Geolocating requests with Google Load Balancer for free - <AUTHOR> https://blog.doit-intl.com/farewell-maxmind-geolocating-requests-with-google-load-balancer-for-free-7938f5adbef0 <comment><USER2> I've been working on and off on a system to build this data for free - [https://www.open-geo-ip.com/](https://www.open-geo-ip.com/)

It uses your browser location to build the data, bootstrapped with Mechanical Turk workers around the world. It has one feedback loop, where if you use the JS library it will give you the users location if they deny browser location (if we have the data...) and if they do share location, then we update the database (but throw away the last part of their IP address).

There are two or three other loops where we could build more data (which you can get here [https://www.open-geo-ip.com/data/download](https://www.open-geo- ip.com/data/download) ).

I'm probably going to do a small kickstarter to pay for some cleanup and expansion work or just kill it if that fails to get funded. Any ideas appreciated on things to do with it.

<comment><USER3> > it will give you the users location if they deny browser location

Seriously? Did you help build BonziBuddy, too?

<comment><USER2> Ha.

Well right now a) we most likely have no idea where an ip address is and b) even if we do, it's nearest-city accuracy.... which is exactly what everyone else does.

Denying browser location doesn't stop the app or website from using your ip address against some third party service to figure out where you are.

<comment><USER3> >Denying browser location doesn't stop the app or website from using your ip address against some third party service to figure out where you are.

I didn't state that it does. However, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Did it ever occur to you that if someone explicitly tells their browser that they don't want to be located that you should respect that?

I hope you are never critical of Facebook's or Google's privacy standards, because there's a full-length mirror with your name on it.

<comment><USER4> I feel it's a bit of a stretch to compare public information (what city does best guess say an IP is located in) and private information (where is my device right now).

The lookup against what IP is in what city is published in numerous public databases that anyone can look up against in small doses at no cost, or at scale commercially.

This service shines a light on that, doing away with illusions of privacy and showing you where you potentially have none.

Comparing to Google and Facebook feels disingenuous. You can't lookup any person in their DB and see their records. It's not public precisely because they're hoarding what (in aggregate) is legitimately private data.

It's still an illusion of privacy mind, as all the recent fuss finally coming about demonstrates.

<comment><USER3> The Google/Facebook comparison is made because those companies also deliberately ignore the user's privacy wishes.

Also, this isn't about locating someone to their city. According to the blog post, it returns latitude and longitude pairs.

Yes, these may not be precise in some circumstances, but as detailed in many recent HN posts, Google has many many ways to narrow that down to a very close approximation of where you actually are. And it's only going to get better at it over time.

<comment><USER4> Whatever location information is being presented is being displayed from a lookup from a publicly accessible database. It's not a private DB that only one org has access to. This is the public library. The only cost of admission is putting in the effort to look. Google's knowledge of you is private. It's not comparable.

Should there be efforts to collect more information to make that public information more specific? Maybe. Can you actually delete already public information from the internet? Not really.

"Would you like to share what colour the sky is?"

You can choose not to. The webpage can still tell you. That information is public regardless whether you provide more specific information or not

<comment><USER3> "Can" vs. "should."

The bottom line is that the user specifically requests not to be located, and this is a way to do exactly the opposite of what the user wants.

Being technically capable of doing something is not an excuse for violating trust.

Here's a web page that may help you wrap your brain around the concept: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics)

<comment><USER5> Every web request is like a letter with a to: and a from: address. Your anger is equivalent to being mad that someone looked at the from: address on an envelope when you told them not to.

Also, your argument is that because the user doesn't want it, it is unethical? I don't want to sit in traffic but that doesn't make traffic unethical.

Similarly, you accuse them of 'violating trust'. It's public knowledge that any IP address can be looked up. Just because you weren't aware of it doesn't mean your trust is violated. In the same way, just because you didn't know something was against the law doesn't make it not illegal.

I am for privacy, don't get my wrong, but your comments represent one of the biggest challenges with privacy right now: the assumptions of privacy and trust. It's hard to have rational and productive arguments about privacy when people get emotional about the inner workings of the system. If you don't agree with the system, work to change it, but don't blame others for what is, at the end of the day, just a feature of how it all works. Instead, try to understand the feature and think about how we can implement future systems with similar functionality but more privacy.

<comment><USER3> >Your anger is equivalent to being mad that someone looked at the from: address on an envelope when you told them not to.

No, it's the equivalent of asking a woman in a bar if you can call her and when she says "no," you look up her number in the phone book and call her anyway.

<comment><USER4> Except she's not forced to wear her full name on display at the bar (unlike IP addressing) and is able to opt out of being in the phone book (unlike GeoIP . DBs).

I get what you're saying and I see where you're coming from, but to try and use this phone number analogy, it's like telling someone what city/state they're in based on their area code when they've opted to provide you no location information beyond their phone number.

The phone number itself contains location information. It's not necessary accurate information as I could easily (and do) use a 212 number wherever I am I the USA, not just in New York.

Finally, we've had rulings about phone numbers and IP addresses. Phone numbers "belong" to the end user, not the operator, and move with the user if they want to. IP addresses "belong" to the carrier, and are non portable. In a number of cases, carriers actively provide city-level accuracy for where they're using their IP space as it actively improves performance for end users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing I will say for Maxmind is that their API was exceptionally good at picking up anonymous proxies like Tor.

I dealt with a ton of fraud a couple of jobs ago and being able to eliminate credit card transactions for people on Tor was huge in cutting down on charge backs from fake card use. The minFraud API was really beneficial as well.

Don't sell the offering short.

<comment><USER7> I don't doubt that there are a lot of baddies using Tor (and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the majority of Tor users in some cases). It's a shame though that cutting off Tor access is the solution. A very reasonable one from a business standpoint, but unfortunate.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't have to be a majority of Tor users, if the tiny minority of actors are flooding tons of stolen cc transactions. A normal person may make an online purchase a day or so, while someone trying to get as much value as possible out of a bunch of stolen cc may just spam a lot of transactions.

For the server seeing the incoming cc purchase requests, it's still majority fraud...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those not running on GCE, I run a free service at [https://blip.runway7.net/](https://blip.runway7.net/) that piggybacks on the Google App Engine headers. Suitable for calling from the client browser / device, it allows you to ask for location specific resources straight from the client without having to do anything on the server at all.

Code at [https://github.com/runway7/blip](https://github.com/runway7/blip)

<comment><USER9> This is especially useful in single page apps, or static sites, if that's not obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just realized that Cloudflare also provides IP Geolocation, even for free plan.[1] However it only provides ISO country code of the visitors.

[1] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200168236-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200168236-What-does-Cloudflare-IP-Geolocation-do-)

<comment><USER11> That's great. Do you know if this also works on all cases when I use Cloudflare only as DNS? Edit: After some thinking this cannot work when Cloudflare is used as DNS only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Using this:

[https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load- balancing/http/ba...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load- balancing/http/backend-service#user-defined-request-headers)

 _The load balancer expands variables to empty strings when it cannot determine their values, for example for geographic location variables when the IP address's location is unknown, or for TLS parameters when TLS is not in use.

Geographic values (regions, subdivisions, and cities) are estimates based on the client's IP address. From time to time, we update the data that provides these values in order to improve accuracy and to reflect geographic and political changes._

<comment><USER13> If using the CLI, don't put the single quotes or the whole thing will become the header without a value.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have used the CLI and the quotes worked fine for me. Here is the complete command I have used:

gcloud beta compute backend-services update app --custom-request-header 'X-Client-Geo- Location:{client_region},{client_region_subdivision},{client_city}' \--custom- request-header 'X-Client-Geo-Region:{client_region_subdivision}' \--custom- request-header 'X-Client-Geo-LatLong:{client_city_lat_long}' \--custom- request-header 'X-Client-TLS-Version:{tls_version}' \--custom-request-header 'X-Client-TLS-Chiper:{tls_cipher_suite}' \--custom-request-header 'X-Client- Hostname:{tls_sni_hostname}' \--custom-request-header 'X-Client- RTT:{client_rtt_msec}'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> AppEngine has had this feature for years and it's extremely convenient!

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! I was using GAE for 9 years now and it's so easy to have these headers automagically being attached to your requests. Finally, Google Compute Engine has the same convenient way of geolocating requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have always said that the GCP HTTP(S) load balancer is the hidden gem in cloud. I'm glad it's becoming more and more popular (also feature rich).

One feature that must be mentioned is that it allows you to cache content (could be anything: HTML, JPEG and more) for as little as 1 second! CloudFlare requires an enterprise plan and even then you cannot set a TTL lower than 30 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anybody know how good the data is? I mean everyone of the geolocation lookup providers has faults and choosing the majority from different sources will have the best results. But maybe Google has much more accurate data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check this out: [https://twitter.com/jasoncartwright/status/98882315371465113...](https://twitter.com/jasoncartwright/status/988823153714651138)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that if you're using this load balancer behind a CDN then the results can be incorrect, although probably generally within the same region.

Also MaxMind does have completely free databases down to the city level, just with lower accuracy compared to their paid products: [https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This probably will depend on CDN. Google's CDN is part of the Load Balancer itself and therefore it won't affect geolocation. With "3rd party" CDNs it's different, of course.

Finally, the free version of MaxMind is great. Thanks for mentioning it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you are hosting outside of the Google eco-system and want to be able to do geo-IP for a store locator etc., or just to set a cookie on a page with the lat/lon, how does one build a minimal app in the Google cloud to do just this bit of the task?

If this is easy doable then that would be an easy migration route.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be pretty easy to build. Probably something you can do end-to-end in one or two days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent! Another great capability added! This will save us some over head!

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome, save some efforts of configure ngnix to work with geoip databases.

<comment><AUTHOR> yep. also, spares some compute cycles for your app

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, that's so cool! I wish my workload was running on Google Cloud

</comment><comment><USER21> We've done some testing and found many inaccuracy in Google LB Geo-IP results, anyone know who is in charge and which channel we can feedback to Google?

<comment><USER21> or anyone would like to try our service, please drop me a mail data at ipip.net

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> has anyone tried to compare geolocation accuracy of this solution vs Maxmind? I would assume Country-level will be very comparable (its easy to do), but doing city level accuracy is not trivial

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/jasoncartwright/status/98882315371465113...](https://twitter.com/jasoncartwright/status/988823153714651138)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool!! Location-based traffic insights have significant value in many use- cases. Show the results on a heat-map to see where you should be targeting customers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Finally, i am waiting for something like that for sometime.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice! Any clue if there is a way this can be enabled automatically on balancers created using kubernetes (on GKE)? That would be really awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts exactly. I am now working on this problem myself and I will share my results soon.

<comment><USER25> Looking forward!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dani-doit No need for external services from now on.

</comment><comment><USER26> Been waiting for this for a while!

</comment><comment><USER27> Great article! It's about time that Google will come with a geo solution

</comment><comment><USER28> Anything like this for AWS?

<comment><USER10> AWS added geolocation to cloudfront in 2014.

[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2014/06/26/amazon...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2014/06/26/amazon-cloudfront-device-detection-geo-targeting-host-header- cors/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not everything goes thru CloudFront. I hope ELB/ALB will have this feature soon too!

<comment><USER29> I do geo routing in Route53. Because of how often China blocks cloudfront.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Finally we can have it as a not only on app engine :-)

</comment><comment><USER31> Sharing is caring :) Thank you

</comment><comment><USER32> Finally!! Thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow, such nice developers! offering more user private data to google huh

<comment><USER34> nobody's offering Google anything, rather, Google is offering developers meta data for HTTP requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Finally, i am waiting for something like that for some time.

</comment><comment><USER35> Aren't there CloudFlare, AWS and Azure have it?

</comment><comment><USER32> Finally!

</comment><comment><USER36> At last

</comment><comment><USER37> finally!</comment>


Ask HN: Help me choose a REST API to build - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I've never built a pure REST API before and I'd like to build one as a side project. What simple API do you wish existed and why? Thanks in advance! :-) <comment><USER2> There was a ShowHN (can't find it) about an API that pre-qualifies email addresses. I think it just checked if the email syntax is valid (see related discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799976)), if the domain really exists and if the domain is a known burner domain (I use this list [https://github.com/wesbos/burner-email- providers/](https://github.com/wesbos/burner-email-providers/)).

Personally I can't use such an external service (in Europe) because with GDPR regulation sending a third-party a list of email addresses without user consent is better avoided.</comment>


Oatmeal fundraiser for Tesla museum is a triumph - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/07/oatmeal-fundraiser-for-tesla-m.html <comment><USER2> This Oatmeal guy is a genius when it comes to internet psychology and going viral. He has also figured out how to translate his talent directly into dollars. I'm very, very impressed.

<comment><USER3> The way he balances crass humor with sonewhat profoubd psychological insights, viral self-promotion with altruism (cancer donation, rallying against SOPA and this) is quite impressive. I don't know of another individual quite as deft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's a little bit early to say it's a triumph. Isn't the end goal to have an actual museum of Tesla at that place ?

<comment><USER5> The goal of the campaign was to purchase the Wardenclyffe property and prevent its demolition. It's a fundamental step on the road of creating the museum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They're obviously going to need to come up with much more money, but the fact that they have now purchased the land is a monster step.

Really psyched to see how this plays out. Especially since I grew up on the East End of LI and still live relatively close by.</comment>


The chips are down for Moore's law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/the-chips-are-down-for-moore-s-law-1.19338 <comment><USER3> I really ought to do a blog post on the math behind this but it's not really a simple matter of power density because drive currents have traditionally shrunk along with the area and hence capacitance of transistors. For a long time people didn't reduce voltage to achieve classical Dennard Scaling[1] because back in the day nobody really cared about power but you could always go back to scaling that if you wanted. I suppose that the reason it looms so large in our heads is that Intel was having problems with power on the Pentium IV right as things were starting to change around 90nm.

Some things that make increasing performance with feature size more difficult recently are that transistors spend lots of time velocity saturated, there's increased leakage current, and the capacitance of wires has come exceed transistor capacitance.

<comment><USER4> Please do. I understand why chips can't continue to improve following Moore's law from some fairly high level perspectives, but I haven't seen anything that provides more detail than the typical pop-science articles but without requiring me to crack open a text on condensed matter physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am excited to see if this evolutionary bottleneck will take us beyond the von neumann architecture.

The article implies we will get even more specialized hardware that will speed up common categories of algorithms like gpus asics and FPGAs have been used.

I wonder what kinds of performance gains could be had from a merge sort asic for example.

I think the real interesting thing will be if new architectures beyond von neumann will allow us to think outside the box and break out into new algorithmic territory that is not obvious from our current perspective.

It's very hard for us to throw away our toolchain towers of Babel but I think the departure has already begun when you look at bitcoin mining and gpgpu programming.

<comment><USER6> I think it's more likely that software development practices will change to recover a lot of the speed that's been lost. Not dramatically - certainly not a new architecture - but in lots of little ways.

There's a _lot_ of low-hanging performance fruit in programming language design, compiler implementation, technology choice, and application design. For the most part, nobody takes it because it doesn't make economic sense. With Moore's Law, just wait a couple years and your shitty implementation is good enough.

It's possible for a skilled engineer to write code that is _much_ more efficient. You have to compromise in other ways, like developer time or feature set. Up till now, those compromises have not been worth it, because somebody will beat you to market and make you irrelevant. In a world where "fast as an initial prototype" is not "fast enough", however, you could see firms actually start to compete on performance.

I predict that even without hardware changes, we'll see a bit of a maturation of the software industry, where people look at what folks actually do with their computers and then work to make that actually perform well. Possibly not for a few years, though.

<comment><USER7> In my opinion, there is still a ton of room to scale performance by improving paralellism.

Compilers will of course get better and better at automatically parallizing code, but a big thing that needs to occur in my opinion is the introduction of the concept of explicit partial ordering into mainstream programming languages. Traditional programming languages assume that the order statements occur in code is the order in which operations should occur (operator precedence for the generation of the AST excepted). Imagine instead a programming language where statements separated by a newline implied temporal equivalence, while statements separated by a semicolon implied a temporal ordering. This would enable the compiler to automatically parallelize code much more efficiently.

<comment><USER6> Most modern compilers do data-flow analysis to identify which statements are independent of each other, and they'll rearrange instructions so they can saturate a processor's pipeline. That's what superscalar processors are - <USER2> have multiple instruction decode units, so they're executing multiple instructions at once even within a single thread.

A bigger problem is that many _algorithms_ aren't really parallelizable. Throw a single mutable shared variable into the mix - even something as innocuous as a counter, or memory allocation pointer, or a logging buffer - and suddenly you need locking and your threads may end up starving each other. Once of the biggest breakthroughs of MapReduce is that it forces you to write your algorithm as functions that operate on independent data. But as someone who's written a decent amount of MapReduces - the thought process about how you design a MapReduce-based algorithm is very different from (and significantly more difficult than) single-processor programming. You can't just go to an algorithms textbook and copy some pseudocode, you need to actually think through what the algorithm and what it's doing, and then rewrite many state updates as message-sends, merges, and CRDTs. (This, BTW, is why Google interviews focus so heavily on algorithms - in many other jobs "How would you find the shortest path between a trillion graph vertices?" is totally academic, but in big data it comes up all the time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Top-of-the-line microprocessors currently have circuit features that are > around 14 nanometres across, smaller than most viruses.

Well, that gives room for improvement, a virus has quite a bit more logic inside than a single gate feature :)

<comment><USER9> True, but transistors are already smaller in size than a human synapse. But synapses don't produce so much heat, so you can stack as many as you want in 3D space without overheating, unlike silicon transistors.

<comment><USER10> There may be an interesting lesson buried here. What if there is efficiency to be gained from drastically reducing the clock rate of processors while at the same time increasing the number of interconnects? A bit like an ultra low power version of the connection machines.

<comment><USER9> There is more than one way to skin a cat. Somehow, the heat problem needs to be solved.

Perhaps what would help is to store energy locally, like our brain. Each cell has its own store of ATP, so a constant feed of ionic current is not needed.

<comment><USER11> That ATP has to come from somewhere though. In cells the ultimate source is usually glucose. So you'd still have to supply some source of energy, in one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Top-of-the-line microprocessors currently have circuit features that are around 14 nanometres across, smaller than most viruses"

Yea this is not true. The 14nm or 11nm stuff from chip manufactures is more of a marketing thing. It's much more complicated than that.

<comment><USER13> People think it is transistor size that is 14 nm, which is not. It is metal pitch on high density memory chips that have repetitive patterns all over the chip.

That sentence is not wrong. It looks well stated.

<comment><USER14> 14nm is _supposed_ to refer to the gate length (which may be larger than the node name).

The gate pitch of Intel's 14nm CPU process node is more like 70nm. [1]

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology- in...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology-in-detail)

<comment><USER15> I think the last process where process name = gate length was _90_ nm. Ever since the naming scheme was more a historic artefact than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where do chipmakers go from here? When the best consumer chips on the market add very little to the cost of a machine, then you have to come up with another way to win market share that isn't just based on speed claims. I'm sure there will be more spend on marketing fluff, attempts to brand slightly different products for different segments and price discriminate between them -- enterprise, gaming, mobile, IoT. But I also wonder if we will see more pernicious behavior, in chipmakers keying chips to specific applications through DRM, so they can sell locked appliances with software built in.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the upper bound of Moore's law foreshadows another impending boundary:

There is a fundamental boundary on all technological progress.

</comment><comment><USER18> _None of this was inevitable: chipmakers deliberately chose to stay on the Moore 's law track. At every stage, software developers came up with applications that strained the capabilities of existing chips; consumers asked more of their devices; and manufacturers rushed to meet that demand with next- generation chips._

Moore's law is stated in terms of a doubling of _lowest cost_ transistors you can fit on a wafer, and results in massive yield gains if you shrink an existing design when moving from node to node (the "tick" in Intel's tick-tock cycle). So whatever customers want, you'll still move to the next node if the economics allow you to deliver the same at a lower cost. This is one of the things that drives game console economics, mid-life refreshes which allow delivering the same capabilities with cheaper and fewer chips (fewer decreases other manufacturing costs).

The heat problem and related end of "free" speed increases is due to the failure of Dennard scaling ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennard_scaling)) after a good 30 year run.

 _Every time the scale is halved, manufacturers need a whole new generation of ever more precise photolithography machines. Building a new fab line today requires an investment typically measured in many billions of dollars — something only a handful of companies can afford._

Ignoring the far out scaling limits, this is what I would have focused on. As far as I can tell, the biggest issue right now is the skyrocketing costs of lithography due to the multiple masks required for multiple patterning ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning)).

If, and it's a big if (see Intel continuing to push out they date they plan to adopt it), when EUV lithography become practical that should change this very recent economic issue, substituting manufacturing costs in buying and running $$$ EUV machines for many fewer masks required for each design, lowering non- recurring engineering (NRE) expenses.

That could return a lot of the game to what it was like for a long time, albeit with only a very few foundries being able to afford these machines. The first generation the leading company in the Netherlands is trying is pretty insane in how they generate the light, by exciting tin vapor (!), imagine the inherent contamination potential for both the focusing optics and the wafer....

One other detail: to the extent a lot of companies start focusing on the economic ~22nm or so node that's just before costs skyrocket, we may be seeing some serious economies of scale as people focus on aspects other than the design shrink. Sure, you'd like smaller nodes, especially for lowest power applications, note how Intel is leading with mobile SKUs for it's newest smaller node chips, but that node is perfectly fine for a whole lot of things. Another economic factor to focus on, not everyone is an Intel, nVidia, Apple etc. that needs cutting edge nodes.

<comment><USER3> When Gorden Moore wrote his first paper on things doubling every fixed time period it was on the lowest cost transistors back in 1965 but the term _Moore 's Law_ didn't come into use until the mid 70s by which time he had written a number of other papers pointing out a number of other doublings including feature size. In the old days these all doubled in lockstep so the original coinage of the term didn't really distinguish economics from minimal feature size.

So there's really no legitimate way to insist that Moore's law has to refer to the lowest cost number of transistors. It actually wasn't that by coinage and it certainly isn't that by common usage. I've even got a copy of a memo by Moore in my 6.175 lecture notes endorsing a broader conception of Moore's law.

<comment><USER18> Well, my conclusion after many years, echoed by one of the themes of _Nature_ article including the lock step nature of node moves, is that Moore's Law is more one of economics than anything else. So I focus on that original definition of it, it seems to be the essence of it and its implications.

Now, if you're in the weeds of designing a chip or node, yeah, things like feature size are paramount, but why are you going to the trouble of moving to a new node in the first place, especially with the end of Dennard scaling a decade+ ago? Power consumption could be an alternative to the raw economics, or maybe taking up less space in the smaller mobile form factors. Intel's leading with mobile chips for _some_ reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had the idea to go 3D in chip design thirty years ago, but wasn't in a position to trigger any research or experiments.

I'm curious to see how this development will turn out.

</comment><comment><USER20> > "So far as I know, there is no example of anything like this in any other > industry, where every manufacturer and supplier gets together and figures > out what they are going to do." In effect, it converted Moore's law from an > empirical observation into a self-fulfilling prophecy: new chips followed > the law because the industry made sure that they did.

Probably because in every other industry this would have been seen as anti- competitive behaviour.

<comment><USER21> > _Probably because in every other industry this would have been seen as anti- > competitive behavior._

Not really, since nobody prevented any company from coming up with even faster speeds / bigger transistor counts.

The whole coordination was to push the limits.

Not sure which industry would consider ... exponential improvements as "anti- competitive". More likely they would kill to be able to have them too.

<comment><USER22> While the GP is seeing collusion where there are only aligned incentives, you are not getting some of the point of Moore's Law.

The thing is, most industries begin with a short period of super-exponential improvements, most of what happen in the lab before the products even get sold. In just a few years, the industry is mature, and further improvements happen in a much slower rate.

Semiconductor industry is different. Because of economical factors, it couldn't have that super-exponential beginning, and had to slow down for decades of merely exponential growth. (It also may had the biggest rate of mature/immature efficiency we've ever seen - but that's another thing.)

<comment><USER21> > _The thing is, most industries begin with a short period of super- > exponential improvements, most of what happen in the lab before the products > even get sold._

Can you name any of those industries? Because most (if not all) industries and products I know, aside of IT, have none such "super-exponential" improvements at their beginnings, not even exponential ones year over year.

We don't have 100x better cars than in 1950.

Film cameras didn't get x better in their first years -- it was a slow and painful evolution that lasted decades to get to something like the 35mm film and standardized functionality.

We don't have 10x better air-conditioning, watches, guitars, etc.

The only places I can think of where that holds are things like memory, storage, CPUs, GPUs etc -- all IT related. And maybe batteries, though I doubt it.

<comment><USER22> Well, you came out with a great example. Cars are one product with a very visible evolution, and expensive enough for slowing this evolution down so it could be documented. How much are the 1915 cars better than the 1900 ones? I'd venture a guess at the hundreds of times.

Film cameras are at the cheap/fast evolving end, so I wouldn't expect to see most of the in lab models documented. Yet, the first released ones were very reliable - I doubt the first prototyped ones were so.

Thermal machines and watches were two examples of products that were slowed down by economical factors. Different economical factors than semiconductors, so they didn't got that the smooth exponential development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Moore's law, the principle that has powered the information-technology > revolution since the 1960s, is nearing its end.

I don't understand why people keep saying Moore's law will end soon... as if it's a forecast. I just checked an online site for cpus and the fastest one available was at 3.7 GHZ. It was maybe 3.2 GHZ two years ago. In 2001, I bought a computer that ran at 1 GHZ. That's 15 years ago! Moore's law is usually defined as doubling every 18 months. Even if we stretched it to every 24 months, we should be at well over 100 GHZ. Even if we account for the 4 cores, it's still not happening.

What am I missing here? It seems like Moore's law has been dead for years. Please don't tell me about experimental cpus that are faster or theoretical processors. Moore's law is defined as speed increases while the price stays the same. What matters is what cpus are available to consumers.

<comment><USER24> Moore's Law properly expressed is about transistor density and not switching speed. Clock rates have been static over the last decade, but register widths have climbed by a factor of 8 and we're now packing a dozen or more cores on a die that used to hold one.</comment></comment>


The Law of Conservation of Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://nomodes.com/Larry_Tesler_Consulting/Complexity_Law.html <comment><USER2> Having non-modal interfaces seems simpler for the user in a simple application, sure. But when I consider all the power in the classic example of vi/vim command mode I'm unconvinced.

If you want that flexibility and power, the options must live somewhere. Dividing that into two mutually exclusive modes breaks up the complexity of the main interface. I need to know a handful of key combinations like ESC, i, r, h, j, k, l (or arrow keys on modern systems), :, w, q, s, d, g, G, v, V, /, ?, !, % to get a vast majority of daily tasks done. How many nested drop-down menus would I need to navigate or multi-modifier hotkeys must I remember to do the same thing just so I don't have to remember one bit (which mode I'm in) before hitting a key?

The human mind is actually very comfortable with modes. Work, home, visiting family, visiting friends. Cooking at home vs dining out vs ordering in vs baking vs grilling vs cooking a holiday feast vs catering in vs party snacks and drinks vs road trip snacks. Driving vs taxi vs riding a bike vs walking. Retail vs garage sales vs in-person auctions vs online auctions vs online fixed-price shopping. Lending libraries vs bookstores vs reading rooms vs newsstands vs books we own vs ebooks. Math vs prose vs poetry vs visual communication vs music. We pay attention to different things and follow different sets of rules in different circumstances all the time. Is it easier to remember all the rules for all scenarios at once or to switch contexts?

<comment><USER3> Developing muscle memory for Emacs is no harder than developing it for Vim, and since both involve rebinding annoying keys on the keyboard (mostly about whether Caps Lock becomes Esc or Ctrl) I prefer the editor with the more mature extension language.

<comment><USER4> Make Caps Lock both! I've got mine bound to be Esc on tap, Ctrl on a longer hold. Best thing I ever did for my pinky. (I'm an Emacs user, though I'm sure Vim users would benefit greatly as well.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems to overlook the concept of essential vs incidental complexity. Most processes I have seen in practice have huge amounts of incidental complexity.

I prefer to think about it from a different point of view: processes always grow in complexity until reasonably intelligent people can't understand them any more. It takes incredible discipline for anything to be maintained in a "simple" state below that threshold because reasonable people will all agree that adding some more complexity at that point has a low cost compared to the value generated. For this reason, most things in the world sit at that threshold of complexity where they are just comprehensible but still annoying complex when you first encounter them.

<comment><USER6> The "Original Formulation" uses "irreducible complexity". Isn't that the same thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Complexity is not conserved. It is a bound. A solution can not be _simpler_ than the problem, when both are viewed holistically and complexity is properly understood. (Yeah, I'm handwaving, but at least I acknowledge it. I don't want to write twelve paragraphs defining "complexity" right now, because my _real_ point is....)

But the solution sure can be _more complicated_ than the problem.

<comment><USER8> >A solution can not be simpler than the problem.

Problem: (4 primitives)

      1 + 1 + 1 + 1

Solution (one primitive):

      4

If amount of primitives defines complexity you are wrong.

What's going on here is that you are using a different definition of complexity to construct your statement above. Most humans intuitively recognize your statement along with mine.

The issue here is that before we can even talk about complexity we have to come up with a formal definition that fits all forms of our intuition about what complexity actually is. Otherwise all arguments can become circular and pointless as everyone is talking about different things.

What is the formal definition of complexity? What is the thing that is being preserved here?

<comment><USER9> I disagree with the above.

If you're listing 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 as 4 primitives (I think it's actually more once you include the primitive of addition), I don't think that 4 is the solution. The solution is a written up program that works on any integer that when run this particular sequence produces the value 4. And that solution/program is significantly more complex than 1+1+1+1.

Or alternatively if you say the program can't run on any other values, just that specific one so you can hardcode the result of the program to be "4", then I'd argue there initially aren't 4 primitives. there is one single primitive the entire entity "1+1+1+1" which is equivalent in inherent complexity to the primitive "4". Regardless of how complex we choose to represent it (ie with more characters or fewer), conceptually it's a single "primite" value input and it produces a single primitive value output.

<comment><USER8> This another definition issue. Traditionally a solution is defined as that expression reduced to the simplest possible form. Your definition of solution is more describing the process of reduction.

How about this. The problem is:

      4

Create a solution that is equivalent in value but has 7 primitives. (Using your definition of "primitive" to include operators).

      1 + 1 + 1 + 1

Under both definitions of "solution" and under my example definition of "complexity" the statement that the solution cannot be simpler than the problem does not hold.

Problems like find every permutation of a string "abcdefg" has solutions more complex than the problem. Disregarding definitions I believe your intuition is a bit off here.

<comment><USER9> I agree it's a definition issue, but I believe it's your intuition that's steering you wrong. You're using a mathematical definition for a non-math domained problem. The domain of discussion is software. The quote from the article is:

 _Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is: Who will have to deal with it—the user, the application developer, or the platform developer?_

In this case, I believe it's clear that the "problem" are the provided requirements of the software, and the "solution" is the union of the user's required knowledge, the application complexity and the relevant complexity of platform the app is running.

In this domain, "4" is not a well formed problem. Produce a program that when given "4" returns "4" is well formed. Produce a program that when given any integers and arithmetic primitives produces a reduced value is well formed.

And in both cases the solution/program to produce that is at minimum equally complex as the requirements description (if it were rigorously defined).

Or put in mathematical terms, the proof of a theorem/statement cannot be any less complex than the theorem/statement itself. The closest you can get is a trivial theorem/statement whose proof is of equal complexity to itself.

And back to the original post, it is handwavingly saying that every proof has some level of irreducible complexity. It is either captured in the complexity of poof itself, the complexity of the proof system / axiomatic-system being used or (here is were the analogy breaks down a bit) in the required user's knowledge.

<comment><USER8> >Or put in mathematical terms, the proof of a theorem/statement cannot be any less complex than the theorem/statement itself. The closest you can get is a trivial theorem/statement whose proof is of equal complexity to itself.

I don't think this analogy is apt. The domain of all problems and all associated solutions which programming covers includes proving theorems but this does not fill the entire set of all problem and solution pairs.

A problem could be: given axiom A and axiom B what are 100 theorems that you could generate that utilizes one axiom or the other or both? This is analogous to my reversal of the addition problem. The solution is not deterministic and is not irreducible.

In your vernacular you use the term well-formed without fully defining it. Intuitively I think by well-formed you mean deterministic and irreducible.

The domain of all problems and solutions includes "well formed" as a subset but encompasses much more than that. Programming is able to generate "1 + 1 + 1 + 1" from 4 and simply because it is 100% possible to write a program that does this, therefore the context of the discussion includes problems and solutions that are not well formed.

Your intuition is wrong in the sense that you believe all problems and solutions have to be "well-formed." They do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there is another kind of conservation that occurs in our desire for complexity. Something about human natures forces lots of people to feel uncomfortable with giving up control, so we strive to exercise it in other places. Successful platforms, whether they be convenience systems like Netflix or Amazon, or software paradigms have always traded some new interface for unstated (and probably unknown) complexity elsewhere. I think the most apt example these days is probably Docker & K8s and the deluge of systems and tools required to make that all work well in a team setting.

There are other good adages that are worth reading about such as "Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety"[1], and the "Complexity Paradox"[2] which I think can apply generally here, if you synthesize the themes out.

[1] [https://www.edge.org/response- detail/27150](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27150)

[2] [https://www.asktog.com/columns/011complexity.html](https://www.asktog.com/columns/011complexity.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good tonic for everyone who wants to simplify the solution by cutting bits off the problem, making a solution which is simple, easy-to-understand, and incomplete. If your program stops doing something, some other program has to do it, and that complexity must be considered as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> _"Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is: Who will have to deal with it—the user, the application developer, or the platform developer?"_

The JavaScript ecosystem is a good/bad example of this. Seemingly simple applications are pushing complexity to thousands of simple npm libraries.

The applications become simpler but the linking and composition of 3rd party libraries gets out of control.

At the core of it; abstractions reduce complexity, but only to a point...

</comment><comment><USER12> For people who don't know it, please look up "Kolmogorov complexity".

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that the _irreducible_ complexity of a task is just what the user _has_ to deal with to do it. If the application or platform _could_ deal with that complexity for the user then it was reducible by definition.

</comment><comment><USER14> No mentioning of the classic from the 70's: Systemantics :-)

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

</comment><comment><USER8> First define complexity formally before attaching the word "Law" to a fuzzy concept.

A more accurate way to frame this is, complexity tends to be conserved. There is no proof or scientific evidence that states that this is a law.

</comment><comment><USER15> Understanding this is the essence of abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER16> Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.-- leonardo da vinci

The idea of simplicity and unity is an important guiding ideology of scientific research. It can be found from the knowledge of various disciplines: the more universally applicable a unified theory, the simpler it is, and the more basic it is, the greater it is.

[The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow v3.0 with Warehouse / Workshop Model ]([https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)), based on the philosophy of Taoism and the Great Unification Theory, In the computer field, for the first time, it was realized that the unification of hardware engineering and software engineering on the logical model. It has been extended from Lisp language-level code and data unification to system engineering-level software and hardware unification. Whether it is the appearance of the code or the runtime mechanism, it is highly consistent with the integrated circuit system. It has also been widely unified with other disciplines (such as management, large industrial assembly lines, water conservancy projects, power engineering, etc.). It's also very simple and clear, and the support for concurrency, parallelism, and distribution is simple and natural.

There are only five basic components:

1\. Pipeline (pure function)

2\. Branch

3\. Reflow (feedback, whirlpool, recursion)

4\. Shunt (concurrent, parallel)

5\. Confluence.

The whole system consists of five basic components. It perfectly achieves unity and simplicity. It must be the ultimate programming methodology.

In addition, the IT industry is still a very young and immature discipline. The current software engineering is still at the level of manual workshops. Pure function pipeline data flow brings large industrial production theory and methods to software engineering. It incorporates IT industry into modern large industrial production systems, This is an epoch-making innovative theory and method.

The modern society is an information society, IT controls everything, penetrates everything. In my opinion, the development of IT is exactly the same as the development of modern large-scale industrial production systems. With the development of the IT industry, With the development of the IT industry, data standard systems will be widely established, improved and interconnected at the international, national, industrial and enterprise levels, It will be precisely standardized to every smallest part. pure function pipeline data flow will become the basic theory and Methods have become increasingly important, and have become the ultimate standard method for entering textbooks and industry.

The key to the industrialization of the IT industry is to establish a complete standard system like the traditional industry. software is the pipeline for producing products (data), which is no different from traditional industrial production lines. Therefore, the software production method will adopt enterprise management ideas, develop software into something similar to a traditional industrial assembly line, input standardized raw materials (data), output standardized products (data), and store them in a warehouse (database).

From the perspective of large industrial production theory, standardizing the input raw materials (data) and output products (data) has the following advantages:

\- Fairness

\- Neutrality

\- Fungibility

\- Standard, Data standards (data interfaces, data specifications) are better than code interfaces.

\- Interconnectedness

\- Combination, Data combination is better than code (function) combination.

\- Simplicity

\- Predictability, because the system architecture and set-up methods are simple and uniform, very clear, so its evolution and direction of development are predictable.

\- Reliability

\- Unity

\- Easy to expand

\- Easy to parallel, Can linearly scale up production (performance).

\- Observable, easy to debug, and verifiable.

\- Clarity, non-IT practitioners can understand.

It can refer to the theory of integrated circuits, business management and other disciplines. The role of the standard system can be seen from the great progress of social productivity after the traditional industry has entered the era of large industrial production from the era of manual workshops.

This method has been applied to 100,000 lines of code-level pure clojure project, which can prove the practicability of this method.

<comment><USER17> > Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.-- leonardo da vinci

Doesn't sound like da Vinci. In what context did he state that?

<comment><USER16> modify:

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

          ---- Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming.

               the first recipient of the Turing Award (1966)

               A founding father of Computer Science as a separate discipline

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

          ---- Albert Einstein

               The greatest folk scientist in history :-)

               A professional clerk in the patent office

               An amateur physicist

<comment><USER17> I don't dispute simplicity is a good thing. I'm just wary about fake quotes since it is really a distortion of history.

<comment><USER16> Simplicity does not mean easy.It is actually a systems engineering.It is difficult to design a complex system into a simple and smooth pipeline system.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Howard Schultz to Step Down as Starbucks CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/howard-schultz-to-step-down-as-starbucks-ceo-1480626061 <comment><USER2> Surprised this doesn't have more comments. Maybe its the WSJ link

TL;DR Shultz is not leaving the company. He is stepping down from CEO duties to run Starbucks' "Siren Works" division. Siren Works is building: "high-end coffee shops that will charge as much as $12 a cup."

One may think Starbucks coffee tastes burnt/bitter and SBUX has made some mistakes, but Shultz has been a very good CEO, at a very large public company, that he built.

From 1 store to 25,000 locations today, a bit hard to fathom opening multiple brand new physical stores every day...for 30 years. And they are profitable.

Shultz was basically an awesome growth hacker in a very competitive market, imagine if he had been running a scalable tech company instead.

I look forward to seeing how the $12 coffee biz goes, I won't be joining a double digit prices coffee craze anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I gotta agree with Schulz on one thing, whole milk for espresso drinks. If that's the way the Italians do it, then that's the way to do it.</comment>


Inside the Guardian's consumer-revenue operation - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/media/inside-guardians-consumer-revenue-operation/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The Guardian is now making more money from reader revenue including paid memberships and subscriptions, than advertising revenue."</comment>


Facebook's AI unlocks the ability to search photos by what's in them - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/facebooks-ai-unlocks-the-ability-to-search-photos-by-whats-in-them/ <comment><USER2> Google photos does this. I just opened Google photos and searched for "food" and aside from a couple pictures of some jack o lanterns (which are arguable, but I don't know anybody who eats theirs on Nov 1st), the results were spot on.

"Unlocks" might not be the right word here.

<comment> david-given If I search Google Photos for 'dog', the top seven hits are, in order: a fuzzy toy, a possum, another picture of the same possum, a cat, a pair of goats, a sheep, and I think it's a pheasant. The dog is #8.

Of course, if I search Google Photos for 'me', the top hit is a frog, so maybe it just hates me.

 _Update_ : not any more! Now the frog is #2. The top hit if I search for 'me' is the MV _Isle of Lewis_ car ferry, photographed on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.

<comment><USER3> I never used this feature until despite using Google photos extensively (I have ~60 GB of photos on there, granted that's 60 GB on my computer which isn't with the same compression/quality that Google uses). I have to say that I'm extremely impressed. it took multiple attempts to even find a mistake ("mountains", "city", "cat", "guitar", "food"). Although I was a little disappointed to find no results when I searched for "me". Being a frog is better than not existing at all.

<comment><USER4> You can add your name to a photo of yours (or any name to any photo). Google will then automatically find all of your photos. When you touch search look at the face of people that shows up below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously, a 51.6MB "gif" that doesn't really add anything to the article?

<comment><USER6> Really off-topic, but: Are there (tech) news-sites which do not have this 10-100MB bloat with three js framweorks and gifs, ads and whatnot? I'd gladly pay for a minimalist news source...

<comment><USER7> It's kind of a PIA, but I enjoy using umatrix and ublock origin. Allows me to only turn on the stuff that I want.

<comment><USER8> [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site- switches#no-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no- large-media-elements)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see how this is unlocking anything. Google has been doing the same for the past 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google photos does this through their server.

Apple Photos does this through your phone, or your laptop. (Data from these two are not synced???)

</comment><comment><USER11> Must be unlocking the same thing that Amazon Prime Photos is doing. I have to say that scanning photos automatically and allowing me to search by what is in the photo is the only solution to cope with the proliferation of photos, especially from camera phones. I still curate my better photos in Lightroom and publish them to Flickr albums. But that approach just isn't scalable for all the "normal" photos I am taking with the iPhone; so privacy concerns aside, I am happy for a machine to help me find the photos I am interested in.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want to see what Facebook tag your photos you can install this chrome extension: [Show Facebook Computer Vision Tags ] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/show-facebook- comp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/show-facebook-computer- vi/elafbihhbfmfihdflghclaclcilcnmie)

</comment><comment><USER13> In the recent times, for some other unrelated reasons, my browsing of FB pages and people's profiles was a bit slow from the network and download side (I always use a browser to visit Facebook, not the app). I noticed how accurate Facebook was in classifying photos when I saw the alt text captions for photos (before the image loaded). It was impressive, being able to say approximately how many people were there, whether a person was smiling, whether a photo was a selfie, whether a person was standing, whether a picture contained a landscape, trees and many other things.

It was also creepy that Facebook knew so much, because though I use Facebook for specific purposes and try to limit what I put there, I didn't imagine that images could convey so much information/metadata that would be useful to the underlying platform.

</comment><comment><USER14> Recently on my phone I tried to copy and paste a picture from Facebook to my messaging app. Instead of copying the picture, it copied a text message that read "picture of dog and three people." I'm sure this is nothing new, but I'd never seen it before and thought it was interesting.

<comment><USER15> This reminds me, (very unrelated) a few years ago (almost 10), when I dragged and dropped an image from Wikipedia with Google Chrome to my Windows XP desktop, and to my surprise it actually saved it with a file name that is the description of the picture, not some arbitrarily chosen name or the Wikipedia file name. Sometimes it was really long and descriptive, like "A man wearing red and a woman wearing blue are playing soccer on a field blah blah blah".

I wondered where that came from, and I looked for that description on that image's page on Wikipedia and couldn't find the same description anywhere (keep in mind, I was a middle schooler or something and it could very well be the case that I overlooked something) I was a little spooked, and I thought it was some sort of hidden feature in Chrome that labeled images like that.

Does anyone know what was happening? It still bugs me to this day :P

<comment><USER16> Could it have been the alt text for the image? I believe the grandparent comment was also pasting the alt text, since Facebook auto-generates alt text for blind users using ML (this is mentioned in the article).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> now i know why facebook has been doin this. [http://i.imgur.com/zPapJHM.png](http://i.imgur.com/zPapJHM.png)

<comment><USER18> I believe that was for accessibility reasons, ie screen readers.

<comment><USER19> but it also allows you to do the opposite things, like search for "sky" and find that image.

<comment><USER18> didn't know that, cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Facebook's search is not useful. It's (obviously) segmented based on your own network, and generally useless for practical purposes. Perhaps law enforcement will find some use in this, but most people won't. Or at least, any utility beyond "Oh, remember that time I took a picture with that weird dog in it?"

<comment><USER21> Your power of imagination is truly inspirational.

<comment><USER22> He's talking about its current public potential, not idealized potential.

For example go on facebook and use the search and tell me one interesing use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thinking of just how difficult this is, I'm reminded of [https://xkcd.com/1425/](https://xkcd.com/1425/).

<comment><USER24> And see [http://parkorbird.flickr.com/](http://parkorbird.flickr.com/)

<comment><USER25> Also [http://birdsnap.com](http://birdsnap.com) and [http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/photo- id/](http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/photo-id/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jeffrey-sean We have a free app that uses AI to find unprofessional Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter photos used by over 50,000 college students:

[https://www.renpup.com/](https://www.renpup.com/)</comment>


Show HN: Help for Students in Academic Trouble - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> URL based on a previous submission: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/epiphany- workflow/id1490449900...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/epiphany- workflow/id1490449900?mt=12)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Epiphany WorkFlow is for collecting all the disparate parts of a writing project into a convenient graphical environment. It's for writing a paper or for synthesizing a study guide from your class materials.</comment>


Scientists want to create 'red teams' to challenge climate research - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/these-climate-doubters-want-to-create-a-red-team-to-challenge-climate-science/ <comment><USER2> FTA: "I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate."

I'm all for continued research, and I'm especially in favor of funding/encouraging research that opposes common viewpoints and conclusions regardless of the subject (yeah, turns out the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth - maybe we shouldn't have been so hard on all those heretics). I look at a quote like this though, and come away thinking that this guy already has his conclusions, and his research will be solely about finding 'evidence' to support it.

<comment><USER3> As a former chemist, I think there's always a role for a gadfly in science (or in any profession). But part of being a gadfly is acknowledging you're probably wrong and the majority is probably right, and not trying to intentionally sabotage others' efforts. For a good example of what it doesn't look like, take a read at Scott Adams (Dilbert) blog, where he argues that the mainstream climate science community isn't just factually wrong, but they're actively deluding themselves. That sort of statement doesn't contribute anything to the situation since the only way they can stop 'deluding' themselves is to accept the opposing view.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing the status quo, so long as it's done honestly, with the humility to say: "I 'm probably wrong," and that's where these guys seem to go wrong. They're sure the majority is wrong to begin with.

<comment><USER4> _take a read at Scott Adams (Dilbert) blog, where he argues that the mainstream climate science community isn 't just factually wrong, but they're actively deluding themselves._

I don't think that's an accurate description of what he's saying -- he's made a point several times (e.g. [0][1]) of challenging the _models_ , not the underlying science, comparing them to economic models, which he feels, having majored in economics (and having studied and built his own [1]) are not reliable. One may disagree with him about models and modeling, but I think it's helpful to understand what he's actually saying.

I'm putting an excerpt here from a recent blog post [0] he did which I think demonstrates my summary above to be a truer understanding of where he's coming from:

 _I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that the chemistry and physics parts of climate science are probably pretty locked down. I give that stuff full credibility.

The measurements of temperature, ice, and sea levels over time are probably fairly good, but I observe disagreements among scientists on how best to measure. I'll give the measurements an 85% credibility.

When it comes to the complex climate models, I've never seen a complex, iterative model – of the type that includes human assumptions and human measurements – reliably predict the future multiple years out. I don't think it has ever been done, and perhaps it never will be. I give the complex climate models a 10% credibility rating. And I am only that generous because perhaps this is the exception to the pattern I observe that says complexity always hides the future, as opposed to predicting it._

BTW, I think the next paragraph, where he describes the psychological aspects of how people evaluate things when they don't have deep expertise or knowledge is interesting and possibly useful for understanding how to get through to people (Adams' blogs a lot about persuasion/psychology and how so often that is more important than facts in shaping people's views of things):

 _This is a good time to remind you that I have neither the qualifications nor the time to evaluate the climate science models on my own. So I'm stuck with using pattern recognition – which is not science, and it is not reason. And my pattern recognizer says humans use complexity of this sort to hide the truth, not to reveal it. If scientists want to change my mind, they need to show me historical examples in which things "like this" did a good job of predicting the future. You have to work on my pattern memory to change my mind, not my knowledge of climate science._

Again, you may disagree with him about models and modelling, but he's identified why some intelligent people, who are not science-deniers, may have issues with some aspects of climate-science.

[0] [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158778029326/how-to-change- my-b...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158778029326/how-to-change-my-biases-on- climate-science)

[1] [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158549646496/how-leonardo- dicap...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158549646496/how-leonardo-dicaprio-can- persuade-me-on-climate)

<comment><USER5> > I don't think that's an accurate description at all of what he's saying -- > he's made a point several times (e.g. [0][1] )of challenging the models, not > the underlying science

Science is the process of developing predictive models. Challenging models _is_ challenging the science by which those models are developed.

Trying to distinguish between these two is fundamentally misunderstanding what science _is_.

<comment><USER6> Unrelated to the climate change stuff I think you need to differentiate "the process" and "the models" (which is the result of the process). Epicycles ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle)) was a good predictive model used for a while and developed as a part of science process. Yet, I think we all agree that Copernicus was right challenging them and he did it in accordance with the science process.

<comment><USER7> We came full circle back to epicycles, though. Fourier transforms can be viewed as a way to model any periodic signal as an infinite series of epicycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We already have a well-established method for challenging climate research. It's called the "Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis" report [1]. It comprises 1,500 pages, surveying the results from thousands of journal articles, and is written by 259 experts from fields including meteorology, physics, oceanography, statistics, engineering, ecology, social sciences and economics. The IPCC regularly updates and republishes this report to include more recent findings and data.

Anyone who has bothered to download and even skim this report knows how exhaustive, thorough, and--most of all-- _conservative_ it is in its predictions and findings. It dedicates a significant amount of space to pointing out where its predictions have failed and where the data does not support the theory of global warming.

Anyone who wants to "challenge" climate research by completely circumventing the existing dialogue that has been taking place in peer-reviewed journals for decades now to take their case directly to the policy-makers is a charlatan.

[1] [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/)

</comment><comment><USER9> There is the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, founded in 2010. They brought physicists from outside climate science to do a clean reanalysis of temperature data.

I think they really kept open the possibility that NASA, NOAA and the UK Met Office had all processed and interpreted the temperature data wrong. After their reanalysis, their result was the same as other work before them.

[http://berkeleyearth.org/about/](http://berkeleyearth.org/about/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for this. I like the way they openly share their data, analysis, and code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of "My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic" [https://wn.wsj.com/stories/c81eb3c4-e367-4087-93aa-1f90b5de1...](https://wn.wsj.com/stories/c81eb3c4-e367-4087-93aa-1f90b5de1cfd.html)

Professor Pielke (his words) "was under constant attack for years by activists, journalists and politicians." The pressure to stop asking critical questions became overwhelming.

Seems there could be a place for viewpoints that don't go with the consensus, especially in an arena that is so highly politicized.

<comment><USER12> But it's not a political issue. How politicized it is shouldn't matter.

<comment><USER13> In a perfect world yes, but lots of scientific disciplines are heavily influenced by politics and public opinion in terms of funding, University support, etc. We can't pretend it doesn't matter

<comment><USER14> It doesn't matter to the supporting data. Thermometers don't run off of opinion. I guess that is what we need to convince people? lol

<comment><USER15> The money to fund the thermostats may depend on opinion.

<comment><USER14> In a fantasy world complete with international conspirators with god-like powers..... sure. If you don't like my use of the word "fantasy" then by all means provide some evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You cannot challenge science with teams. Science can only be challenged with evidence.

"Prominent scientists operating outside the scientific consensus on climate change."

That's already a red flag.

Prominent scientists have, and will continue to challenge climate change from within "the scientific consensus" (whatever that is suppose to mean -- consensus is irrelevant).

Climate change is true not because of a lack of challengers. It is true because we have only found evidence to support it. It is true because of a consensus of evidence.

The nature of climate change is highly debatable (= could use more research and hypotheses) and uncertain (= further understanding is possible). But we cannot get into "the nature of" while in denial of "the existence of".

<comment><USER17> > You cannot challenge science with teams. Science can only be challenged with > evidence.

The goal of the proposed team would be to collect evidence and examine alternative hypotheses. No one is proposing creating a team for its own sake.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a climate skeptic.

<comment><USER16> > The goal of the proposed team would be to collect evidence and examine > alternative hypotheses.

But they exist. They are all the scientists already working in the field. Which is why the next statement is suspect:

> No one is proposing creating a team for its own sake.

I am assuming this Red Team business is about funding. They want to pay people "outside science" to challenge scientists who are already doing their jobs and are quite good at it.

That is why this makes no scientific sense. But it makes PERFECT political sense. It's politics.

<comment><USER17> The idea is that the existing science is already politically biased, so a new team will be created to investigate verboten hypotheses, contributing new evidences to the conversation which might challenge or support the existing consensus. Whether or not you or I agree with the premises is a different matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There already are red-teams looking for evidence against the main consensus on the climate. Let me explain why you've never heard from them.

Let's start by what climate scientists actually do. Very few of them actually gather any of their own data. Some get a grant here or there to go on a trip to Greenland or Antarctica, or to design and launch their own satellite, but they are few in number. And generally while they get first dibs on their raw data, it all gets public at a set pace.

What climate scientists mostly do is 1. download raw data from the diverse array of sources available, 2. run models with them, using C/C++, Fortran and MPI, 3. distill what they find with Matlab and R, and finally 4. produce papers.

That's it. If you've experience with analyzing data in Matlab/R/Numpy, with using queue-based computer resources or AWS, you too can be a climate scientist. Just apply your knowledge to this narrow field. Done. The only difference between you and climate scientists is they're paid to do it full time, with an allowance for buying Beowulf clusters or running up a tab on other people's.

Observe that the right wing think-tank archipelago around Northern Virgina and DC has thousands, literally thousands, of people with statistics Phds, and money for as much playtime on AWS as they want. Climatology is a highly accessible field to anyone who's every pulled an all nighter with Matlab. And the right wing sponsors of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Cato, et cetera, would love, love, to find serious evidence against the greenhouse effect.

So why haven't they ever stepped forward with anything?

Because there isn't anything out there.

Why has the anti-AGW community ever produced anything that is at or above the dignity of a middle schooler?

Because middle school taunts is all they have.

<comment><USER19> Check the sibling comment [0] in this thread.

There are known climate consensus red teams.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13989422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13989422)

<comment><USER18> You and I would consider Berkeley Earth to be a "red team."

But for right wing politicians, a "red team" either produces evidence against AGW or stays silent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this paragraph is pretty telling:

> "One way to aid Congress in understanding more of the climate issue than > what is produced by biased 'official' panels of the climate establishment is > to organize and fund credible 'red teams' that look at issues such as > natural variability, the failure of climate models and the huge benefits to > society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise," said witness > John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in > Huntsville, in his prepared testimony. "I would expect such a team would > offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human > impacts on climate."

It is pretty clear for this scientist's choice of words ("biased 'official' panels", "I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions") that he has no intentions of approaching this in an unbiased manner. I get the impression that he has an agenda, and he will force the facts to agree with him.

<comment><USER21> All science starts with a hypothesis. If the evidence he presents supports his, then what's the problem? Peer review will illuminate if he is dishonest in his analysis. The bigger risk is the converse problem, where nobody around is challenging the consensus. History is rife with examples where the consensus is wrong.

<comment><USER22> Two problems:

1\. There are plenty of places to publish junk science. This is all somewhere like Cato needs to keep arguing that climate change isn't real and that is enough to convince half of the lawmakers. Even if the science is bad, it can easily influence policy.

2\. You can make this argument until the end of time. When have we done "enough" research on alternative hypotheses? Never, of course. We can keep on demanding more research and put off emissions regulations indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here you can see the problem of these congressional committees: they hear from a few people on one side, and a few people on the other, completely unaware that the few denialists they've heard from are _basically all of them_ (Curry and Christy are pretty infamous), whereas almost every other scientist disagrees. They should have to sit through 97 witnesses who agree with the consensus for every 3 who do not- that is the only way to really understand it.

<comment><USER5> > Here you can see the problem of these congressional committees: they hear > from a few people on one side, and a few people on the other, completely > unaware that the few denialists they've heard from are basically all of them

The committees (largely their staffs) choose who is going testify, and they absolutely know this.

To the extent they pretend not to, that's because they are trying to use the hearing for propaganda purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So we should cut funding into climate-change related science in general, _except_ for "science" that is working towards a desired conclusion being promoted by certain politicians?

That's not really science anymore then, is it? It's more "we should pay some scientists to support our position"

</comment><comment><USER25> Science, by definition, challenges itself. These "red teams" \-- the name itself is telling -- are a ploy to give industry-funded skeptics the rhetorical props they need so they can continue to deny climate change and the large-scale societal and regulatory shifts required to fight it.

</comment><comment><USER26> If they also create "red teams" to challenge their tax and health care policies I am all for it.

</comment><comment><USER27> The way I see it, it seems there are 2 issues which get confused a lot:

A) Is there evidence of climate change (Yes/No)

B) Is human activity impacting the climate change (Yes/No)

I think most people across the political spectrum agree with A) Being true (please correct me if wrong). Of course, some will disagree, just as there are people who believe the earth is flat. oh, well...

The big contention these days is mostly regarding B). I guess some groups don't want to deal with the economic ramifications they assume will impact them if human activity is at the core of the climate change.

On the other hand, if it's not 'our fault' we can carry on and not worry about finding solutions? I don't completely understand where the 'red team' would stand on this, anyone care to clarify?

<comment><USER12> I don't believe that climate scientists even see item B as being very much up for debate. And I feel safe in saying that these red teams would think otherwise. The writing is on the wall, really. How could it surprise anyone that this is happening now, given that our current president (and his cabinet) has deep financial ties with big players in the fossil fuel industry.

<comment><USER18> The debate on Item B pretty much ended in 1957.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Conservatives love this kind of nonsense-- they did it during the cold war, and came up with wildly bad conclusions about Russian intentions and capabilities:

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

Then the exact same guys did the same thing in the lead up to the Iraq War:

[http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/NEWS-ANALYSIS-Bush- te...](http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/NEWS-ANALYSIS-Bush-team-sought- to-snuff-CIA-2600065.php)

The purpose of this kind of thing isn't scientific inquiry, it's a blatant attempt to muddy the waters in order to advance a political agenda.

</comment><comment><USER29> A video of the testimony is here: [http://democrats.science.house.gov/hearing/climate- science-a...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/hearing/climate-science- assumptions-policy-implications-and-scientific-method)

At the bottom of that page are links to the written testimony of the 4 witnesses:

Curry: [http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/documents/Curry%20Testimony_0.pdf)

Christy: [http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/documents/Christy%20Testimony_1.pdf)

Mann: [http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/documents/Mann%20Testimony.pdf)

Pielke: [http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...](http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/documents/Pielke%20Testimony_0.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER30> >"I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate."

The sheer stupidity of saying we should fight biased research by funding a plainly biased team of "researchers" who, with hat in hand, state their conclusions before they've even begun is mind boggling. I can't say it surprises me though. There's lots of mind-bogglingly stupid shit happening in national politics all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's really a shame. Some fields are undergoing reproducibility crises at the moment, and I'd expect there are innumerable questions that you could survey those communities about, only to return with a strong but irreproducible consensus. Peer review is hard enough without challenging the status quo, and peer review has demonstrated itself to be an incomplete mechanism for science (short term, at least, and we need climate action in the short term). With that in mind, red teams sound great.

However, when doing anything statistical, there are questions you can debate before and after you collect data, and that distinction is incredibly relevant here. Having a red team push back against methodology while no-one has yet seen the data sounds great. But if you have a red team supporting your methodology before you collect data, only to challenge it based on the conclusions, you're basically endorsing using your "researcher degrees of freedom" to push in a particular direction, and it's terrible. It's p-hacking with an agenda. It's oxymoronic to ask people to do science that leads to specific conclusions, and that feels like where this is going.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obviously this scheme is just political pandering. They want to create an organization whose sole purpose is to assault the legitimacy of factual science for political purposes, and put it inside the government under the guise of "scientific rigor".

But it made me consider: we are facing a serious crisis of replication in psychology. Medical studies are very unreliable. Economics is quite truly a voodoo science; state the conclusion that best lines your pockets and you can find a scientist who says it's just good economic sense and anyone who disagrees is "ignorant of economics". Climate change is based on science but because of the denial there's this air of a faith-based test whenever it's discussed (oh, you're one of THEM?). All of science, since it's a human activity, tends towards an echo chamber. Conservatives don't become social psychologists, lo and behold all social psychology research is blatantly pointed towards reaffirming liberal world views. Communists don't become economists, so economics has become the clergy of unrepentant neoliberalism. Plenty of people aren't particularly concerned about the environment for its own sake, but none of them become climate scientists. This is partially because of initial ideological attraction, but it's largely because these fields require conformity. Being a detractor is difficult: undergraduate lectures are you being lectured about things you fundamentally disagree with which are often not scientific. Every person in your classes and your professor all agree in lockstep about these fundamental concerns except you. When you advance, it's hard to get respect or publications. No matter how rigorous, trying to get a paper published against a tide that strong is impossible. You're ostracized, minimized -- that's even if you get that far, which most don't. They pick a different topic of study where they feel more comfortable.

At the end of the day, that's a problem. I think a red team is a great idea in science, if that means people can get grant money and publications and respect for verifying and testing experiments, conducting them again, reproducing them, re-checking the work of others in an adversarial fashion, challenging premises.

But you should NOT have anyone be a dedicated red-teamer. That's politicizing the whole process and giving credence where none is due. They should be selected at random from the scientific body and required to advocate against the consensus as best they can for the period of a grant, the way lawyers do pro bono work as a public service, then go back to their regular research.

<comment><USER33> Medical studies with proper protocol and sufficient power are actually extremely reliable. Compared to the rest of the fields you mentioned, climate science is way more replicable and data-driven. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that even the deniers no longer deny that the planet is warming. Now they have shifted the goalposts to quibble about whether this is 'man- made' or not. While harder to establish, there is abundant evidence supporting this hypothesis as well. It's also important to distinguish between this testing question and climate forecasting, which is harder and more error- prone.

<comment><USER34> Actually, 90 percent of medical studies are pretty much horseshit.

Source [http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

Or ask a good cardiologist after a few drinks.

The closer you get to the source, the more you find out just how much we delude ourselves about what we know.

Sometimes BOTH sides have a hidden agenda.

<comment><USER33> I've read that paper more than once. It doesn't contradict what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and > otherwise

This has nothing to do with determining if climate change is man made or not. This is an attempt to support a political argument.

</comment><comment><USER36> Science doesn't play politics. Miami is already flooding! Tic Toc Tic Toc

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant The title is missing a leading "These". This small word is important, without it I assumed the Washinton post were talking about scientists _in general_ —when it fact it does not.

</comment><comment><USER37> So the discriminative scientist neural network competes against our generative scientist neural network in a zero-sum game regarding climate change. What are the laws against back propping a scientist?

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)

</comment><comment><USER39> TIL "red team" means "bias confirmation"

</comment><comment><USER40> Healthy science is letting unpopular opinions be disinfected with sunlight.</comment>


The race is on to dominate quantum computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2018/08/18/the-race-is-on-to-dominate-quantum-computing <comment><USER2> You've reached your article limit

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that a startup wants to be able to "hibernate" indicates that they are aware that this is in a hype cycle which will deliver disappointing short term results.</comment>


Fuck Cancer  - <AUTHOR> http://www.letsfcancer.com/

<comment><USER2> I've been known to be brash and enjoy brash statements, but for an awareness cause it doesn't really resonate with me. Especially with copy like "let's declare this month Fucktember".. It really comes off, I dunno, immature? Seems like the emphasis is more on saying the word fuck rather than having an aggressive proactive attitude towards cancer screening and awareness.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why they didn't get the letsfuckcancer tlds as well.

Also, why some spammer registered "fuckcancer.com".</comment>


Self-Service App Marketing Tool for Startups and Developers - <AUTHOR> http://dashboard.appsamurai.com/welcome <comment><USER2> The website basically seems to be a signup squeeze page. Would be great to get some more info before signing up.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's not a lot of explanation of what it does. Also, no social proof on the landing page either.</comment>


Shanley Kane, Tech Diversity, and Free speech on Twitter  - <AUTHOR>

Anyone have thoughts/info on the recent @shanley Kane @Medium meltdown that was brought about by the news that journalist Elizabeth Spiers was doing a profile article on Kane. Shanley responded by characterizing the profile as a violation of boundaries and a potentially violent act -- even though it's hard to imagine why Medium.com would 'attack' one if it's better known boggers.
Here is how Medium.com responded:
https://medium.com/@bobbie/on-reporting-65077a5c9047 <comment><USER2> Shanley is a divisive wannabe celebrity - ie: what can I do to piss people off and bring attention to my self? Total attention whore. Yeah - there are dickheads everywhere - why do you want to do battle with them and draw stupid people to the attention you garner - OH - that's what you want... Ass

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's please not invite drama onto HN.

If you have a story to submit about how a magazine chose to report on a subject or how that subject responded, submit it. It might still be too superficially dramatic for HN, and it might get buried or flagged off the site. But it might not, and if you really believe the story has substance, there's not much harm in a good-faith submission.

This, on the other hand, is merely a solicitation of opinions --- not even informed opinions --- about interpersonal drama unrelated to HN.

I flagged it and, for my part, would be thankful if people didn't post stuff like this to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry you feel that way: It's really more about how free, reasonable, expression is being suppressed on twitter.com based on a somewhat radical slant on what is acceptable speech in the tech community.

Shanley Kane writes on tech, with an emphasis on venture capitalist like YCombinator. Actually YCombinator is often the focus of Shanley Kane's criticism of VC in Silicon Valley.

[http://bit.ly/1impCn6](http://bit.ly/1impCn6)

Hacker News, to it's credit, seems to be more open/less gameable than other sites, and being able to express your own opinions on tech culture/community -- is a very significant issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somebody's either got a secret or is over-managing her image.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an amazingly intolerant environment on twitter: simply reposting Shanley rants (something she did routinely to others) -- will get you shut down, apparently by the back-channel of supporters who want to cover up her routinely abusive, polarizing language. It's a little bit frightening.

I think that regardless of how critical the article is (or isn't) -- her reactions already suggest that her views on tech culture are histrionic distortions of reality, where any disagreement is equated with violence: even a fellow woman journalist is castigated for contributing to 'harassment and violence' for simply writing a profile that was probably, on balance, originally leaning positive.

The key word here is histrionic:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Flagged. I'd note that Harrylyme was suspended on Twitter for harassing Shanley and is trying to carry it over here.</comment>