Problems in identifying people of other races: Are kids as bad as grown-ups? - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/02/problems_in_identifying_people.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'm a white guy and my wife isn't "white". We live in Maine, the whitest state in the union. When our daughter sees a picture of a non-white woman she always says that she "looks a little like mama". However, the same doesn't apply to me when she sees a picture of a white guy.

Must be the effect of living in such a white state! Even though she's with her mother all the time, she clearly sees Caucasians as being the norm.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the tech industry had a race bias ( [http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/02/race-and- technology...](http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/02/race-and- technology.html) ), would this create a bias in facial recognition startups and would this create a bias in facial recognition software?</comment>


The Blockbuster Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/10/01/the-blockbuster-syndrome/

<comment><AUTHOR> I started reading Lefsetz when I was still working in the pro audio industry. While not backed up with data, I still find his opinions interesting to consider. In this post since he seems to have changed his opinion lately. I found the quote interesting:

"But my main point is while you were at home plotting your assault on the Internet, growing virally from nothing to something, the entire game changed. The public became wary of wasting time, not only foraging for new entertainment, but finding out in most cases what they discovered wasn't worth the effort. So people have retreated, they've come back from the wilderness and have set their eyes on what everybody else is paying attention to."</comment>


Daala: Perceptual Vector Quantization (PVQ) - <AUTHOR> https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/pvq_demo/

<comment><USER2> The bit on normalized vector quantization reminded me of the normal vector quantization technique on the unit sphere used by Java3D [https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17802_01/j2se/javase/technologie...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17802_01/j2se/javase/technologies/desktop/java3d/forDevelopers/j3dguide/AppendixCompress.doc.html#47775)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hm. The pictures at the bottom are only really obvious if I middle click to make them big.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, load them in two browser tabs and switch back and forth for best effect.

Though even at the small size you can see how badly JPEG gets the colors wrong at this rate.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Nokia deal approved by European Commission - Suraj-Sun http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-nokia-deal-approved-european-commission-180612924.html

<comment><AUTHOR> So long and thanks for all the phones!

</comment><comment><USER2> Goodbye, Nokia.

<comment><USER3> Apropos [http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science- technology/window...](http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science- technology/windows-95-buys-nokia-3210-2013090479126)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Call me crazy but I reckon Nokia will splash some cash on Jolla, pull a fast one with Nokia HERE (the big selling point for WP8 if you ask me) and port it to Jolla only then hit the market again lean and clean.

No one is buying Windows RT and there is talk about it being canned entirely. WinPhone isn't exactly popular apart from here in Europe and it's not exactly zooming out the door.

Microsoft could be left in the dust again.

<comment><USER5> WP8 has been gaining momentum [1]; brushing it aside is a mistake. I also wouldn't count out WinRT. Surface 2 and the Nokia Lumia 2520 have received relatively favorable reviews. I don't expect their sales to double overnight or anything like that, but I expect they'll increase steadily throughout 2014.

Full disclosure: Windows Phone employee

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/29/5041666/nokia-lumia- sales...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/29/5041666/nokia-lumia- sales-q3-2013)

<comment><USER4> Ugh sorry to throw this at you (nothing personal) but here's how I see it...

Full disclosure: OP, long term Microsoft customer, ex MSDN premium sub, ex- registered gold parnership, 25 years working with Microsoft software and ex MCDBA, MCSD, ex WinPhone user (710, 820). Hey I even have a book on DOS signed by Gates from a 1990 PCUG meeting I attended.

Note the number of ex'es above. Even people like myself with vested interest have given the whole platform the finger due to the amount of crack smoking going on in the last couple of years.

Realistically, this is what it looks like to us. Not just me; this is the talk around the gum tree amongst the sector in the UK:

1\. WinRT is an utter failure and is going to die. Even Microsoft is pretty sure about this now[1]. We've been telling clients not to even poke it with a 20 foot long stick becuase our stuff doesn't work on it (we have a desktop/COM broker that talks to our web app). It's a support nightmare. People just think they're getting a cheap PC. Instead they get a laggy bastardised half-finished OS which sometimes throws the desktop in your face with a copy of Office that is pure sufferance to use.

2\. I've said positive things about WP8. It's not terrible. However WP is only selling because the handsets are low priced compared to the competition and aggressive marketing. Regardless of sales, I doubt a single penny of profit has turned up yet. Not only that, a lot of us devs who would possibly build something for it are put off by the whole buy/sell crack smoking, the fact that WP7 users were left in the shit and the completely closed nature of the platform. Also, mummy darling and Vicky Pollard still want an iPhone as do I because it's just nice [2] and not some lump of soulless plastic farted out of a tellytubby.

It's only my Unix/Linux wizardry that has kept me sane all these years.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/26/microsoft-...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/26/microsoft- kill-windows-rt-larson-green)

[2] nice is equivalent to quality here in the form discussed in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig.

Edit: this is designed to be comedic venting rather than a flame.

<comment><USER6> > and not some lump of soulless plastic farted out of a tellytubby.

You are certainly aware of the latest line of cheap plastic iphones in primary colors?

<comment><USER4> Yes entirely.

I actually went and played with one in the Apple Store a couple of days after release. At the time I was still using my Lumia 820. They feel about the same so I agree.

However consider the 4, 4s, 5, 5s. There's nothing like that for WP.

Premium devices are just more features.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can technical writers be proficient working remotely - <AUTHOR> For context, I'm the program manager of a technical documentation + training unit that recently got consolidated into a single team -- whereas in the past they worked on and were part of different departments.
On the technical writer part, though, we've had positions open for months on end, and have really struggled to hire people, particularly because we feel that to work in product documentation, they would really benefit from being close to our R&D department.
Things happen fast, and members of our group are being allocated dynamically to development teams, working alongside them when the time is right to actually produce the end-user documentation, all the while participating in the teams' ceremonies as much as possible.
We felt that, in order to acquire enough context to produce quality documentation, and to make sure nothing's lost in translation, they'd really benefit from being located here and being able to come to the office, be among the developer teams. Everyone's encouraged to work remotely whenever they feel the need to (comms through Slack and Zoom).
One additional aspect that we try to keep in mind is that the team's job is also to make sure that documentation is not an afterthought. Developer teams, as usual, are not very keen on creating documentation to start with, so it's our team's job to take care of the process more end-to-end.
We've tried being open to having remote technical writer team members, tried it unsuccesfully, particularly as we struggled with time zone differences, and a somewhat low quality of the documentation produced.
The problem in the near future, that will probably make allocation a nightmare for me, in particular: our R&D department is doubling its size this year... whatever they produce is clearly going to need docs and training.
What recommendations would you have, in your experience working with or managing technical writer teams, for being able to accomodate remote writers? <comment><USER2> Our team has recently been using team.video. They let you edit a doc in real- time alongside the video chat. Might be worth a shot especially during training and pairing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have significant experience building and managing remote teams, including across time zones. In my experience, much of the online discourse (HN comments, Twitter, and other ephemeral platforms with popularity-based upvoting) about remote work is a mixed bag. It's almost taboo to point out the significant problems, inefficiencies, and overhead of remote teams because everyone wants to believe that "remote work is the future of work". To that end, don't be afraid to make hard decisions where necessary to make your department work properly, even if that means moving away from remote work.

Remote work takes a special set of skills that not everyone has, and not everyone can develop effectively. Ideally you'd hire people with a demonstrated track record of successful remote work, but that's hard to find. Next best option is to hire people with experience at distributed companies with many offices around the country or the world. Those distributed, multi- office companies are halfway to remote work. If you can't find either type of employee, your third best option is to hire diligent employees and train them for successful remote work. Remote work attracts a wide range of employees from high performers who want more flexibility to low performers who want a job where they can blend into the background and do the bare minimum. Be prepared for some turnover as you identify the low performers.

Remote work requires more deliberate communication than in-office, in both directions. If you don't feel like you're overcommunicating or repeating yourself to the team, you're probably not communicating enough. Likewise, set expectations for more frequent updates and more detailed communication from your direct reports. Share a simple spreadsheet or document with all shared targets, status, assignments, and priorities so everyone can clearly understand the targets.

Encourage transparency. It's tempting for remote workers to descend into private messages, single-person phone calls, and privately shared documents where no one can see what they're doing. In my experience, it's better to set the expectations for where shared discussions and documents are handled. Create channels, document templates, and processes that encourage openness and information sharing. Unless you have specific secrecy requirements, everyone should be able to see examples of great documentation, feedback, process, and final products in a shared location. Practice mentoring the team in parallel in public rather than privately in 1-on-1s.

Develop processes that work best with one-off calls with engineering teams instead of letting the documentation teams ping engineers as questions come up. People tend to have better manners in face to face offices where interrupting someone to ask a question is visibly disruptive. Remote workers have a tendency to fire off Slack messages randomly throughout the day, generating massive interruptions and annoyance everywhere. Drive the teams to collect their questions into batches that can be answered asynchronously. E-mail over Slack whenever possible. Other teams will appreciate the effort and will be more likely to help out.

Minimize the number of scheduled weekly meetings. When you have a recurring meeting on the calendar, people tend to wait until that meeting to bring up important topics that should be addressed more quickly. Daily async check-ins can help, but set the expectation that everyone manages their own time and communication without waiting for scheduled meetings.

Performance management: Be strictly clear about what's expected, what good vs. bad documentation looks like, and don't be afraid to performance manage the under-performers. Keep an eye out for the sandbaggers who are taking weeks to accomplish what another person can accomplish in 1-2 days. Remote work is a magnet for people working multiple jobs, working on a side hustle, freelancing, watching children, or otherwise minimizing their working input. You don't need to force everyone to work 40 hour weeks, but you do need to clamp down on any temptation to sandbag.

Make life as easy as possible for the teams you work with. If you're coming in late and nagging the teams with interruptions and questions all day for weeks on end, people will loathe working with you. Instead, engage with teams early and often. Share a publicly-available process document that sets expectations for how other teams can work best with you. Emphasize the benefits of working with your team early to save time later. Put in extra effort to make it easy for the other teams. Avoid anything that pushes the real work on to other teams. Make it easy and enjoyable to work with your team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the incredibly insightful reply! There are a few things in particular that stood out. I have worked mostly remotely during a period of my career, and I know just how important it is to maintain discipline and clear, constant communication.

I feel we'd be quick to identify low-performers, because it can get demanding quickly here. I'm a pretty hands-on manager for the time being, though always trying to foster autonomy as much as possible, but I know what the team is doing at all times -- we keep track of it with the help of allocation maps, and regular syncs with the dev teams that would leave little space for someone to... space out. The team keeps itself accountable, too: they wouldn't let anyone underperform for long, without trying to address it -- and mostly, in a very positive way.

The one-off calls with Engineering you mentioned, that's something I'd really like to highlight: it's been a mixed bag for us. As practice, I usually reinforced the need to collect all information needed in one batch and only then addressing the teams to get the answers needed. Sometimes, it just works, but there's always something missing. Following-up isn't always easy, and not everyone takes it lightly. That's when it's just easier to go and get 'em, in a 5 minute catch-up for clarification. Technical writers, per nature, are shy people, as are devs. Face-to-face interaction doesn't come naturally, but it's been known to work.

The problem is when other teams just choose not to reply. That's usually when I'm CC'ed, but there's good will established, those issues have been mostly overcomed.

As for the working hours: I am, and the company as a whole, is very flexible. I don't care what time they get in and what time they get out; I don't care if they're at home, as long as they're approachable when needed. I only care about them getting the job done. If they wanna go the same way that fella who outsourced all his work to China or something and then just validated their work? I'd promote them.

In its entirety, your answer was great. Thank you! I'll be keeping this all in mind, even share with the team right now. (Maybe not the part about shady promotions and all)</comment></comment>


Emergence.js - <AUTHOR> https://xtianmiller.github.io/emergence.js/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Ruby Mendicant : Prawn's First Release - Fast, Nimble Ruby PDF Generator  - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/08/ruby_mendicant_prawns_first_re.html <comment><USER2> The two best reasons to consider Prawn over PDF::Writer are * Support for built-in Adobe fonts (AFM) * Support for TTF embedding without the need to generate an AFM file</comment>


Ada Support raises $2.5MM seed to bring AI to customer support teams - <AUTHOR> https://ada.support/posts/announcing-our-funding-and-our-roots/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I work for Ada.

Just wanted to share our good news with the HN crowd. David and Mike really took the YC philosophy of "build something people want" to heart when the started working on Ada. They embedded themselves in a few companies around Toronto and figured out the problems that were costing people real money. After answering thousands of support tickets, they started automating away the annoying stuff --- after a few hundred iterations we found ourselves with a very compelling product.

<comment><USER2> This sort of announcement doesn't tend to do well on HN to begin with, plus our software drops upvotes that look promotional. You guys would be much better off writing something about what's intellectually interesting in what you're doing, and posting that instead. It sounds like there's a lot there.

If you want, you can email a draft to firstname.lastname@example.com and we can give you feedback (as long as you don't expect an immediate reply!). The same offer goes for anyone who is trying to write about what's intellectually interesting for HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We've got some great ideas for more intellectually stimulating stuff. I'll send it your way.

Thanks again for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic News! congrats to the Ada team!</comment>


Show HN: iPipeTo, Yeoman ui as a standalone composable cli tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ruyadorno/ipt <comment><USER2> Clever! Can make several scripts more useful without having to type the args!

</comment><comment><USER3> So handy!!!

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great!</comment>


Analysis on the nature of the credit crisis: "Financial Armageddon for Dummies" - <AUTHOR> http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=485790

<comment><USER2> The article is fine as far as it goes, but there is nothing in the article to explain why we are having a crisis in the "subprime" housing market right now (as opposed to some other market or at some other time). And why did it start here and not elsewhere? Nowhere does it mention the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995, which required banks to "reinvest" into the "community" -- or face reprisals. "reinvest" they did, with "subprime", i.e., junk, loans -- $2.2 trillion worth, that are now bringing world markets to their knees.

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt the CRA is part of it, but I think the fed lowering and lowering and lowering the prime rate after 9/11 in order the stimulate the economy figured prominently as well.

With interest rates low, banks have to be more aggressive in pursuing borrowers to maintain their same level of profitability (i.e. they'll start considering loaning to folks they'd normally not loan to). Also, with interest rates low, there was a housing market boom which convinced a lot of people they could make money buying houses on credit and flipping them.

It makes you wonder if we'd have been better off if we'd have just let the economy recover on its own after 9/11. The fed lowering the prime rate did hasten the onset of economic recovery 7 years ago, but look where we are now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another excellent explanation that doesn't gesticulate wildly and incoherently towards panic, bankruptcy, firesales, etc. Thanks.</comment>


Social Network Monetization: The Four Dominant Business Models - <AUTHOR> http://venturedig.com/tech/monetizing-social-networks-the-four-dominant-business-models-and-how-you-should-implement-them-in-2010/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure this outlines the 4 dominant models. It strikes me more as the dominant business model (per-click ads) and 3 ideas that are novel and popular. The latter 3 haven't proven themselves as "Business Models". There is no particular indication that they won't go the way of (e.g.) Google's custom search: a good idea at the time, but unfortunately not particulary relevant to the market in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suggest adding the prefix back in to the title. Without "Monetizing Social Networks:" in the front, the title is wrong, as the classic "make stuff, then sell it for a profit" doesn't appear in the list. This article is far more limited than the HN title suggested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I tried, but It got cut off -- character limit.

I'll cut out some other thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edited. That's better. Now it includes the social networking prefix

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Freemium should be on there, too, which is how LinkedIn makes some (most?) of its money. Many dating sites fall into this category, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> An interesting overview. I'm not sure of the validity of taking all of your statistics from TechCrunch, however.</comment>


Freelancers and health insurance - <AUTHOR> http://jenamiller.com/notes-from-a-hired-pen/reader-q-what-do-you-do-about-health-insurance/

<comment><USER2> This is absolutely true! I believe that the current structure and cost of healthcare in the US is one of the largest detriments to entrepreneurship. This is never brought up in political debates and is rarely talked about in media. Before the ACA, providers would deny people applying for individual coverage for the silliest pre-existing conditions and once you were denied, you wen't getting healthcare anywhere (black list).

This was a huge struggle for me early on in my career--and it wasn't until our company had a group (3+ people) that would could affordable plans. Even then, we were paying over $1000/mo to insure 3 healthy 26-year-olds.

You can read more about my story here: [http://thecreativecareer.com/2009/03/30/us-healthcare- system...](http://thecreativecareer.com/2009/03/30/us-healthcare-system- undermines-innovation/)

EDIT (In case the above is TL;DR):

"This means that many entrepreneurs and innovators—those of us paving the way on our own—are left with costly insurance or no insurance at all. Because of the limited choices for affordable healthcare, the decision to become an entrepreneur looks increasingly less attractive. Even if an individual is to secure an individual policy, the rates will be higher, and the coverage will be less than policies available through an employer."

<comment><USER3> I've always thought it would be cool to have employers offer "MAKEation" days instead of vacation days. This would be time accumulated to take a month, a quarter, or even a year off to build your own product/service/dream. The company offering this would also provide mentors, resources, and periodic sit- downs to discuss investment into your new product/service/dream. You maintain your insurance throughout this time also. When you return to work, instead of having a meeting to "be brought back up to speed", you discuss with managers how to integrate your new business into the company, what you learned, and then make a presentation to the rest of your business/department. The idea being that every business can be it's own incubator of sorts. I would imagine this would attract top talent to your company, allow for new sources of revenue, keep your business fresh, and promote innovation among those that might otherwise be more risk-averse.

<comment><USER4> "In addition to" vacation days, I could see it, but in lieu of? No thanks.

Taking time away from work is an important part of my mental health. The last thing North American culture needs is another way for corporations to replace leisure time with yet more work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to make this too political, but this is the big issue no one talks about when discussing healthcare. For many small businesses, providing health insurance is a major cost, and a major distraction from their core business.

Whenever I talk to my conservative friends I try and point this out. Many entrepeneurs with kids who might be out there 'creating jobs' can't because the healthcare industry owns our politicians.

<comment><USER6> I've said this a few times here, and I'll say it again - I was able to start two businesses in Massachusetts precisely because of the MA health reform, i.e. "RomneyCare" (which, for the underattentive, has roughly the same model as the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. "ObamaCare").

<comment><USER7> As a self-employed Bay Stater, I am in complete agreement. I have a self- employed buddy in Hartford, he applied for health insurance with a CT agent. The questionaire he had to fill out for the application asked if he had ever felt depressed - not diagnosed as clinically depressed, just if he had ever been depressed. Well, as anyone who has ever worked for themselves can understand, it's hard to not ever experience a moment or two of depression. He answered honestly 'yes'; the agent told him that counted as a pre-existing condition and he was denied coverage.

I am so grateful that is something I didn't have to deal with on MA.

<comment><USER8> Not just those who are self employed, I think pretty much anyone that is human has probably felt depressed at one time or another. This seems similar to all the pharmaceutical commercials where they try to convince you that you need medication if you have ever felt tired, sore, nervous, etc.

It really does seem like a huge distraction from building a business that not only do you have to find and pay for health insurance, but that you have to run a gauntlet just for the opportunity to possibly be able to buy insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Health insurance coverage, primarily for my wife, is one of the biggest reasons I have a full time job right now instead of expanding the contracting I was doing previously or trying to start a business. For various reasons, she is nigh-uninsurable, and she's working two part time jobs, which of course offer no health insurance whatsoever. When I was contracting, we had two separate private insurance policies, with a combined deductible of something like $6,000.

The bolded point at the top of the article is absolutely true: If you cannot afford health insurance, you can't afford to freelance. I often wonder if being shackled to a job by the specter of being uninsured isn't built into the system on purpose.

<comment><USER2> "I often wonder if being shackled to a job by the specter of being uninsured isn't built into the system on purpose."

I've often wondered this too. It just seems so asinine that we tie healthcare to the employer--it's bad for employers and employees.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it was intentional. My understanding is that getting health insurance through your employer became a major thing when wage controls during World War II prevented employers from competing on salary. It remains a major thing because it enjoys a status as non-taxable income (also dating from World War II).

But even if it was accidental, it is morally perverse. For anyone with a serious illness, you can turn the statement around -- "You can stop working for me, but then you won't be able to get the medicine you need" -- and it sounds a lot like slavery.

One of the things that's perverse about it is that medical "insurance" is handled on a monthly basis, rather than on a per-diagnosis basis. Think about how insane that would be in another field. What if car insurance paid for things on a monthly basis rather than a per-accident basis? What if life insurance worked per-month rather than per-death?

My dream health insurance plan would insure me against the _possibility_ of getting cancer -- and if I was diagnosed with it, it would be their responsibility to cover treatment, not just in any month in which I paid my premiums, but for the lifetime of any disease discovered while I was current on the plan. My dream health insurance plan would be willing to help me insure against _variations in the cost of treatment_ for pre-existing conditions, but for conditions I truly couldn't pay for, would refer me to a charity.

I'm of the opinion that the misalignment is a result of _businesses trying to keep employees healthy_ rather than the natural result of _individuals mitigating risk_.

The link between health insurance and employment needs to be severed _yesterday_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a UK resident and I've never thought about any of those things, ever. I just take so much for granted.

I just do what I want and know I am covered for everything. We really do live in completely different worlds.

<comment><USER12> I have several friends in the UK and Canada and they tell me that universal coverage is more comparable to the US situation than everyone thinks, for several reasons.

If you are healthy, it's a wash because, well, you are healthy and it makes no sense for you to have health insurance at all, just pay out of pocket for what little you need. If you are sick, it's a wash because there are waiting lists and eligibility requirements, so they (my friends) all choose to carry extra insurance, for which they pay out of pocket, just in case by the time they are able to get that fancy heart surgery, they may no longer be alive.

What is your take on that?

Edit: Curious that all the responses so far are all about _money_. Surely going bankrupt beats dying because you never got that life-saving surgery on time?

A less dramatic example: I just had a wrist fracture. According to google, if I were a Canadian or a Brit, I would have had to walk around with a broken wrist for roughly 2.5 months (official average wait times).

I am not saying the US healthcare system is not broken. Of course it is. I am just saying universal coverage is not all it's made out to be either. At the end of the day, if you want good healthcare, you have to pay.

<comment><USER13> The difference is that there aren't 1 out 6 people (50 million) without health insurance in the UK and Canada. Another difference is that no one in the UK or Canada would ever have to go bankrupt trying to get that "fancy heart surgery" or "fancy cancer treatment" or "fancy kidney transplant".

"just in case by the time they are able to get that fancy heart surgery"

And, the 50 Million people who could _never, ever_ hope to get that fancy heart surgery because they can't afford the surgery _or_ the insurance (or don't qualify)? What of them?

Saying they are comparable in any way except "doctors perform treatment on patients in a licensed and regulated manner" is reaching.

<comment><USER12> 1-in-6/50MM without health insurance is not as straightforward a fact as it seems. Not saying there isn't a problem, just pointing out a few considerations:

1\. Insurance is not the same as coverage. Plenty of Americans who do not have health insurance are covered through various programs for children, the elderly, veterans, etc.

2\. Insurance is voluntary, and many people who can in fact afford it, simply choose to spend money on "stuff", including that sacred cow of american life, home ownership.

3\. The statistics for the uninsured (like your 1-in-6 number) include the elderly, the illegal immigrants, those who are uninsured only part of the year, and other groups that skew the results.

4\. If 50MM (although I dispute that number as per above) cannot get the heart surgery because they don't have any coverage but the other 250MM can, it's better than, say, 200MM not being able to get the surgery because of waiting times or ineligibility. Of course, those are totally made up numbers, I am just making a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not health insurance, but for day to day health _care_ , anyone in Seattle paying their own way should consider <http://www.qliance.com> . Together with a (very) high deductible plan, I was able to get insurance and primary care for myself at around $100/mo.

The main selling point is the excellent access to care, though. When your time is money, you don't want to be bouncing around between three doctors for a month to treat an allergy that prevents you from sleeping. When I was on Awesome Traditional Insurance when I worked at BigCo, it sometimes took over a week to diagnose and treat a simple problem that was preventing me from working. With Qliance, I've gone from call-with-problem to prescription-and- plan-in-hand in under 3 hours. That's a big deal for a freelancer.

I understand there are other organizations around the country functioning on a similar model. You can google Direct Primary Care to find them.

<comment><USER2> What happens if you get _really_ sick (cancer, etc.) or hit by a bus?

<comment><USER14> For a young person, improbable illness is probably best handled by bankruptcy.

<comment><USER15> This must be the American way of thinking. Doesn't sound like a good plan to me.

<comment><USER16> This isn't "the American way of thinking," it is a response to the state of the American system. Although casual, yours is a rather bigoted statement.

<comment><USER17> It's not bigoted, just wrong. Requires a familiarity with US law to know why it's wrong, though. There are some ideas and beliefs that are more common in the US than in other places, just as there are particular ideas and beliefs everywhere that are more common there than other places. Don't lower the bar on bigotry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://freelancersunion.org/> ?

That's what everyone in NYC uses, at least. I've been on and off of it for years without any issues, definitely the cheapest option here.

</comment><comment><USER19> The reality is that its not as easy as that.

Its not like "oh well, I can't be a freelancer because it doesn't provide healthcare, so I guess I am forced to just take that $90,000 a year job with full benefits."

The reality is, and I know I'm not the only one, that it can be much easier to find "freelance" or "contract" work than full-time employment with full benefits. And the alternative can often be zero income, because unemployment insurance doesn't cover a lot of circumstances, and it really doesn't apply (or shouldn't) when you can easily pick up a "freelance" or "contract" job.

The closest thing to 'full-time with benefits' that I have had (recently) has been 'contracting' jobs through staffing agencies, and there were no useful health benefits. Actually they had sort of a token health insurance, but it wasn't good for anything.

My health condition makes it harder for me to pick up and stick with one of these supposed full-time with benefits jobs that would probably be huge a waste of time anyway. I have a startupy idea and sort of a businessish that I am working on, and they are just much more useful ideas than most jobs I could pick up. And almost all of the most joblike jobs I have ever had have involved bosses who didn't know what they were doing wasting my time, office politics, and usually a few completely useless coworkers who I couldn't stand.

So I have been doing the "freelancing" thing, and even though the budget for this latest project basically has been on fumes for many months and I have to work for peanuts and can't afford healthcare, if I did manage to find a regular "job" after we get our new version into production, I don't think that would really be a win. It would suck all of my energy and time out just to support some asshole's lavish lifestyle on the basis of what would (odds on) just be a business based on some spammy bullshit marketing hacks or some other way to suck money out of the economy without providing any real benefit or innovation. Literally the only reason I would do that would be to take advantage of the healthcare after X months, assuming it somehow covered pre- existing conditions.

My hope is that the next day gig will have a better budget, and also that I can finish the startupish thing and that will provide money for me in a way that is not a waste of my time and allow me to eventually get rejected for health insurance and then reapply to the other California program and then get the insurance and then finally get my Nissen fundoplication.

</comment><comment><USER20> Important! Overall a good piece, but one glaring inaccuracy: if you are self- employed in the US, you _can_ deduct your health and dental insurance premiums _without_ needing to reach the 10% of gross income threshold. The 10% threshold [probably] does apply for health care costs other than premiums [1]. Assuming family premiums of $1k / month and a marginal tax rate of around 40% (which may be low after state is taken into account), being able to deduct your premiums is worth about $5k / year in tax savings, so this is not a minor detail.

Source: [http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch06.html#en_US_2011_pu...](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch06.html#en_US_2011_publink1000208843)

1\. Depending on whether you setup an entity through which you do freelance work (and what type), you may be able to setup a plan that allows you to pay for healthcare expenses with pre-tax dollars, even if you don't reach the 10% threshold. See your friendly CPA for details.

<comment><USER21> Itemization is where you can deduct out-of-pocket if it gets high enough, but you are correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the post: "If you cannot afford health insurance, you cannot afford to freelance."

I'd say that's true (in the US). Health insurance is just but one cost of working for yourself. Since freelancing, I've found that I've been bumping my deductible up over the years to keep up with the 15% YOY price increases, but it is what it is, "catastrophic" insurance. I'm definitely not covering acupuncture.

One thing I always wished there were was a pool for sole proprietors, which would allow you to negotiate better terms, just as if you were a large company.

It's starting to look like this might be part of ACA with the creation of state run exchanges, or at least I hope that's a possibility, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

<comment><USER2> I always thought this was a smart idea. Lump all the single biz owners together and buy coverage as a mega-group. That makes way too much sense to be considered...

<comment><USER23> What's wrong with this idea? I figured that's how many folks did it?

<comment><USER2> It's not possible... You have to be a business, non-profit, etc... You can't just be a bunch of random people. Even if you found a group, you'd need to put together some legal structure to make it work.

If you're starting your own company, the last thing you want to worry about is starting another entity, finding a group and buying healthcare--you won't have time for real work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Health insurance for healthy people without kids shouldn't be a deterrent to freelance. Self employed health insurance is generally relatively affordable and easy to get, provided you are in good health and don't have any dependents.

If you have kids or health problems it might give pause but there are options - you need to attempt to get on a group health plan of some sort. Here in NYC we have freelancer's union but a little known trick I learned recently is that in most cities you can actually use the health insurance plan associated with your local chamber of commerce, which they offer as an enticement to joining.

<comment><USER25> This is such a silly thing to have to worry about. You're starting a company but first you have to spend a day or two along with a bunch of money finding a group health insurance plan (whatever that even _means_ ).

When I started a company in the UK, I didn't have to consider this.

<comment><USER26> _You're starting a company but first you have to spend a day or two along with a bunch of money finding a group health insurance plan (whatever that even means)._

I wish it were that easy. You also have to figure out if there even any doctors nearby that will accept your insurance.

We currently have to drive around 30mins-1hour to take my newborn to the doctor, and of course only during work hours.

You also have to deal with the fact that insurance companies mess up, a lot it seems. We've had to deal several times with our insurance mistakenly denying coverage and have to fight tooth and nail just to get them to pay it.

It's incredibly alarming to come to a $9000 bill in your mailbox because someone accidentally put the wrong ID number while typing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I live in New Jersey, which is a fair coverage state, so I've never had to deal with being rejected from a plan because of pre-existing conditions."

This is a huge omission. If you don't live in a fair coverage state, you have a high chance of being ineligible for individual health coverage based on preexisting conditions. Preexisting conditions include migraines, depression, and benign conditions with scary-sounding names, like "subaortic stenosis." There was a Planet Money interview recently with an insurance broker who generally rejected 50% of applicants. Granted, this selects for people who think they need health insurance, so the actual number may be a bit lower, but it still stands to reason that a large number of people are getting denied coverage.

If you don't fit the platonic ideal of "healthy," you may have no choice but to work for "the man."

</comment><comment><USER28> This article rests on a potentially false premise: that you are likely to find a job that provides health benefits in today's economy.

<comment><USER2> While this is true--any skilled position at a major employer will offer health coverage. I have a full-time staff of 3 people. If I didn't offer health insurance, I'd have a full-time staff of 0.

EDIT: Hell, if I didn't offer health insurance, I wouldn't work for me...

<comment><USER28> And whether you can get a "skilled position at a major employer" depends heavily on where you live and the job market there as it applies to your skill set. Remember, the current job market is such that we have people with college degrees leaving them off their resumes when they apply to jobs so that they aren't rejected as "overqualified".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Starting in 2014 it will be far cheaper for many to pay the health insurance tax and enroll for coverage as necessary.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm leaving my job in 2 weeks. I'm planning to get insurance through ACM if it's cheaper than COBRA.

<http://www.acm.org/membership/insurance>

</comment><comment><USER31> This probably applies to start-ups as well. I wonder how many would-be start- up founders changed their minds after realizing they would not be able to afford health insurance without a full-time job.

Reminds me of an article I read last year about how there are more start-ups in Norway because the country has a really wide and extensive social safety net, so people don't have to worry about hitting rock bottom if they quit their job to pursue their own endeavors.

<comment><USER32> I'm lucky to live in Canada which has pretty decent health care, but I looked into supplemental health insurance (for dental coverage, etc) when I started contracting, and the premiums for the services you got were just ridiculous.

The annual premiums were way more than I would ever spend, and I would have to be paid in for three years before I would even get any dental benefits.

I ended up going without supplemental health insurance until I got married, upon which I got coverage under my wife's plan.

<comment><USER4> Who were you getting supplemental insurance through? Blue Cross kicks in dental after a couple of months, from what I recall.

<comment><USER32> This was several years ago, but Blue Cross was one of the several companies I looked at - the policies were pretty much the same across companies.

I ended up not getting any. The only thing I was looking for was dental, since most basic health care is covered by the province. The rates I found were around $2K a year, easily more than I would normally spend, and when I read the fine print, I couldn't get comparable dental coverage to my previous full- time job without having been paid in for 24 months.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why we parted ways with Grammarly (and you should too) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/kayako-engineering/why-we-parted-ways-with-grammarly-and-you-should-too-dea483bef823 <comment><USER2> I hope the post is fair. Let me know if it isn't. Our goal is to explain the situation to our customers, and help make other teams aware that their apps may be suffering similar issues.

<comment><USER3> Hey Jamie, my name is Sergey and I'm a developer for the Grammarly extension. Sorry to see you had so much trouble with Grammarly! That definitely wasn't our intention – quite the contrary.

Thanks to your debugging video pinpointing the issue, we have been able to fix it. There was a bug where Grammarly would try to poke nodes outside of the input field in certain cases. It should be fixed now in the latest version of Grammarly for Chrome – please check it out and let me know if it helped.

<comment><USER4> Sergey, I'm also running into this. Is there a way to prevent grammarly from running on our app from the code? An a css class, or <meta> tag we can add to opt-out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Holy crap, i just got our first bug report about this exact same problem, Ember 2.14.

<comment><USER2> The latest version of the Grammarly extension resolved the problem entirely for us. Hope it does the same for you!</comment></comment>


No Emails on Saturdays - <AUTHOR> http://swapped.tumblr.com/post/43344145251/no-mail-on-saturday <comment><AUTHOR> OP's here.

A couple of things I forgot to mention in the post.

1\. The numbers are based on hits through URLs with tracking information. Some visited and voted from the Twitter feed, some hit the base URL. This affects absolute numbers, obviously, but the %-ages should be about the same.

2\. I also tallied up negative and positive votes, thought that perhaps people on Monday were more stressed and negative than on Sunday. But there were too few dislikes, so it's hard to make any conclusions -

             like    !like
      Sat     22       3
      Sun     44       3
      Mon     34       1
      Tue     34       1
      Wed     35       4

EDIT - I added raw emails/opens/votes data at the end of the Tumblr post, just in case.

</comment><comment><USER2> There is email campaign software available that tracks the open times on previous emails to each person on your list. The next time you send a newsletter to that person, the email is sent at the optimal time for the person to open, read and interact with it. I forget what the software was but I always thought it was a great idea.

<comment><USER3> While at Bronto software (<http://bronto.com/>), one of the features I worked on was just that. We called it Send Time Optimization, and from what I understand, it's not an unheard-of feature amongst email software providers.

<comment><USER4> Completely off topic — you worked at Bronto? I did a short (like 1 or 2 day) contract to write a first pass at their Ruby client gem a couple years back. Seemed like nice guys. I get shivers thinking about Ruby and SOAP though. Eesh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thumbtack has an open-source split testing calculator which makes it very easy to see whether or not results like these are significant or not:

[http://www.thumbtack.com/labs/abba/#Sunday=47%2C389&Tues...](http://www.thumbtack.com/labs/abba/#Sunday=47%2C389&Tuesday=35%2C378&Wednesday=37%2C400&Saturday=25%2C401&Monday=35%2C379&abba%3AintervalConfidenceLevel=0.95&abba%3AuseMultipleTestCorrection=true)

If we treat "Sunday" as the baseline and use "votes" as the count of a successful email, it appears that you can say with a somewhat high degree of confidence that Sunday is better than Saturday, but nothing else.

<comment><USER6> But with the opening rate, there is a totally different story: [http://www.thumbtack.com/labs/abba/#Sunday=157%2C389&Tue...](http://www.thumbtack.com/labs/abba/#Sunday=157%2C389&Tuesday=175%2C378&Wednesday=177%2C400&Saturday=111%2C401&Monday=148%2C379&abba%3AintervalConfidenceLevel=0.95&abba%3AuseMultipleTestCorrection=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One other thing I think you should experiment with is time of day. There was another great post (not able to find the link yet, will update when I do) that talked about open rate being highest within the first few hours of sending _regardless of the send time_.

I've always been a fan of sending between 3-6am, although I think I just took this as a rule of thumb from someone I worked with an never questioned it much. Would love to see a similar study on send times within the optimal range of days.

<comment><USER8> MailChimp has a neat page where they list the average open rates for the 5.5 million mailing lists people manage using MailChimp's platform: <http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/>

"Most emails are sent between Monday and Friday, with the highest volume on Tuesday and Thursday. More subscribers open email, however, on Wednesday and Thursday."

"Subscribers are likely to open email after 12pm, and the most active hours are 2-5pm."

"Your newest subscribers are your best subscribers. They're most engaged immediately after signup, and then trail off over time."

Those are averages though, your mileage may vary. For the newsletters I send out, Tuesday morning has proven to be the sweet spot.

More information: [http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/when-is-the-best-time-to- sen...](http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/when-is-the-best-time-to-send-emails)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What time of the day you send the email makes a big difference. Especially if your list is large. ISPs do magic with large sends to prevent spamming. If you send on a Sunday evening, and others send Monday morning at 3am for example, most people's email view is reverse chronologically ordered. So on Monday morning, your email is likely to be on the bottom of the pile.

</comment><comment><USER10> Your sample size it way too small for the stats to be meaningful

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, I see.

So you are saying that if I had 10x the data, then the Saturday opening rate and the Sunday response rate could've been completely different?

<comment><USER11> Your margin of error is 4.38% [1], which makes the comparison between all non- Saturday meaningless. However, it seems like the numbers for Saturday vs other days are useful.

To answer your specific question, if you had 10x more data, your margin of error (with 95% confidence) would drop to 1.39%, so yes, you could reasonably get fairly different results.

I was disappointed to read that you skipped Thursday and Friday. In my domain, Mondays are the peak of activity, slowly sliding down to a bottom on Friday/Saturday. I would have liked to see your numbers for every day. Next time! (In that case, your MoE would have been 5.37%, btw.)

[1] <http://americanresearchgroup.com/moe.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I am too very curious about Fridays, but I suspect it would require getting the time of the day right too. Send it too early, and it's pre-weekend morning stress. Too late - and everyone's already gone for the day.

PS. I don't know why I picked (mod 5). Makes zero sense now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting stats, but I'd love to see this with a bigger sample size, and with thursdays and fridays included!

</comment><comment><USER13> are the engagement numbers for sunday correct? it appears to be highest, which doesn't match the conclusions.

[edit: maybe i'm not understanding, but engagement on sunday is _highest_ at 47, yet the final recommendation is for "Tuesday or Wednesday" (35 and 39). why wouldn't you choose the day with highest engagement?]

[also, incidentally, those numbers are all the same to within a couple of standard deviations (1 sd ~ sqrt(n) ~ 6). so the sample size is too small to draw any really firm conclusions.]

<comment><USER14> It looks like the conclusion is overly simplistic (but it's a blog entry based on a single experiment, so it's quite reasonable to limit it to simple conclusions)

If I understand the data correctly, Sunday has a low open rate, but of those that open, it had very high engagement rate.

The author seems to be saying that the open rate is low enough to make Sunday a "bad day", but that really depends on what your email is about.

If getting people to read the email is your priority, then avoid Sunday, but if you mostly care about getting them to respond in some way, then Sunday could be good - those that read it will have the free time to actually respond.

(Of course, while the limited data provided by this experiment is interesting, it's probably not worth basing any serious decisions on)

<comment><AUTHOR> What I wanted to share was the fact that there _was_ a noticeable difference to begin with, so it's something worth paying attention to.

The exact pattern will depend on the audience. If it's VmWare emailing IT people, then the open rate is probably going to be the same through the workdays and zero on weekends. If it's some hobby stuff, then it'd be in reverse. For my particular project, it just happens that Saturday sucked, which is a good thing to know.

<comment><USER14> I certainly think that your experiment has value - my apologies if it came across any other way.

\- If nothing else, it shows that there is a difference, and the day you pick for your newsletter matters. \- It seems that it would be helpful for other people to repeat your experiment (but stretch it to 7 days) to see what the results are for their readers. \- The difference between the open rate and engagement rate is quite interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting, thanks for the share.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't there a statistic somewhere about facebook, that people go there the most on wednesday 17h?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this number also apply to Tweets? Maybe someone can tell their experience on tweets.

<comment><USER18> We do this for Twitter at <http://socialyzerhq.com>, but rather than just limiting to historical data we try to predict when to send in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why no Thursday/Friday? Those are slower days at many work places.</comment>


Kaspersky AV injected unique ID allowing sites to track users in incognito mode - <AUTHOR> https://heise.de/-4496138 <comment><USER2> Interesting. I think its time to get rid of this junk. I always had a bad feeling about AVs, due to repeated "extra vulnerabilities" they seemed to introduce, while not providing measurable added value compared to Windows Defender.

That Kaspersky is apparently too stupid to fix this leak properly even after it was pointed out, suggests to me that their developers obviously are incompetent and the trust int hem doing AV right is approaching zero, if they can't even load a script into a website without leaking like the Iraqi marine.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

But then, I don't trust Microsoft, either.

In Debian, I can be reasonably confident that no information leaves the system without my authorization.

Edit: Just out of curiosity, am I wrong in mistrusting Microsoft, or in trusting Debian?

<comment><USER4> You are wrong about trusting Linux.

Linux would badly need AV if it was a more popular desktop OS. Right now the user base is just too small to be a valuable target.

A regular Linux distro (without SELinux or some kind of application sandboxing and a hardened setup including NOEXEC home, forbidding ptrace, ...) is very susceptible to compromise.

All it takes is somehow getting the system to execute one unprivileged shell script and your user is permanently hosed.

An attacker can spy on everything, including other applications memory, unless they prevent it. Browsers are also easily compromised by just injecting a extension that can spy on everything.

Also he lack of dynamic firewalls makes it hard to monitor/prevent unwanted network traffic. (which could often be easily circumvented, though)

<comment><USER5> Yes, Linux distributions don't have protection against malicious software. If you downloaded thrid-party program and run it, it can read everything from your home directory, including cookies and browser history, it can inject itself into browser process, it can see everything you type.

And if you decided to add third-party apt repository, for example, to use Node.JS or VS Code, you give permanent root access to the owner of repository. Also, some third-party .deb packages (for example, Slack) automatically add their repository and public key to apt sources list upon installation.

For example, there is a third-party repository, that allows installing multiple versions of PHP in Debian. This repository replaces cryptographic libraries provided by Debian with its own ones (you can see those packages here: [https://packages.sury.org/php/pool/main/o/openssl/](https://packages.sury.org/php/pool/main/o/openssl/) )

Also, in Linux unprivileged program, run under "nobody" account, can read all unique hardware identifiers like MAC address, HDD serial number etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their fix is apparently to not leak machine-unique UUIDs but UUIDs unique to the version of the AV. Thanks Kaspersky for leaking if the users AV is vulnerable to exploits!

<comment><USER7> That's not really a big deal. The attackers can just be indiscriminate and hit a good number of vulnerable instances. And it's already pretty standard for clients to send used agent versions.

<comment><USER6> Well, it is, because you can now deploy much more targetted payloads, which means you can hit even more instances with a little bit of extra work, comparatively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honest question: what is AV even for these days? I have had some form of AV on all of my Windows machines since the 90's. I don't think I have seen a detection in at least ten years.

<comment><USER9> Every single company I worked for installed AV on our work computers, which was a huge resource hog and made the highest-specced MacBook Pros feel like cheap netbook.

I suspect it is mandated by some sort of compliance requirement, and the IT departments are just ticking a box. Maybe that's how this industry is still alive.

<comment><USER10> Reading sibling comments I have an idea for a startup.

Make an AV, that does not really do anything, but can be used by thoughtful companies to "tick the box". Sell licenses and then do only the minimum required for compliance.

It could be described that it uses Windows Defender service to provide the basis of AV solution.

<comment><USER11> An AV that alarmed on unpatched vulnerabilities might be better. Attackers will resignature their code to evade everything on VT, then spam the world to hit whoever hasn't patched.

For ransomware anyway. If they're targeting you specifically they'll find out what you're running and customize against it.

<comment><USER8> A vulnerability scanner would be welcome. I would even run something like that on my linux machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20703699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20703699)

</comment><comment><USER13> Do we even need A/V for windows ? I think Microsoft Defender along with "proper digital hygeine" obviates the need for dedicated A/V solutions.

<comment><USER14> The only annoying thing about it is that it periodically notifies me that "It has not found any threats". I guess even computer programs feel lonely at times.

<comment><USER15> It can be turned off. But I kinda understand why they do that. Every other antivirus constantly show various "licence is ending", "some component is outdated" messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anti-virus here means anti-privacy. What shocks me most is that this is in the paid versions as well.

I run Linux and have ClamAV installed for some compliance thingy, yet I have never run it (the compliance thingy tells me to have AV installed, not to actually run it). I can totally recommend some up-to-date Linux distro in case you want to steer clear of "virusses (etc)".

<comment><USER17> I used to run ClamAV for a few years, both on Linux and macOS. The only thing it ever detected were Windows viruses in my spam mailbox. Every time I received a spam email, ClamAV would complain and I'd have to go delete the email that was already not in my inbox.

<comment><USER18> This is ironically one of the ways using _any_ AV can increase the attack surface of a device, leading to its compromise. I don't know if ClamAV has ever had an issue, but it seems lots of people here have forgotten the zoo of not-that-long-ago Windows Defender exploits that could be triggered by it scanning various files, like in a spam email the user never even looked at but their client downloaded a copy of anyway. The issues are often made worse by the AV processes that get owned already having root privileges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some years ago I found Mcafee Enterprise doing something similar, where it added a unique ID to the user agent string on Firefox. It didn't inject it tlat runtime though, it actually modified your Firefox profile files to set it.

I presume this wouldn't allow tracking in private browsing mode (I guess Firefox doesn't use the standard user agent), but still not good.

</comment><comment><USER20> Avast also tracks clickstream data and sells it to Jumpshot.

<comment><USER21> Jumpshot is Avast.

Just a subsidiary.

<comment><USER3> Does that somehow make it OK?

<comment><USER22> Without knowing anything about the specifics here... yes, I can confidently say that transmitting information between two companies with the same owner is "ok" and should be expected.

<comment><USER23> I think that's splitting hairs, and focusing on the wrong aspect of it. Avast gives clickstream data to a digital marketing company. That company happens to be a subsidiary, so Avast _is_ a digital marketing company. The problem becomes one not of a company sharing your private information with another so it can me monetized, but the initial company monetizing it itself. If you have a problem with your data being used for marketing by your AV vendor, whether it's shared to make it happen is likely of little consequence to you.

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

And there are other risks to users. Once that data has been collected, others may access it, and use it in far more damaging ways. Users in China or Saudi Arabia, for example, may end up in jail, or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can anyone tell me how kaspersky is injecting a script into an HTTPS site?

From the screenshot in the article, there doesn't appear to be a kaspersky browser extension in use.

I guess it would have to be a MITM of some sort. Either by installing a cert or by getting the TLS keys from the browser, I suppose?

<comment><USER25> This was my immediate thought. Where is rewrite happening? All the options seems icky.

<comment><USER26> I think AV vendors used to do browser addons to provide some functionality. But since browser extensions in all popular browser are now effectively neutered versions of their former selves, they are probably resorting to stuff like this. It can be hard to even get a browser addon installed as a third party program without resorting to hacks (thanks to browsers having taken measures after the toolbar hell).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why would they use a unique id unless they intending to track or deliver unique JS payloads to each user?

Edit: Especially frightening given allegations of FSB ties that other users pointed out [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_bans_and_allegations...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_bans_and_allegations_of_Russian_government_ties)

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought the only people that used AV programs were old people that were getting scammed?

</comment><comment><USER29> There's lots of 'Do we need Kaspersky' type questions in here already. The more pertinent question is whether AV is actually effective, or if stronger countermeasures like application whitelisting are needed?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcgHkeZ1i4&list=PLqz80p7f6d...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcgHkeZ1i4&list=PLqz80p7f6dFuKBsESxMLjrI3ZWzTQoaPU)

<comment><USER30> You would need a document whitelist since many programs can be hijacked using buffer overflow attacks or outright support execution of arbritrary scripts.

<comment><USER29> I'll also point out that defending against buffer overflows which are considered vulnerabilities is a far saner boundary than a blacklist of files which grows infinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't fully understand why everyone gets upset over browser leaks when in private mode - most websites interested in tracking private sessions will just associate private and non-private sessions by IP address.

If you're paranoid enough to use a VPN for 'private' traffic, you should probably be running such sessions in a VM using something like the tails live CD.

<comment><USER3> For sure.

But using Tails in VMs isn't recommended. Better is using Whonix, because it isolates the Tor client and userland in separate VMs. It also has a LiveCD mode. And for added security, you can run it in Qubes.

<comment><USER31> Funny that you namedrop like three security products but fail to evaluate which hypervisor should be used, which is probably the most important part of a secure environment if unauthorized code execution fits in your threat model.

<comment><USER3> Sorry. Whonix, by default for non-expert users, runs in VirtualBox. You can also use KVM. And Qubes basically uses Xen.

My threat model is mainly about preventing potential adversaries from learning my ISP-assigned IP address. I don't care all that much if a VM, or even a host machine, gets pwned. My stuff is well enough compartmentalized that I'd at most lose some work. But not my privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://www.tomsguide.com/us/kaspersky-possible- ban,news-270...](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/kaspersky-possible- ban,news-27054.html)

A good time to remind people that thr U.S. government is not a fan of kaspersky products.

</comment><comment><USER33> AV, always reminding you you're under attack since 1986.

</comment><comment><USER33> If i click the above article link, then come back to this thread, will i find a unique id used to track me planted somewhere amongst my cookies?</comment>


Decentralized TikTok? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/30/dfinity-demos-its-tiktok-clone-opens-up-its-internet-computer-to-outside-developers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Developers expected to submit some interesting projects now the internet computer is open

</comment><comment><USER2> dfinity for the win.. and an tiktok clone that doesn't rate user appearances. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER3> another step in the right direction</comment>


7 reasons why mobile apps are uninstalled - <AUTHOR> http://appiterate.com/7-reasons-why-your-mobile-app-gets-uninstalled/

<comment><USER2> The top seven are all things I'm concerned about, but I was initially surprised at the fact that my preference order is pretty much the reverse. Then I wasn't surprised. Then I was just happy that permission over-reach, intrusive ads and forced social logins made it to the top seven.

</comment><comment><USER3> how about: fails to deliver the expected functionality?

this is probably top 5 on my list.</comment>


Before the Internet (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/before-the-internet <comment><USER2> It still blows my mind that I used to make plans with friends to go see a movie a week in advance and everyone would just show up.

<comment><USER3> I struggle to remember precisely how we did .. I know we did.. I know it involved theater programs and phoning .. but the concrete memory is gone as if it was fantasy

<comment><USER4> There were these things called newspapers. They ran theater ads, at least a week in advance.

<comment><USER5> Remember calling the theater's recorded schedule line? Then if someone bugged you at the wrong moment you'd miss the times for the one you needed and have to listen to the whole damn thing again?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I do indeed. That was an intermediate technology level. And in some ways, not so much worse than the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone use Teletext? I booked a holiday from an advert on there once. Of course you had to just phone them when you wanted to book. It was also good for a laugh playing Bamboozle [1]. It was like a mini internet.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle_(quiz)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozle_\(quiz\))

</comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off topic, but I've had a print subscription to The New Yorker for many years and I always read the Shouts & Murmurs satire pieces and the absolute most riotously funny one I've read is "Sunday Routine" by Jen Spyra:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/sunday- routine](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/sunday-routine)

<comment><USER8> Same, TNY is the only publication we are still subscribed too and it's always a pleasure to read. Coming in weekly we are always behind, so they are all scattered around the house and actually pushes us to read more.

The shouts and murmurs is definitely a great section!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I loved reading this!

'Before the internet' pretty much coincides with 'when I was a kid' for me. I would love to hear 'before the internet' memories from people who were adults before the internet too.

<comment><USER4> Here's one from the "damn, that sucked" side: literature research. I spent days in libraries, digging through various indexes (that is, lots of large and heavy books) and taking notes. Then finding journals, and making copies on temperamental photocopy machines. Or "printing" from microfilm. And requesting stuff through inter-library loan.

<comment><USER10> I actually enjoyed all of that, and still occasionally spend time pouring through the stacks. Right up until the "making copies" part. It goes very quickly (instantly?) downhill from there.

I definitely get more out of physical paper where I can book mark, dog ear, underline, highlight and write in the margins than I've ever gotten from a digital copy. Except for the searching.

I don't think we'll ever have a great hybrid, but pairing the two together is the way to go.

Inter-branch loans haven't changed. I'm on 3 months now still waiting for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before the internet, high school reunions had a lot of suspense to them, because you didn't have Facebook and already know nearly everything about people you hadn't seen in N number of decades.

</comment><comment><USER12> Catalogues. Toy shops. Newspapers. Libraries. The visual and structural meaning of these would be highly more enveloping of the imagination and the only source for curiosity. Definitely different times.

</comment><comment><USER13> _And there would be no way to look it up, no way to prove who was right, except if someone had a little booklet. "Anyone got a little booklet?" you'd ask, looking around. "Is there a booklet on this shit?"_

Wow! I actually had 'the booklet' when I was a kid. Carried it around with me. If you want to brighten a youngster's day, get it,

[https://www.amazon.com/Rocks-Minerals-Golden-Nature- Guides/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Rocks-Minerals-Golden-Nature- Guides/dp/B0006AUWR0/)

</comment><comment><USER14> What a lovely piece!

</comment><comment><USER15> Before the internet, parents of children with rare diseases watched them die without a doctor ever believing them.

Before the internet, gay kids committed suicide, never even knowing how they felt was normal for some other people far away from their small town.

Before the internet, if your county library didn't have it, it didn't exist.

Before the internet, you had 3 TV channels, and you watched what the advertisers would pay for, not what you were curious about.

<comment><USER16> > Before the internet, if your county library didn't have it, it didn't exist.

Inter-library loans existed long before the internet.

> Before the internet, you had 3 TV channels, and you watched what the > advertisers would pay for, not what you were curious about.

Cable TV with lots of channels existed long before streaming video was available on the web. Also, you could rent videos at Blockbuster (or borrow them for free at the local library). And you had ad-free public TV stations.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how book search systems were used, surely large library indexes existed but how efficient and how often they'd be used..

In a way, book searching is probably the only cool thing about internet IMO. The rest was already nice enough as it was. You don't need ultra high bandwidth and ultra low latency to find a VHS for a night with friends... it won't make the memories better.

<comment><USER5> Without the Internet: between rentals, purchases, and the library, more than enough media to keep me 100% happy and occupied my entire life for very little money.

With the Internet: Same but now I have _way_ more than I need rather than just more than I need, to the point that picking something to enjoy is kinda hard because there's so much and it's all about equally hard to get—i.e. not hard—all the time. Total expense kinda high, actually, since you can't reduce the base cost of Internet access by checking more movies out from the library, even if you manage to replace Netflix and friends—to use it at all, there's a high monthly price, so if you occasionally need it for work or whatever you're just stuck.

Also, for those who didn't grow up without the Internet, here's a fun one: passing thoughts about trivia didn't used to bug us. In fact they'd often not even reach the level of conscious thought. It was difficult enough to find out the answers to "when was that actor born?" or "who produced [album you don't have on hand]?" that we just... didn't even think about it, most of the time. If we did and no-one within yelling distance knew the answer and there wasn't a relevant coffee table book around to consult, that was it, rarely did anyone go to the effort to find out or feel any kind of nagging sensation that they really ought to go look that up. In short, it was wonderful.

For those who didn't grow up without smartphones (they're old enough to be on here now!): we used to often do one thing at a time, not one thing plus being on our phones. Oh and kids—even ones old enough that they all have their own cell phones now, like 8 or 9 years old—used to just have to find something to do if they got dragged somewhere by their parents and got bored. Usually games with other kids around, if there were any. The games would be imagination- based or use improvised playing equipment—cup ball, for instance, which was like baseball but with a wadded up cardboard concession cup for a ball, and makeshift bases. Seriously.

<comment><USER3> paradox of choice</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the deal with hating Flash? - <AUTHOR>

I am in the process of building a RIA that will involve various media types and creating an interactive presentation out of them.  We are doing it in Flash.  It's faster and simpler to code with a universal support by desktop systems where this app is targeted to be used.  In discussing it with the various digerati as oon as Flash is mentioned it's like I've stepped in dog poo and noses get all scrunched up.  There simply isn't an elegant HTML5 solution for this task at the time.  I'd be happy to support the iPad and Jobs mafia in the future when this all gets cleared up but, as we've seen, a great majority of Flash dependent applications (Youtube and their interactions, Viddler and their comment system, and recently Grooveshark and their actual file player) cannot be done in anything but Flash if they're to be as interactive and reliable.<p>Am I wrong?  Has anyone seen any really good interactive multimedia RIAs done in something outside Flash? <comment><USER2> Good question.

Personally, I used to love flash, but they kept adding crap to it and the IDE environment kept getting crappier and crappier (in my experience), that it became more of a PITA than a benefit, and that was even before iOS.

For sure, in the right hands, and for the right things, it's a powerful multimedia tool, especially for desktop interactive presentations. I've built many such things in Flash (and Director!) myself.

Some advice: Go ahead and use Flash, but treat it like the component it is. Don't do your entire UI in Flash, just use it for media playback, and even then as a fallback for when HTML5 standards don't work on a given user's platform of choice. That way when things really get going, you don't have an entire application to re-write. For sure the main platform that will still be around in 10 years will be the web.

JavaScript isn't that much different from ActionScript, DOM elements aren't that much different from MovieClips.

I expect we are about to see really good interactive multimedia in the browser. As a fellow tool-builder, I've got something cooking myself. Curious about your project, any details you can share about why you feel Flash is essential?

</comment><comment><USER3> People dont like flash because it takes long to load, make for slow and unresponsive ui's, consumes lots of cpu, ruins vast amounts of basic usability and is generally a bad player in the web department.

Flash is not required for reliable and interactive interface, it is needed however to deal with multimedia reliably, so when people look down for using flash, just tell them you cant do what you need to with current web standards. Looking to the future I think its pretty unarguable that people should be looking to move to web standards when they are reliably available</comment>


Want more startups? Build a better safety net - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-28/want-more-startups-build-a-better-safety-net <comment><USER2> This might be an unpopular opinion here, but I think that there already are plenty of start ups (and I do not live in the bay). The author is probably right that reducing risk will create more entrepreneurs, but I don't "want more startups".

That's how capitalism works, the grand reward of making it big motivates entrepreneurs to do the extra work and take the additional risk to succeed.

Of course there would be successes that would arise due to the welfare state... but at what cost?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is exactly true for me. I've always wanted to start a business and would have done so at several points in my career. But I have a family that I need to keep covered under some sort of health insurance, so I keep working for other people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Somehow that just cries UBI to me. But this will always be torpedoed by the naysayers who predict that the majority will then just kick back and play video games all day instead of working to make their visions become reality.

<comment><USER5> I think that I would prefer if we simply subsidized wages to push down hours/week. I realize this wouldn't work for intensive job roles, but I'm pretty certain that many - if not most - jobs could be shared by two, rather than one, hire. Push hours down to 20/week and hire twice as many people. More time for people to engage in hobbies/entertainment/family/community. I believe this was done in Germany in '08 as a crisis intervention to avoid the large job losses we saw here in the states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Then there will be plenty of startups for the purpose of getting safety net at the expense of legitimate startups</comment>


Compiler Bugs Found When Porting Chromium to VC++ 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/compiler-bugs-found-when-porting-chromium-to-vc-2015/ <comment><USER2> Active discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11361151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11361151)</comment>


Show HN: Pydockenv v0.6.0 is out! Easier installation & increased compatibility - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/se7entyse7en/pydockenv/tree/v0.6.0 <comment><AUTHOR> `pydockenv` has been completely ported to `golang`. This makes the installation much easier since it doesn't have any Python dependency, hence no conflicts during installation outside of a virtual environment.

Currently it has to be installed with `pip`, so Python is required to install it. Once different ways for installing it (package mangers, package in GH, etc.) are provided, Python itself won't be a dependency (you'll be able to run Python environments without having Python installed).

Having `pydockenv` written in non-Python makes also the development itself easier since no meta usage of `pydockenv` is needed.</comment>


New Year's Resolutions for the Java Developer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jelastic.com/2013/01/03/new-years-resolutions-for-the-java-developer-guest-post/

<comment><USER2> Java is a language for people good at resisting temptation. It gives you all sorts of ways to make your code look nicer, more elegant, but the only way to be productive in Java is to avoid all of them.

In my experience, you can be more productive in Java than in any other language, because it has by the best tools and libraries. However, don't use reflection, don't use cloning, avoid automatic (de)serialization, don't doc needlessly, don't separate interface and implementation when you don't have to, use refactoring and code generation, don't feel bad about code duplication.

Most of all, always consider that coding is cheap. Changing a constant? Easy, not hard. Changing interfaces? Easy, not hard. Introducing an alternative implementation? Easy, not hard. Changing names? Easy, not hard. Adding new types? Easy, not hard. You don't need to think about easy things in advance, think about the problem instead.

<comment><USER3> More productive than any other language?

That's quite a bold claim...

I'd expect languages that require far less code for pretty much anything, and have far more compile-time safety to be more productive both at the prototyping stage, and at long term software maintenance.

<comment><USER4> "In my experience"

It wasn't a broad claim, it was an observation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Java advocate. Here's a few more:

Learn YAGNI. Tattoo it on your friggen foreheads. Run lean... No, you DONT need to build a framework to complete your project!

Stop abstracting god dang everything. Interfaces and composition are GOOD, use them. Inheritance and generalization use SPARINGLY, or not at all! Before you create an abstraction, are you CERTAIN sometime in the future you will swap the impl out or are you more likely to throw away the code? Think about that.

Instead of Spring, consider CDI on TomEE. Dependency injection is GOOD, but you don't need to friggen inject everything in the mothafriggen world. Since CDI has a smaller feature set than Spring, you will be forced to not be as stupid. -Said a recovering spring-a-holic

Here's a slight disagreement with the article:

JPA is fine, but Hibernate is bad, slow, and it's made by Gavin King, the man who has a terminal case of 'wasn't invented here' syndrom. Use EclipseLink and stick JPA2, and pull in Redis/Mongo where appropriate.

<comment><USER6> My personal advice:

Writing a service? Use dropwizard[0]

Avoid EE6's version of CDI (WELD/OWB) and EE6 all together. Its slow and causes more problems than its worth. If you really want CDI, use gluice.

Guava is your friend.

Avoid JPA, specifically the parts regarding session management. Never liked it myself and Ebean[1] is a far cleaner ORM which reuses the JPA annotations for mapping classes.

Writing a user facing website? I don't have a good answer here honestly. JSF/EE6 is terrible, GWT - yuck, Wicket - yuck, in my opinion they all suck. For related options Grails seems ok, Play! seems ok, Rails on JRuby seems ok but I haven't used any of them enough to have any real opinion of them. We're currently using angular.js and Jersey for the API on the backend.

Groovy 2 is pretty awesome when performance isn't critical, use it.

[0] <http://dropwizard.codahale.com/>

[1] <http://www.avaje.org/>

<comment><USER7> Don't forget Joda Time (<http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/>), at least until Java 8 is out.

<comment><USER6> Yes, Joda-Time is awesome and a default include is pretty much all of my POMs. I'd also add that if your dealing with monetary fields / calculations, Joda- Money is also a great way to avoid common pitfalls.

<comment><USER7> Tanks for pointing out Joda Money, didn?t know that one yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This year ,I will recover from my Spring addiction. The grim realization that Spring ruining me a as a programmer dawned upon me when I looked at my project that was using Spring Integration and I could not figure out what the heck was happening . There was so much xml that my eyes bled ! Other Spring addicts suggested using the Spring IDE for visualizing Spring Integration xml, but I think the Spring way of life just makes simple things complicated. I have decided to refactor all my Spring Integration code and instead use Clojure ( perhaps in most non-idiomatic fashion) to glue java static methods into a sequence of functions that provide the same workflow as Spring Integration. If this works out, I will target Hibernate next; I hate having to do master hibernate/ORM api to do SQL operations.

</comment><comment><USER9> I disagree with "Stop using Anonymous Inner classes and just bite the bullet and wait for 8." Are you going to stop development while you wait for 8 too?

Most IDEs tend to hide a little of the noise associated with anonymous inner classes and, at least, with IntelliJ, the auto-completion for things like Guava's Function are huge time savers that make it much more bearable.

Now, should you think twice before you reach for an anonymous inner class? Of course! But there are many situations in which "closures"/"functional-style" anonymous inner classes can significantly decrease the amount of code written and/or make it much clearer. Basically, it lets you stay D.R.Y. much better.

One very common situation is reusing a complicated data structure traversal, just to be able to do two different things with the same inner pieces of data. Without the ability to "pass in code" using anonymous inner classes, the way to avoid code duplication is to accumulate the final destination items in a list and return that from the traversal code, such that this intermediate list can then be fed into the two different code paths. Of course, often such a refactoring is not easy or litters the otherwise-clean traversal code with the details of the intermediate list population. If the intermediate list gets too long to fit into memory or if pagination is required, then you end up having to return an iterator of lists, etc. It just gets messy.

Contrast that with code that takes in an anonymous inner function to apply to each piece of data. Bam, it's so much simpler. Want to start paginating the traversal? No problem, the calling code is none the wiser.

Developers who've been using closures are very familiar with this style of coding. The ugly syntax of anonymous inner functions raises the bar for using them above many simpler situations, but the greater utility cannot be disputed.

</comment><comment><USER10> As a Scala developer I'm obviously biased, but I would add "try out scala" to this list.

Why? Because learning new programming paradigms is beneficial whether you stick with them or not. And Scala is easier for a Java developer to start with than Lisp or Haskell or Z or anything so foreign.

It is simple to get into because you can start basically like "java without semicolons", and IntelliJ community edition has excellent Scala support.

<comment><USER11> 2013 Scala newbie here. Scala feels nice in the way that Python feels nice. They both give the newcomer some say in what programming paradigm they get to think in. I like languages like that.

I'm a little hesitant to call Scala "Java without the semicolons". Going too implicit too soon might cause things to go horribly wrong while climbing the learning curve. Besides that, it might scare my colleagues if I was ever to bring that kind of code to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Stop worrying about the procedural code [...] I don't see a lot of value coming out of the abstractions we create.

I completely agree here. If you're not getting value out of the abstractions, don't introduce them.

However, abstractions in general and OO design does solve many issues that arose from procedural programming. The trick is to recognize the problems, and focus your design around those.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would add "stop using SOAP" to this list. Its 2013!

<comment><USER8> Good luck with that ! You are not using SOAP because two programmers decided it was the best integration solution for distributed computing . We, you and I, are using SOAP because our CIO /Sr. VP was invited to an offsite retreat or management executive seminar where over a course of the finest hooch and blow, an enterprise vendor ( most likely IBM or Oracle) convinced your exec that having SOAP is like having an insurance against personal accountability for project disasters; after all nobody has ever got fired for buying IBM. So rail and rant against SOAP at your own peril.

In my last project, I was asked to send a file, that was uploaded by users onto our servers, as a SOAP message over TIBCO where another application read the SOAP message and put the file into a folder where it was processed by a nightly batch job. On the plus side , the managers and executives responsible for the design were all well connected charming people with PMP certification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like Spring/Hibernate is losing it's shiny new gloss. I wonder what the next round of 'hammer to fit all nails' that 'we need to rewrite everything in!'

Writing code using annotations? Dynamic languages on top of the JVM like Scala? ;)</comment>


Ask HN: What are web traffic details for hacker news? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I initially though it to be some where between 200,000 and 500,000, but I was surprised to see hacker news as one of the top 10 referrers to stack exchange.</comment>