Laundering Money On-line: a review of cybercriminals' methods [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1310/1310.2368.pdf <comment><USER2> I wonder if lots of stores often sparsely populated with expensive goods where we _almost_ never see anyone are part of some money laundering scheme. These stores should be able to claim lots of cash-only transactions to launder money while having to keep almost no significant levels of products.

<comment><USER3> Good idea, but I think a boutique store claiming lots of cash based transactions would send alarm bells ringing. Buying an $8k chanel handbag in cash would be very unusual.</comment></comment>


A City Took Fluoride Out of Its Drinking Water - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-happened-when-a-city-in-alaska-took-fluoride-out-of-its-drinking-water <comment><USER2> I live in Portland but I'm from somewhere that fluoridated the water. Every time I go to the dentist here they immediately know I am not originally from the area because of the lack of cavities.

</comment><comment><USER3> ScienceAlert.com - a science website with their own agenda.

Fluoridation only helps certain communities, such as those who consume lots of refined sugar and don't brush their teeth regularly (even with non-fluoridated toothpaste), or have an unfavorable balance in their oral flora.

Sodium fluoride is a neurotoxin, endocrine and immune system disruptor. ~27 human studies, and >100 animal studies link water fluoridation practices to ~7 IQ points less (according to Harvard's public health website), and brain damage (such as ADHD).

7 IQ points can drastically change a person's life.

<comment><USER4> 127 studies and you don't link to one of them?

<comment><USER3> Mentioning Harvard's public health website should have made your search pretty easy. I'm not going to link 127 studies.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth it to write programming tutorials for beginners? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
I'm a developer that currently have a lot of free time. One idea that I've had for a long time is to write a series of tutorials on how to code for complete beginners. The goal of the course would be to be REALLY accessible.
But I'm now wondering: is this really worth it? Will people be interested in this project? It seems like "programming tutorials" is a crowded market...
So I'm interested in your input. Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you have gone through many tutorials and feel there is still something missing, then definitely. If you feel you could present the program in a new more effective way, sure.

Things to keep in mind: (a) People are only beginners for a comparatively short time. (b) Language choice is very important. (c) Beginners will not know how to set up their development environment, and this can cause a lot of friction for any language.

In the end though, making something useful for other people is not a bad thing. If you are confident that you can bring something important to the programming education scene, go for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on what criteria you're using to evaluate "worth".</comment>


Covid-19: Only 268 cases and no deaths. How did Vietnam with 97M people do it? - <AUTHOR> https://mothership.sg/2020/04/vietnam-covid-19-success/ <comment><USER2> We have been in Vietnam since March 8th. Prior to that we were in Thailand. The response of these two neighbouring countries is night and day.

Authoritarian governments can shine during the crisis. In the meantime, Thailand is in a messy political situation and has lost control of the situation.

When we arrived, on March 8th, there were stations at the airport doing temperature checks. Immediately quarantining anyone with a fever. They also collected extra info on all arrivals for contact tracing.

Majority (~ 80%) of locals were taking it seriously and were wearing masks voluntarily. And they were really adamant about us wearing masks. Our condo had free masks and sanitizer in the lobby.

They were also doing home visits of people who have arrived starting from March 8th. But we didn't get a visit. I'm guessing they were working backwards and just never made it to these earlier arrivals.

Overall I'm very impressed with the way Vietnam handled the situation.

But at the same time, I can't believe these numbers. I have no concrete evidence, but just feels too low.

There was A LOT of contact. Many businesses continued operating. I know of a software office that continued asking people to come into the office and the last week, when permission was given to work from home. Construction was in full force. Most didn't wear any masks. Many other businesses remained operating and didn't shutdown.

<comment><USER3> > Authoritarian governments can shine during the crisis

Pretty bold claim as China did not fare too well and keeps lying from the beginning about everything.

<comment><USER2> I think they did well. You have to consider the environment they are operating in. Very dense living conditions. Way more commingling of citizens. And the sheer population alone.

<comment><USER4> Also China was the epicentre. Other governments and scientists had an extra two months to think about the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My prediction is if more cities around North America did post-mortem Covid tests of people who passed away in February, there's a good chance we'd find some deceased actually had Covid-19 similar to what California revealed earlier last week. Because of those findings, some researchers are now thinking community spread in places like the Bay Area may have started as early as January.

I say this because reading this article, they mention that Vietnam quarantined an entire district in Hanoi back in February when the entire country only had 10 cases at that point in time. They also banned travel from and to mainland China in early February. Those measures done early may have saved them from tens of thousands of infections. Vietnam has essentially relied on aggressive contact tracing coupled with strict lockdowns/quarantining.

Here in Canada, we brushed off suggestions of forced quarantines of incoming travelers or banning flights to/from Mainland China. We solely relied on travelers telling authorities if they experienced symptoms, which bit us in the tail when March came along and hundreds of new cases were popped up by the day.

We didn't reverse our stance on restrictive measures till the virus had gotten out of a control. Even now as the growth rate has flattened, we're still dealing with the fallout in long term care facilities as hundreds of elderly people have passed away due to caregivers/visitors unknowingly infecting them. That coupled with the growth of the virus in the homeless community has made it very challenging to sustainably contain the virus.

I think what frustrates me is that we knew we had weaknesses in our system, yet we decided to go with the non-proactive solution anyway. Even recently we didn't bother with random testing asymptomatic caregivers until after hundreds of people died. It's a lot harder to undo the damage than it is to be overly pre-cautious and prevent the worst case scenario from happening in the first place.

<comment><USER6> They (they Vietnamese government) had apparently hacked the computers of the Chinese CDC and the Gates foundation to obtain information about the epidemic in China in the last weeks of January. Equipped with these informations, the government of Vietnam could act swiftly and decisively beginning February to contain the spread of the virus. It was a war-like situation and reliable up- to-date information is of crucial importance. The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China). And the lack of reliable information turned out to be deadly.

<comment><USER7> >The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China).

I see this accusation thrown around a lot, but it doesn't align with timeline and import statistics.

APT32 (Vietnam) hacked China as early as Jan 6th, but didn't shutdown borders until late Jan, well after WHO confirmed H2H and after China the broadcasted seriousness of covid19 with Wuhan followed by country wide lockdowns. Apart from shutting borders with Hubei/China in late Jan - early Feb, the countries that responded well shared one common quality: they immediately rolled out effective screening, testing, tracing and isolation. Which is in line with WHO recommendations on Jan 23 and Jan 30.

The effectiveness of border closing is debatable, since imported cases statistics from these regions (SK, HK, Taiwan, Singapore) indicate very few cases were exported out of China (less than 30), most of which were out of Hubei, whereas hundreds of imported cases came from Americas and Europe. Australia, New Zealand and Canada is similar. These are all places with massive traffic flows with China that also repatriated hundreds to thousands from Wuhan with few positives cases that spread was or could have been managed without huge impacts on civic life. Vietnam is different in that it doesn't have as much resources as other countries so it must necessarily ere on the side of caution.

But broadly, the countries that didn't handled the pandemic well didn't listen to WHO and China and waited too long before acting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From a westerner living in Vietnam:

There are many things that haven't been mentioned here yet.

Vietnamese schools haven't reopened since Tet, end of January.

The population distribution is skewed towards the young end.

Most cases were imported, by youngish people, and the average age of these is even younger, mostly students, or for business or for holidays. Mostly relatively rich and young, not many travelling pensioneers in this country.

Mentioned measures contained community spread from said travellers to the rest.

The very old in Vietnam are not in care houses, they are at home, cared for by their extended family, who is much more likely to give a damn.

Information from the government news agency has been rather transparent, or so it seems to me. Every case has a number, and case numbers of contacts of new cases are reported. If unknown this is also reported.

This appearance of transparency and the fact that everyone infected is receiving prompt free treatment encouraged people to report suspect cases rather than hiding.

The government carries as a badge of honor that there haven't been any fatalities yet. The few critical cases are getting extreme medical treatment, no resources are being spared, there are so few that they can afford to do this. Multiple nurses, doctors and equipment per ICU patient. It seems to me that they will do whatever it takes to prevent fatalities. One of the critical cases is an european pilot. If he died it would be impossible for the government to hide.

Facemasks are plentiful, I have shipped many to friends and relatives in my country, where they are scarce and expensive. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.

It seems that heat doesn't stop the spread after all, but if it slows it down, that might also have helped, this is a tropical country, though in the north, and in the mountains, it can get quite chilly in winter.

I feel lucky being here now, but, of course, it's too early to call, I won't know for sure until this is over.

<comment><USER9> also they made a viral tik tok banger, which help spread the basic hygiene and preventive message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Along with Taiwan, Vietnam is also another country that dealt with and learned from SARS in 2002/03.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _Vietnam has become one of the first few countries in the world to emerge > successfully from the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak_

It's even more impressive: they emerged successfully not just from the first wave (direct from China, with which they share a long land border), but the second wave as well (travelers from Europe, US, Iran etc). Quite a few countries, notably Singapore, rode the first wave well but stumbled on the second.

</comment><comment><USER12> "They were also one of the first few countries to ban return flights to and from mainland China, having announced the suspension from Feb. 1, 2020, slightly more than a week after the country's first cases of Covid-19 were found."

How much of their reported success in containing the virus was due to this, and how much was due to the lockdown? Other countries which have fared relatively well (e.g. NZ, Australia) also closed their borders early.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nicaragua supposedly only has 13 cases of Covid and they never implemented ANY precautions. Their president was also missing for more than 30 days, just showed up a couple of days ago finally.

<comment><USER14> Oof. Are there any stats on how many tests Nicaragua has run?

<comment><USER15> 14

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Vietnam is doing more to halt COVID-19 than most countries on Earth. people that are there: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs)

</comment><comment><USER17> Vietnam is not a magical place. It lies some where at the bottom of the pile in the press freedom index next to China.

So god knows how many people where silenced, jailed or killed. Wait for a few years for the full story to emerge.

<comment><USER18> American living in Vietnam right now.

The first part of your post is true.

The second, is in my opinion, completely false.

As others have mentioned, the government is incredibly diligent in tracking the virus. And why shouldn't they? They were freaked out by SARS in 2003 and as a growing 3rd world country, they simply cannot afford to have the virus spread.

Also, if one person gets the virus or one person is placed in quarantine in Vietnam, it's all over Facebook and shared. The government can't hide shit when it comes to the virus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe because they don't get extra money for labeling a patient as a COVID patient:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact- check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The same way Thailand has only 52 deaths, the blokes here could have explosive diarrhea and still won't consider washing their hands (granted the woman are the polar opposite - washing their hands continually - scared to death of it) and with mass exodus from the cities when hospitality went belly up the other month there is no way it isn't everywhere in SE asia non-city towns and villages. Whereas Singapore is fucked and they have western approaches to hygiene, a bit odd that wouldn't you say. Ineffective testing, or ineffective tests, head in sand, photoshots for the big boys, hospital directors worried about their livelyhood etc..

All cynism aside I do think SE Asia has fared better than Europe, but the reasons won't be worthy of someone getting an award (although no doubt their will be award like ceremonies for years to come) - the temperature theory is rebounding now etc..

<comment><USER21> > Whereas Singapore is fucked and they have western approaches to hygiene, a > bit odd that wouldn't you say.

Singapore was doing fine until their blind spot for itinerant cheap laborers meant this group was never properly tested. Now they've realised that these people are in fact people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to see an antibody study in Vietnam. I have a theory that with a low enough viral load, most people won't be symptomatic. If you can infect someone with a single copy of the virus, they won't notice. You cough directly in their face and the constant factor starts from that virus population and your immune system doesn't have a chance to catch up.

This is why healthy medical staff die and the prison population tests positive for antibodies but didn't show symptoms.

\----

To be clear, I am not advocating for an unethical study, but that infection rates in Vietnam are much higher than their case count would indicate.

</comment><comment><USER23> This conversation is rather prescient as the death toll in the US due to covid will most likely surpass the total US combat deaths of the Vietnam War tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER24> I follow a professor in Vietnam on twitter; he was pointing out last month that hydroxychloroquine is an over-the-counter drug there and is commonly used to treat malaria. They're probably not going to wait until you're most of the way dead before administering it the way the "We Must Have A Study" bureaucrats will here. I suspect this also apples to the rest of Indochina.

</comment><comment><USER25> a few things they did:

> On April 15, Vietnam's "fake news" laws went into effect, which was > introduced to address the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 over > social media in the country.

> A fine of VND10-20 million (S$605-S$1,210) was to be imposed on people who > make use of social media to share "false, untruthful, distorted or > slanderous information"

> Security officials or Communist Party spies can be found on every street and > crossing in every neighborhood and in every village

maybe they just didn't have super spreading situations? what if it was luck?

<comment><USER26> You can't hide overall mortality so the truth will come out eventually.

<comment><USER27> Smells like "we've concluded this person died of normal causes and if you say it was covid-19 we will fine you heavily for spreading 'fake news'.".

Even doctors in China were punished for trying to speak out, it's easy to believe the Vietnamese govt would do the same

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In short: They didn't. That are only the measured numbers and they depend on how well you measure.

</comment><comment><USER29> Kind of pointless without knowing how many people were tested

<comment><USER30> Back when MOH of Vietnam still published number of people tested per day, I collected the data from their website and made this graph: [https://i.imgur.com/hzkG3R2.png](https://i.imgur.com/hzkG3R2.png) They stopped doing that though.

So as of 4/12, number of people tested and came out negative was 121.6K

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys North Korea is doing even better.

<comment><USER31> If you trust them (but who would). That said, given they have so little interaction with the outside world, it wouldn't be surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Clearly it's weather.

I'm not sure how much more evidence we need.

Yes they are lying a bit. Yes they have done great work. But these aren't enough to see what we are seeing.

And all the counties going into winter are going to be crying in a few months no one warned them, or it was somehow unexpected.</comment>


The Fediverse – The Future of the Social Web - <AUTHOR> https://Fediverse.network <comment><AUTHOR> In light of the recent Twitter hacking, many are reconsidering the potential and dangerous consequences that a proprietary, centralised, and ultimately fragile platform can result in. Yet people stay because there is seemingly no alternative. Twitter would love to keep it that way.

The Fediverse isn't a platform, or service, or company. It's an interconnected and decentralised network. And it's growing. You've likely heard little or none about it, precisely because it's not a product, nor is there a reason (ads & data hoarding) to lure you in. Its freedom, and its your own prerogative to learn, join, express, and thrive freely.

So take a chance. Be the future. Join the Fediverse!</comment>


Show HN: Npm donate - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bukinoshita/npm-donate <comment><USER2> The documentation you link for the stripe API key says

 _Authenticate your account when using the API by including your secret API key in the request. You can manage your API keys in the Dashboard. Your API keys carry many privileges, so be sure to keep them secret! Do not share your secret API keys in publicly accessible areas such GitHub, client-side code, and so forth._

How is this supposed to work safely, when you need to put the key in the package? Or is the enduser (who wants to donate) somehow expected to have their own API key?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can check an example here where I use `dotenv`.

[https://github.com/bukinoshita/npm- donate/blob/master/exampl...](https://github.com/bukinoshita/npm- donate/blob/master/example/lib/donate.js)

<comment><USER2> So the latter? People need to have a stripe API key to use it to donate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just the project owner.

1\. Project maintainer add `npm-donate`; 2\. Creates stripe account; 3\. Add API Key; 4\. Release;

Users that wants to donate to the project, doesn't need an API key.

<comment><USER2> Add API key _where_? I don't get how this authenticates to Stripe without distributing the API key.

<comment><AUTHOR> To the file where is calling `npm-donate`. But instead of hard code the API Key, you use some sort of dotenv to hide the API key from the end users.

When users install your package, they won't see your API key.

<comment><USER2> The code on the endusers machine needs the API key to function, since there is no server on the publishers side involved, right? So you have to give the API key to them in _some way_ , if directly embedded in the code or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I will add a warning and try to figure it out a better way. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed! released v0.0.2</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I hate search - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/15/why-i-hate-search.aspx <comment><USER3> He's not quite making the leap I thought he would, so I'll make it.

Our browsers are _dumb_ , and encourage 'search'. Google's made inroads by making a faster browser that makes it easier to 'search' (through them, of course), but keeping track of that information _in the browser_ sucks. Browser bookmark tools are a joke, and web-based ones, while better, generally aren't much better.

I envision a 'browser' that can track my behaviour, watch what I do, show me more detailed history info, make 'history' part of my 'search' results, adapt my search to my behaviour and more. Perhaps Google will be the ones to do this, but they'll only do it if they can show us more ads (or "more relevant" ads).

Ideas: "history" on chrome, for example, shows me a little information on pages in my history, but not too much. Did I copy/paste information from that page? How long was I on it? Show me thumbnails from that page. Show me other meta data from that page (author, friends that shared it on facebook/g+, etc). Information on what I _did_ with info on that page is often what I'm looking for, not just every page in my history with a particular word on it. Screenshots would help jog my memory, but so would something that said "you copied 'foobarbaz' from this page and emailed it to sam" next to a history result.

Merging in local bookmarked and historical pages in with regular search results. Or, more to the point, merging in external search engine results when I'm searching through browser history. Have an option to make searching my local history the default, with extras merged in from google/bing/yahoo/etc.

None of this will happen overnight, but... there's a huge amount of metadata associated with the activity with page data that isn't being used, because having us go to a browser bar and search (again!) for the same data we found 2 hours ago is more profitable. Our browsers are _dumb_ right now, and there's quite a lot more that could be being done to take advantage of the local intelligence that lives on our desktops or in our devices.

<comment><USER4> I've found the cases you describe to be one of these areas where Firefox seems to behave way superior than Chrome. It's not entirely as advanced as you describe of course, but usually just typing parts of a few key words returns a list of relevant sites you've ever been to, and the ranking is very good. The algorithm seems to even take into account whether you originally typed in the link etc.

In general, if you've visited a site once, it's way easier to find it back with Firefox, and it doesn't require a Google search.

If you think about it, it is very logical that Google doesn't want to move into this direction.

<comment><USER5> This is the one reason I stick with Firefox. In Chrome if you search for the name of a YouTube video, with a string you know was in the title of the page, you're very unlikely to get that page as a result. If you're lucky you'll get another page with a link to the page you want in the suggestions list. In Firefox it'll almost always be an instant result, right at the top of the list. It seems strange, but Firefox's search really blows Chrome's out of the water.

<comment><USER6> I just tried this experiment and I get the same results. Firefox uses Google search on the backend, so I don't see how it could be otherwise.

<comment><USER7> He means using the auto-complete in your address bar, not actually searching with it.

<comment><USER6> Auto-completing against what, against Google ala Google Suggest, or you mean auto-completing against your Web History?

<comment><USER4> Your web history, which is what the address bar searches in Firefox.

In Chrome these two aspects (history and Google search) are blurred, but it's not better for it. I'd say it is a good example of 2 half-assed features not making up for 1 good one.

<comment><USER6> If you want to search your Web History explicitly, just hit Ctrl-H. This is a case of personal preference. I rarely search my Web History, so I want my Omnibox real estate to be web search. Some people will prefer history ranked above search, others will prefer it the other way. Chrome should give you a preference setting for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy seems to forget that the reason Google won was because they actually presented search in a usable, non-intrusive way. They were the first company to do search _well_, providing good, reliable results, and also the first company not to surround their search box with a border full of ads.

To me this makes his assertion,

> There's no more reason to expect search breakthroughs from Google than there > is to expect electric car batteries to be made by Exxon.

fall a bit flat, since in the 90's and 00's, Google was exactly the counter- example to his proposal that there is no profit in enhancing the quality of search: Google was the company that proved that doing search well was exactly what people wanted and needed.

Now, if he was targeting Yahoo or another "search portal" that used to bombard users with ads, maybe he'd have a point. But Google? They're the ones that changed the playing field.

<comment><USER9> My thoughts exactly. Here's an excerpt from "In the Plex" <http://goo.gl/5YPtb>

_"Bell was visibly upset. The Stanford product was too good. If Excite were to host a search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, he explained, the users would leave the site instantly. Since his ad revenue came from people staying on the site—"stickiness" was the most desired metric in websites at the time—using BackRub's technology would be counterproductive. "He told us he wanted Excite's search engine to be 80 percent as good as the other search engines," says Hassan. And we were like, "Wow, these guys don't know what they're talking about." "_

I hate to apply the fallacy of argument from authority here, but I wonder what OP's history with Google is? Not in the sense of, is he a good engineer...but whether he was with Google in its early, reportedly idealistic days? And if so, does his leaving Google indicates that those ideals are now gone? Or was he a relatively recent hire of Google before going to Microsoft? I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he's not doing this just to boost up Microsoft's image.

\--- And you don't even have to go back into Google's origin stories to see that they've consistently tried to minimize users' search durations: <http://www.google.com/insidesearch/instant-about.html>

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure you should be giving him the benefit of the doubt. He worked for Microsoft for a few years <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james- whittaker/13/878/229>, then moved to Google, and then moved back to Microsoft, writing a scathing article [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why- i-left-google.aspx) about Google in the process. It feels to me like he was using his time at Google to get a promotion at Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> Well, I just didn't want to go too far into making the debate about the OP personally rather than just evaluating the merits of his claim. It's possible that Google killed his dog _and_ that his anti-Google argument has merit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems to be a semantics issue. "To search" has multiple meanings, and only one of them implies loss.

In computer science, you don't (only) use search as an information retrieval mechanism. You use it primarily (whether that's Google, find <dir> | xargs egrep <pattern>, Microsoft/OS X help, etc.) as a mechanism to reduce entropy.

Information stored in files or on the internet is generally too vast to be easily absorbed by a brain that, marvellous as it is, has difficulties processing more than 7 +/- 2 symbols at a time [1]. We need a way to reduce the entropy and extract and filter information. And that's what search tools in computer science primarily tend to do (online or offline).

This is also why by default we use "and" to combine search terms and are generally more interested in narrowing search results rather than expanding them.

Some people admittedly also use search as a tool to look up information; I recall that there's some usability research where some people prefer using search, while others prefer a catalog scheme (such as bookmarks) and that forcing one type of person to use the opposite scheme reduces their productivity.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)

</comment><comment><USER12> >"Search is dead. The web doesn't need it and neither do we"

Okay, but I'd love to know what the alternative is. I can't picture any more efficient method to organize the web, not that that means it isn't out there.

Search implies loss, as the author says. But it also implies that you can be anyone or anything and _be found_ , in the vast swamp of the internet.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand his jump from "search is unpleasant and implies loss" to "search is dead". Cleaning bathrooms is also unpleasant, but to say companies specializing in it are dead? I don't think we ever globally solved the lost car keys and lost pets issues, either. It's a fact of life. The world is a complex mess. Thinking you can "just organize it" is hopelessly idealistic.

Edit: And he also implies that all searching is for things that we had in the first place. He completely forgets about searching for new information or things. Searching a library doesn't have to be unpleasant.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I only really "search" google etc when I am looking for new information (which is quite often). For frequently visited sites there are bookmarks etc.

I guess there are people (sometimes me) who use google as their navigation bar, but in such a case they are not really using google as "search" anyway,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I take issue with the premise that search implies loss. When you solve a maths problem you could be "searching for an answer" -- it doesn't mean you've lost it before now. For me, Google isn't really about searching for something you're missing, it's about solving a problem. So it's not really serving results, it's serving "answers". Some of them are more correct than others.

I don't see that search is broken at all. I think search is one tool in a great arsenal of other tools, like social media, blogs, sites like HN, that we have available for discovery of new content and new sites.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is anyone else not surprised that the doc is working for microsoft? Perhaps instead of associating himself as a former googler, former professor, and former startup founder, he should assert himself as an individual and an authority on whatever new and exciting product he's working on at mcsft.

I guess that new and exciting product is posting negative blogs about a former employer. Step it up doc and contribute something meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER6> You know, if I ever quit Google and joined Microsoft, I still wouldn't write crap like this, even if my boss tried to force me.

Although, maybe if I quit Microsoft, and then joined Google, and then quit Google, and re-joined Microsoft I would. :)

Is it a job requirement for Microsoft that you have to write cheesy bash posts against Google?

So, what, Siri doesn't do search, even though you have to ask it to find stuff for you in Apple's commercials?

And somehow, by magically watching my search history, it will eliminate the need for me to search for a plumber?

And please, the idea that Google is trying to maximize the number of failed searches to display ads (no way, no how) or that Google is not researching ideas for guessing what you want before you search (something they've been saying for years in public about the ideal search engine) would be something Whittaker knows having worked at Google.

Did his boss at Google kick his cat or something?

</comment><comment><USER17> He will fit right in at Microsoft then. They call bing lots of things like "decision engine" and "doing engine", but never a "search engine".

Despite the tooltip for the magnifying glass on bing reading "Search"

<comment><USER18> Haha! I thought that was going to be dropped in at some point as well. "We need less search, and more decision."

These articles feel more like marketing pieces than actual thought-out articles. Other than the Google bashing, what was suggested for a solution?

I'm slightly incredulous when Microsoft calls out Google on search practices.. Weren't they caught copying Google's results last year..?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Its pretty obvious by this point that Google's aim is not annoying the maximum number of people to maximize ad revenue.

Even if it was - why would you join Microsoft?

</comment><comment><USER9> _The problem with Internet search is that being stupid about it is profitable. The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well?_

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when google started out, wasn't one of its core philosophies to reduce the number of times that users had to redo a search? And that they refused an offer from Excite because the Excite CEO complained that Google results were so good that users were NOT staying long enough to read the ads? Is the OP saying that this part of Google's history is a lie?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of what I believe is going to replace (or more accurately, make irrelevant) current search engines. Most of the pieces are already in place.

Let's say I'm in the mood for a donut, but I can't remember how late my favorite donut place is open ( _as if_ , but bear with me).

If I had a knowledgable human at my disposal, I could ask them "When does that donut place close?"

They might answer that "they're open for another hour."

There are two important differences between this and search:

First, my friend uses contextual data s/he knows about me to determine what specifically it is that I want to know, and takes my "query" in natural language. Services like Siri already go a long way toward making this a reality, and good natural language search queries have been quite usable for years now.

Second, the answer is a natural language representation of the information I was looking for, rather than a pointer to where I can find it. Wolfram Alpha does a pretty good job of this if your query is about math or science or some other type of data that can be relatively straightforwardly curated.

If I do the same with Google, I get a Yahoo Answers page asking why donut places close at noon. If I'm a bit more specific and ask "When does Rocket Donuts close?", the top result is, helpfully, their home page. I then click the result and look around the page for their hours, and finally find them at the bottom of the screen. Then I have to remember what day it is, what time it is, and subtract that from the appropriate number.

I also don't have much information about how current their information is, even though the web server helpfully responds that the page was last updated around noon on April 2nd.

One approach would be the so-called "Semantic Web", but I believe getting a majority of unsophisticated web publishers to reliably include semantic information is a fool's errand.

What's really missing is a way to index the web not by text, but by a machine's best guess at the interpretation of the of the text. Basically index a bunch of "facts" on the web, including who is claiming that they're true, and how long ago they made that claim. So the "key" would be something like "Rocket Donuts, Bellingham, WA, USA: Closing time on Thursday" and you would get a bunch of results, but you would sort by authority (something like PageRank) and recency (both descending). Hopefully the top value would be "5:00PM PDT".

Obviously one does not simply walk in and solve this kind of problem, but I believe whoever does would have a shot at replacing "search" as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER21> What started as a nice thought that could have been transformed or applied by the author into something useful (In the sense that it could have helped someone to create something great) launched into another "I hate Google and you should too" ad by some Microsoft employee.

I wonder what kind of developers are they targeting? (as this blog is obviously targeting developers)

Do you have to properly hate something to be a good fit for Microsoft? Seems so, especially when you look at other campaigns (Gmail man reading your email etc.)

And then theres the grave accusation of Google distorting the search results, again with no evidence whatsoever.

This "former professor and startup founder" couldn't even come up with 5 or 10 test queries to prove his point.

But still this ad was well written, it tricked my built in spam filter and so i read it from start to end. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow I feel trolled by the author. Come on Google shaped the web as we know today with PageRank and AdWords, isn't it totally unfair to put things in that way? Also the author confuses search with discovery just to prove his point.

I agree it feels dumb to surf the web they we do know. But this is a case of less is more. We can think of more complex solutions but those won't solve what our current solution solves for most of the people.

Surely there is a next big thing waiting to happen regarding content discovery, the last one I saw that attempts that is Prismatic, but there is a long road to even become a plausible alternative to what we do in our current search engines.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem is that if you try to delegate responsibility for avoiding the scenario where the information is "lost" to begin with, you have to make sure that the process performing the searching and organizing knows what to look for at least as well as, or better than, the person for who the finding is being performed. I'll be very impressed if you can create an algorithm that knows what I want, up to the second, better than I do.

</comment><comment><USER24> _We know every place possible where the online equivalent of car keys are found._

Well, I don't, but there's this company called Google that seems to.

Speaking broadly, "search" has been, _as he points out_ , a major paradigm in human intellectual activity long before and far outside the web. Library card catalogs existed for searching. Door-to-door salesmen are effectively searching for customers. Inventories, indexes, tables-of-contents, filing systems, maps, and written records of many forms exist to facilitate searches or to distill the results of searches.

 _The word 'search' is a negative word. It fairly reeks of loss..._

I think this opening statement embodies the mistake in his whole attitude very succinctly. A system for searching - particularly a nearly effortless and instantaneous one like Google offers - gives users the _freedom_ to lose things, to forget things, secure in the knowledge that we'll be able to find them again when we decide we need them.

Your to-do list has 11 things on it; would you try to memorize it or would you write it down? Most people would rather write it down because it frees their minds to think about other things in the interim.

But of course, looking at the list is fundamentally a search.

</comment><comment><USER25> What does he suggest, though? If having a "decision" engine is what he thinks is best, I'd say that usually the top 3 organic results in Google for just about any search are much more relevant that the technology Microsoft has to provide a decision.

Small example off the top of my head. The query is "Who uses LLVM?". 3rd result on Google is the "LLVM - Users" page that lists all the companies using it. Definitely the page that I need. This page is no where to be seen in the Bing first page results for the same query.

Saying that search is dead isn't right because for many queries, you need tons of results. Like someone mentioned here, if you're searching for a plumber, you want a selection. And implying that Google is broken isn't right when they do the best of both worlds: unobtrusive search with a ton of relevant results, and top 3 results that are about as good of a decision tool than what Bing currently has.

</comment><comment><USER26> He only says that search is crap, but not really how to make it better. Except for Siri.

He claims we could do better, but how?

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems a bit idealistic to me.

There have been a few ex-googlers who are upset about Google being an advertising company. Maybe they where sold into a dream that never materilised.

Lets say you own a company employing thousands and you discover the perfect way to improve your clients user experiance, the only problem is it disrupts the market so much your company is no longer profitable, so all your share holder and employees go without ? would you still do it?

Siri is a value add to a company that makes money out of its products. You have to own a 600$ piece of metal to have the privelege of using it.

And i much prefer googling - "Pet shop in dubai" for free. Weirdly - <USER2> that do avertise have it much more together. If there paying for a dollar for my click, there definitly going to be open and have the products i want.

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems incredibly out of touch with reality. I can buy that there's a better model out there than search, but what is that model? Until the author can give me something better, search is still the best model for this, even if we accept the author's problems with search.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think search can be done better. But I don't see a replacement for search. Even when we think, we perform a search in our mind to return the answer. It is far quicker to type into Google "who is the main character in 1984", than to go to a database(dmoz) and click books, then click 'numbers' then find 1984 then click it. I don't know if there can be something quicker than search (of course if you had an answer immediately when you thought of a question, but that still requires a search). But I agree search can be done differently and in a way that is more organized and "semantic".

</comment><comment><USER30> I've worked at Google and they take search quality very seriously. In fact, the search quality guys are not allowed to talk to the ads guys to avoid exactly this type of influence.

Sure money matters, and there is an "apparent" conflict. But in reality, the better the search results are, the more likely that users will use the search engine, which leads to more $$$. There is plenty of literature that demonstrates how serving poor search results will actually result in less ad revenue.

So James, being a former Googler, did you find that Google held back on search quality in favour of ad revenue?

</comment><comment><USER31> I for one would vote for common sense, which would get rid of, say 1/3 of the entire planet's search queries. That amount of course is taken completely off the ceiling, but it get's my point across. That being said, if no one were searching, then no one would be finding. Searching is the thing that makes us learn, I mean, in a school library you also search for a book, right? No books are going to run into your lap by themselves. So, unless some of you geniuses have a way to fix that and make human race even more lazier, do let me know.

</comment><comment><USER32> Great article. What really strikes me about this is that we just saw Google's new glass video - a device in which search is primarily implied. Google knows search is dumb and wants to fix it, primarily through external devices (android) that are context aware and have access to incredible amounts of personally relative data. They can't kill their money cow, not directly, and haven't shown us how they'll monetize products without relying on ads, so they'll have to leave search alone, at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Good god. Bothered me so much I had to blog about it.

<http://robertelwell.info/blog/search-haters-gonna-hate/>

</comment><comment><USER34> Really bizarre. I totally get that searching needs improvement in various areas, but Siri etc are just search via audio. The other option is to give up all your privacy to allow tracking, but as you see on a daily basis, we're a long way from contextual understanding that really works.

SO without search you'd be relying on asking Hackernews/Twitter etc for every single enquiry you have...

Including the embarrassing ones...

</comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps we'd be better off with different products for different types of searches. If I need a specific tool or utility, I search the App Store. If I need a review, Yelp. If I need to compare prices, ShopZilla. What I'd love to see if a search engine that only returns authority websites, sort of what Blekko was doing.

</comment><comment><USER36> "When the fox cannot reach the grapes he says they are not ripe" A Greek proverb which matches perfect this guys post.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't agree entirely with OP, but there is truth in what he says.

> The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on > ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles > the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution > when being part of the problem pays so damn well?

One thing that to me seems like a no brainer is for google to have user- configurable catalogs, or groups of websites. So, if I am logged in, I should be able to make a group called "Poker" and add the 10 websites that I know have good content to that group. So then when I am doing a search on that topic, I can choose my "Poker" catalog and results will only be returned from sites within that catalog.

This is just one extremely simple idea that would be immensely valuable and greatly improve search productivity, there are _many_ others. That google hasn't thought of this idea, or has thought of it but decided it wouldn't be beneficial to users, seems very hard to believe. They have a vested interest in search being good (better than everyone else), but not great.

<comment><USER9> Um...isn't this what Google+ is supposed to do, in effect? By registering your +1's for sites and users, Google gets a good fix of where you like your information from.

However, the solution you propose would fail if similar precedents are to be considered. Users do not like manually curating lists (remember Facebook friend lists?). On a philosophical point, your solution requires that users know what they don't know: that is, they don't know that the "poker" question at a given time might be better answered by a site outside their circle. If users were encouraged to curate their own sources to limit the search for knowledge from, then that encourages the echo chamber phenomenon which ends up hurting the "open" web.

<comment><USER37> > Um...isn't this what Google+ is supposed to do, in effect? Maybe, I have no > idea. It lacks the manual grouping though.

>Users do not like manually curating lists No one is forcing them, I'm not proposing this is the default behaviour, this would be a part of advanced search.

>your solution requires that users know what they don't know No, it enables users who _do_ know something to leverage that knowledge (as the existing "site:" qualifier allows with a _single_ site)

A _very_ small number of google users even know about any kind of advanced functionality so there'd be no risk of an "echo chamber phenomenon".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a friend reminded me, if Google is lying about trying to minimize searches, then 1) Why Google Instant and 2) Why "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

If Microsoft wants to convince people they have better tools than Google, there's more classy and informative ways of going about it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Search is dead. Long live the semantic web.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure why you were downvoted. "Semantic Web" was the first thing that came to my mind after reading the first couple paragraphs of the article. I thought he was going to head that direction as well. I was sorely disappointed!

There are surely diminishing returns for doing increasingly sophisticated things with the contents of HTML tags to parse and understand webpages, using inbound links to rank them, etc.

Cory Doctorow's essay, "Metacrap," does a great job of listing the reasons a Semantic Web-style metadata attempt will always fail when left to the "public" to implement. One thing that the old human-run Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project do get right are the quality of results, but since updates are made at the speed of human, these seem to be pretty much impossible to keep current.

Perhaps there is some neat way to use everyone's browsing histories to create a semantic link between content on the web. But that will never happen because of (extremely valid) privacy concerns.

Well, shame on the author for writing such a myopic rant piece containing no new ideas or proposals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> where is the f __dislike button ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Microsoft failed, miserably, at search. So search doesn't matter. Right?

It is impossible to read this piece without getting coated with the dripping venom of regret. It's hearing an adolescent tell you why they really, really didn't want something that they didn't get and now envy.

What really gets me is this claim: "There's no more reason to expect search breakthroughs from Google than there is to expect electric car batteries to be made by Exxon."

Yet Google has overwhelmingly been responsible for the breakthroughs that essentially reduce our usage of their own product. Google _themselves_ are trying to reduce our use of search. Over the past year they've added semantic canonical answers for many questions.

Years ago we really did have to go through pages of search. Now you seldom have to go past the first link, if you even need that.

It's also a bit laughable that he mentions Siri, betraying the gross agenda of the piece. Siri is a basic text parser that, if it fails at that, _does a web search_. It isn't some semantic knowledge engine, and in many of the scenarios in their own commercial, does a bog standard web search, relying upon all of the old tactics to give an answer. If Siri is the revolution, someone is misunderstanding how it works.

EDIT: 4 downvotes and not a single comment as to why. It is somewhat ridiculous how desperately so many on HN are to promote any vapid anti-Google screed, even when it comes from _Microsoft_ of all places.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow, did someone just reinvent browsing history?

</comment><comment><USER43> To me this just feels reaching. Sure, he does a good job of highlighting a problem but doesn't really offer any vision for a solution. But why go to Microsoft? GOOG 635.15, MSFT 31.21

<comment><USER44> > But why go to Microsoft? GOOG 635.15, MSFT 31.21

Share prices are not directly comparable. Market cap is, where MSFT is beating GOOG.</comment></comment>


Make with Ada: ARM Cortex-M CNC controller - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adacore.com/make-with-ada-arm-cortex-m-cnc-controller <comment><USER2> Author should check out [http://camotics.org/](http://camotics.org/) It's an Opens-Source 3-axis CNC simulator that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. It not only shows you a visualization of the tool paths but also the resulting cut workpiece.

Disclaimer, I'm the author of CAMotics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author is aware that there are many Gcode simulators.The specificity of this one, thanks to Ada portability, is that the simulator code is 100% the same as the code running in the embedded controller.

<comment><USER2> No other Open-Source GCode "simulators", as far as I know, simulate the actual cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some questions come to mind:

\- Can it not accelerate smoothly? The graph on the page seems to imply that.

\- Also on that graph, the relation between distance and speed on accelerated parts appears to be linear, but, if this is supposed to approximate constant acceleration, the relation between distance and speed _squared_ would be linear (v^2=v0^2+2ad).

\- Why did they need to develop that GUI, when there's existing software available? E.g. Pronterface. _edit_ I see it's also a simulator so that makes sense.

On the other hand, I really like such proof-of-concept projects, small enough to understand but large enough that you can see the patterns. One can learn a lot from them, and I'll be sure to check out the code some day :)

On a related note, some shameless self-promotion: my APrinter[1] project is an open-source firmware for CNC devices, is highly portable running on many chips including STM32F4.

[1] [https://github.com/ambrop72/aprinter](https://github.com/ambrop72/aprinter)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

\- The software architecture is inspired by GRBL. The split of motion blocks into segments is more manageable for the software, and if you choose a segments size small enough, the acceleration will be very smooth.

\- I do not try to approximate constant acceleration.

\- The GUI is a way for me to test the Gcode and stepper algorithms (the code is the same in the GUI and in the embedded controller).

Please also comment directly on the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny, I wanted to do the same stuff on the same board by converting my current C implementation to Ada, it ended up in a disaster, the compiler wouldn't run on my mac (so I used a linux simulator), the real-time feature of Ada were actually clocked on a fixed SYSTICK, and most of the Ada tools were randomly crashing.

the plugin I started writing at the time: [https://github.com/nraynaud/ada- intellij](https://github.com/nraynaud/ada-intellij)

The code I wanted to convert: [https://github.com/nraynaud/webgcode/tree/gh- pages/interpola...](https://github.com/nraynaud/webgcode/tree/gh- pages/interpolator)

where I threw the towel: [https://github.com/nraynaud/bldc_ada](https://github.com/nraynaud/bldc_ada)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I know you :) I used your web Gcode simulator a lot: [https://nraynaud.github.io/webgcode/](https://nraynaud.github.io/webgcode/)

<comment><USER4> funny, I never really used it myself, but I got a few people telling me they use it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the topic of safe languages on embedded systems, I'm very excited for the future of Rust on micros. Having just recently spent probably in excess of 100 hours on an embedded systems project at university, I'm starting to get a bit annoyed with using embedded C.

I'm sure good software engineering practices would eliminate a lot of my problems, but being the only computer scientist in a group of electrical engineer has made my life difficult. The entire project is just a massive mess of cascading makefiles and #defines, and is amazingly poorly documented.

A lot of the code was supplied by our lecturer, and has no documentation whatsoever, and he's gone and made this arcane cascading set of makefiles that goes about 4 levels deep.

<comment><USER6> _Having just recently spent probably in excess of 100 hours on an embedded systems project at university, I 'm starting to get a bit annoyed with using embedded C._

You many want to reconsider your career path, then. Because I've been working on embedded systems for a long time now and it's always been embedded C. And it's looking like it's going to be that way for a long time to come. If you're using a kernel like Linux or FreeRTOS, even moreso.

 _The entire project is just a massive mess of cascading makefiles and #defines, and is amazingly poorly documented._

Again, welcome to embedded systems engineering. Enjoy your stay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are CNCs still using stepper motors? If so, why? Hard drives moved on decades ago, becoming much more accurate and fast.</comment>


How to Angel Invest, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://nav.al/angel-2 <comment><USER2> Some anecdata: I know 8 people who angel invest (small sample yes) and 0 have made money.

To heighten your chances you're going to need to write 20-40 checks which means about a $500k investment. And then curl up in to a fetal position till 1 > 20x at least to break even.

<comment><USER3> You're exactly right. Portfolio size is absolutely the key here. To give yourself a fighting chance of finding an outlier-type return, you need to have some diversification... Gerry Neumann did a great post breaking down some of the math on this[0].

[0] [http://reactionwheel.net/2017/12/power-laws-in-venture- portf...](http://reactionwheel.net/2017/12/power-laws-in-venture-portfolio- construction.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > If you have poor judgment, you won't know it.

I'm pretty sure I have bad judgment of the sort that would make me a bad angel investor.

I'm too trusting of people and too motivated to invest in things I would find technically interesting rather than those that could be viable businesses.

<comment><USER5> Getting screwed by untrustworthy people would be more misses. But returns are made on the hits, so I don't think that would matter.

Definitely the latter issue of investing in something technically interesting would matter a great deal. Maybe you're seeing a wave before others with your insight. But maybe you focus on the tech and not the traction or the path to scale. But knowing the tech is an advantage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part 1: > Dealflow and access are the most important things to work on as an investor. Your judgment doesn't have to be that great, because the returns follow a power law. And you can always get capital if you have good dealflow and access.

Part 2: > At the end of the day, judgment is the single most important thing. It's more important than access to deals and access to capital.

</comment><comment><USER7> Angel investing needs to be automated and commoditized.

I believe the focus on having superior foresight and personalities in this space are nonsense, especially when we have over 40 years of actuarial data to study from.

The known knowns and known unknowns of angel investing should be well modellable by now, just like flood risk. This should translate to fund structures, deal terms and milestone expectations that can be made transparent and standardized across geographies and across industries.

I would like to see angel investment being accessible to A LOT more people than the lucky few in Silicon Valley. If portfolio size is the best determinant of success, imagine an angle fund the size of Blackrock.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great advice from Naval and Nivi. If you ever considered angel investing, they cover many of the pitfalls. Invest wisely.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just chase founders with big Twitter follows && chasing top angel investors.

</comment><comment><USER10> This dude is the absolute worst. His brand is taking the platitudes of a "wellness influencer" and applying it to tech and investing. He uses logic/rhetorical fallacies to say things that sounds smart/deep that dont say anything. He also, anoints himself at every turn.

He's a walking manifestation of the reputation tech has built as being elitist and out of touch.

<comment><USER11> Please don't do generic tangents or personal attacks on HN. Those are two of the worst influences on an internet forum.

If you don't like this article, there are lots of others to read here.

<comment><USER10> The irony of your generic complaint followed by overstatement about my what you believe to be my generic complaint is genuinely fun.

This isnt a character attack, it's a substantive attack. And you should care. This ego maniac has his sights set on being the representative talking "tech guy" at the highest form of culture. He was a featured guest on Joe Rogan spouting his empty rhetoric and he indirectly represents us.

<comment><USER11> I don't see anything substantive about it. Yes, moderation comments are ironic, but alas we can't do without them ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20tedious%20write%20read&sort=byDate&type=comment)) I don't know who 'us' is supposed to be; he doesn't represent me, and I assume he doesn't represent you. By the way, the issue with personal attacks is not so much the person, as what they do to the community. Maybe you don't owe Naval better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it. We need to take care of the commons, which suffers enough as it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Naval's Twitter feed is like a Deep Neural Network based Quote generator. I guess his thread of How to become rich trended everywhere but I'm not sure how many really got anything practically applied with those things. He very much reminds Silicon Valley (HBO) to me. Is it how usually VCs talk or it's just an image of an Angel Investing Monk that he's building?

It's a genuine question I've got (Someone who lives far away from the Bay area)

<comment><USER13> If you say as little as possible people will reflect their own beliefs in the words and you just can't be wrong.

<comment><USER14> People have made millions using just this little fact right here. Pose as an expert and say most generic BS and let people do the mental gymnastics to have it match their world view.

A starter pack would include gems like, "any person who have wanted something bad enough has gotten it", "never let anyone tell you your dreams are just that", "success is right after the point when you give up", "only if you knew you were destined for tres comas club" etc.

Please join my course on life-coaching if you are interested in this field.</comment></comment></comment>


Data Science & The Role of the Data Scientist - <AUTHOR> http://wikibon.org/blog/role-of-the-data-scientist/ <comment><USER2> The 1790 census thing aside, I think what makes this such a nice infographic is that the creator didn't try to squeeze a bunch of numbers in there. Aside from the the pie chart (which I actually like since it is intentionally used to demonstrate misleading statistics) and a few other cases, it's primarily a written description.(I wish it would provide citations, but I'm satisfied with the accuracy of the information)

It didn't fall into the trap of trying to ornament charts by substituting icon for point on a chart or create 3D or otherwise exotic charts that are nearly impossible to interpret. Simply stuck to telling a story and that seems to work.

[edit: I should add. I definitely fall into the category of "Data Scientist". So while I have a lot of appreciation for quality visualization, I think in this case it was best to stick with a narrative and not try to incorporate anything quantitative into the visuals.]

</comment><comment><USER3> Good infographic. Although:

"The first big data collection project in history was by the U.S. Census, which started in 1790."

Errr....

<comment><USER4> Hmm. I can push that back to the doomsday book.

And probably every single tax collector in history.

<comment><USER5> I think tax collection records are always one of the earliest examples of writing in a ancient language

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The link goes to "Database Error - Error establishing a database connection" which is kind of interesting, given the subject of this thread.

</comment><comment><USER7> good summary, also see [http://www.quora.com/Educational-Resources/How-do-I- become-a...](http://www.quora.com/Educational-Resources/How-do-I-become-a- data-scientist) and <http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/what-is-data- science.html></comment>


Debian Covid-19 Hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://blends.debian.org/med/bugs/covid-19.html <comment><USER2> A small correction:

Debian is not running their own hackathon, instead they are joining an existing biohackathon: [https://github.com/virtual- biohackathons/covid-19-bh20](https://github.com/virtual- biohackathons/covid-19-bh20)

I'm the organiser of Debian's participation, thanks for the publicity!</comment>


Bubble Trouble? I Don't Think So - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%99t-think-so/

<comment><USER2> On the whole an excellent article, but i think there is one big flaw in his reasoning.

Hs opening argument is that back in 2000, Ebay, Amazon, Cisco, and Akamai were trading at ridiculous multiples, but they are now much more sensible. The issue with this argument is Ebay, Akamai etc were the Zynga, Twitter and Groupon's of their day. They are now businesses with 10 years of trading history and relative flat revenues. For example Ebay's current revenue annual growth is just 5% and Akamai's 6%. It's hardly surprising that their multiples are low now (for comparison eBay grew 100% year on year back in 2000)

If he put Twitter, Facebook, Zynga and Groupon in that table then I think the numbers of today would be as bad as the numbers of 2000. e.g. Facebook and Groupon is at roughly 25 EV/Revenue (where Cisco and Amazon were in 2000) and Twitter is prob more like 100 (comparable to ebay). The PE ratios (for those that make profit in this group) would be even more stark.

Obviously the companies I've listed are still private, but that is more a factor of the IPO markets, and companies choosing to delay an IPO where as in 2000 a company like Facebook or Twitter would have IPO'd by now.

<comment><USER3> In other words you're saying that a bubble might only affect new companies spawned by that bubble. That wasn't true in the late 90's though -- just look at the telecoms. Many of them had substantial trading histories, but they also saw big runups in their valuations followed by big drops in the early 2000s.

Also, the author talks about this in the first paragraph of his post:

 _Similarly, in recent high profile private financing rounds for private technology companies with valuations over $1B, the valuation multiples were at or below corresponding multiples for publicly traded companies such as Google._

<comment><USER4> The bubble affects the companies that are trying to get a piece of the bubble. The runups in the telecom industry was due to them moving into laying fiber optics spurred in large part by Global Crossing flying high.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but aren't Google, Salesforce, Amazon and others doing much the same thing by building/buying cloud computing platforms, social networking products, and so on?

That's widening the companies from those Ben Horowitz named, so maybe valuation:value IS climbing for public companies that are trying to get in on the hot stuff of the day. That would certainly be an interesting argument, I'd love to see someone make it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow! His writing style is amazing.

Though I have a question about the metrics he uses for measuring the bubble based on valuations of Venture Capital raised.

During the boom, Venture Capital raised $200 Billion, but he is comparing that to the $50 Billion raised during the recession of the last few years. Those metrics shouldn't add up.

Also, he isn't factoring in the growth of Angel Investment, which is taking the place of early VC. Sure, each individual deal may be small, but there are (from what I've heard) so many of them, that it all ads up.

Am I understanding the dynamics correctly? or missing something?</comment>


Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/dungan.html

<comment><USER2> Basically Victor Mair's papers always come down to "I don't like Chinese characters", and "I don't like calques". I'm not so fond of characters either, but I also think calques are a damn sight better than loanwords --- and as Mair notes, a character-based writing system has the side-effect of forcing you to make calques, rather than just stealing foreign words wholesale without understanding them.

Among Аnglophones, the French have given calques a bad name. We hear the story all the time in the media: some French people start using an English word to talk about a new concept from the US/UK. Years later, a Language Academy bureaucrat belatedly notices. He wrinkles his nose. He comes up with a cumbersome, incorrect translation of the English word for that concept. Then, for his _pièce de résistance_ , he forces everyone in France to use his new translation.

But in Chinese, the process of coming up with calques is decentralised, immediate, and competitive. The first guy to publish a Chinese academic paper or newspaper article on a foreign concept puts together some Chinese word roots and comes up with a calque. The next guy to cite him might accept his translation, or abbreviate it, or reject it entirely. And so on. After a period of confusion, the best word wins. And the Chinese language has a new word whose meaning can reasonably be guessed at, even by someone who's never seen it before.

<comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with his other papers, but is there an assertion in that very long article that you take issue with? I'm no scholar in the field, but my on the ground experience clicks with what he is saying.

The impenetrability of chinese character-based written languages is a huge difficulty even for native speakers. As just one example, Japan supposedly has a 99% literacy rate. This is only possible by redefining literacy to mean "capable of reading at a childish level". A staggering number of the japanese people I encounter readily admit that they cannot read the newspaper, as just one example. For another, I received a notice at work a few weeks ago and asked a co-worker who had received an identical notice what it was about.

He looked at it very intently for about 15 seconds, pronounced it to be about retirement funding or some such, and then the co-worker who actually handed the paper out explained that it was a government notice on some completely unrelated topic. We're talking about a piece of paper containing fewer words than your entire comment, and he completely misread even the _topic_ of it. This is a university-educated Japanese person who is indeed "literate".

<comment><USER2> Oh no, don't get me wrong --- I agree: Chinese characters are hard. People can't read them. An alphabet would be much easier.

On the other hand, Mair seems to think that slaughtering your native lexicon and replacing it with a bunch of English/Russian loanwords would be a good thing, while I disagree. (This has been the exact consequence of alphabetisation in Dungan and Korean). And I also think that devoting a career to trying to get China to switch to the Roman alphabet is an irrational waste of brainpower --- it's never going to happen, for reasons totally unrelated to efficiency or practicality.

But these are little quibbles compared to the real issue: even if China threw out Chinese characters tomorrow, all the historical linguists like Mair would STILL be mad, cuz the damage has already been done: we may never have any clear idea of the pronunciations of so many old languages from civilisations in China's orbit. In the rare event those civilisations' literate elites wanted to write in their own languages (instead of writing in classical Chinese), they had to use Chinese characters to try to approximate the sounds, because they never developed their own alphabets --- and their approximations sucked. In the mean time, the Indologists point and laugh cuz they can tell you _exactly_ how Sanskrit sounded all those thousands of years ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freelance graphic design - <AUTHOR>

Greetings fellow hackers...
I have a fair bit of design work I would like to have done in the near future. It includes....
1. Aesthetic-only redesign of our website (just some templates really, not the actual finished product.  we can handle content and the HTML drudgery),
2. Some print media brochures of our products,
3. some tradeshow displays and business cards.
We already have a great logo but unfortunately our designer has moved on to bigger and better things.
There's two avenues I want to explore:
1. I know there are some sites where you can post freelance design work like this for people to bid on. I have forgotten what the good ones are; does anybody recommend a site and/or person who has done work for them in this fashion.
2. If you know a freelance designer (preferably a person and not a firm) who can do most or all of above described things in the 4-7k range (depending on the quality of their portfolio) whom you recommend, I am all ears. We are on a budget as you might expect and I can't really afford to pay more than this.
Thanks in advance all. <comment><USER2> 1) olance.com and elance.com are two of the biggies. I've had mixed success on elance but, when it was a success, it was a good success so I've continued to do business there. Craigslist for locals is possibly a try...

<comment><AUTHOR> Success with design or programming, and with who?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i hope this helps - good luck

<http://99designs.com/>

<http://www.crowdspring.com/>

<comment><USER4> Those are both pretty good sites. If you're still not able to find anything, my partner and I do graphic design as well. <http://www.alfajango.com> for our portfolio.</comment></comment>


Physics laws cannot always turn back time - <AUTHOR> https://www.astronomie.nl/physics-laws-cannot-always-turn-back-time-77 <comment> tom-thistime As usual with physics links, the layperson's blurb sounds kind of silly and is easy to criticize. But the actual paper is linked and you can look at it: [https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article- abstract/493/3/3932/5...](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article- abstract/493/3/3932/5736044?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

General HN comment: I think our discussion on physics topics will really be improved if we comment on the physics papers (start with the abstracts) themselves.

The (completely understandable) trend right now is to focus on the press release or science journalism that accompanies the link to the physics. Unfortunately that normally leads away from the basics of what's actually happening in the physics.

(Metaphor here: If you're a programmer, imagine reading about some CS topic in Wired magazine, then looking at 200 comments from people who agree or disagree with the pop sci writeup.)

<comment><USER2> New garbage collection algorithm makes manual memory management obsolete! Kernel devs hate it!

<comment><USER3> You deserve reddit gold!

<comment><USER2> thanks, I really appreciate the kind words!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This headline is (unsurprisingly) misleading. The argument is actually "the rounding error of this calculation is smaller than the Planck length, and we still get rounding errors that compound to large amounts over time."

This is really an argument about the ability to measure and simulate, not about which of the laws of physics are invariant under time reversal.

<comment><USER5> The content of the matches the headline.

What they do is to increase the accuracy so much that physical perturbations at the quantum level dominate, not numerical accuracy. Irreversible up to the Planck length means fundamentally unpredictable.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04029](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04029)

<comment><USER6> > The time symmetry is broken because disturbances the size of the Planck > length have an exponential effect.

Yeah, that's the point right there up front: Butterfly effect at the sub- Planck scale.

<comment><USER7> I guess I'm too dumb to understand what is novel about this? What does it tell me beyond James Gleick's popularization of chaos theory circa 1987?

In some other thread, people told me I was wrong about reality having finite resolution. So _is there_ a "sub-Planck scale"? How can simulations tell you if there is or isn't?

<comment><USER8> There isn't a sub Planck scale. That's the point. You'd need a sub Planck scale in order to reverse the computation.

Chaos theory is math. This is physics showing how the math applies to reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mm, no I think what this shows that in just the same way as the future is uncertain (you don't know which path you will observe an electron to take), the past is uncertain in the same way (you can't know which path an electron took). They've just expanded that principle to a cosmic size (there are several past histories, diverging on the Planck scale, that lead to the same present day observations). That doesn't mean physics is not reversible, it just means there isn't a _unique_ way to reverse it. Which, we already knew.

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps this is a philosophical question in the end again.

There are open questions: Why would their accuracy be sufficient? Is there a proof of it being sufficient to make such a claim? Then we have: Is their simulation correct? Can we even make a correct simulation inside a computer, about 3 black holes and in addition to that, make general statements about laws of physics, based on the results of that simulation? Perhaps to make a perfect simulation, to be really sure, we would need an apparatus of as much matter as fell into those black holes.

So I remain sceptical.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wen you use this level of precision, you need to consider the quantum effects. And [the current version] of Quantum Mechanics is time reversible. The problem is that they mix some Classical Mechanics that is time reversible and Quantum Mechanics that is time reversible, and the wrong mix is not time reversible.

Autonitpicking: There are some technical details about time reversal, but as far as we know the CPT symmetry is not broken.

<comment><USER12> I'm no physicist but shouldn't QM be not time reversible or even not repeatable?

Based purely on the fact that events happen randomly within some constraint then if you go forward, backward or repeat nothing can ever be the same even when initial conditions are exactly identical?

<comment><USER13> The evolution of the wave function which determines the probability distribution sampled by observations is deterministic and reversible in all of the quantum theories I have personally studied (which is not many).

<comment><USER12> I'm talking about the actual materialization of the particle. Not the probability wave itself. Dunno if it's the right term "materialization" but basically I'm saying when it's no longer a probability wave but it becomes a particle it appears at random places within the probability wave. The location of the particle after the materialization of the particle itself will be different forward or backwards through time? Does someone know?

<comment><USER11> Wavefunction collapse is a huge problem, and taken at face value make QM not reversible.

Nobody is sure, but probably when you consider a bigger system that includes the experiment and the observer, the time reversion is restored. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence)

(Note that the observer in QM doesn't need magical properties like consciousness, in some experiments it is enough to place a brick in the right position.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a question for those more knowledgeable about physics:

Everything we know so far points to time invariance * , right? What would happen if we discovered that some things truly aren't time invariant? Would it crucially change the fundamental understanding, or would it just be a new class of phenomena?

* except maybe TFA which isn't really right based on the other comments I'm reading.

<comment><USER15> Not at all a physicist, but I think I can take a stab at this. I think so far we only see CPT (charge, parity & time reversal) symmetry as being a fully unbroken symmetry of nature within the context of what you're asking. (I believe the weak force breaks a simple time reversal symmetry.)

Time symmetry is typically synonymous with energy conservation in classical mechanics. It get's more complicated when you introduce quantum mechanics, and lorentz invariance from relativity. In essence though, there's probably an analogous invariant to energy conservation for CPT symmetry. Maybe this is just lorentz invariance for a quantum field theroy? Not quite sure.

Implications of seeing that symmetry broken would be huge since the CPT theorem implies that a quantum field theory obeying lorentz invariance obeys a CPT symmetry. (I'm guessing by an application of Noether's theorem?) SO a violation of that would be either a violation of lorentz invariance (which would be VERY interesting) or some type of violation of the assumptions of quantum field theory. In essence, it would mean new physics!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this paper more about simulation techniques than about reality itself? It looks like time reversibiliy (sub-planck length or otherwise) should be studied in closed form or at least in non-lossy mathematical ways, not simulated with imprecise digital computers. Montecarlo simulation to calculate pi is just not a good way to know whether the digits of pi ever repeat or they don't.

</comment><comment><USER17> The guys should dig up an old copy of "Chaos" and read it. Their simulations exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The predicted orbits will diverge similarly in the forward-time direction if tiny perturbations are made to the initial conditions. They're also subject to rounding errors.

Nothing to see here about time reversal, its just chaos.

<comment><USER4> This is all correct—but you should always look at the actual paper and not the summary article that some journalist wrote. The authors are pretty clear about what they've shown and how it fits into ideas about chaos.

<comment><USER18> I disagree: the paper wasn't linked -the dumb summary of it was. The paper itself is a trivial result of chaotic dynamics rather than "muh mind bending woo headline."

Newsflash: a simple double pendulum also requires Planck length precision in initial conditions (or would if it weren't for, like, friction) for reversibility if you sit around and watch it for long enough and excite it properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The quantum mechanics of black holes is still open, isn't it? As I recall even Hawking entropy depends on putting the (non-unitary) Second Law of Thermodynamics in as a prior. This turns out to be consistent with (unitary) string theory and LQG, so far at least.

</comment><comment><USER20> To travel through time, you'll have to apply the laws of special relativity.

Time Travel Is Possible, But We'll Need Lots Of Negative Energy

</comment><comment><USER21> well, system of black holes would lose some energy via gravity waves, this isn't something that could be reversed, yes?

<comment><USER22> In a simulation you would simply flip a sign on that one and it should go back. I've done plenty of simulations myself where waves radiate from a source, and those are perfectly reversible.

The article is pointing at a more subtle issue related to a fundamental small- scale fuzziness which affects chaotic systems and breaks reversibility.

<comment><USER23> Probably a naive question, but why is this a subtle issue? Isn't this basically the well-known butterfly effect?

<comment><USER22> In a nutshell, yes, it kinda is a sort of butterfly effect.

But look, you go to school and they drill into you until the cows come home that quantum mechanics is time-reversible, and gravity is time-reversible, and you just assume this is always true.

But turns out, all that's needed is a bit of small-scale fuzziness due to QM effects, and then particle ensembles of 3 or more are suddenly not time- reversible anymore, though each of the basic laws still are.

For someone like me this was a small shock.

<comment><USER7> Ok, but if you have the idea that "Planck scale" means something, then how can it be a shock then?

Often understanding something better makes it _less_ obvious, but at my level, I don't understand what's non-obvious about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This only shows that time evolution on the observer's branch of the wave function is not reversible. Considering the whole wave function, the time evolution is still unitary.

<comment><USER25> This was not a quantum mechanical simulation, the wave function is not relevant for this.</comment></comment>


How You Can Help Save Upcoming.org, Posterous, and More - <AUTHOR> http://waxy.org/2013/04/how_you_can_save_upcoming/

<comment><USER2> "While companies like Yahoo work to destroy as much human history as possible, Archive Team is the only group actively trying to save it."

What kind of article is this? It is cool they are trying to save some of our virtual history, but these kind of statements aren't helpful. Clearly Yahoo's main intension isn't destruction.

<comment><USER3> Destruction is exactly what "sunsetting" is all about. Or to be more accurate, its like saying you're going to stop watering your fern. No, you're not destroying the fern you're just... not keeping it alive anymore.

The problem with people using online services is that their data is stored there and can't be recovered ever again. You can say the data is pointless crud or everyone should know better, but I don't see how you can argue that the data isn't being lost against some people's wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had never heard of Upcoming.org until a day ago. I had heard of Posterous, but never really used it.

Why do these sites need to be saved? It appears that they have been shutdown due to lack of widespread traction or apparent value.

Sure, they are someone's "baby", and it's natural for some people to take this personal. But is there really truly anything of value in saving these sites?

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand. If this virtual machine:

\- Downloads dying web pages, and

\- Uploads them to the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive,

That means I'm not saving the Internet Archive _any bandwidth at all,_ and this is no more efficient than them just downloading the site themselves.

The virtual machine itself is 174MB. This times however many volunteers means distributing the virtual machine is probably more stressful than the actual archiving operation.

<comment><USER6> As mentioned, the issue is getting around YDOD throttling (and that the shutdown is happening in 10 days).

If you have proper boxen, you don't need the VM. Here's how to get it up and running on a clean Ubuntu setup for example:

      sudo apt-get install build-essential -y
      sudo apt-get install git -y
      sudo apt-get install libgnutls-dev -y
      sudo apt-get install liblua5.1-dev -y
      sudo apt-get install python-distribute -y
      sudo easy_install pip
      sudo pip install seesaw
      git clone https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/yahoo-upcoming-grab.git
      cd yahoo-upcoming-grab
      ./get-wget-lua.sh
      run-pipeline pipeline.py [YOURNAMEHERE]

<comment><USER7> Does that download posterous as well, or only upcoming?

<comment><USER6> For Posterous you'd need to check out <https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/posterous-grab> and run that particular script I believe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can the world's first AI ski instructor beat the real thing? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/049f15ce-d798-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8 <comment><USER2> Uh oh, this is not good. AI is starting to take our jobs and we don't even realize it yet. Even if the AI is a much better ski instructor than a human instructor, I think it's still important to have an actual human right there to guide a newbie and show him how it's properly done.</comment>


Elephants Are Scared of Bees - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/science/bees-elephants-.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> The owner of a safari camp showed me the line of beehives around their property. They were adding a new hive because the gap between two was big enough and elephants got in. Pachyderms also motivated the row of chili peppers around their garden.

Just in case you're wondering, there are specific plants that elephants prefer. If anyone wants to move to Africa and plant an elephant garden surrounded by a butterfly garden, please invite me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article in the "Related" section of the OP; apparently, mosquitos can "learn" that they should stay away when attempts are made to swat them:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/science/swatting- mosquito...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/science/swatting- mosquitoes.html)

> _Some blood meals are worth a mosquito risking its life. But if there's a > more attractive or accepting alternative to feed from, a mosquito may move > on to that someone or something instead. That's because if you keep trying > and missing, the mosquito may learn to associate your swatting vibrations > with your scent, a study published Thursday in Current Biology suggests. And > it just may remember: This is not a person who will tolerate me_

</comment><comment><USER4> I would think that if elephants are smart enough to learn that recorded buzzing is not a threat then they will also learn that the fake hives don't pose a threat.

<comment><USER5> Apparently, they did use recordings and it did have effect on the elephants in Sri Lanka.

> we used a recording of a disturbed hive of cavity-dwelling Asian honey bees > (Apis cerana indica) and conducted sound playbacks to 120 wild elephants in > 28 different groups resting under trees in Uda Walawe National Park in Sri > Lanka. Elephants responded by moving significantly further away from their > resting site in bee playback trials compared to controls. Elephants also > increased vocalization rates, as well as investigative and reassurance > behaviours in response to bee sounds, but did not display dusting or > headshaking behaviour

[http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(17\)31649-4)

<comment><USER6> It worked in the short term since elephants weren't expecting to be fooled. But it is possible that if they hear the sound of buzzing enough times without seeing any bees, they will start to disregard it.

Fear of bees is clearly a learned behavior in elephants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Study: Wild Sri Lankan elephants retreat from the sound of disturbed Asian honey bees

Citation: King, Lucy; Pardo, Michael; Weerathunga, Sameera; Kumara, T.V; Jayasena, Nilimini; Soltis, Joseph; de Silva, Shermin; Cell Current Biology Vol 28, Issue 2 January 2018.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.018](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.018)

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.018

Summary: Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are threatened primarily by habitat loss and human–elephant conflict. In addition to establishing protected areas and corridors for wildlife, empowering farmers to protect their crops is crucial for Asian elephant conservation. Elephants can habituate to artificial deterrents, hence natural biological alternatives are of great interest. African elephants (Loxodonta africana) avoid African honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata), inspiring 'beehive fences' as a successful means of small-scale crop protection. Here, we used a recording of a disturbed hive of cavity-dwelling Asian honey bees (Apis cerana indica) and conducted sound playbacks to 120 wild elephants in 28 different groups resting under trees in Uda Walawe National Park in Sri Lanka. Elephants responded by moving significantly further away from their resting site in bee playback trials compared to controls. Elephants also increased vocalization rates, as well as investigative and reassurance behaviours in response to bee sounds, but did not display dusting or headshaking behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, I guess I'm an elephant then.

<comment><USER9> Necessary not sufficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All I can think of is the classic Oprah bees meme:

[https://media.giphy.com/media/dcubXtnbck0RG/200w.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/dcubXtnbck0RG/200w.gif)

<comment><USER11> [http://www.beesbeesbees.com](http://www.beesbeesbees.com) has been one of my favorite 'joke-domains' for some time now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You guys should check out [https://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs](https://reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs) for a daily dose of adorable pachyderms!</comment>


Pro Display XDR - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/ <comment><USER2> The "See Pro Display XDR in AR" feature on the website was a compelling demo of using AR for getting a better sense for a new product.

Looking forward to seeing more in-depth reviews and hands-on experiences about these.</comment>


How should I detect and handle cheating in "Read My Tweets"? - <AUTHOR>

Cheating is pretty easy, but how many people would bother?
http://www.readmytweets.com
Any ideas on how to detect and handle cheating?  I don't want to make the reading comprehension check more difficult.
I suppose I could add a traditional CAPTCHA in addition to the reading check question, but that would be really annoying. <comment><USER2> I don't get it. Why would I want to use your site?

Not being harsh, just not sure what the ROI is on my time.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for twitter users who want more people to see their tweets (e.g., so that they can direct more traffic to their site).

It's sort of like a banner exchange, but with tweets.</comment></comment>


The Lifestyle of the Digital Nomad - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/peacefullatom/the-lifestyle-of-the-digital-nomad-507g <comment><USER2> I did hop on the digital nomad train a couple of years ago.

I had to realize it's just a millennial, fancy word for being a monitor bound slave and making up some fancy terms (online marketer, digital marketing professional) for crunching numbers / clicking ads / creating those ads, remotely; where remote usually means a place where your pay worth more. Oh, and don't forget, now you are self employed, so don't need to worry about deductions for your retirement savings and such - if you are a really smaaaaaart nomad, you even move to Cyprus to optimize your taxes, how lovely.

Now put this into an Instagram-deluded world (so that these nomads can show how TRULY HAPPY™ they are), and you will find yourself in a kindergarten you don't really want to belong.

I met a lot of cool people on my way, who own cool businesses, and do cool work. There is one thing common with them. We don't need to put the digital nomad BS label on us. Probably we also make more than those fancy insta-stars, but this is not the point.

I ended up saying "I travel for work", withdrawing myself from the digital nomad groups and communities, and gladly deleting Instagram for good.</comment>


A unified control panel to manage all your services – ManageYum - <AUTHOR> http://manageyum.com/#.Uvm-9nYAMu8.hackernews <comment><USER2> Awesome! I really like the introduction.</comment>