc.htm...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/07/why-i-do-yc.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Galactic Algorithms (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/galactic-algorithms/ <comment><USER3> In lay terms, an example of a galactic algorithm is one which has better big O complexity than algorithms currently in use, but where the crossover point of better performance than the status quo requires an incredibly large N - <USER2> large that we can't conceive any practical problem where this algorithm will perform better.

For example, you may need an N larger than the number of stars in the universe. Hence the term "galactic". I've seen another one that requires an N larger than the number of atoms in the universe.

</comment><comment><USER4> A somewhat famous, more recent example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280)

</comment><comment><USER5> The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems [1]

An algorithm M is described that solves any well-defined problem p as quickly as the fastest algorithm computing a solution to p, save for a factor of 5 and low-order additive terms.

(The constants in the "low order" terms are... large. Basically this is a delightful reductio of asymptotic analysis)

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0206022)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the article: "A galactic algorithm is an algorithm that is wonderful in its asymptotic behavior, but is never used to actual compute anything."

<comment><USER7> Yes. Theoretically the algorithm is tractable, but the exponent is so large that it wouldn't be practical to run it in a real environment.

<comment><USER8> According to the article, the algorithm does not need to have a polynomial bound to be classified as "galactic".

<comment><USER7> It is mentioned a couple times explicitly, but I think most of the readers for this blog would know that the border line for tractable is polynomial growth. Still, it is an interesting observation, worth investigating.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz: A week later & still more questions then answers - <AUTHOR> http://themoderatevoice.com/173889/aaron-swartz-a-week-later-and-still-more-questions-than-answers/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Aaron's legacy will be following a path he seemed to predict in his blog "legacy...trying to do things that change the system instead of following it". This isn't anymore about the details of what Aaron did or didn't do in his lifetime, but instead what should be done to change the systems that his actions helped highlight needing an overhaul.

Like prosecutorial overreach (not just about Aaron's but also the many other lesser known souls caught in it). And changes to CFAA & access to academic writings to be shared with the world etc.

To be honest these weren't on my radar until Aaron died, but since then, the more I've read on the subject and on his life & blog (as he said let curiosity lead you), I am willing to take a stand & fight for reform.

Gotta say his writing is insightful, and as in this example, kind of prophetic (I think). I'm glad it will be around on the web for years to come. <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/legacy></comment>


Why I stopped reading HN - <AUTHOR> http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-i-stopped-reading-hn/ <comment><USER3> _I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one's own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one's time that exists._

Very interesting insight. If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time. And I don't mean that in a philosophical or political sense. It applies to everything -- coding, marketing, time management. If you spend 3 hours on HN today and leave with basically the same opinions, habits, and immediately useful pieces of knowledge that you started with? Not good for you.

HN has always discouraged deeply nested discussions, seeing them as just so much noise. I've always thought that was whacked. Yes, many times you are in a flame war and nothing is accomplished, but the entire point of interacting with other people is to _learn_. So you'd think that a long conversation about, I dunno, pointer arithmetic, would have a transformative effect on both the participants and the community. I think the issue here is whether you view users as intelligent folks who are trying to understand each other, or cranks and trolls who solely exist to get some emotional thrill from flaming (yes, Gresham's Law comes into play here, but everything is a trade-off)

As it is, what's happened is this kind of lightweight, superficial herd mentality, with folks striking out fairly deep responses and then nothing ever gets settled. Lots of generalizations and high-level talk, nothing past an initial exchange or three. I've even questioned some longtime members about various topics and was told "I'm not posting to discuss, I'm posting to cut you off" more or less.

Once I realized that HN was idle geek chitchat and not the watercooler for entrepreneurs I wanted it to be, it changed my opinion of the place. I still like it, no place like it, but it also has this terrible time-wasting underbelly that we rarely talk about enough.

<comment><USER4> _If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time._

As written, this is a dangerously solipsistic statement. Transforming your mind, body, knowledge, opinions and philosophy is indeed helpful, but it is much less than half the problem: Unless you are content to live and die as a hermit, you must also seek to transform the world, even if it's just the world in your immediate vicinity.

Learning is valuable, but teaching is just as valuable, if not more so.

Teaching is hard, though. You have to do it in tiny pieces, applied one drop at a time over weeks, months, and years. One of the hardest things to learn is not to lecture. You think -- especially if you have spent years in school -- that you can just tie someone down and tell them the truth over and over until they get it, but it doesn't work that way in real life. Rather, it is both ineffective and rude to grab a piece of someone's attention and then attempt to deliver a big lecture. In face-to-face interaction, people deploy social signals to discourage this; on the web we must take more obvious measures, such as designing venues like HN where lecturing feels awkward and is therefore discouraged.

But if you want to read incredibly long-form back-and-forth discussions that go on for pages the rest of the Internet is right there, one click away.

<comment><USER5> _As written, this is a dangerously solipsistic statement._

Dangerously self-referential statement. As written, of course.

<comment><USER6> well, I learned a new word today

<comment><USER4> And I have learned something too: I must never use this word again, since apparently I have yet to master all its overtones. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds to me like the reasons he stopped reading HN were:

1) He couldn't stop himself from posting. He had to comment on things even when he had nothing to add. He even admits to commenting solely to gain karma.

2) He couldn't stop himself from reading the things he found pointless. All the flame wars, the arguments, etc.

Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it.

Learn some self-control.

That, or tell me what the new best tech-news site is. I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment.

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I write a comment, but writing makes you think more clearly about the subject, and so I realize it is not very insightful.

Then I discard it and feel very proud for saving everyone's time.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious how many people started replying to you but ended up discarding it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the first time I remember having argument on HN from which I learned nothing-- one of those nasty, legalistic types of arguments where the other guy is definitely _not_ collaborating with you in a search for truth-- was when the site was about a year old. So it is not a new phenomenon. You just have to sense when a conversation is going down that sort of rathole, and not get drawn into it.

I still sometimes get drawn in, but not as easily as I was before I'd developed any resistance. As recently as a few years ago, I could still be fooled by deliberate trolls. Now I'm mostly only fooled by de facto ones.

<comment><USER11> I would wager learning nothing is a trait of individuals and not settings.

<comment><USER12> I think you're right. You learn something every time. But it may not be the kind of thing you're out to learn.

As pg writes he learned not to be part of such arguments. Although, an important lesson, I'm sure that's pg actually wanted to learn something more pertinent to the argument (that's why he joined in the argument in the first place).

When we don't get to learn what we were seeking to learn, we feel disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is 'drewcrawford. Reading ~10 pages of the last 60 days of his comments, I'm not seeing the unproductive arguments he's referring to. It's too bad; he's an interesting guy: lives in OKC, went to WWDC, has opinions about crypto. Maybe a bit too willing to invest himself in discussions that HN doesn't do well (politics, social justice).

<comment><USER14> To be fair, politics/social justice discussions seem to turn poisonous _everywhere_ on the web and they probably produce a steady stream of people saying "I'm not posting there again".

<comment><USER15> Which is precisely why they are largely discouraged here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The thing I love about HN are the comments from domain-experts - e.g. tptacek on security, grellas posts on law or a direct response from a founder/creator. These kind of comments always seem to be very insightful. I don't value general discussions that much and I don't think HN is a very good medium for discussions.

<comment><USER17> I think it might be better to ignore the roles of an expert and evaluate the comments by themselves. If the comments are insightful, they can stand on their own. Evaluating the comments by themselves help to develop critical thinking and avoid being spoonfed by others.

<comment><USER16> Arguments from authority are a fallacy and I am not saying that I trust blindly someone just because they are an expert. I am just stating that domain experts on HN generally have some really insightful comments :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I would like to see get addressed is how a popular sentiment can get upvoted so much. I feel that this undermines the importance of making an insightful or relevant comment. People can easily just speak the popular sentiment of the time and gain karma/have it highlighted.

However, this is an issue we can all try to address. Next time we see a comment that says "hackers rule", we can avoid being trigger happy about upvoting it but rather evaluate it in terms of its merits. As a corollary, I make it a focus of mine to upvote good comments that I disagree with, a particularly hard thing to do.

<comment><USER19> Also hero worshipping.

This is one thing I absolutely can't stand in reddit and now I see that it is also very common here in HN.

People seem to up-vote users with "high score/past reputation/YC funded member" on virtually any comment they leave, even if their comment contributes absolutely nothing to the discussion or just re-enforces whatever the hive mind believes in.

Forget about trying to disagree with a popular HN poster without getting down- voted to oblivion.

This is really sad.

I think overall karma points should not be made public. Each comment should be judged by its own merit not by the "karma points" they have in the leader- board.

<comment><USER20> I haven't really wrapped my head around the grounds for down-voting on HN. It seemed very rare - and proper - at first, but I am beginning to get that the, albeit few, who do it vote based on content and not form. In other words, they disagree with what a person is saying - sometimes vehemently - but the downvoted comment is still politely and somewhat cogently phrased.

It's not as widespread as on reddit where there is widespread reputation- sniping going on, and many HN users tend to pick up on unfair downvotes and vote the comment up to counter it. It'll still deter some people, I guess.

<comment><USER21> Based on how much some of my comments bounce up and down, I don't think that the downvotes are done by only a few. But I think this is a good thing, and if anything we need more people eager to downvote poor quality submissions. I think the reason that HN has remained as usable as it has because it is actively policed for content quality.

I don't see a way to check, but I'd guess that my upvote to downvote ratio is about 3:1. I try to vote up anything that would want to see more of on the site, whether I agree or disagree with the content. I try to mercilessly vote down snappy one liners, purposeless profanity, and dumb jokes. If anything, I'd say I vote primarily on form --- I'll support just about any content if it's well written and well intentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If semantic debates are really starting to be a problem here, <http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/>.

Seriously, that's what I wrote it for.

<comment><USER23> Why do you think the problem people will be the ones who click the link? And think about it enough to figure out what situations it applies to and learn how to recognize those situations. And learn to see situations they are personally involved in, in an objective enough way so that they can recognize when they personally are doing it. And remember all this.

The link offers very little help in doing these tasks. It's almost pure content, with little about how to integrate it into your life and actually use it. I think it therefore is failing to give much advice about a part where the many of relevant people get stuck or fail.

There also seems to be some significant proportion of people who think taking issues like this seriously is not fun -- it's "overly serious" -- and they want their internet discussions to be light-hearted and enjoyable. They are alienated to learning things. So they won't care what you're saying; they think it's only for people with a different personality type who like that kind of thing. I don't even know what to do about these people because giving an explanation of why they are making a mistake would offend them -- if they aren't going to take discussion too seriously, they certainly don't want it to turn into a self-help seminar that asks them personally to improve.

So, point is, while it's a decent article, if it's supposed to be for fixing a discussion atmosphere involving thousands of people, I don't think it will solve that problem.

<comment><USER24> There is a similar post to the original article here that was posted to LW a few days ago, _Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti- Instrumental Rationality_ , [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distrac...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/) . I have been strongly cutting back my browsing in general, including both LW and HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are communities I have left for various reasons. I am not wrapped around the axle enough about it to write a blog post naming the forum in the title and bitch about everything that is wrong with the forum in question. I couldn't get through half this post. I just don't care that much. I stopped reading after he explained how central HN had been to him and how giving it up was like lopping off a limb (or some such) but he just had to do it (or some such). HN serves some of my needs, so I visit when time permits and the interest is there. No big.

</comment><comment><USER26> A few ideas (of course you won't be reading this, so perhaps it'll be useful to those of us remaining on the service):

1\. Logout of HN and have a friend of yours change your password and not tell you what it is. This keeps you from getting into the commenting/commenting- for-karma cycle. And you won't want to create a new account because karma addicts can't stand the idea of starting back at zero.

2\. Find a community that better suits your argumentative needs. I would probably suggest looking a quora.com -- but, if you're addicted to arguments for the sake of arguments, then that's probably not a good idea either.

3\. Take up photography. Seriously. It will center you and give you a vice to replace the void created by quitting this site (whether the ban is short-term imposed or long-term imposed).

</comment><comment><USER27> The biggest change for me is the broadening of focus away from just startups. I like it because I'm interested in broad stuff, but it leaves a hole. So we created <http://techstartu.ps> for the startup piece and now I regularly visit both sites. Reddit subreddits are also good for other specific knowledge domains, e.g. netsec.

</comment><comment><USER28> The thing about Karma is it's related to Zen.

Sometimes you just have to accept things for what they are and let them be. HN is the Parisian salon or bohemian coffee house of its age. And they also suffered from the pretentious, inane or despotic and inciteful, as well as the insightful and delightful.

<comment><USER29> Excellent point. There is no point about meta-complaining about HN. It's a superb community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one's own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one's time that exists. "

This should be the reason he has comments closed. Walk your talk.

<comment><USER31> I was thinking the same thing myself. I'm unsure why a person who considers having arguments a vital part of his life and is "very, very careful" with his time would spend a month writing an article nobody can comment on. He's surely not coming back the HN to read the comments.

Tell me again why I should care about this article?

EDIT: FWIW I did enjoy reading parts of the article. I thought the writer has some thought-provoking things to say. I like his ideas about what make a bad argument, and I like his ideas about the importance of interacting with people who don't think like you. I just have a problem taking people who say one thing and do another seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Well I can empathize with the author. I too feel almost everything of importance that I've ever accomplished intellectually or mathematically, however modest, emerged as the result of intense collaboration with colleagues, complete with rigorous arguments. We would often change sides solely to get a burst of new energy when stuck in the same old thoughts. It's how research is done.

I also begin a lot of comments that I don't publish (please give the karma to swah below for saying it first :), as writing is a skill you have to work at. I don't consider myself a lurker, as my low karma might indicate given I've been here 1306 days, but mostly I scan and occasionally read in depth and try to jump in when I can add value or correct obvious mistakes. In terms of interests it's surprising how diverse this community is. Even with lots of programmers one wouldn't expect to find so many familiar with category theory.

I've seen HN change, often not for the better, and I'm reminded of Shirky's essay on a group being it's own worst enemy, but I've watched this puppy grow for a long time so I'm staying. Besides, I haven't owned a TV in 20 years now and I miss the Saturday morning cartoons. HN fills that gap.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've left other communities for many of the same reasons. I think that people get attached to the discourse and mental challenge that they ignore the underlying issues. I don't think any site will ever be good enough and I don't think that sites really change that much. I think the change perceived is more the person coming around to the way things actually are and not the 'new toy' image they had.

One site that I like to look at from time to time is [http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74a...](http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74acadce7bf0617ca0c303&act=idx)

From what I can tell, most people that post there do so in a manner that represents intelligence and proper manners. Plus they all agree with each other too. There are some new people that join up because they have a question but from what I have seen, there is a finite community. This also leads to a tremendous stagnation on the forums. When everyone agrees, and everyone is polite, discussions resolve themselves very quickly and there is nothing left to talk about. Granted they are only concerned with one particular philosophy and it's impacts, I think it shows what can happen.

</comment><comment><USER34> It was only natural that the community's interests would broaden and lose focus. There was certainly a more strict focus prior to 5-6 months ago and definitely 4 years ago, however, HN was never strictly startup only news. In the initial stages it was heavily weighted towards startup news, but the focus was still more diffuse than say /r/startups.

<http://www.reddit.com/r/startups>

This is where the superiority of a site designed to offer something for everyone without foisting a mould on everyone becomes obvious. Reddit allows the targeted streaming of topic consistent information. Hacker News attempts to be an aggregate approximation of multiple streams that interest hacker mindsets. Alternatively, Facebook is good if you're looking for organized boredom in a curated garden that will spill your information like a dribble cup.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't read very many articles on Hacker News and I think I get a lot more out of it by being my own add on filter.

I avoid articles from techcrunch, nytimes, and basically any majorish news source (they usually can't keep my attention for some reason, even if it is interesting). What I do like are the new startup posts (sometimes they are interesting just to see what people are doing), the underlying tech posts or how someone solved an interesting problem (be it programming or something else) and anything else that sticks out I'll click on. After I click on them I skim them and see if it keeps my interest and then I read whatever is left, some days I don't read any articles and some days I read quite a few.

Also comments help the filter and if I'm grabbed by a title I might check the comments to see whether or not I am going to read an article.

</comment><comment><USER36> Some of what the author wrote was interesting, but a lot was hyperbole. At the end of the day, HN loses less from his departure as he does from leaving. I'm not saying this as a suggestion of the author's inferiority in comparison to HN, far from it, just that people join and people leave communities, and ultimately unless you are able to corner an area of the market (like why the lucky stiff and rails) nothing of value is generally lost.

I see where the author is coming from but think it's a good thing for his development as a person, he should carry on and move to his next thing, because he should push forward in whatever direction he feels fit. Anhyoo, I never stopped reading, because for every shameless plug, there's a 6502 implemented in Javscript here. You just don't get that ratio on reddit. Good night, and $deity bless.

</comment><comment><USER37> Irony: it is articles like this that keep me coming back to HN.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think it would be helpful to have certain information-breakdown made public.

From what I have seen,those with karma of 1000+,have been active on HN for more than a year.

I am curious to know the number of people with karma 1000+ - (or any breakdown of people/karma ranges).

It would be helpful to have : a)A graph of number of stories submitted vs Karma level. b)A graph of number of downvotes vs Karma levels

This might give a better picture of the dynamics of HN. While that would not be directly indicative of the quality of discussions, it would atleast show: a) Rate of infusion of number of people into higher karma levels b) A closed, and strongly opinionated group of higher karma levels

..which should be healthy for HN, as such.

</comment><comment><USER39> I suspect that one of the discussion to which he is referring is this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549623>

</comment><comment><USER40> A reasonable point of view, but I would suggest simply setting rough limits like "I am going to spend about 20 minutes today reading tech news."

Way off topic, but: I think the article was too long. This is a trick I learned a long time ago: usually when I write an email or a blog post I let it sit for a while, then try to shorten it. Other people's time is as precious as our own so the effort in shrinking material down for quick digestion is worthwhile.

<comment><USER41> "Forgive the length of this letter; I did not have the time to make it shorter." -- Blaise Pascal, at the end of a 10-page letter to a friend

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This article is attention-seeking flame-bait disguised as a thoughtful analysis of why HN is no longer worthy of his attention.

Him: "Baby, I love you but you're so self-destructive" HN: "No, don't go - <USER2> promise we'll change and be better for you"

I don't buy it. Why make a stink about it? Why not just leave quietly?

<comment><USER43> Maybe he wanted to burn the bridge publicly in order to make it more likely that he will keep to his decision. "Can't go back now that I've said I'm leaving." kind of thing? But if he does decide to go back it leaves a nice opening for the follow-on post of "Why I decided to go back to reading HN".

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Every community deteriorates over time" - I hate these kind of statements made by every community as it grows and the "older" generations feel that they come from an elitist or a superior, time of purity.

Just related: <http://xkcd.com/603/>

<comment><USER45> Unlike your XKCD example, a community's early members are not talking about the general population. They're talking about a special interest community's dilution.

Few communities are begun by the average, they're begun by the inspired, impassioned, or invested. The founders are focused. Motivated, they cross a barrier of inaction, pouring in resources and effort, establishing a meeting place for clear like minds.

Latecomers are on the whole less missioned. The barrier to joining is less than the barrier to beginning. Growth and time inexorably pull participatory discussion away from the founding focus toward the bell curve's center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I don't see why people make such a big deal about karma...it doesn't affect anything...and noone can see it without checking your profile. And that's coming from someone who was #3 karma wise on this site.

<comment><USER47> The problem is that karma does affect things. Just by existing it affects the way we think. It may be subtle, but we give more respect to posters with higher karma. It's a sign of acceptance from a desirable community. It's also correlated with the age of your account, and we all know that older accounts are respected more than newer accounts.

And we do check the karma of other users even though we have to click through to a profile. All the time. At least I do. It helps to frame a user's comments for instance.

Ultimately I think karma is a big deal. And it comes off as a little disingenuous when someone with a ton of it belittles its importance.

<comment><USER48> Yes, karma affects things. It's an instant feedback. So you can adjust to it. It's supposed to have a positive effect, and I believe it has, but the negative is:

I've already learned that going "with the crowd" can get you more than trying to argument against the popular belief. Going against guarantees to give you some minus values even if you follow all the rules and contribute to the discussion (that is you're not going off-topic). I guess we can generalize things and say that the life is the same, _you just can't argue that the condoms are good among the Catholics._ So I have personally already also learned that how I'd be able to get more karma: say positive things about Python in post about Python, about Erlang in post about Erlang, about Lisp in posts about Lisp, etc. As Scott Adams would say "we're just meat robots."

As long as people react so, the people are not only train not to troll, but also not to discuss against, just to "join our righteous crusades and fight the infidels."

<comment><USER49> To a point, some of the most well know and respected members of this community and more generally the startup's community are often so respected because they do take alternate viewpoints and argue for them really well.

Sure you can preach to the choir on issues but if you do truly believe in an opposite viewpoint and make a well construed argument on it, good enough for the other side to at least see where you are coming from, that will earn a lot of respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Very insightful. I have become a casual reader just for articles, not really for the illogical arguments or personal attacks. It really does feel like everybody's talking and no one is saying anything.

<comment><USER51> You're missing out. The comments are a great way to filter the articles. I usually load them up before reading the story and if the most highly rated comment is a point by point evisceration of the thesis of the article then I know I can skip it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > I am very, very careful with my time

That's funny; I read Hacker News when I just want to blow off some time. If I'm being careful with my time, I'll spend it hacking.

</comment><comment><USER53> What I appreciated about this article was the idea of engaging yourself into a community for the sake of learning. I'm not sure that I do that enough.

</comment><comment><USER54> Grey mixes well with neither black nor white. Please stop!

</comment><comment><USER55> I basically stopped posting after this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433950>

<comment><USER55> It's extremely discouraging to write a sincere comment that receives downvotes without explanations, giving no chance to clarify or modify ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what people are objecting to....

I felt that my comment (the one I linked to) was on topic and fulfilled what the TC had asked for, yet downvotes and no explanation.

So I felt hurt, and here I am bringing it up. "It," the downvoted comment, basically being the reason I don't post here much anymore.

I don't mind my downvotes in this submission, since unclear comments aren't good comments. So I should have written a better comment.

I do respect this community a lot, I'm just not very "active" anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> HN is soooooo 2009

</comment><comment><USER57> When I was unemployed, HN was a big deal to me. I don't have time to come here now. Developments about languages, frameworks and such is best received other places. The trivial businesses, which are the stuff of legend around here, and often silly, tribal discussions are not worthy of a person looking for new information.

The worst feature of this and many other communities is the transparent effort of many in the discussions to make compliments at the nebulous 'community.' Some cool people make an effort to engage in some threads (especially about them or their fraudulent board members). However, most of the time, hairs are split in abundance.

<comment><USER58> Unemployment + exploration is what enabled me to find out about HN. A job with a routine span of hours can really gouge out a lot of opportunities to find out about many interesting things going on in the world. However, when having a much more limited amount of time to explore, it helps prioritize what to explore. Both circumstances have their benefits and undesirables.

I think another issue is the idea of having a range-rating system versus a 1 point up & 1 point down system.

Another idea is to be able to turn off seeing the point system altogether until you are done reading what you want to read. Perhaps this can be accomplished somehow with the firebug firefox add-on. I like the idea of being able to customize & edit the entire Web as an add-on feature (not permanent/censorship) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> tl;dr... "NEWFAGS R THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING HN!!111!!!"

Move along. Nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER60> I stopped reading HN too. Doh!

</comment><comment><USER61> Umm...Its a website....you should probably just get over whatever is making you grumpy and get some fresh air. Sure its a community, but if it really is that hard to let go of then you really need some time out to sort out your real world issues.</comment>


Comcast Wi-Fi serving self-promotional ads via JavaScript injection - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/why-comcasts-javascript-ad-injections-threaten-security-net-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> Another good reason for sites who don't think of themselves as needing security to go HTTPS-only. MITMs who you wouldn't normally think of as attackers (e.g. Comcast) will screw up your site for your users.</comment>


On Cilantro - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98695984

<comment><USER2> Very interesting read. Thai cuisine contains a lot of cilantro and I can eat bunches of it. However my wife sounds a lot like the author. She can't even stand the smell of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun fact: Eating large quantities of cilantro is said to remove toxic metals like mercury from the body.

<comment><USER4> I would like to know the source of this as well. I'm not to big on large quantities of cilantro, but I'm game if it can remove heavy metals from the body.

<comment><USER5> Aside from looking totally unreliable: <http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/9steps.htm>

>Because cilantro mobilizes more toxins then it can carry out of the body, it may flood the connective tissue (where the nerves reside) with metals, that were previously stored in safer hiding places.

>This process is called re-toxification. It can easily be avoided by simultaneously giving an intestinal toxin-absorbing agent. Our definite choice is the algal organism chlorella. A recent animal study demonstrated rapid removal of aluminum from the skeleton superior to any known other detox agent.

<comment><USER6> _A recent animal study demonstrated rapid removal of aluminum from the skeleton superior to any known other detox agent._

This gives me an idea for defeating Wolverine at last! Finally world domination is within my grasp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ha Ha. I love cilantro, called coriander here in the UK, but I hated it as a kid.</comment>


How WeChat Came to Rule China - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16721230/wechat-china-app-mini-programs-messaging-electronic-id-system <comment><USER2> The govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it. But yeah nice to see "Made in China first, for Chinese first" idea working out well for local investors/technologists.

<comment><USER3> > The govt blocking the access of similar foreign apps (Whatsapp, Skype etc.) > to the Chinese people has some role to play in the popularity of it.

This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their rich features, fast iterations, etc.

I still remember that during the 360 vs Tencent event, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_v._Tencent), a lot of people switched to Skype as their communication tool to against the company Tencent, but not long after that people switched back to WeChat and QQ. It's simply because WeChat and QQ are easier to use.

<comment><USER4> > This is not accurate. Along with WeChat and QQ, people can freely use Skype > and MSN messenger in China. The success behind WeChat and QQ relies on their > rich features, fast iterations, etc.

Really?

I am not sure about Skype which is not even a strong contender anymore in our mobile generation, but WhatsApp is definitely blocked by China[1]. And MSN was dead long ago.

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/whatsapp-blocked-in- china/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/whatsapp-blocked-in-china/)

<comment><USER5> WhatsApp was only started to be blocked recently (last year) when WeChat was already way ahead of WhatsApp in the market. WeChat's success was not due to lack of contender

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, but does WhatsApp put out any market in China? The strategy is a completely different approach. WhatsApp simply building 1 product for the entire globe where WeChat just focus on 1 monoculture.

Have WhatsApp spent effort to build "that product" to China, and they would fail on it.

And I don't see WhatsApp is super pissed that they lost this 1.3B market anyway.

And in a hindsight, it is probably better for WhatsApp to not build "that app" for China. Imagine spending all those resources, money into a product and simply turn off by China government overnight. It's a big loss for that investment.

TL;DR do not enter China if you haven't yet finished conquered the entire world.

<comment><USER6> I live in the Bay Area and I use both WhatsApp and WeChat and I would say WeChat is a significantly better product, with more features and better video/audio quality. When I visit China, WeChat is another order of magnitude more indispensable due to its great integration with all the other services (eg, mobile payment penetration through WeChat effectively 100%).

<comment><USER4> Hmm... I don't know, but my app is less heavyweight on said WhatsApp than a bloated WeChat. But that's my opinion.

When I send a message, why does it need to be so bloated. I just wanna send a message. Does being lightweight a feature too?

<comment><USER6> What's bloated about it?

From the UX point of view, it's pretty lightweight for most common operations. Goes into the app, finds the contact, sends message, done. There is virtually no difference between WeChat, WhatsApp, and Apple's own Messages. For many other operations that are less common, WeChat is easier to use and manage (e.g. sending emojis, voice memo, photos).

From an app size point of view, I just checked on my iPhone. WeChat takes up 157.3MB, whereas WhatsApp takes up 105.9MB. The difference seems minor (just a few photos).

<comment><USER7> WeChat's success is something I find... strange. I just thought uses don't want everything and the kitchen sink in the same app but we chat success story shows I'm wrong? I still don't get it.

I have that Facebook messenger even has draw over other apps permission on Android. I hate the pop up chat. Am I out of touch?

<comment><USER8> Being able to send money to people via chat app is pretty appealing to many people.

Also, there was a post on here highlighting Japanese web design and you might say it's also a kitchen sink approach. And then someone posted, or the article updated and added(I don't remember exactly) some nice links to show that the exact same design phenomenon exists in major websites in Taiwan, Korea, and China.

We might theorize that users in these particular markets might want everything but the kitchen sink in one app, or one website. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but there's definitely some indicators.

Would be very interesting if it's a case of actual rejection of western style minimalistic designs, rather than something like it being all they've known and thus have simply gotten used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before wasting your time on this hopelessly optimistic article, here is the most important sentence:

"Tencent is a content partner of The Verge in China."

<comment><USER10> The article is up front about the privacy invasion of the app, and mentions Amnesty International's 0 out of 100 score for that reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The general theory that I have is that the Great Migration brought millions of chinese citizens to the city, who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones. The pathway to connecting with friends, businesses, and money or even finding jobs immediately became "Get WeChat and a phone." This lead to a reenforcement cycle with businesses, that they had to offer services on WeChat to get new customers and combined with the injections of cash due to the overall modernization of China, it allowed WeChat to grow even more. And of course, add in the local government blocking foreign competitors.

Thus a large portion of some individuals where basically introduced to modern computing via phones and via chat and businesses started advertising "Chat- first" as well.

I've seen roughly the same in India with WhatsApp, but with a lot less discrete functionality.

Feel free to correct my theory though, it's mostly outside observation...

<comment><USER12> The lower end you go, the more popular QQ is over WeChat, at least that was the case a few years ago (I'm sure WeChat is over dominating now). WeChat started to become popular firmly among the middle and upper classes as far as I could tell.

<comment><USER11> Thats a fair point that asks 'Why did WeChat become the upper/middle city class chat app of choice over QQ and others' and I'd love for someone to weigh in there...

<comment><USER13> Well I'd like to point out that 微信 (WeChat) does require a personal bank card in order for monies to be transferred/stored on a persons account.

I think the two main contenders for payment apps are Wexin and Alipay (支付宝). Both are vastly more popular than QQ these days.

WeChat and its dominance in its early days to a number of factors. Primarily in its infancy this is: good advertising, uniqueness compared to QQ (think MySpace -> FB), solid interface and voice memos. Voice memos were a killer feature that is massively more popular than in England (my experience) and I assume most of the West. Later on payments were added which enables anyone to have a business (receive money for services) and huge convenience for shopping or sending money to friends.

Alipay at the moment is less focused on social media like WeChat and more on interlinking services (Cinema, Shopping, Mobile payments, Utilities, Lifestyle etc). Also there's a massive advertisement campaign driving its use; currently each 24 hours users can scan a red envelope (红包) QR code an receive credit on their balance. I've receive $4~5 dollars a day, with an average of $1. Thats a free breakfast for most people.

<comment><USER14> Typing Chinese is significantly harder than typing English. Thus, voice memos offer a superior user experience. Building in Voice Memos as a first class feature into the messaging UI was what got WeChat its initial push.

<comment><USER15> Not really true IMO, because you can even use initialisms to type entire phrases and sentences in pinyin and omit most of the characters.

Let's say you wanted to write 我很喜欢吃汉堡 (I really like eating hamburgers), you can get away with just typing 'w h x h ch han bao' and predictive text gets you the entire sentence.

Chinese text is well optimized towards readability and information density, at the expense of taking a lot of work to manually write, but that calculus completely changes if your writing system is smart enough.

<comment><USER16> But that assumes a lot fluency with pinyin and the prediction system. A lot of people are missing one or both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Garbage article with no new information, regurgitating random bits of English- language blog posts about the app, with no "how".

</comment><comment><USER18> Its like "why the trabant came to dominate the russian automobile market".

</comment><comment><USER13> Having just returned from China after a year, I must also point out that 支付宝 (Alipay) is also extremely popular for payments. Also, tsunamifury noted that their theory is that the wave of migrants "...who neither had bank accounts, credit cards, or phones" is partly responsible. Again, I must point out however that WePay requires a linked bank account in order to allow for the transfer of money.

<comment><USER4> Please also point out that that "linked bank account" is currently only work for China banks. If you are using foreign banks, no luck. :-(

And every significant transaction required you to provide ID, which is currently supporting China ID, some apps do have support for foreign passports, but do you want to share your passports to those China apps?

<comment><USER19> If it makes you feel any better, most countries financial apps don't link with foreign bank accounts either, unless it's a credit card. Credit histories also don't cross borders easily.

SEPA & the EU is the special case exception I've found.

<comment><USER4> > unless it's a credit card

Nope, that exception don't even existed in Alipay/WeChat Pay as well :-) Being foreigner in China sucks.

<comment><USER5> Any foreigners can open a bank account in China even on tourist visa. No special documents needed other than your passport.

Yes, being a foreigner in China does suck but not for this case.

<comment><USER4> I just return from a trip to China and yes I carried a 10yrs China visa to open a bank with Bank of Construction in Guangdong province. No, the bank's front desk refuse it and said they cannot accept foreign passports.

Having a "work" visa is possible though.

Please stop spreading rumours about China when it's not true.

<comment><USER5> Not sure if things has changed but 1 year ago my brother in law has opened an account in bank of China 中国银行 while he was on a 1 year traveling visa. You may want to try with another bank

And no, we're not trying to spread rumors :)

<comment><USER4> I am curious what type of "traveling visa" was that, because a tourist visa don't work for me. Also Chinese government change policies all the time and rollout instantaneously. Whatever works 3-months ago don't mean it works now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I understand WeChat to be effectively an application platform. It runs messaging, payments, delivery tracking, and many more mini programs, and runs on devices that are relatively old and underpowered by US standards.

How is this architected? Is there a platform/app separation, or just a pile of spaghetti, or something in between?

<comment><USER21> Afaik on the application side most WeChat applications are just NSWebViews or UIWebKit instances.

<comment><USER22> Steve Jobs was right. HTML 5 really is the future of apps... at least under certain circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't get too big, or you get Nationalized if the govt thinks they have too much control on the people

</comment><comment><USER24> In my team a lot of people use WeChat. So I set out to give it a try. When I was forced to leave my voiceprint [1], I chickened out and aborted the registration.

[1] [http://blog.wechat.com/2015/05/21/voiceprint-the-new- wechat-...](http://blog.wechat.com/2015/05/21/voiceprint-the-new-wechat- password/)

<comment> dis-sys I have been using WeChat on daily basis for 5-6 years now, this is the first time I've ever heard the voiceprint feature. Checked my wechat client and the feature is like 4 clicks away from the main UI, and you get choose to activate it if you want.

<comment><USER24> Yes, my Chinese colleagues were also surprised. Apparently the requirement seems to be a new thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I got excited and clicked to see why so many people in China are avoiding proprietary closed IM networks and using IRC instead.

Bummer, not what I thought :) [http://www.irchelp.org/clients/unix/weechat.html](http://www.irchelp.org/clients/unix/weechat.html)</comment>


YouTube Comes To A 5-Star Realization: Its Ratings Are Useless - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/22/youtube-comes-to-a-5-star-realization-its-ratings-are-useless/ <comment><USER4> The official post from YouTube: [http://youtube- global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-domina...](http://youtube- global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html)

<comment><USER5> That chart is veering dangerously toward misleading; it should be a bar, not a line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having "xx% liked this video" under each video would be more useful and meaningful.

BTW, they really should have used a histogram here.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm shocked that such a big-data company has missed the mark on ratings by this much. Especially given that they have Flash running in the browser.

If I were YouTube, I would start by automatically ranking the videos by the percentage of times it was completely played but discounting times it was played completely and the page was just left open with no activity (to counteract the people who opened the page and ignored it afterwards, or left their machines idle). Discard the 5% outliers on either end of the spectrum and you should have a pretty decent idea of which videos are popular and which ones are boring.

After all, don't they care mostly about whether the videos are engaging?

It seems like there should be a ton of techniques that they should have already been using to supplement the star ratings in order to fine tune any algorithms they wanted to play with.

<comment><USER8> _I'm shocked that such a big-data company has missed the mark on ratings by this much_

Well, given how badly they messed up with _comments_...

<http://xkcd.com/202/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At least they realize it. Amazon book ratings have a similar problem, to a lesser degree. You really have to dig into the individual reviews to get any reasonable ratings info. I find, at least for technical books, that comparing the price the book is being sold for used to the new price is one of the more accurate ways of determining if a book has legitimate value.

<comment><USER10> Actually, Amazon's review & rating system seems to be one of the few that works well. Seeing the distribution and reading the most useful positive and negative reviews works really well in my experience.

<comment><USER8> _Seeing the distribution_

This is key! Almost always, only good or great products will have a bunch of ratings and a distribution like:

        ****************
        ********
        ****
        **
        **

_Someone_ is always going to dislike just about anything. But the above distribution seems to indicate something that a lot of people genuinely like.

I also look at the most useful positive and negative reviews.

<comment><USER10> It's not just about good vs bad. It is also the fact that i can see what people didn't like it. Often there are downsides that are a big deal to some, those that rate low which may or may not apply to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Though I don't have aggregate data, I don't think Amazon has this issue. People seem able to differentiate within the 2-4 range when there's an actual purchase involved.

Then again, Amazon doesn't account for the statistical uncertainty of votes, so it's a little odd as well.

<comment><USER10> Maybe it's because Amazon asks (and receives) written reviews as well. They make people think a little more. I assume there is still a bias towards the 1 & 5 stars though.

<comment><USER12> Not quite. See <http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.0237> Page 9 Table 4.

The closest I've ever seen to the "ideal" curve is the IMDB curve right next to it.

<comment><USER10> I love that on HN you can get as a response to a vague & half-arsed comment a reference and link to an academic paper.

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always thought smaller scales were better. I think asking people to rate something on a 1-5 scale is optimistic. A 1-10 scale is simply insanity. No one, without substantial effort, can reasonably rank something from 1-10... even if they think they can. I once had someone try to convince me that they could rank the attractiveness of girls accurately on a scale of 1-100, differentiating between every point on the scale. I don't think anyone would argue that that's insane. I feel the same way about 1-10 scales. It simply isn't possible. When a particular rating is really important, I say use 1-4. I think preventing people from picking a middle answer will help get more honest opinions. If it's an issue about which you can truly be apathetic, 1-3. Hacker News seems to do quite well with a scale of 1-1 on submissions, or perhaps we should call it a scale of apathy-opinion.

Maybe for YouTube they could count opinion votes when someone watches the same video twice or uses the embed/share feature. If someone watches a video but never shares it or watches it again, then I think it's fair to say they were apathetic about it.

<comment><USER14> Just to supply evidence to the contrary, I make full use of the five-star scale in iTunes, with each additional star translating to some privilege the song gets as a strict subset of the songs with lesser ratings (e.g. 4+ = always on iPod.) I frequently wish for half-ratings across the board, which would make the full, discrete scale 1-10 :) I imagine I may indeed be in the extreme minority, though.

<comment><USER15> See, thats key to making the system worthwhile. Your ratings come back to haunt you in a qualitatively different way for each rating. Not that I can see how youtube could do this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I commented on the article:

"Five start systems are supposed to work on the basic idea that the one and five votes will average out to a value somewhere in the middle. In this way the two, three, and four star ratings are averages based on the ratio of one star votes to five star votes."

However, that doesn't always work. People seem to be lazy and they don't want to judge the comparative value of different items.

</comment><comment><USER17> I found this interesting, as I've just started working again on a web app for rating learning resources - I made a previous post on HN asking about the merits of a 5-point system versus a 2-point system (thumbs up / thumbs down). It seemed the consensus was to the five-point system, as it's more informative.

However, TC seems to believe that the 5-star system is more poorly defined. Opinions? I've been wondering about whether to include guidelines for the different rankings, (3 stars means this, 4 stars means this, etc) or just to let people use their own definitions (since, in all likelihood, the guidelines would be ignored). I've always thought it strange when reviewers provide a little box saying "5 stars - Excellent, 4 stars - Good..." and so on, since most people should have got the idea by now.

I also want to segregate links by level - <USER2> Started/Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced - and was trying to think of precise definitions for each. Again, I've also thought that since people likely would ignore any such definitions, it might be better for them to use their own definitions. Theory being that if 100 people thought this link should be in the 'beginner' category, then others won't be surprised to find it there.

So, give definitions for each ranking, or let users work by their own interpretations for each ranking?

2 ideas to improve things:

Idea 1: Change the weighting of a vote based on the voter's voting habits. Eg, if a person only gives 1 and 5 star votes, decrease the weighting for their votes. I doubt I'm the first person to come up with this idea, does anyone know of any sites that implement such a scheme?

Idea 2: Users with 'editor' priveleges have the ability to move things around into their 'correct' place. This could make it more useful to have predefined definitons for each ranking and category.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd say that a rating based on the number of favorites makes more sense. It's less arbitrary than the five-star system, in that it tracks the nominal level of interest in the video. People don't generally favorite a video at random, so any favoriting at all is generally a good sign as to the video's content.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really don't see why, as the article claims, the fact that opinions are subjective and everyone has a different one makes the 1-5 star rating any more useless than a thumbs up/thumbs down/do nothing or a favorite/not favorite rating. Those are subjective and different for everyone as well, and the idea is that it averages out over lots of people.

No, the problem is that people can't be bothered to spend time to think about just _how much_ they like something, compared to everything else, and that it can become uncomfortable to try and do that because you realize that your relative liking may not be neither constant nor consistent, and trying to make it so could be a lot of work (I like A a lot, but B even more... hey, C is _really_ cool! But some things about A are better than C... now what?).

<comment><USER20> _"I really don't see why, as the article claims, the fact that opinions are subjective and everyone has a different one makes the 1-5 star rating any more useless than a thumbs up/thumbs down"_

Because you're implementing a system that on paper has a lot more resolution than what you're really getting. Imagine buying a 1080p HDTV and then showing solid colors on it only - not only a waste of engineering effort but also building subsequent systems around the validity of your 5-star ratings will also be fundamentally broken.

Also, based on their data there's a very concrete reason why the 1-5 star rating is worse than the thumbs up/thumbs down. With the thumbs up/down system you have a single dimension of data ("likedness"), whereas with the 1-5 star rating system they're only getting data from people who like the video (and almost none from people who disliked it, look at the distribution). This makes the data practically useless for determining the quality and user preference for a video. Consequently ranking algorithms just won't work on the star system - the difference between video #1 and #100,000 can be an average rating of 4.8 and 4.92.

 _"Those are subjective and different for everyone as well"_

So are movie ratings - but it's still a very useful metric to a lot of people. With a large enough sample size you get the lowest common denominator preference measure - which may be what YouTube wants.

 _"the problem is that people can't be bothered"_

I object to the labeling of basic user behaviour as laziness or some type of stupidity. Users will behave how they behave - assigning value judgments to this behaviour just makes you a prick, and disconnects you from your users (who also happen to be your customers, yay!). If your users aren't using your system in the way you intended, _you_ need to fix it. Trying to pawn off your responsibility in the equation as "lazy users can't be bothered" simply is a cop-out.

<comment><USER19> _Because you're implementing a system that on paper has a lot more resolution than what you're really getting. Imagine buying a 1080p HDTV and then showing solid colors on it only - not only a waste of engineering effort_

The difference is that the HDTV costs extra, while the rating resolution does not.

 _but also building subsequent systems around the validity of your 5-star ratings will also be fundamentally broken._

It depends on how you interpret and use the data.

 _Also, based on their data there's a very concrete reason why the 1-5 star rating is worse than the thumbs up/thumbs down. With the thumbs up/down system you have a single dimension of data ("likedness"), whereas with the 1-5 star rating system they're only getting data from people who like the video (and almost none from people who disliked it, look at the distribution). This makes the data practically useless for determining the quality and user preference for a video._

Again: With only people who like voting 5 stars and a few people who dislike voting 1 star you have the _exact same_ information as with a "favoriting only" voting system, or as a thumbs up/down one with few people voting down (which is very likely). So how is it any more useless? The only real problem I see is that people probably interpret the ratings differently - to some, 1 star is "the worst possible vote", to others it is "one notch better than no vote".

 _Consequently ranking algorithms just won't work on the star system - <USER3> difference between video #1 and #100,000 can be an average rating of 4.8 and 4.92._

Which is not necessarily a problem, if you weigh the average by the number of votes. Sure, you don't want to rate a video with one 5-star rating higher than one with 5000 5-star ratings and one 1-star rating. But you don't have to.

 _So are movie ratings - but it's still a very useful metric to a lot of people. With a large enough sample size you get the lowest common denominator preference measure - which may be what YouTube wants._

Um, yeah. That's exactly what I said.

 _I object to the labeling of basic user behaviour as laziness or some type of stupidity._

You're reading something into my comment that I did not say. Actually yeah, it's lazy... and people have every right to be - they go to YouTube to be entertained, not because they're being paid for it.

People do something because there are rewards. With user-generated content, the rewards are generally immaterial: attention, status, self-expression. The only reward for thoughtful ratings is self-expression, but very limited because nobody can see your vote. Even a single-word comment is more rewarding than that. So if you want people to spend the time and effort that thoughtful fine-grained ratings require, you'd have to add artificial rewards - which is almost impossible because you can't measure how thoughtful a rating is.

The alternative it to make rating easier, so that more people will do it at the current reward level. And "easier" here means "requiring less thought".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The more motivated you are to vote, the more likely you are to vote it a five. A mediocre video is characterized by a lack of votes, not a preponderance of three-star votes.

Back when Youtube rounded the average vote result down to the nearest star, I joked that Youtube videos really only had three ratings:

Five star: New video (eventually it will accrue a vote of other than 'five' and drop to four stars) Four star: Top notch (mainly fives, a few troll one- star votes) Three star: Disgusting trash (at least many one-votes as fives)

You don't see anything less than three-star since it will have been deleted by the time you get there.

</comment><comment><USER22> The way to make ratings more valuable can be seen on a site like www.rateyourmusic.com . You only get one vote per item, and voting again just changes your previous vote. Furthermore, you can see your voting distribution (this usually cows people into not just voting 5 on everything, because that makes you look like an idiot). On the other hand, youtubers probably aren't too concerned with looking like an idiot...

</comment><comment><USER23> Kinda always had a feeling that's what happens but nice to see graphical proof! I feel good now about choosing +/- rating only for launchly.

<comment><USER24> You still have to be careful with a +/- rating system, because for it to work you need a constant number of viewers for every item. The more the actual number of viewers deviates from the ideal constant then the more unfair the voting is. An example would be a popular item getting more finite votes because a larger sample of people were exposed to it. So a +/- system probably must be expressed as a percentage to correct this problem. However I can see a 5 star system being improved by showing some sort of relative data too.

So I guess a +/- system may not necessarily be more advantageous. It all depends on how carefully and correctly you interpret the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It really doesn't matter very much. The main thing the rating system does is allow you to avoid utterly crappy or misrepresented videos. I don't see what difference it makes whether you're avoiding one and two star videos or videos with too many thumbs down.

I don't think changing to a thumbs up or down system would affect my experience of youtube on way or another.

</comment><comment><USER24> YouTube is slow to realize it... You don't know statistics to show that 5 star ratings are innaccurate.</comment>