Car designer warns on Google game changer - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/27/us-autoshow-japan-designer-iduskcn0sl08t20151027?utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> One attribute that puts Silicon Valley in the category of globally iconic regions is its penchant to reinvent itself. Over the last 30 years, the waves have gone from DRAM to CPUs to networking to Dot-coms to Social and Web 2.0. Toss in a healthy dose of biotech for flavor.

Now, are we really establishing automotive as core industry? Tesla, Google and Apple as auto manufacturers? Today, it's tiddlywinks in the shadows of Detroit, Regensburg or Toyota City, but is there any chance The Valley is not totally deluded and another automotive center is emerging?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it is a dire as Okuyama suggests. If you have ridden in a Tesla you can see (and feel) all of the things that Tesla is learning about being a car company (perhaps more so riding in a Roadster).

Both Google and Tesla have done something that was considered "impossible" (or at least "very far in the future") by the senior leadership of the car industries, that said, just like when the first machine guns made their appearance on the battle field[1], the senior leadership did not appreciate how effective that technology would be in achieving their objectives.

In the case of electric cars Tesla was able to put into production an electric drivetrain with a car wrapped around it. It almost killed them and it was insanely risky. They also managed to convince the high margin market to go for it and tapped into a number of timely themes (energy independence, global warming, 21st century gadgets, Etc.) But now that they have done that, _all_ the car companies have a fully electric car in their designworks. The reason I'm long on TSLA the stock is because I think the Gigafactory is the secret weapon. Someone will buy out the "car" business and Tesla will end up supplying _everyone_ with their batteries. Like Intel capturing the margin from the CPU business, Tesla will capture the margin on the battery business. And you have to replace those batteries regularly, so its like a subscription business too. Pretty genius.

Google put enough computers and connectivity into a car that they could drive it. They mere embraced and extended the technology that Dr. Thrun had been developing at Stanford starting on the DARPA Grand Challenge. They added the enhancement of massive amounts of ground truth data from their mapping project and took it to the next level. But more importantly they convinced the public that self driving cars were not only possible, but _desirable_.

I don't see them getting into the self driving car business themselves but they have a tasty patent portfolio to license there. And unlike companies that "build to license" they have enough resources to build alpha+ prototypes to further their research. So rather than wait for Ford or Toyota to partner with them (and diffuse some of the licensing revenue possibilities) they keep enhancing that portfolio. But Google car dealerships? Unlikely. I think they learned their lesson on phone handsets there.

Apple is an interesting dark horse. Arguably the best tech design shop on the planet they could conceivably re-invent the car around electric and self driving technology to create a consumer device that redefines the world. But they don't have the 'itunes' hook as far as I can tell. So I consider them a long shot at best.

[1] Yes, its lame to use war analogies in business examples but it works in this case (for me at least)</comment>


Dear Linux, I'm leaving you for Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2013/05/28/dear-linux-im-leaving-you-for-windows-8/

<comment><USER2> It's a microsoft review site lol. Not biased at all.

[http://betanews.com/](http://betanews.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh dear. Not this shit again. The discussion is always the same. Windows vs. Linux. Or maybe a Mac? C'mon, just use what you like and leave us kids alone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Quote: "I have long been a proponent of OpenOffice and LibreOffice. While I still think they are fine options for the financially challenged, they are no match for Office 2013."

That's quite an argument you have there -- LibreOffice exists only for those poor souls who can't afford Office 2013. It's a variation on the elitist notion that things with no cost have no value. That outlook fails many basic kinds of reality-check, like free sunsets.

I call it the "Pet Rock syndrome". An ordinary rock has no value -- but if you put it in a box and sell it, it acquires value by having a price: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock)

When we evaluate something based more on its price than what it actually does, we let the tail wag the dog. It's like therapy -- once you could productively talk over your personal problems with your Aunt Tilly on a porch swing. Now you're under pressure to consult a mental health professional, even though studies show therapy doesn't possess an advantage over the time-tested Aunt Tilly approach:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561380](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8561380)</comment>


Now Dollar Shave Club Sells Hair Gel, Too - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/25/dollar-shave-club-hair/

<comment><USER2> Harry's is so much better at razors & blades. Tried them both. Hated Dollar's hardware. Love Harry's razor... and their blades are superior as well.</comment>


Brexit:supreme court rules article 50 cannot be triggered without MP vote - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/jan/24/supreme-court-article-50-judgement-announces-its-article-50-judgment-politics-live <comment><USER2> Active discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13470049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13470049)</comment>


How do you deal with frustration during software development - <AUTHOR>

I have this so much, whenever I'm developing something, and I encounter the smallest frustrating issues like typo errors that occur every 10 minutes but take half an hour to debug, or doing any kind of css. It heavily frustrates me, and destroys my motivation so quickly that I want to give up on the project, because there are always more frustrating bugs and problems, it never ends.
No matter what I'm working on, school projects, my own projects, helping others with their projects.
Really small things like this make me feel very down and quickly destroy whatever motivation I have. What do you do to deal with this? <comment><USER2> Ah, the thing they never tell you when you learn to program... computers are the source of all frustration.

I have spent all day editing a backup copy of a file, wondering why nothing I changed fixed the bug. I've spent a whole day chasing a missing character. I've spent a week, under deadline pressure, only to discover a bug in the compiler. I've lost the source code for a whole project because I nuked the directory by accident. I have to reboot my MacBook every two weeks because it starts paging and is so lagged I can out-type it.

I did a self-study and found out that I have a 3% error rate in everything I do... and found out that 1/2 of those errors are caused by copy/paste (which I stopped doing). Errors at every level, from typing to syntax to semantics to design to thinking...and every one of them is a source of frustration.

I have to laugh when I hear people suggest that we require students to learn to program. Learning to program is the easy part. Dealing with the continuous, painful, and ever-present frustration is the hard part. All day, every day, every year of my 44 years of programming have included creating, fixing, and bleeding over programming and its frustrations.

You ask "What do you do to deal with this?"... I guess it is like trying to be a really good musician, you just study, work, and bleed at it. Most people give up on music; most programmers "retire into management". Some of us program because, like a musician, "it is not what we do, it is who we are". We program because we must. Frustration just makes that rare success that much sweeter.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've found that as I've gained more experience, I learn from my previous mistakes, and over time it slowly improves so that I'm making fewer mistakes and debugging the mistakes I do make more quickly. I remember that when I started learning software development, there were a lot of roadblocks to progress that were caused by my lack of experience. Such roadblocks have mostly disappeared for me.

My code still has bugs, of course, but I can usually identify and squash them a lot more easily now. I still encounter the occasional frustrating issue, but it's a lot better overall.

My mistake rate spikes when I'm learning a new technology or language of course, but that subsides once I get used to it.

Attention to detail helps a great deal, but I know that this can sometimes get tiring.

Of course it also helps to work with compiled languages rather than interpreted languages. :) More of those mistakes get caught by the compiler.

For interpreted languages, I find that linters are good for finding issues and some IDEs have integrated linting and possible mistakes are highlighted right there in the editor. I like the WebStorm IDE for Javascript development (node.js or client side) and it wouldn't surprise me if SublimeText had something to help spot code issues.

So if you stick with it, it'll likely get better and less frustrating. In the near term, my suggestion is to use tools that assist you in avoiding simple mistakes like typos.

Another suggestion would be to walk away from something that is causing you frustration and come back later. I sometimes find that a particularly infuriating problem is more easily solved if I take a break from it for a while.

</comment><comment><USER4> I keep track of all my projects using task management apps like Asana, use Git to backtrack what I have been doing on each project, and switch projects really often. This way I can make sure I am organized and can pick up where I left off and if I am at a roadblock with one project I can blow off steam by doing something really great on another.

Another helpful thing is to use code linters to prevent simple typos and other easy-to-miss errors. Atom editor, for example, has tons of linter plug-ins, as well as other helpful things, to ease creating code.

</comment><comment><USER5> I lost motivation and went back to system administration. It's so much easier to build Windows VMs.</comment>


Wanted: IPv6 Multicast as a Service (MaaS) - <AUTHOR>

Here's what it would look like:
1. An IPv6 client with a globally-scoped IPv6 address (the Source) requests an IPv6 multicast address from the service. The address is valid for a particular amount of time, unless renewed. The address can be renewed indefinitely.
2. Other IPv6 clients (the Clients) are given the multicast address and join that multicast group, using the (S, G) method.
3. The Source sends packets to the multicast address and the Clients receive them.
I have no idea what the billing would look like, perhaps traffic sent over the channel? I just know I would use this service if it existed.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to mention, only the Source should be able to send to the multicast address.

Also, the cost of a new multicast address should be negligible (e.g. $0.01). Instead, charge for incoming traffic on that multicast address from the Source.

</comment><comment><USER2> Realistically the Internet isn't going to support multicast, so it probably makes more sense to reframe this as some kind of CDN overlay.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume you mean this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_multicast>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Why IPv6 specifically?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I need a lot of multicast addresses (hundreds to thousands). IPv4 has a very limited pool and they're hard to get a hold of, which is why I'm looking at IPv6 solutions.

I'd be happy to use IPv4, but I suspect the cost would be prohibitive, assuming it was feasible at all.</comment></comment>


What aspects of incarceration couldn't be guessed by who hasn't experienced it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Prisons/What-are-some-aspects-of-incarceration-that-could-not-possibly-be-guessed-at-by-someone-who-hasnt-experienced-it?srid=3OC <comment><USER2> If incarceration destroys your ties to the outside world, and builds only superficial ties to the prison world, how can prisoners be expected to suddenly switch to being fully integrated members of society on release? Surely rehabilitation would be more effective if it concentrated on better integrating criminals with society rather than further alienating them? How could this be achieved without endangering people's safety?</comment>


It's Fred Korematsu Day: Celebrating a Foe of U.S. Internment Camps - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/30/512488821/its-fred-korematsu-day-celebrating-a-foe-of-u-s-internment-camps <comment><USER2> >It was an executive order in 1942 that created the system forcing Americans of Japanese descent to live in internment camps.

Funny how often I see this roundabout way of framing this. They'd rather not come out and say that FDR, the president, took this initiative. It was a piece of paper that did this.

Congress, the usual suspect is not to blame. Nobody voted on this. There was no public debate.

So we tiptoe around calling out FDR, maybe because he is one of our golden boys.

And we call them "internment" camps, to soften it a bit.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it is possible that its more an attempt to draw a connection between an old horror enabled by an executive order, and any new horrors we are seeing and will see with Trump's executive orders.

<comment><USER2> They are, but they managed to call out Trump by name. If they were drawing parallels, they could have just mentioned the executive orders.

They should have called out FDR also but I think they wanted to avoid seeming to compare him to Trump. After all FDR was a great guy when he wasn't putting American families into internment camps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few months ago I randomly came across Fred Korematsu's grave while walking around the Mountain View Cemetery (which is in Oakland, not Mountain View). There are some really notable people buried over there.

If you're in the East Bay and would like to go pay your respects:

[http://www.mountainviewcemetery.org/files/7114/7267/1043/201...](http://www.mountainviewcemetery.org/files/7114/7267/1043/2015_MVC_Notables.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> Never again is now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Consider this alternate reality: It is exactly like our timeline, but alternate reality US does not intern it's Japanese citizens during WWII. Some of those Japanese citizens went on to commit mass murders against civilians. Other than that, the timeline is the same as possible (US wins, etc).

Would you still feel the revulsion against internment camps as we do in this timeline?

<comment><USER7> Of course. White supremacists, sovereign citizen folks, and the like commit the majority of terrorist acts in the united states, but I don't call for putting them in concentration camps.

Plus the timeline is implausible. The Office of Naval Intelligence had declared that the Japanese American population was not a threat to national security. The solicitor general, Charles Fahy suppressed that information. If he hadn't died thirty some years before the federal government admitted wrong doing, he would hopefully be facing serious charges and expect to die in prison.

I am unaware of an example of concentration camps that was an issue of security instead of racism.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use Azure? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone use windows Azure for their startups? What are your impressions? <comment><USER2> Yep! Our company IActionable.com is running on Windows Azure platform. In fact, I'm writing this comment from the Microsoft campus in Redmond. We are attending a Windows Azure Deep Dive hosted this week.

My CoFounder and I were both .Net developers in the past and love C# and SQL Server. We are happy with the Azure platform so far. We're using a little bit of everything too. Worker and Web Roles, Queues, Table Storage and SQL Azure. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

<comment><USER3> It seemed like the pricing structure (for SQL Azure, particularly) made for a big unknown. Was the billing in line with your expectations? What are things to watch out for?

<comment><USER2> Some things completely depend on the type of project you run. We decided that only the bare-minimum/must-be-relational data will go into SQL Azure so that the database doesn't grow too fast. Instead, we use Table Storage for the really big data. It does require a big change in the way you think about storing and querying your data though since you lose functions such as Count,GroupBy,Joins,etc.

But, there is now something called 'Federations' coming out for SQL Server which will let you automatically and sometimes magically shard your data across multiple database with little maintenance. I'm not sure what the roadmap of that feature is but it eliminates any of the GB cap worries that existed before.

The biggest surprise we ran into was the cost of Transactions. Even though you get 10k storage transactions for pennies, it does add up. Especially since every request for items from a queue is a transaction. So a lot of thought has to go into things to make sure parts of the system aren't too 'chatty' when it comes to Azure Storage. You don't have this problem with SQL Azure. There is no transaction cost, only the GB used.

<comment><AUTHOR> We mainly use TableStorage as well for storing data, however since none of the data that we have is stored (besides user information) we have each webnode talking directly to each other. I am not quite sure if each of these transactions costs money, but since all the connections between servers are stable connections that are left open in a separate thread, I am thinking it will be pretty cheap. We did run into some problems when using TableStore since I think we underestimated how much we need Count, GroupBy, Sort, etc. Even basic operations such as bringing back a list to display to the user, then clicking to sort by a column is difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm considering using Azure atm & would love to hear some opinions/limitations. Initial reading is suggesting there will be a lot of configuration to get things going.

<comment><USER2> My first recommendation is to get into the BizSpark program. It will give you an MSDN account and a nice chunk of free Azure Hours every month and (I think) 3 1gb Sql Azure databases.

Our company deals with lots of data and real-time responses so we push many of the existing features to their limits. We haven't really had any blockers that didn't have some sort of reasonable work around. And most of the time the next release of features will eliminate a good chunk of those.

We're pretty lucky in that we're part of Microsoft' early adopter programs and get to peek at some features coming down the pipe soon. There is some awesome stuff coming, but of course we're under NDA.

There are some extra things to consider but they are more a result of using the Cloud in general. For example, it highly recommended that you add retry logic into your code which makes sql queries. This is because your data is triple replicated and fail overs or db moves can drop your pooled connections.

Also as I mentioned in my other comment. There are some limits to Table Storage which you need to account for or you'll find yourself stuck and frustrated. Things like Count,GroupBy,Joins,Distinct,etc are not available. For those familiar with NoSql db then this is no surprise. But if you're a hardcore relation guy like I was then this takes getting used to.

We're pretty happy with our decision to use Azure.</comment></comment>


Net Neutrality Rules Are Imminent From the F.C.C. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/business/media/21fcc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> Wireless is not fundamentally different than wired. What if considerations like this were made for home internet service? If Qwest had allowed to block Skype because they wanted people to keep using landlines at home?

The Skype blocking has to go. I have a Verizon phone and Skype is so thoroughly neutered, it's absurd. They even ruin skype-to-skype calls by forcing the app to use only 3G, not wifi, and routing the call through an 800 number to Skype. Calls within the US, even when dialed through Skype, are actually carried by Verizon. On the other hand, my plan has unlimited data - it's just plain stupid. Same with text messaging... a total scam at this point.

So, by doing this they are preventing the next innovative applications. Better not be planning on doing something that might cause AT&T to make less money, folks!

<comment><USER3> I'm more and more convinced that Net Neutrality will be very damaging to the Internet.

         Wireless is not fundamentally different than wired.

That's irrelevant: wireless is still young with lots of competition going on. You don't fix something that ain't broken.

And about your problems with Skype, you don't know lots of details, like: can Verizon actually handle it? Or who's to blame, Verizon, Skype, the FCC?

         Same with text messaging... a total scam at this point

Yeah, it's called capitalism. What? Do you want regulation on that too?

<comment><USER2> Based on my position, wired is still young with lots of competition going on. You don't fix something that ain't broken.

Why should the two be considered differently?

And no, I feel consumers can figure out for themselves that paying .25 to send 256 bytes of data is a scam. But I don't think wireless carriers should be granted special abilities to protect this sort of underhanded dealings which wired providers are not. What would you think if it was said that DSL and cable internet providers could block MSN, AIM, Jabber and Skype IMs because they had a special deal where they wanted you to use their IM service for .25 cents a message? Though other data was unlimited? I'd have a problem with that, personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Julius Genachowski wants to pimp bandwidth to the highest bidder. It's a scary and slippery slope.

"We must take action to protect consumers against price hikes and closed access to the Internet and our proposed framework is designed to do just that: to guard against these risks while recognizing the legitimate needs and interests of broadband providers," - Spin Maestro and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Really? To protect us from what hikes? What closed Internet? Please drop dead.

If this goes through, Europe will soon follow and then the rest, whether they like it or not. If they don't participate, they'll lose out because US will prioritize all incoming global traffic anyway. Video streams from China-based startups will load the slowest in the U.S.

Networking companies will rush to build large scale traffic prioritization solutions and in the process strive to achieve maximum regulatory compliance with local/federal laws so they can peddle their product better, faster.

ISPs will invest in the infrastructure for packet monitoring and filtering because it will directly improve their bottom line. They only will drive up the demand for "network neutrality" solutions. And once they have the infrastructure and tool chain in place, we'll see a lot more censorship and eavesdropping.

The consumers will be fooled into thinking that this will help their YouTube videos load faster.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you think after the massive gift given to the healthcare industry in name of reform and the even greater gift given to the big money banks in the name of TARP that our government is motivated by anything other than the interests of industry. I have a bridge I am selling in China. Its very big and makes tons of money. Just let me know if you are interested.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope they forbid the Indian version of "netjacking" where ISPs make some sites free to access.

</comment><comment><USER7> "If corporations are allowed to prioritize content on the Internet, or they are allowed to block applications you access on your iPhone, there is nothing to prevent those same corporations from censoring political speech." said Mr. Franken

Oh great, so once these rules are passed companies like Paypal and Amazon won't be allowed to censor political speech such as that by wikileaks? Somehow I have a feeling these rules will cause the exact opposite. I'm much less worried about corporations censoring political speech than I am the gov't.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some successful startups built on top of other services? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any successful startups built solely on top of other services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google App or others? <comment><USER2> Baremetrics ([https://www.baremetrics.io](https://www.baremetrics.io)) by Josh Pigford is built off of Stripe. There are also a handful of dunning-related services that sit on top of Stripe, also.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gnip ([http://gnip.com/](http://gnip.com/)) was just bought by Twitter. I would argue that they built their whole business on top of twitter & other social media companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Zynga was basically built on top of Facebook. Upworthy was built on link traffic from FB. Then FB changed the way they allowed / promoted sharing and both companies took a hit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lots in the social media space (ad tools, social analytics, crm, big data tools) also in the enterprise space (i.e add-ons for Salesforce, SAP, etc.)

</comment><comment> x-separator Youtube was originally a Myspace widget.

<comment><USER6> Really? Do you have a source?

<comment><USER7> Search for jawed karims talk at CMU I guess. One of the key reasons of YouTube fast growth was the HTML snippet that you could embed in you MySpace page.

<comment><USER8> I remember MySpace ended up blocking YouTube from their site. And YouTube, a small startup at the time, turned to their users to plead to MySpace to activate them again. A few weeks later, they were back in business. But it's interesting to know how close YouTube was to hitting the deadpool.

Edit: Dug up an older article about it: [http://www.blogherald.com/2005/12/22/myspace-users-angry- ove...](http://www.blogherald.com/2005/12/22/myspace-users-angry-over-news- corp-censorship-of-youtube/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Siri was built--and still relies--on Dragon Mobile Speech Recognition from Nuance

<comment><USER10> Shit, I didn't know that. Whoa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dropbox and Heroku are built on top of AWS (amongst thousands of other companies)

<comment><USER12> They use aws as infrastructure but aren't inseparably welded to it. They could presumably switch to hosting elsewhere without changing their product itself.

<comment><USER13> You can see them as abstractions of AWS in some ways. An average consumer wouldn't go through the trouble of dealing with AWS to backup their files and even for developers heroku provides a nice level of abstraction

<comment><USER11> Agreed, that's the way I've seen these companies. AWS has truly become a layer that powers a huge part of the applications on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> AppointmentReminder by patio11 relies pretty heavily on Twilio AFAIK.

</comment><comment><USER15> NextBigSound is built on top of plenty of social media companies.

</comment><comment><USER16> Heroku on Amazon</comment>


Google Now Lets Website Owners Measure The Power Of Social Widgets - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/29/google-now-lets-website-owners-measure-the-power-of-1-and-any-other-social-widget/

<comment><USER2> interesting... especially considering how much more data Google could be providing websites given their depth of knowledge of users... dont think they won't!

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it let them measure the bloat too? I have Chrome extentions that block all those twitter and facebook social widgets and now websites are blazing fast. Lonely as hell looking, but blazing fast.</comment>


Dating apps face questions over age checks after report exposes child abuse - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/dating-apps-face-questions-over-age-checks-after-report-exposes-child-abuse/ <comment><USER2> One question - where the heck are these kids' parents? I think most people on dating apps are under the impression that other users are of legal age.

If your child is searching for _adult_ partners, complete strangers, over the Internet, you as a parent have a lot to answer for.

That being said, none of that justifies what happened to the minors mentioned in the article. Ultimately, there are a lot of bad people out there. It would be great for children to not be exposed to such people.

But I think the necessary change is parental supervision, _not_ government intervention.

<comment><USER3> How is this different from, for example, requiring age verification to purchase alcohol? Or are you also opposed to that?

I think we understand that parents are not in complete control over their children, and in the interest of harm reduction, we don't give parents the entire burden of keeping their children safe but spread parts of it out among the community. This doesn't seem like a particularly burdensome request, here. Some parents are terrible parents, some kids are complete terrors, sometimes there are circumstances outside your control. Parents are not gods.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the article?

It clearly states that tinder and grinder already monitor for minors. They state that they spend, and I'm guessing this wouldn't be an exaggeration given their volume, millions of dollars on this effort.

What lawmakers want is ID required.

This is an extremely burdensome requirement. To have every new user of any online platform have to verify photo ID against a webcam is... very onerous. And even then whats to stop a kid from using his parents confirmed account?

Alcohol is a transaction for a substance that is deadly and purchased in public. Comparing it to creating an online profile in the privacy of your home is a big stretch. It would be more like creating an account with... I don't know, maybe buying a can of figs off amazon.

Can a child buy a can of figs without ID? Not easily, but he could. Could he hurt himself with it? Yes. Should we require ID for this: I'd say not.

The article seems to not mention any of the age verification things the kids forged and their parents computer. But don't worry, if it was convenient for the powers that be, they would have framed this as: "Evil kids get into banking system by HACKING."

Funny how I'm sure they won't be asking Amazon to verify ID everytime a purchase is made. I mean, plenty of kids have ordered down right dangerous things this way, probably even caused a death.

The worst part of the authoritarian inclined who use the 'what about the children?' argument is that many times they ironically make it less safe for children since the solutions aren't particularly well thought through (see drinking age in the US) - all while making it worse for the rest of us.

The thing about the outrage crowd is they point to a problem with while implicitly saying 'anyone who doesn't support 'the solution' is in favor of the problem'. I'm not in favor of the problem. I'm in favor of fixing the problem IF it can be fixed in a cost effective way. Many people can't accept that there aren't widespread easy and simple solutions to giant complex social problems. Accepting that this behavior is an emergent quality from our individual actions and pruning one's own actions is very hard. Most people shy from this and look for externalizations.

<comment><USER3> > Did you read the article?

That's an inappropriate response. Don't respond that way in the future.

> What lawmakers want is ID required.

Yes, like for alcohol.

> This is an extremely burdensome requirement. To have every new user of any > online platform have to verify photo ID against a webcam is... very onerous.

New regulations are regularly called "extremely burdensome". I would say that alcohol regulations are extremely burdensome in most parts of the country where I live (USA). This is why I used alcohol as a comparison point. The government regulates how many alcohol licenses are given, sometimes operates liquor stores themselves, conducts enforcement operations including "sting" type operations with underage informers. The hours and days when alcohol can be sold are regulated and in most places, minors are not allowed to serve alcohol or work the register for alcohol sales. In some states, most types of alcohol can only legally be sold in state-licensed liquor stores. In NY, for example, each liquor store must be owned and operated by an individual living within a certain physical radius of the store's location.

The question here is about weighing the burden against harm reduction.

> And even then whats to stop a kid from using his parents confirmed account?

Condoms aren't 100% effective. Why should laws be 100% effective?

> The worst part of the authoritarian inclined who use the 'what about the > children?' argument is that many times they ironically make it less safe for > children since the solutions aren't particularly well thought through (see > drinking age in the US) - all while making it worse for the rest of us.

The effects of raising the drinking age in the US have been well-studied, and provide a wealth of data because laws were passed at a state-level and at different times. From a harm-reduction versus cost perspective, I am in favor of the 21 year drinking age in the US. Based on the studies.

> The thing about the outrage crowd is they point to a problem with while > implicitly saying 'anyone who doesn't support 'the solution' is in favor of > the problem'. I'm not in favor of the problem. I'm in favor of fixing the > problem IF it can be fixed in a cost effective way.

I think you might be directing your comment at some kind of nebulous "authoritarian" or "outrage crowd" and I'm not a part of that, so if that's the case, I'd appreciate it if, when you respond to my comment, you respond to the content of the comment itself and not some third party.

You seem to believe that the burden to verify age is too onerous for online dating apps. I think that we should require age verification for dating services across the board, and it should be up to the online apps to compete with offline dating services on equal footing.

If it turns out that the reason why online dating services succeed is only because they don't have to bear the cost of age verification, then I'd be shocked.

<comment><USER4> Actually, asking if you read the article was me being kind in my assumptions.

Alcohol is responsible 88,000 deaths per year.

You are literally comparing something with 0-10 deaths per year (if that) to almost 100,000 deaths per year. That type of grotesquely disproportionate comparison is part of 'outrage' culture. It's something I dislike and have no trouble calling people out on.

Not a single cost/benefit analysis. No consideration of the cost, just a wave of the hand (they will bear it). No discussion even of what type of age verification should be or any pros and cons.

The fact that tinder has revolutionized sexuality for a generation is... or made dating safer for women... or made dating safer for LGBT in places where it can be dangerous to date as an LGBT... better bury that in bureaucracy.

No care about privacy.

Doesn't matter if over regulation just pushes people to less regulated platforms like online classifieds, maybe hosted in a non-us country.

If you don't seem to consider the consequences of laws, or even the fact that the logic you use is based on grotesquely unbalanced comparisons, I see little possibility for dialectics.

<comment><USER3> > Actually, asking if you read the article was me being kind in my > assumptions.

Your assumption here appears to be that anyone who disagrees with you must be misinformed.

> You are literally comparing something with 0-10 deaths per year (if that) to > almost 100,000 deaths per year. That type of grotesquely disproportionate > comparison is part of 'outrage' culture. It's something I dislike and have > no trouble calling people out on.

Please respond to content, not to your own emotional responses (likes and dislikes). Being offended is not an argument for or against anything.

Harm comes in different forms, and we are going compare harm prevention strategies even though some strategies try to prevent liver disease and death (age verification for alcohol) and others try to harm prevention strategies for child sexual abuse (age verification for dating apps). It is appropriate and normal to compare different things.

> Not a single cost/benefit analysis. No consideration of the cost, just a > wave of the hand (they will bear it). No discussion even of what type of age > verification should be or any pros and cons.

Yes, I would also like to see a cost/benefit analysis. On this, we agree.

> If you don't seem to consider the consequences of laws, or even the fact > that the logic you use is based on grotesquely unbalanced comparisons, I see > little possibility for dialectics.

You have come up with a great many explanations for how I am somehow an inferior person, but this is inappropriate behavior and you should in the future respond to content unless someone is acting inappropriately.

<comment><USER4> Nope, I don't think anyone who disagrees with me didn't read the article.

The thing is, logical people when they read about 3 deaths per year don't propose applying the same social burden as to avoid 100,000.

You ask questions, but don't answer. How about addressing the fact that a comparison of something that costs 88,000 lives to 3/year is grossly out of line? How about you write out exactly what you propose instead of innuendos? Maybe include pros and cons without any hand waving? You know, dealing with those details you seem to support.

Using reason means understanding 3 < 88,000. It's not opinion. That's logic.

I didn't say you were inferior. I said you were emotive and didn't use reason: if you can't handle such a call out, then you might not have a place in a serious discussion. We've all been there; having taken unreasonable stances. Whether you choose to stay there is your choice.

How about addressing privacy concerns for LGBT?

How about you answering questions on margin of error improvement based on the proposed changes? After all, you are the one proposing new things; the burden to prove your new solutions good is on you. Not that you have shown any desire of understanding this burden of proof thing. Asking for changes WHILE requesting others prove your numbers... it shows such a lack of understanding of how dialectics work. Reverse burden of proof isn't opinion, again, that is fact; you are wanting a change that you are asking others to prove/disprove.

Your opinion on inappropriate behavior is, as you used to put my perspective down, just that, your opinion. Last, you telling me what to do is... laughably authoritarian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Error: variable "the platform" was used before it was defined (heavily implying she was on a dating site, not Instagram as was the case).

> Last month the BBC reported on the death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl who > killed herself in 2017 after being exposed to self-harm imagery on the > platform.

<comment><USER6> It's just bad writing. That case was Instagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> and the scope creep for the bad Online Identification begins. First it was no porn, then it was no dating. Soon it will be no rw to access to UK internet without age+ID. Disconnect the UK before the damage spreads!

<comment><USER8> > no rw to access to UK internet without age+ID

Fantastic. Everything attributable to a public pseudonym privately tied to a real person.

This sounds exactly how it should be.

If somebody tries to subvert the law, they can easily be arrested and tried in a court of law.

<comment><USER9> This is utterly damaging to democracy - a real democracy needs anonymity to survive. Removing anonymity will lead to people limiting for example posting critical opinions of the government or a political party.

The reason is simple: even if you trust the _current_ government to not abuse all the tasty meta-data, who says the next government, led by the party you vocally criticized on the Internet, will look away?

Just look at China, or what Turkey is doing, or even what US border checks asking for your social media logins are doing _right now_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We were running a chat app network dating platform. User profiles were from chat apps & majority of the users were from Facebook Messenger, many in asian countries especially women from Philippines used their child photograph as their profile picture.

After I realised the issue, we integrated Amazon Rekognition API to detect age range < 18 & block the profiles who had a child's picture on their user profile. The issue is that Rekognition isn't perfect & we lost several users because of this integration & false positives, yet we continued to use it till the end for moderation. We were processing >200,000 profile pictures each month for this.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is the danger that if these services don't nip this in the bud, it'll become a social problem akin to enjo-Kosai in Japan, which not only lends itself to exploitation of minors but also encourages needless conspicuous consumerism.

For the most part, aside from using someone else's credit information, these businesses have information on age and with facial recognition should be able to flag most falsified accounts.

</comment><comment><USER12> The solution seems relatively straightforward to me, but maybe I'm missing something. If you want to engage on a platform designed explicitly for adults doing adult things, you give them your driver's license number or non-driver's ID number. They can instantaneously verify that with the government electronically and determine the age of the person associated with that license number.

To further prevent problems - like kids taking their parent's ID and then changing the name and age - dating sites could bind the age of the site profile to the license provided. So if junior uses his old man's ID, he's going to show as 45, not 18, and he won't be able to change it. That has the additional benefit of stopping a lot of the lies related to age on dating sites.

Lastly, they could also bind the first name only to the profile, hide the last name from other users, and allow a nickname or preferred handle to be displayed. So you can't upload a license for John Doe, age 30, and then say in your profile that your preferred name is Tony and you look 15. This would be a red flag to anyone. But makes perfect sense for Robert who likes to be called Bob, or William who goes by Bill, and actually look their age.

<comment><USER13> I see a few problems with this proposal:

1- There are still strong taboos against certain kinds of relationships; being forced to tie one's dating preferences and behaviors to a governmental ID seems dangerous.

2- Should companies get automatic access to one's name and age based solely on the ID number? Seems like a violation of privacy.

3- Mandating that for apps served over Google Play or the App Store is not hard; what about dating webapps served from other jurisdictions?

Finally: will it really work? Looking 15 is already a red flag, because no minor is supposed to be there, yet they are.

<comment><USER12> 1\. Yeah, you wouldn't want to roll this out to places like Egypt or Iran, for sure. And I usually am very pro-privacy, but since people either pay the companies that run these apps/sites/services or they use it for free but have it directly linked to their phone, google, etc., in reality these companies already have their true identities - or at least enough of it that if asked by any government entity they could produce it even if they didn't have the actual ID number of the government issued document. Isn't this how people buy alcohol online, though? I've never done it, but I recall someone telling me they had to upload their driver's license to the site they were buying from for age verification. So this seems to already be occurring elsewhere and I don't think anyone has complained about it.

2\. Not sure I agree this is a violation of privacy since a) you would be providing them this exact same information when building your new profile upon account creation and b) you would agree to its collection as part of the signup process thereby waiving any privacy right you may or may not have in this regard. It would also be considered something a reasonable person would expect the third party to be given when supplying that identification number. For example, I assume that when I provided my information to my insurance company when applying for a personal disability policy that they checked everything on those documents for accuracy (name, age, address, etc.).

3\. I was assuming this was legislation and would therefore apply to all services of this nature as long as they operate in the country/state where the legislation is effective.

4\. 15 year olds are able to exist on these platforms in part because some 18 year olds look very young while others look much older. So someone can be 18 or 20 and look 15-16.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Will this end up another misguided "think of the children" measure that will just make more consentual adult sex illegal? Or will it be accepted with open arms by dating sites who want all your PII to sell? ('anonymised' of course) (CoughmatchCough)

Am I just jaded or does this seem to be the way things are going?

<comment><USER15> You're not just jaded. "Trafficking" has become a vehicle for the religious right to shut down anything they don't like, from robot brothels [1] to, in this case, hookup apps. And nobody is _for_ trafficking, so politicians from across the spectrum tend to go along with it.

It's been this way since at least the Mann Act, which was ostensibly about trafficking but used to crack down on interracial relationships (notably by Jack Johnson, who recently got a posthumous pardon)

"Remember when some tea company added "blockchain" to its name and stock prices soared? "Trafficking" is the equivalent word in the policy / non-profit world." \-- Alex Frell Levy [2]

[1] [https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/30/houston- robo...](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/30/houston-robot- brothel-plan-halted)

[2] [https://t.co/HaNQ2H7kFX](https://t.co/HaNQ2H7kFX)

<comment><USER16> > And nobody is _for_ trafficking

Nobody in first-world countries, you mean. In third-world countries, a lot of what gets categorized as "human trafficking" is just self-motivated border- crossing by career prostitutes.

You know how you might find a fellow working in America who is from, say, Bangladesh, and is here for the jobs that pay 100x as much as jobs in Bangladesh do, so he can send money home to his family? Well, in the hotbed countries of "human trafficking", many of the women involved are just people who did exactly the same thing, moving from countries like Cambodia ("human trafficking source countries") to countries like Thailand ("human trafficking destination countries") because they know there's far more of a market of sex tourists there with higher expectations of average prices. And her family back home? Thinks exactly the same of her as the family of the Bangladeshi man working in America does. "She's providing for us; we're proud of her."

The annoying thing is that "human trafficking" was established to go after what is, at its core, a real and horrifying crime—the combination of kidnapping and slavery that mafias tend to consider the highest-margin way to operate brothels, factories, etc. If someone isn't themselves doing the kidnapping, or operating the brothel, but is just, say, driving the kidnapped people around, we didn't have a crime to charge them with and had to let them go, until we invented "human trafficking." It was essentially a gang-busting crime, a way to put pressure on ground-level members to get them to give up their higher-ups. But now, basically everything related to the original intent seems to fall under the aegis of that crime†, and its scope has grown to the point that we've forgotten why we invented it.

† Probably because of motivated reasoning of statisticians working for the trafficking-related nonprofits. Sort of like the motivated reasoning of statisticians working for cigarette or sugary-cereal companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The apps are tools, it's up to the humans to do or not do stuff.

In these cases, how are children getting in first? Where are the parents of these children??

Then, it's not the apps that create abuse, but the users on the other side. There could be a set of rules that the apps should make users agree with, and remind from time to time, like be kind, don't get angry if it doesn't work out, report strange behaviors/underage profiles/illegal stuff if you happen to detect one, ...

Is it that complicated to be adults in 2019?

<comment><USER8> > The apps are tools, it's up to the humans to do or not do stuff.

"Guns don't mass murder people, humans do"

In the real world, if I saw a child go on dates with a grown adult, I'd alert the police and have the man arrested, then I'd do my damndest to have the restaurant shut down for facilitating the grooming of minors.

And most importantly, _in the real world_, we all have visibility of this and society as a whole acts in disgust and would (legal or otherwise) punish the offenders and people who facilitated and accommodated this.

> There could be a set of rules that the apps should make users agree with

A pinky promise maybe...

<comment><USER18> >then I'd do my damndest to have the restaurant shut down for facilitating the grooming of minors.

You lost me there. This is an entirely unreasonable burden.

<comment><USER8> You don't think an establishment has a legal duty to report child grooming that occurs on their premises?

I used the word 'dates' (plural) - a re-occurring thing, not a one off event.

<comment><USER19> I'll bite, how is a restaurant supposed to figure out which groups of people are "child groomers" as opposed to something more pedestrian and normal like "parents?"

<comment><USER8> You've never once seen something and felt something was a bit off?

You're never able to read a person?

You don't think people working in a restaurant can't put 2 & 2 together and come up with 4 more times than not?

So, you see a person come in with different children repeatedly and act above & beyond affectionate to them. Inappropriate caressing/touching?

You don't think that's gonna set off alarm bells in the staffs' heads?

<comment><USER19> So, we're gonna rely on the psychic powers of witch hunting cretins who work in food service; what could possibly go wrong?

I don't know what planet you live on where we need to deputize the country's wait staff to catch child molestors who meet their victims on match dot com and bring them to restaurants, but I don't want to live on that planet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hybrids Might Play an Unappreciated Role in Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/do-butterflies-challenge-the-meaning-of-species <comment><USER2> As always, no. The problems with the biological species concept were well known decades ago. They are covered in standard high school textbooks.

Language like this:

> What is a species? It's a question that has agonized scientists since well > before Darwin. With some exceptions, the thinking has landed on an evidently > firm reproductive barrier: Members of different species don't mate. If they > do, their offspring are sterile and can't contribute to future generations. > The reproductive barrier has thus created a useful demarcation of "what is a > species"—until a deep dive into butterflies showed otherwise.

is deeply dishonest.</comment>


Low-cost, non-invasive melanoma detector wins award - <AUTHOR> https://jamesdysonaward.org/news/skan-james-dyson-award-2017-international-winner/ <comment><USER2> The creators are from McMaster* University in Canada, their names are Rotimi Fadiya, Prateek Mathur, Michael Takla and Shivad Bhavsar. Really wish they got the credit in the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> questions I have from a clinical perspective: Today, we see skin lesions that look like melanoma and apply the ABCDE acronym for diagnosis:

Asymmetry

Border irregularity

Color (all the same or not)

Diameter greater than 6 mm

Evolving size, shape or color (over time)

Now, based on this, we would then probably biopsy the lesion (any dermatologists lurking on HN wish to chime in?) and send to pathology to interpret.

Will this method beat out the clinical diagnosis in terms of sensitivity (number of false negatives, which is what I would care more about) and specificity (number of false positives), such that we could biopsy more of the patients that we missed before? Additionally, would we see these changes earlier with this software and hardware?

Cool idea, nonetheless. I'd be more than happy to set up some sort of clinical study looking at this technique though if there are enough tools out there to implement this myself.

<comment><USER4> Not a dermatologist but I've following melanoma research for several years now thanks to my wife's diagnosis.

What's exciting about this one to me is that if the detection mechanism is truly sound, this is a great leap over the ABCD(E) criteria which have been the clinician's main tool, and which has a high false negative for one of the deadliest forms of melanoma, nodular melanoma. This often does not present with varigated coloration and because it tends to invade tissue rather that spread superficially its morphological characteristics aren't as apparent until its more developed, greatly increasing the risk of metastases. This was the case with my wife's primary, which her dermatologist _almost_ didn't send out for a pathological workup, and had been missed by a couple of different doctors thanks to its atypical presentation.

All of which is not to say that ABCDE isn't a valuable rule of thumb, but its always struck me as somewhat subjective, which I guess is tempered with the experience of the physician but also does have the false negative problem, even with specialists.

<comment><USER3> Best of luck to you and your wife.

ABCDE is awful, don't get me wrong. I've always felt it was like holding your finger out to see what the wind direction is like. It has a horrible sensitivity (50%-90% depending on the type, I'd err on the side of lower). But if this technique also only has a 50% sensitivity, that is what would bother me. Hopefully the sensors they are using are sensitive enough to detect these temperature changes well.

<comment><USER5> > [ABCDE] has a horrible sensitivity (50%-90% depending on the type). But if > this technique also only has a 50% sensitivity...

If the sensitivity of the two techniques are not correlated, a 50% improvement on top of ABCDE would be fantastic.

<comment><USER6> Then call it ABCDEF (Frigid cells warm quicker)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen multiple attempts to get melanoma detectors past the FDA. The last attempt cost millions of dollars on appeals and still ultimately failed.

Hopefully thia one will do better.

<comment><USER8> It seems to me that the FDA should allow the best available option through even if it's not very effective, as long as it's safe and no false claims are made. This would at least allow companies to bootstrap and iterate if their approach works at all.

<comment><USER9> I believe FDA criteria is it has to be as good or better than the best available technique, which AFAIK is a detailed exam by a trained dermatologist, possibly using several tools like light sources, magnification, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could you do this with looking at post-cooling images from something like FLIR One? [http://www.flir.com/flirone/](http://www.flir.com/flirone/)

<comment><USER11> Perhaps, but from the video it appears they have some software that helps with diagnoses as well. Something the Flir camera wouldn't have (at least not specific to skin cancer).

<comment><USER10> Not trying to belittle the project, it's very cool - just might make sense to use existing commodity hardware. Yes the software would be crucial - FLIR One + Android/iOS software for analysis would be a quick route to market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think a proper blood test for proteins should detect cancer e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha- fetoprotein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-fetoprotein) test to detect liver cancer

</comment><comment><USER13> Did they invent some new mechanism to detect melanomas? Or did they just automate existing methods?

<comment><USER4> This is a novel method—existing patents I've seen on melanoma scanners generally fall into the category of 3D imaging and computer vision to automate what a clinician does to various degrees.

<comment><USER14> So is it basically that the specific heat capacity of the material in the top layers of the skin is altered when there's melanoma present, so when it's cooled one can observe that this part warms more slowly (?) than the surrounding tissue (because of density?).

It seems likely to me that there would be a difference in reflectivity/transmittivity too that could be detected by using a strong light source that could penetrate the exterior dermal layers. Presumably active scanning like MRI (or microwave heating - probably too risky) would show the differences well too?

Would be interesting to read about the range of methods that have been tested (conductivity using surface contact probes would seem another obvious method?).

The benefit, as it appears, of the current method is probably simplicity but it doesn't appear to scale to scanning the full surface readily.

<comment><USER15> The article says that cancer cells have a "higher metabolic rate" which I understood to mean that they use more energy and thus generate more heat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My wife works at McMaster. Lots of great research happening there.

<comment><USER17> Can you give some examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Regardless of the usefulness of the device $40K award doesn't seem a lot, especially for a company like Dayson.

<comment><USER18> I wonder why the down-votes? For a company with hundreds of millions if not billions stashed in tax heavens and a founder who's worth £2.5bn to give a $40k award a year seems like an insult to me. It's not bad but still...even McDonalds had better campaigns as far as social responsibility is concerned.

<comment><USER19> Let's not forget he was a proponent of Brexit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read this headline as "Mellodrama Detector" X-D

</comment><comment><USER21> [deleted]

<comment><USER22> Wait, they're a scam, but you think there should be more of them?

<comment><USER4> GP is a little jaded IMHO (but perhaps with some reason, if family members have dealt with melanoma—my experience has been different) but essentially spot on WRT to the supply and demand. The medical profession is protectionist to the extreme. Basic economic forces should see the supply of medical schools (and doctors that graduate from them) increasing, but the AMA keeps a tight lid on that, and specialization boards further distort the market.</comment></comment></comment>


Clark Glymour on philosophy and its relation to science - <AUTHOR> http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/bayes-arrows/ <comment><USER2> For more thorough background on Hume, Reichenbach, and the primacy of inference, see the newly published Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Wesley Salmon:

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wesley- salmon/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wesley-salmon/)</comment>


Jason Fried: Get Satisfaction is "awfully close to blackmail" - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else <comment><USER2> I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first. I see no indication that there was any communication between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction prior to this very public post.

I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention.

It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well.

Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?

<comment><USER3> _I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first._

Whereas I think a public statement of outrage is entirely justified. Take a look at the screenshot. GetSatisfaction has been collecting feedback under the 37signals name for at least a month. Those people who typed messages into GetSatisfaction expecting a response have been disappointed for a while. Anyone who randomly came across that page and saw lots of months-old issues -- but no post from 37signals itself -- has been subliminally convinced that 37signals never gets around to answering their mail.

This is not a theoretical issue. I believe this group of confused visitors includes _me_. I think I remember clicking through to this page, being puzzled by the lack of back-and-forth, and then surfing away -- not consciously angry, but feeling lost and a bit let down. _This incident, and others like it, is not a trivial matter._ This sort of thing is costing the company money.

How is 37signals to solve this PR problem, which GetSatisfaction has intentionally _inflicted_ on their company, except by making a big, immediate, loud public fuss? Ideally, this message needs to reach every single person who has ever visited that page on GetSatisfaction.

If GetSatisfaction doesn't want to get into confrontational disagreements, perhaps they should have avoided designing a system that automatically trashes the public image of other companies.

<comment><USER4> Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change doesn't work, but starting off by asking people to resolve something lends you credibility because you've tried to resolve things amicably. If you want to put a squeeze on them, you can add, "Or we're going to lambaste you in our popular blog."

But starting off that way is just obnoxious. Granted, as noted, being obnoxious drives page views.

<comment><USER3> _Loud public fuss is usually a reasonable backup plan if asking them to change doesn't work._

You still haven't grasped the problem. I'm sure that 37signals could easily have used quiet channels to remove the offending pages, messages, and marketing copy on GetSatisfaction.

But that would not have reached _me_. Up until three hours ago I was wandering through the world, with a faint memory of the time that I followed a Google link to a 37signals support page and found nothing but a ghost town. To counteract that bad impression, they need _me_ to hear that it wasn't their fault, and they want _me_ \-- a potential future customer -- to know that they take their reputation _very seriously_.

I suppose they didn't have to put up a blog post. They could have filed a lawsuit, or obtained an injunction, and then publicized that instead. Would that have been more polite?

<comment><USER5> Not every wrong in the world needs to be righted. Sometimes righting an old wrong creates a new wrong. Personally, I find new wrongs to be more costly than old ones.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that this way of addressing it has no doubt created some new enemies. Sure, it looks like some of the stuff from GetSatisfaction is a bit shadey, but do you really want them as an enemy over it? If you loudly called my startup extortionist and mafia like, I'd be more than a little pissed off, even if I had screwed up.

The startup world seems too small to want to create that kind of karma.

But again, if the post had said, "Hi folks, just to let you know, the GetSatisfaction page for 37s is not official and we've worked something out with them where they'll now offer an option to all companies to redirect to their real support page and will ask permission to use logos in the future and tone down the language." it wouldn't have been the top story on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For what it's worth, Thor Muller (Cofounder of Get Satisfaction) responded in the comments and said the wording was a mistake and would be changed immediately:

"Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn't come off at all. The idea is to encourage openness, and provide a badge for companies that want to be associated with it. This was just unfortunate phrasing (one small part of an ongoing redesign effort), and doesn't reflect our values, as I think many, many people and companies who've used our service can attest."

<comment><USER7> The text in the badge is/was:

 _37signals has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services. Encourage them to join and support the Company-Customer Pact._

I really have a hard time believing that this was an oversight. It is at the top of almost every page. When you consider GetSatisfaction's strategy it is even well written.

<comment><USER8> I agree. The language was simple and clear. I have difficulty believing language that straight-forward was an accident.

<comment><USER9> They don't mean accident in that they fell on a keyboard and that came out. They mean accident in that someone wrote it as placeholder (or supposed final) copy and it didn't get reviewed/agreed to by the team before it got launched. Clearly some writer was overzealous and the higher-ups didn't get a chance to read it.

Happens all the time at small startups.

<comment><USER10> > Happens all the time at small startups.

ORLY? How many layers of management bullshit are there between the decision- makers at Get Satisfaction and the people writing their core message? This is not some random page buried deep within the site, it is top right on most of the pages they are generating.

I have a feeling that what they mean by "accident" is that someone with a voice decided to call them on it...

<comment><USER9> O Rly.

Have you ever worked at a startup? It's not layers of management. It's a mess of people pushing towards similar goals with a LOT less workflow and oversight than a normal company. Everyone at our 5 person startup has the authority to commit copy to the site. I imagine GS is similar (I think they have ~10ish people). Sometimes it's not great copy. Sometimes it's placeholder copy. Sometimes a user will point out a typo in a prominent place on our site that hasn't been touched for a week-- How could we possibly miss that for two weeks!? <gasp>

" This is not some random page buried deep within the site, it is top right on most of the pages they are generating."

I don't know their QA process, nor do I know the time/date of the commit of this copy change. But I can say that it only shows for companies where the company hasn't "claimed" the forum. So GS folks could've checked their own forum area, and a few customer areas (which were "claimed") and never seen that message. If one employee made the change without discussing it, it'd be very easy to miss. For weeks at a time potentially. I haven't re-read copy on our home page for WEEKS-- for all I know, one of my team changed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We switched to UserVoice because GetSatisfaction is often simply broken. Way too many links have just failed.

Try to count the steps for a new user to leave feedback. There must be at least 10.

Our UserVoice widget (<http://tipjoy.com/feedback> ), also has a really easy email form.

<comment><USER12> I just logged into our GetSatisfaction account to see if I could direct people to our UserVoice. Nope, can't do it.

Until today, we encouraged people who visited our UserVoice page to go to GS with complaints (the idea was that UserVoice would be for feature requests only). I'm trying to remove that language as a result of today's brouhaha.

EDIT: couldn't figure out how to change it on <http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com> but at least we're sending people to UV at <http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny that Thor@GS, in the comments, points out that they're continuing to use non-free logo images, on the auspices that they're using them the same way a Wiki would.

It is in fact not easy to use non-free company logo images on Wikipedia:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos

The tests you have to meet on WP to avoid copyvio include:

* Demonstrable encyclopedic merit (you can't just upload and tag a logo)

* Noncommercial use of the mark

* No dilution of the trademark --- ie, you can't make it appear that the company sanctioned your use of the logo.

Doesn't GS flunk all three of these tests?

<comment><USER14> Yes they do.

Which is unfortunate, because in some cases they are providing a valuable service.

This is one of those challenges that can make or break a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _The site also hosts, without permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies. They'll use your logo, title the page "Customer service & support for [COMPANY NAME HERE]" and generally make it feel like an officially sanctioned place to get official support from the company in question._

If they're using your company's logo and name, and those are a registered trademark, isn't that grounds for a lawsuit? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that trademark law is supposed to prevent? (One company purporting to be associated with another when it isn't)

I know there's a reason a I can't make my own cola, slap a Pepsi logo on it and sell it out of the back of my truck. I thought this was it.

<comment><USER16> Or operate a "Pepsi Helpline", for that matter.

I'm amused at all the "gee, he should have just emailed them" responses. The fact that 37Signals didn't lawyer up to start with was an act of restraint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a bit amazed by a lot of these responses. I sympathize with the idea that problems should be worked out with friendliness and civility, but this sort of thing is not a question of etiquette that Fried mishandled. These are actions by Get Satisfaction that could easily lead to serious lawsuits.

I suggest that folks in web businesses who look at this and see the major concern here as the tone of an aggrieved blog post should make sure they have good lawyers to run their ideas by.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't have any strong feelings about Get Satisfaction (or any of the other sites like this), but we made <http://featurelist.org> available for free to anyone who wants a lighter approach to that sort of thing. It focuses a bit more on the feature request side than the technical support pieces, but it might be interesting to some of you.

Once we catch our breath from our other sites, we're going to provide featurelist.org as open source (PHP/CodeIgniter) in case people are hesitant to host their user feedback on someone else's site.

For our own usage, we really just needed a way to track feature requests and have YC-inspired feedback widgets for our own sites. So we opened that service up for everyone to use.

<comment><USER18> sorry to say, but featurelist.org has a horrible look and feel, although the idea is quite nice.

i'd guess you're a couple of coders -- get a graphic designer on board! (and keep up the work :)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for commenting.

Featurelist won't appeal to everyone visually, though, neither does Reddit or HN. A lot of our users have liked the simplicity of the site, but it might not be for you.

We're not focusing on the visual aspects (not to the extent we have for bug.gd or yumbunny), so no one should expect a facelift or for it to win any awards. I'm just sharing it here so people know they have other alternatives floating around. To each their own, of course.

Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To prefix all this: I've never really looked in to Get Satisfaction for anything except a couple of random posts on other companies pages there. I can see where 37 Signals is coming from with the whole not being committed to an open conversation thing but I think the whole article is a bit sensational. A guy from Get Satisfaction even jumps in and says they messed up with that badge. They do need to make money some how and targeted ads seem like a good idea for that. It really strikes me as a young company that's just making a couple of mistakes and I don't think they deserved this PR. I wonder if anyone at 37S tried to contact GS before making this post. If they did then it was deserved but if not I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER20> My issue with the whole thing would be the fact that they use branding, logos, and so forth from a company that they have no business relationship with. Doing so devalues the brand, and should cease immediately.

It would be like going into a storefront that has a UPS Package Store sign, and finding out it's just a counter with a guy that claims to be UPS customer support, but doesn't actually help you out with anything. And then find out it's a different company entirely.

<comment><USER21> Sounds like fraudulent misrepresentation/impersonation. Good luck if you try to do that with a brand like UPS. They would be down your neck in a second. A cell phone store in my neighborhood got busted by TMobile for misrepresenting themselves as official TMobile resellers. This is no different. Should be grounds for legal action.

<comment><USER22> You mean like <http://getsatisfaction.com/ups> and <http://getsatisfaction.com/tmobile>?

<comment><USER16> Good luck if anyone passes along those URLs to the companies in question. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It sounds more like fraud and misrepresentation.

<comment><USER21> An enterprising lawyer could put together a compelling class action case if only GetSatisfaction's pockets weren't so shallow. I'd like to see them get their asses handed to them for this shit.

<comment><USER24> You are not the only one. Supposedly someone is offering to pay 25k to a fund in support of a class action lawsuit. [http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction- or-...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or- else#comment_41944)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's the difference between something like this and Yelp? (Why is this bad, and Yelp's not? Is it because people here all have online businesses, and don't want a forum where people could say something bad about them?)

<comment><USER16> Because when I go to Yelp and look up Morton's Steakhouse in Atlanta GA, I see clearly marked _reviews_ , not "Complaint Department and Feedback for Morton's Steakhouse". I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money.

Seriously, you might find the linked blog post interesting.

<comment><USER26> "I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money."

Actually, this seems to be exactly what Yelp does:

Here's what advertisers receive, according to an e-mailed sales pitch that a local business owner sent to this newspaper. They can highlight a favorite review to appear at the top of the page about their business. They also show up first in search results for similar businesses in their region (for example "coffee" near "Alameda, CA"). Ads for that business appear on the page of local competitors, while competitors' ads do not appear on their page.

[http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491&showFullText=true)

<comment><USER16> Hmm, then maybe it _is_ as sleazy as GS in that aspect.

Still, I couldn't reasonably end up on a Yelp page and mistake it for a Morton's Steakhouse feedback page. That's the bigger offense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Garrett Dimon's comments are the only voice of reason on that page.

Posts like that are useless, yet I'm sure Jason will use all the "I agree, GS is lame" comments from his fan club to validate his reasons for posting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thor Muller posts an open letter to Jason Fried:

[http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to- ja...](http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-jason-fried/)

...and negates 95% of the "he should have been nicer about it" complaints about the original post by saying "And while I would have preferred you sending us a note, or even posting it somewhere less trafficked than your popular blog, the fact is that Get Satisfaction is a huge proponent of public airing of grievances. You were right to bring it to our attention any way you saw fit."

</comment><comment><USER28> sue them

</comment><comment><USER29> So GetSatisfaction mildy misrepresents their association with 37Signals and uses their IP without authorization.. and 37Signals counters with a potentially slanderous letter in a public forum? Not exactly a great way to start a dialogue or build a legal case.

Most any other company would first engage with a civil, private, discussion, followed by legal action before firing off a public lambasting as a last resort (a rare event at that.)

There may be some valid points in the post, but whining in public makes you like a fool, to customers, to other businesses and to the public at large. Totally unprofessional.

<comment><USER16> What was slanderous (or, since it was written, libelous) about anything in the blog post?

Very simply, GS set up web pages where they appeared to represent another company in a detrimental way. That is <i>not</i> something the other company is obligated to quietly request them to stop - they are well within their rights to open up with a cease & desist order, not an annoyed blog post.

<comment><USER29> For starters he implied (and borderline accused) GetSatisfaction of blackmail and extortionist practices.

<comment><USER16> Libel has to be _a_ _lie_. Someone harshly laying out their opinion on a business's practices and saying those practices resemble extortion isn't even in the running for libel unless s/he says something factually untrue about those practices. Opinions aren't libelous.

<comment><USER29> In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is often, but not always, a requirement that this claim be false, and, or alternatively, that the publication is made to someone other than the person defamed.

<comment><USER16> Fried didn't post about the private sex lives of people working for Get Satisfaction. He accurately described their operation and characterized it unfavorably.

While the law differs in other parts of the world, in the United States libel has to involve knowingly false statements meant to give someone a negative image.

Making complaints on one's blog and having the party you're complaining about show up, act highly apologetic, and immediately start rewriting parts of their website to address your complaints is about as far from "defamation" as you can get.

<comment><USER29> Any statement can be grounds for defamation if it can be proved true or false in a court.

A statement made as a fact (for example "The site also hosts, without permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies.") is potentially actionable.

<comment><USER16> By your persistence on this point, I assume you're both British (or otherwise only familiar with UK law) and think UK law is relevant on this point.

It's not.

I'll leave you to ponder the question, "If Fried's complaints in his blog post are 'defamatory', what exactly are all the consumer complaints _on_ Get Satisfaction's site, then?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thor Muller 31 Mar 09

 _Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn't come off at all._

According to this DoucheWeasel, GS tried to say that their page about 37signals is not sanctioned/approved by 37signals, but failed.

Instead they ended up implying that 37signals doesn't care about their customers. Whoops.

Have you ever tried to type "This space is not officially sanctioned by 37signals" but made a few typos and ended up typing "37signals is not committed to open an conversation" instead?

Gosh, that mistake could happen to anyone!

<comment><USER16> The GS guys are doing an amazing combination of groveling and passive- aggressive whining about being caught at the same time.

<comment><USER30> You nailed it. That was just about what I wanted to say, but couldn't.

In any case, last time I checked, they had most of HN fooled with their douchery too, which is quite surprising.

Seriously.. If their "wording" was _explicitly_ meant to state that the "space" was not officially sanctioned by 37signals, well then, why not just freaking go ahead and _explicitly_ state exactly that?

It's obvious that GS is a shady company, and after Jason's blog post, what exactly do people think they'd do?

"Why yes, we are full of shit. You got us."?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We need someone to start up a site that provides user feedback on GetSatisfaction, using GetSatisfaction's look-and-feel. Taste of their own medicine.

</comment><comment><USER31> Those "getsatisfaction" people need to be eradicated.

TOTAL rats in suits - I wish I could tell you all who and what, but a person I know (former client) has enough on them to get them thrown in the bighouse.

</comment><comment><USER32> Get Satisfaction got Customer Service Served by 37Signals, ouch!

</comment><comment><USER33> Is that really Get Satisfaction's doing, or was it a 37signals fanboy who put that together without permission?

Snagging the look-and-feel (graphics, colours, etc.) of a target's site is particularly sleazy and it seems very odd if Get Satisfaction has chosen to go that route for their business.

Unless Get Satisfaction provides a prominent "request this forum be deleted" link, and actually removes a forum on request, I wouldn't touch these guys with the proverbial 10' pole if site mimicking has become their standard practice.

<comment><USER34> Why should companies be able to "delete" 3rd party forums where people discuss their products and help each other?

If someone asks a question on Stack Overflow about using Visual Studio, should Microsoft be able to delete it? Should they be able to sue SO? Should SO not be able to run ads for products that compete with VS?

<comment><USER33> I don't think there's any problem with third-parties putting together support forums, Q&A pages or the like. It's when they snatch the look-and-feel of a company's site to try and pass themselves off as an official part of that company (without permission!) which sends my alarm bells ringing.

<comment><USER21> Yep, look-and-feel is protected as part of a company's intellectual property. As it should be.

<comment><USER35> You're technically right. For reference, look and feel fall under "trade dress" [<http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html>]. In brief, the relevant case law is:

"To recover for trade dress infringement ... a plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence: (1) that its trade dress has obtained "secondary meaning" in the marketplace; (2) that the trade dress of the two competing products is confusingly similar; and (3) that the appropriated features of the trade dress are primarily nonfunctional."

Continuing ...

"Strength of ... trade dress depends upon the interplay of two elements, the uniqueness of the trade dress and the investment in imbuing a trade dress with secondary meaning."

... which makes trade dress difficult to prove, even to only a preponderance of the evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone using jenkinsfile for ci? - <AUTHOR> Jenkins has had a version controlled pipeline setup for a while, but googling around yields fairly few results that arent just basic tutorials. Dev mindshare seems pretty low. Is anyone using / recommending jenkinsfile for ci over the mainstream gitlab/circle/travis etc? <comment><USER2> If you can clarify some things, I'm happy to give it a shot. 1) What language is your project 2) After it builds, do you want to store a copy of the build anywhere? 3) Do you want to use any particular system for deploying the build to the servers?</comment>


Record-breaking win in computer Go match vs professional at 4 stones - <AUTHOR> http://gogameguru.com/zen-computer-go-program-beats-takemiya-masaki-4-stones/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some context: This is the first time a computer has beaten a professional in a slow game on a full-size board with a 4-stone handicap or less, putting the computer's strength above that of all but the most dedicated amateur players. Few people expected this result going into the match. It's also worth noting that the hardware was just a small cluster of four PCs, not extravagant.

<comment><USER2> Is 30 minutes main time really a slow game for Go?

<comment><USER3> On KGS 25 minutes is actually considered a medium length game. Obviously real games between pros can go on for days, but for whatever reason most games with bots seem to be played at or near blitz speeds, so this is slow by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting conclusion! nice post</comment>


Birkenstock quits Amazon in US after counterfeit surge - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after-counterfeit-surge.html <comment><USER2> At what point is Amazon complicit in the sale of counterfeit goods from a legal standpoint? It is an obvious problem and Amazon doesn't appear to be doing much to counter it.

Seems like only a matter of time until they get sued by a brand name manufacturer just as YouTube got sued by content producers almost a decade ago. Not that I look forward to the day when Amazon sellers can be taken offline by a copyright notice like YouTube users today, but that is where we are heading.

</comment><comment><USER3> So far, I have not been affected by the confluence of stock comingling and counterfeiting resulting in receiving a counterfeit product from Amazon, but... the day that does happen is the last time I buy from Amazon.

I don't mind knock offs, so long as they are clearly labeled as such, so I can choose or I can avoid them.

Amazon needs to address this issue at once and with force. They can't afford to ignore the issues of both the effects of stock comingling, counterfeiting, paid fake insincere reviews resulting in their customers getting fleeced disappointed and upset.</comment>


Show HN: Recapp'd – Improving NBA boxscores - <AUTHOR> http://recappd.com

<comment><AUTHOR> OP and author here to add some context.

This is a side-project that was motivated by learning. As a software engineer in the medical device space by day, this project was an opportunity to develop a web app (first time doing this solo), learn a relatively new technology (rails), and scratch my own itch.

The problem I was having that this site attempts to solve is that of a long- time NBA fan, who used to have a lot more time to dive into scores, read game- recaps, peruse boxscores and watch video highlights. As I found my free time dwindling while my appetite for information remained the same, I longed for a solution that would give me more information 'at a glance' than your typical ESPN scores page.

It's plainly obvious I'm not a designer, nor experienced web developer, but I'm proud of having followed through and launching _something_. I've been spending an hour here and there on the site, with long breaks in between (for example, when your scraping source decides to change their schema, sigh) for over 2 years now. Show HN was always a goal of mine and I'm glad I've made it.

Games at-a-glance: [http://recappd.com](http://recappd.com)

Sample detailed box-score: [http://recappd.com/games/2015/1/21/OKC- WAS](http://recappd.com/games/2015/1/21/OKC-WAS)

Feel free to click around. Player names, teams, and badge descriptions (hover, then click on help-text) all lead to other pages.</comment>


My app is earning $30,000 per year. Would you like to buy it? - <AUTHOR>

This is the second time I've posted about this. The first time saw interest from a few people, but a sale hasn't been finalized yet, so I'm trying once more.
I have an iOS and Android app that are earning about $30,000 per year, combined. It's been sitting and earning that, but I feel like a lot more features could be added (possibly a webapp component) and sales would rise more. It's not what I truly want to be working on, so I'm trying to sell it so I can focus on other ideas.
Around $15,000 of that $30,000 is subscriptions. Some are monthly subscriptions, some are yearly subscriptions, but right now that comes out to around $15,000. The subscriptions are all through Google Play and Apple App Store.
I'd like to sell the app for around $60,000. The sooner I sell it, the better.
It is an app for small business owners. I will provide the link, as well as App Annie revenue / download statistics, if you are interested. Just drop a note here, and I'll have the information over to you ASAP. <comment><USER2> I'm interested if it's still available. Please email me at teejtang at google's email service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you wish to sell the app?

Why don't you link to the apps on google play or the app store?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey man. I'd be interested in buying if the revenues are sustainable. Lets talk. My email is: email@example.com Thanks

</comment><comment><USER5> What category does your app fall into? What is the best way to get hold of you?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a business app. Drop your email and I'll reach out to you - we can Skype today if you'd like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm interested - email@example.com</comment>


Visual Macros in TeXmacs [video] - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gnu_texmacs/status/1251554336842407938 <comment><USER2> Very nice, but not a stitch on LyX's math editor [1]. Especially good are its user-defined math macros (scroll down to point 6 in [1], or look at this video [2]); you can even define different versions for the output and for editing. Entering macros (both built-in and user-defined) and positioning your cursor in the arguments can be done with keyboard or mouse.

Unfortunately LyX tends to get dismissed a lot because long-term LaTeX users naively assume that it's just for beginners. Ironically I think you need to be a fairly advanced LaTeX user to start with before you can use it effectively.

[1] [https://www.lyx.org/VisualTour](https://www.lyx.org/VisualTour)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Gys4rp3u4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Gys4rp3u4)

<comment><USER3> I played with LyX a long time ago, when exploring options for editing XML documents.

The way it presents the structure of the document was great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not obvious to me what "TeXmacs's macro arguments can be edited visually" _means_ at a glance. It seems to mean: after defining a macro, in this case a commutative diagram, you can paste the 'skeleton' of a macro, and fill in arguments in the skeleton rather than having to write out the invocation of the macro. Here, each argument appears several times in the commutative diagram, and the diagram remains 'consistent'; changing an entry in one place changes all of the other entries that the macro defines to be the same. That's pretty neat as an effect, although not something I think I've ever wanted.

On the other hand, the process of _defining_ the macro looks hideously painful, with a separate mouse hunt-and-click just to insert a macro argument. I understand the argument for structured text editing, but does it have to be mouse-driven? That is, do I have to use a mouse to insert macro argument A, or can I just type A within the macro definition, or is there possibly some middle ground where I can just type A, but pre- or post-pend some modifier key? (I've never used TeXmacs, though I've always been interested to give it a try ever since I realised it _wasn 't_ just "emacs + TeX"; I'm too wedded to the vim system.)

<comment><USER5> I did the video, and I was lazy: you can type Ctrl+arrow (as indicated in the tooltip) to insert more placeholders, no need to use the mouse. and then references are inserted with \A, etc.. Anyway you can define VIM modal keybindings ;) [http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/a-very-tiny-vim-in- texmacs/176/7](http://forum.texmacs.cn/t/a-very-tiny-vim-in-texmacs/176/7)

<comment><USER4> vim emulation is always dangerous, because it falls so easily into an uncanny valley—it lulls you into feeling comfortable, and then is _more_ jarring when you hit a bump than if you knew all along you were in a different editing paradigm. Anyway, thanks!

(Also, to be clear, I wasn't criticising the use of the mouse, just hoping that it wasn't the only way.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me a lot of JetBrains MPS and their projectional editing features. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN2PflvXUqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN2PflvXUqQ)

<comment><USER5> I didn't knew MPS but indeed seems quite similar. Both are structured editors, in the sense that you never work with "text" but with some projection of the underlying tree structure. For example you can ask TeXmacs to show you a representation where every node tree is explicit (which look very much HTML, but where you cannot have an open environment tag without the corresponding closing tag).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ivy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jhallen/ivy-lang <comment><USER2> i dont appreciate getting flagged for my comment. the "mom" operator is a real thing not found in many languages.

>mom is an object member present in objects used as activation records. It refers to the object used as the next outer scope. mom can be used to access variables in the next outer scope:

<comment><USER3> The problem with your other comments is that it is too short and almost look like a joke. I read the docs partially, and I didn't notice the mom operator. As a recommendation, try to avoid oneliners in HN.

[Note: I didn't flag/downvote you.]

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on my pet language recently. The documentation is much improved and Ivy now supports object oriented programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> Add a Fibonacci near the top of the readme.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, I've added it, and a few others as well: Y-combinator and Man or Boy.</comment></comment>


Affordable Housing Developers Hope to Build Tall in Mission District - <AUTHOR> http://missionlocal.org/2016/07/affordable-housing-developers-hope-to-build-tall-in-mission-district/ <comment><USER2> How much more expensive would it be if they made each unit have a nicer ceiling height? A decent room needs to be taller than eight feet. Old buildings often have ceilings that are 10-12 feet from the floor.

Once a basic structural feature like this is built into a building, it's basically impossible to fix it without tearing the structure down. If and when people get richer in the future, and want something better, they are going to be stuck with this thing, which is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's only nine stories, and they're calling that _tall_?

When beautiful skyscrapers stretch to 70+ stories, nine is anything but tall.

<comment><USER3> Tall is relative. If you're several stories taller than any other building in the neighborhood then you're a tall building.</comment></comment>


New Portal to Unveil the Dark Sector of the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/11589.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[http://www.ibs.re.kr/cop/bbs/BBSMSTR_000000000738/selectBoar...](http://www.ibs.re.kr/cop/bbs/BBSMSTR_000000000738/selectBoardArticle.do?nttId=14417)

with author credit (Dr. Letizia Diamante) ripped out. Graphics also copied from there without attribution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this is just too editorialized, but "dark portals" connecting to "dark sector particles"? This sounds like science fiction nonsense. Are Ing going to start spewing out of these dark portals?</comment>