Why has examine.com disappeared from search results? - <AUTHOR> https://examine.com/nutrition/google-update-july-2019/ <comment><USER2> I was going to say that "examine.com is one of the best sites on the internet for information about supplements/nutrition". But it's not. It's _the_ best site on the internet for that sort of thing. It's great that Google is attempting to fix the issue of bullshit nutrition sites ranking highly, but I sincerely hope someone at Google sees this and does something to help out Examine, which is a tremendous resource.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I've come across the site before, but at first glance it doesn't look reputable at all. --I realize that looks aren't everything, but I see the following that look like red flags to me:

1\. They show logs for news sources such as The New York Times, BBC, etc., but they don't actually link to those sites, let alone to articles that actually mention this site.

2\. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019".

3\. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site?

4\. The attempts to get me to spend money feels slimy. --This is pretty subjective, I know, but that's how it comes off to me.

So I can understand how this site wouldn't rank high in a search engine. I would need to do a lot of research to decide whether or not to trust it, let alone whether or not they have information that's actually worth spending money on.

<comment><USER4> Let me address these:

1\. No one links to them. You are welcome to google. Eg here: [https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how- to-...](https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build- muscle-strength/) \- you'll see their _entire_ supplement section is from our site

2\. That is our one, and it's more of a play on 2019 and 19. If you read the article, you'll see it's no-nosense.

3\. How exactly do I prove someone is real?

A quick google search shows this guy: [https://twitter.com/drmikehart](https://twitter.com/drmikehart) \- you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others.

4\. We analyze information and sell that for revenue. We are a business - alas, we have no tree that grows money in our backyard.

<comment><USER5> Re 3. providing a bio and referencing their other work is a good start; as is linking to trusted sources, LinkedIn, the person's Uni or business resumé page, a "verified" Twitter account might work; if they're of note they may have a Wikipedia page ...

<comment><USER4> Good idea!

Here's Kamal's thorough bio page: [https://examine.com/user/kamalpatel/](https://examine.com/user/kamalpatel/)

Here's Kamal verified on twitter: [https://twitter.com/zenkamal](https://twitter.com/zenkamal)

Here's him on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_(researcher)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_\(researcher\))

Here's Examine.com on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examine.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examine.com)

<comment><USER5> Just FYI I was addressing the question. You're being a bit salty. You should have asked "what else other than x, y , z" if you already had a good answer.

Aside: the Creatine page links to [https://examine.com/about/#researchers](https://examine.com/about/#researchers) which is below where Kamal Patel appears on that page, so I scanned down the page and he wasn't mentioned (he's at the top, but I had to search to find him).

That page is long, and linking to generic prose about researchers from a named link made me think there was no information on that person.

That could be a one-off error, of course.

<comment><USER6> He's being salty elsewhere because HN commenters are being rude to him. Here, he's just directly addressing the parent comment, without providing any color at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Got curious and decided to go through their SEO.

\- First off, according to Ahrefs, their dofollow / nofollow ratio is a staggering 10:1, which is a huge red flag right away. A more natural ratio would be in the neighborhood of 1:2 so we are talking 20x less. But hey, maybe it's the niche that naturally attracts a ton of dofollow links - let's move on

\- Looking at another of the main spam indicators, anchor text, most of them are just single keywords, like "ashwagandha", which point to the page optimized to rank for that exact generic search. The entire website is targeting single-term searches, which are notoriously hard to rank for and attract a lot of spam websites. This falls into anchor text over-optimization. They have 210 referring pages linking to their curcumin page with the exact anchor text "curcumin", same with "catechins", "creatine", "caffeine", "vitamin d" and the list goes on for all the keywords they are trying to rank for. This is not just unusual, it's literally impossible for it to just happen naturally. This has the Penguin penalty written all over it. Moving on...

\- Their backlinks are for sure interesting. Among their top backlinks, we have pages such as: [https://www.herbalsupplementreview.com/retro-lean- forskolin/](https://www.herbalsupplementreview.com/retro-lean-forskolin/) \- with a URL rating of 46 for a website with zero traffic. In SEO terms these are called "PBN links". Not that unusual for the health niche, but definitely not white hat. Here's another one with the same identical metrics as the previous one (this time, it's a homepage link), also from a dubious website with zero traffic: [https://best-testosteronebooster.com/](https://best- testosteronebooster.com/).

All of these with exact match anchor texts leading to their corresponding Examine.com pages.

\- Mind you, I'm not saying that they don't have great editorial content, and I'm not sure who helped them with their SEO, but I'm not the least bit surprised that Google might have penalized them multiple times for several reasons. There's probably more stuff but this is what I was able to find with a quick analysis.

<comment><USER8> This completely misses the point of a search engine. The ability to game SEO has nothing to with relevance or content quality.

If a random supplement information website's most lucrative monetization path would be to game SEO instead of doing what they're nominally supposed to do (i.e. provide quality content), the problem doesn't lie with the the content owner but rather with the search engine and the incentives it promotes.

<comment><USER9> I think the point is that they apparently have spent a bunch of time on SEO, and it's backfiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For additional context, Google has "disappeared" 100s of alt-health sites - some bad, but some very good. The site Self Hacked was one, and detailed it here: [https://selfhacked.com/blog/google-censorship-of-health- webs...](https://selfhacked.com/blog/google-censorship-of-health-websites-is- taken-to-the-next-level/)

Some, like Mercola, peddle highly-controversial, near anti-vax content.

But on the other end of the spectrum, Examine.com should be the gold standard. Quality Raters should use it as an example of a site to emmulate. Much higher quality content and informative content than WebMD, IMO.

<comment><USER10> So... Google is openly editorialising their results?

They were already doing it with the carousel (google "american inventors") but if they are doing it with what seemingly is the list of organic results this is very, very troubling.

<comment><USER11> I mean, Google always was, even in the PageRank days. Even if you can perfectly recreate the numbers as to why so and so site is ranked higher in your system, its still your system choosing to rank so and so site higher.

<comment><USER10> I see your point, but in this case they are blacklisting domains by hand because of their content, which they don't agree with. And that is very bad. Maybe it was my mistake, thinking that their organic search was holy, which no longer is the case it seems.

<comment><USER12> I dont understand this point of view. Googles literal mission since inception was to rank results based on how good google thought they were. Their purpose is to editorialize results through the order they appear. Quality is defined buy googles subjectivity.

Where did the idea of google neutrality come from? Google would be useless if they didnt blacklist what they perceive to be spam.

<comment><USER13> > Where did the idea of google neutrality come from?

From Google. They've stated time and time again that it's a magic algorithm and they don't hand-pick winners and losers. And it's a good thing, too, otherwise you're just inviting corruption. Top spots are literally worth millions, and if there's an small army of people that decide who ranks where, they are an obvious target for bribes.

This doesn't look that hand picked, though, more like somebody didn't check what would happen if they rolled out some algo change and targeted way too broad.

<comment><USER14> They have certainly peddled the idea that "the algorithm" is what drives page rank.

<comment><USER12> This is an extremely circular conversation. Google writes the algorithm that ranks pages.

They absolutely know, that if you search Disney, and Disney isnt the first result, they wrote it incorrectly. They also know their product has less value if it returns spam, which is why they fight SEO artists.

They do try to distance themselves from "choosing" the top result for "best construction store" or "best news site" by shouting the world algorithm, to distract the conversation. That doesnt mean they dont carefully craft the algorithm to return a relevant top result.

<comment><USER13> > That doesnt mean they dont carefully craft the algorithm to return a > relevant top result.

I found [https://medium.com/@mikewacker/googles-manual- interventions-...](https://medium.com/@mikewacker/googles-manual- interventions-in-search-results-a3b0cfd3e26c) an interesting read on that topic. It's not just a crafted algorithm, but there are different algorithms and employees choose different algorithms for some queries if they/journalists dislike what the original algorithm considered most relevant.

<comment><USER15> I mean, that's how you'd train the main algorithm, right?

I'd fully expect to see these interventions fed back into the algorithm so Google can better predict "this search term is likely to be targeted by partisan or otherwise suspiciously motivated actors".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've noticed that Google search results prioritize reputation above search matching. If you search for something, even if there's a blog out there with the exact thing your searching for, it won't show up, even in the top 100 search results, unless the site has a high enough page rank/ or some other generic metric google is looking for. This is unfortunate because there's a lot of great information out there that never sees the light of day due to this problem. Google still has a long way to go before they solve the search problem.

<comment><USER17> > Google still has a long way to go before they solve the search problem

For any search query, there's only two results: 1, what you're actually looking for 2, what Google wants you to see

Unfortunately Google has 'solved' the search problem by always optimising for 2, and most times it's never what you want to see. That's not just health results either, for most anything outside of 'pop culture' Google is garbage.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like we need a new search engine, a better search engine. One that returns the things you're actually searching for.

<comment><USER19> Duckduckgo?

<comment><USER20> Isn't that just a wrapper for the same search engines?

<comment><USER21> I believe duckduckgo uses bing for search results. (See [https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1](https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1)). If you compare searches on bing and duckduckgo, they are very similar.

The main advantage of duckduckgo is that they aren't tracking you and the ads they show are just based on the search keywords not based on a digital profile they have compiled like google and facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My website has a number of articles that talk about anxiety health issues. I was getting steady traffic of at least 100-150 users per day. Now I get about 10/day. The traffic didn't gradually slow down. It dropped by almost > 50% on two separate days and continued that trend.

No idea what is going on. My DR has also dropped on ahrefs. I am nowhere near examine.com, but my articles are honest and of good quality I believe.

I am on the first page of DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Bing for my keywords. I'm on page > 10 on Google for the same keywords.

<comment><USER23> Can we get a link to your website?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems like Google is de-ranking independent websites, rather than actually analyzing whether a website provides good information or not.

I'm not sure that this is happening intentionally - it's probably way more difficult to figure out a way to automate a "quality of information" rating, rather than just prioritizing websites for companies that make lots of money.

However, this has the unintended effect of narrowing the overton window for "acceptable" opinions. I've found that it's really difficult to find good results for niche topics on Google nowadays.

<comment><USER25> This is almost certainly what happened. Search YouTube for any political subject and you will only see videos from channels with a check. It's just a dumb hard boost, on a hand selected list of authoritative channels.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Google change is essentially the same, just without the visible check marks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is tragic. Examine.com is probably the best site I know with a focus on determining the science behind any food or supplement one might be interested in. They should be at the top of every Google search.

<comment><USER27> isn't this one of the classic reasons monopolies are bad?

[edit] please let me clarify the reason i wrote the above is because examine.com basically has no recourse but to appeal to google since they are basically a monopoly in search results, which is one of the reasons people consider a monopoly to be bad... they can't just "pay more to bing" and get all their lost traffic back can they?

<comment><USER28> No, it isn't

<comment><USER27> why? (genuinely curious)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think examine.com needs to redouble their efforts on SEO, because if I search for something like "creatine benefits" on duckduckgo/bing, which is a more raw search than google, I see examine.com is way down the list at #26. Some of the other sites mentioned in this thread are high on duckduckgo/bing (selfhacked.com #4, lifextention.com #11)

So, I think examine.com's problems could be beyond google's search algorithm/de-ranking.

www.healthline.com must be winning the SEO game because they are showing up #1 on google, duckduckgo, bing, etc.

A very simple observation is that examine.com is not using good titles for their articles. "Summary of Creatine". It is too generic, and that is causing it to be ranked lower that these other websites which have more specific titles like "Anti-Aging Benefits of Creatine" (lifeextension), or "12 Creatine Benefits + Dosage & Side Effects" (selfhacked).

So, maybe a better title. Or , because this "Summary of Creatine" article is so long, maybe you need multiple summary pages tailored to different purposes, e.g. "Benefits of Creatine", "Side Effects of Creatine", which link into the Creatine research.

I have never been to this examine.com website before, but if every article is like "Summary of X", then I would say you have a problem. You need to match your articles titles to the most likely search _phrases_.

</comment><comment><USER29> I find this concerning. I use examine.com quite a bit. They have references to all the studies for each topic whereas other health sites like webmd do not always have reference links. Examine have saved me a bit of time trying to search through all the studies on nih.gov / PubMed. I still do manual searches to ensure they are not cherry picking, but I have been happy with Examine thus far.

<comment><USER30> duck.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If we are banning sketchy medicine sites could we ban healthline and webmd?

Those websites use scare tactics to push users through 10+ page "top 10 illnesses based on your symptoms" list which are often not even researched to the point of any accuracy and only written to drive ad revenue.

</comment><comment><USER32> There seems to be an increasing problem with automated content filtering systems that filter out legitimate actors. This seems like a very broad problem that is hard to generalize, but perhaps I'm wrong. It also seems like the problem will only get worse as the Internet grows even larger. I wonder what the end result will look like, if this will just magnify the effect of walled gardens.

<comment><USER33> Google is trying to be non-partisan, so that they can have their algorithms continue to do all of the work.

They delegate "what is true" to trusted sources rather than taking a position themselves, which is then frequently abused by wiki editors and crowd swarm attacks.

Recognizing correctness over both reputation and quality is not something an algorithm can evaluate with finality, and is an aspect of the old Yahoo! Directory that Google has never been able to replace.

Google will continue to worsen at any search for which one possible reply is snake oil, because they continue to refuse to apply human reasoning and make biased judgements for and/or against the claims of the sites they index.

This will eventually be the end of Google, but they seem unwilling to confront it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I remember reading Google's instructions for their manual page quality reviewers. It had two special sections, one on financial info, and one – you guessed it – on _medical_ information.

Within those two categories, called "Your life or your money", reviewers were asked to pay special attention to a site's trustworthiness, with a special focus on "traditional" credentials, such as association with a known, trusted institution.

Edit: Found it: [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Yup - EAT and YMYL has been a thing for a long time. That's why all of our authors are on an about page, why we distinguish editors vs reviewers vs researchers, why Kamal Patle has his own page, and why we even explain our editorial process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's a very cynical part of me that is considering whether this might be a planned action by Google to cycle the FP, and try to get the "disappeared" sites to pay Google for pay-per-click advertising. I wish that was completely unbelievable, but Google has proven to be entirely focused on profit when it comes to monetizing search; and of course intentionally starving sites from getting hits/leads/conversions seems like the best and fastest way to generate profit from their desperation.

<comment><USER36> But it has only impacted sites in the health niche. There's a lot of really bad advice and information being circulated in this niche. The antivax insanity didn't just spring out of nothingness.

I run a site that covers musical equipment (I'm an amateur musician) and my rankings have been stable for over a year with almost zero work.

<comment><USER35> Again, the cynical response is, "for now". When they get past this stage where they're doing the most obvious thing that's probably more good than harmful, how long before they say that they're working with musical industry leaders, so they'll emphasize on what the labels say is good equipment.

<comment><USER36> At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I've seen some things on YouTube that point in that direction. Some random new creators have suddenly amassed millions of views and over a million subscribers with as few as 5 mediocre videos.

These creators have either found some way to game the YouTube algorithm, or they have been created by YouTube (or other media giants like Disney) and promoted heavily across organic channels in an attempt to create the kind of stars (that media companies can control) you see, say, on Disney Kids.

It's becoming clear to me that as we enter the fourth decade of the internet, the open, democratic nature of the internet is under siege.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd move off Cloudflare. Cloudflare hosts a bunch of sites that are penalized by google. Google is known to penalized sites in bad neighborhoods. Spend the money and get dedicated IPs and don't share certs. Examine.com is sharing a cert with an online gambling site(reengame.com).

<comment><USER38> Cloudflare is hardly an obscure service. I'm confident that Google's search quality team is aware that Cloudflare exists, and that they have taken steps to avoid penalizing sites for using it.

<comment><USER37> [https://serverguy.com/case-study/cloudflare-seo/](https://serverguy.com/case- study/cloudflare-seo/) . It is well known in the SEO arena that your neighbors affect your SERPS. Cloudflare has an open policy on who they allow on their service where AWS, Akmai, Fastly, etc have acceptable use policies banning services like online gambling, online pharmancies, etc.

Google doesn't release any information about how they rank sites but it is reasonable to assume there is a network/IP reputation score similar to what email providers use to combat spam.

<comment><USER39> Interesting. I know CloudFlare's neural policy but never thought about its effects on ranking. It explains a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >Let's be clear: Google owes us nothing. They are a private organization, they can do whatever they want.

This is a surprising thing to hear. I think given Google's influence, they owe them at least some fairness.

<comment><USER18> And, as an entity more powerful than any living thing on this planet (with the power to kill or support nearly any online business), they owe the world quite a bit of fairness: Otherwise, they can watch as their search business drops to nothing overnight. Facebook and Amazon and most B2Bs have quite a bit of lock in. But google, if they piss everyone off, we'll we're just one tab away from using something else: and once people realize that something else is equal or better, it's all over for G.

I switched to duck duck go a few months ago for search and the cost of switching was Zero.

<comment><USER41> > _with the power to kill or support nearly any online business_

Absolutely untrue. Almost every startup I've worked for considered search traffic to be negligible. I've also worked at a place where google traffic accounted for 70% of sales and they actually went out of businesses a few months after we dropped off the front-page, but there is no inherent reason why our company deserved the top spot any more than those that replaced us on the front-page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Are there any curated directories left? It seems like they were all killed off by search, but this sort of thing underscores that curation itself actually has value.

</comment><comment><USER43> The folks at Examine.com should also analyze what inbound links they have scattered on the web.

An easy way to sink your competition is to place their links on shady websites. It's common SEO practice.

<comment><USER37> I thought google got rid of the disavow feature and no longer penalize on the quality of inbound links?

<comment><USER44> Doesn't seem to be the case.

[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links- main?p...](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Examine.com is the most legit and reputable place to get information on niche supplements especially some of the ones at the fringes.

It would be a huge disservice to the internet and those seeking research information if they dropped from Google indexes.

</comment><comment><USER46> Google has also made disappear "harm reduction" drug-related websites, such as Drugs-Forum.com on relevant searches; IMO, a travesty and an affront to "Don't be Evil"

<comment><USER47> Pretty sure they dropped the don't be evil moniker when they decided to go full steam ahead with evil

<comment><USER48> They changed it with "Do the right thing", which is equivalent to saying "Evil is sometimes the right thing"

<comment><USER49> [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/)

"And remember… don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!"

<comment><USER48> [https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of- do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil- from-1826153393)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Use duck duck go, yippy, gibiru, qwant, or any other of the many alternatives. Google's search is probably the most over rated product of our time when you look at the full cost of being a Google user. I haven't used Google search for more than 5 years and I am not missing anything.

Google search keeps the rest of the Google machine afloat. If consumers showed their distaste for Google's problems by using alternative search products they would get their act together faster than the average query time.

<comment><USER51> I find I always !g my ddg searches. What do you use instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I never use google. On searching Bing for 'nutrition supplement' I found examine.com on page 4.

I also found the NIH's 'medlineplus' on page 4. It is certainly authoritative. So, in a way, that's a compliment.

But apparently 'authoritative' is not the only significant factor at Bing. Yes, I found 'nutrition.gov' and 'fda.gov' on page 1, as well as 'wikipedia.org' and 'supplementwarehouse.com'.

I suppose that 'authoritative' ought to be a primary factor in a search algorithm. But then, I think 'accurate' ought to be a primary factor in 'translation'.

It's no surprise to me that machines are no better at distinguishing science- based authority than they are at translation. You have to consider the culture the machines have grown up in.

</comment><comment><USER53> Examine.com is rock solid in my opinion. Best summary of research (with direct links to each published paper) that I've seen.

I often use examine.com directly without going through Google but I hope Google will realize they have made a mistake in this case.

<comment><USER53> P.S. I'm not associated with Examine.com in any way except for using the site regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> On the other hand when I run "Astaxanthin" query in the DDG (I never searched for this item or other supplements previously) I see Examine result on the first page, 5th position from top. At the same time there are results from scummy resources on the same page: 1\. Webmd 2\. Wikipedia 3\. Healthline 4\. Mercola 5\. Examine 6\. Draxe 7\. Drweil 8\. Antioxidantsforhealthandlongevity 9\. Amazon 10\. Webmd

Hard to say what should be a proper way to deal with misinformation but looking at human history it is probably not censorship, mostly because any and all censorship systems are abused and corrupted eventually.

</comment><comment><USER55> I will say, I miss the days when the first comment here would be "Paging Mr. Cutts..." followed by actual insight from Matt on what's happening here!

Is there any other double-digit employee at Google around now who can take up the mantle?

<comment><USER56> Even if there would be, is it even possible anymore? Or is the algo so controlled by AI and ML that it is not even possible anymore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Bing does not have this problem (yet): [https://www.bing.com/search?q=is+diet+soda+bad+for+health](https://www.bing.com/search?q=is+diet+soda+bad+for+health)

</comment><comment><USER58> I took a look at the page and have to agree with another poster - the landing page at least looks like a lot of trash websites.

They say they are recommended by:

The New York Times Washington Post BBC Guardian Forbes Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

But do not link to any of these sites showing the endorsement (the the icon of Men's Health does turn color when hovered over). That's classic bad behavior scammers use.

Ask yourself, why would be the BBC of all places be endorsing this site? Oddly googling for examine.com and BBC get's a link to "The food supplement that ruined my liver" which makes no mention of examine.com

I then followed the links to the scientifically proven "super-food" \- Spirulina. This links to a paper and I picked one random name and found they were a lecturer at a university in Romania - where they also received their degree. Ok...

The whole scientifically proven "superfoods" with dramatic health benefits invented by "NASA" is already so scam buzzword filled how does google not push this down?

Now google is supposed to be promoting this type of health info over more standard health info? I'm all for folks exploring the edges of things, but... at least a quick read of the page doesn't inspire huge confidence in this landing page as an authoritative source for health info.

I may also have found the MD who recommends examine.com . His website is here: [https://mikehartmd.com/](https://mikehartmd.com/) no issue with cannabis, but again... lifestyle / single topic medicine vs a normal internal medicine dr.

Edited: Interesting to see the quick downvoting for what is a relatively content oriented comment.

<comment><USER59> I think the downvotes might have something to do with your dismissive attitude.

How is the nationality of the lecturer (w/ a diploma) a relevant fact? Why the "... ok" reaction? Was is more credible if the lecturer was based in SF ? Is medicine different if you're not from SF ? Are you automatically bad at everything you do if not from SF? As for the "invented by NASA", i do think they were referring to this:

In 1974, the World Health Organization described spirulina as "an interesting food or super food" for multiple reasons, rich in iron and protein, and is able to be administered to children without any risk," considering it "a very suitable food."[52] The United Nations established the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition in 2003.[53]

In the late 1980s and early 90s, both NASA (CELSS)[54] and the European Space Agency (MELiSSA)[55] proposed spirulina as one of the primary foods to be cultivated during long-term space missions. ( source: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplemen...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_\(dietary_supplement\)) )

<comment><USER58> "How is the nationality of the lecturer (w/ a diploma) a relevant fact?" -If you are not familiar with the issues here I can't be that helpful.

The quality of academic institutions and systems varies widely on a nation by nation basis. This is the issue I guess, a site like this and you are claiming no difference between countries.

Note that many top US scientists come from other countries, so its not the nationality of the scientist that is critical but the system they operate within, and the issues with academic integrity in China, Africa and yes, Romania are reasonably well known. Even the US and UK have struggled, and have tons more resources (some struggles relate to their overseas programs).

Hiring your own graduates is sometimes considered a bit of a weak sign in academia as well.

It's the totality of all these factors, bogus "endorsements" by big name media orgs (BBC), medical doctor endorsements from overseas doctors that practice relatively niche medicine (cannabis practice), and scientific research that seems to take any paper written anywhere and treat it equally.

<comment><USER59> "If you are not familiar with the issues here I can't be that helpful". So you are not familiar either ? Or is that you don't really feel like spending time actually answering the question instead of deflecting ? You do seem to have enough knowledge to dismiss a paper based solely on the "system they operate in"

"The quality of academic institutions and systems varies widely on a nation by nation basis. This is the issue I guess, a site like this and you are claiming no difference between countries."

I made no such claims. What I did however was question your reaction when seeing a romanian academic as the author of a scientific paper and that is all.

"and the issues with academic integrity in China, Africa and yes, Romania are reasonably well known".

Mind sharing some insight on this ? I'm genuinly interested. That seems like a very loose enumeration created strictly to get your point across, not being related in any way other than not being US.

<comment><USER58> Sure. To get you started...

An imperfect measure is to just get a sense of where a countries top university is ranked.

[https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university- rankin...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university- rankings/2019/world- ranking#!/page/0/length/25/locations/RO/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats)

is one. US news is another. In all cases top Romanian institutions are all 500+ down the list. That is pretty bad. South Africa for example has much better universities (150 - 200 range) with UCT (and that's true - UCT has a good reputation).

[https://wenr.wes.org/2017/12/academic-fraud-corruption- and-i...](https://wenr.wes.org/2017/12/academic-fraud-corruption-and- implications-for-credential-assessment)

[https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/07/02/the-plagiarism- in...](https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/07/02/the-plagiarism-insanity-in- romania/)

Can I ask if you have lived or worked overseas (outside of core EU/US countries)

US has issues in its for profit colleges and universities among others as well so it's not accurate that all US institutions are strong. I would have reacted the same way if I recognized a the article as being from a predatory journal ([https://beallslist.weebly.com/](https://beallslist.weebly.com/))

Note, I'm looking at the website as a whole, and the claims it is making. This includes endorsements by the BBC, endorsements by medical doctors, and "scientifically proven" "superfoods" that "dramatically decrease LDL-C, triglycerides, and total cholesterol while raising HDL-C"

In each case I looked into the support was not great. In other words, this issue is about the supposedly unfair treatment of the site relative to other sources of medical and health knowledge. And my point here is that of the quick indicators I looked at, none looked that good.

Can you not be bothered to look at the other points I made when evaluating the sites quality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> What is an alternative to Google search that has better search results than DDG? If I use Bing, will it use my data to customize my searches (I don't mind this too much anymore)?

Google sucks now for technical, science, math, and philosophy searches...

I haven't vetted or researched this at all, but I get a feeling that I am just getting advertisements or google sanitized reputation rankings on Google.

<comment><USER41> > _What is an alternative to Google search that has better search results than > DDG_

What's wrong with DDG results? I have found them to be pretty good, the results don't seem to be as sensitive to current events and viral trends but I can always find what I'm looking for. I do have to sometimes hit the "more results" button, but I definitely find myself on the 2nd or 3rd page of google particularly on technical or scientific topics.

<comment><USER60> Looking up astrophysics and ML stuff is usually pretty difficult. Same thing with Japanese folk tales (revenge plays of the 18th and 19th century) and poetry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> As someone who casually came across Examine.com a while back, I left quickly simply because the website didn't seem credible. As others have pointed out here, the website's design (while looks nice) does not send all the right signals that this is a well-established research website. I know it's not good to judge a book by its cover, but online, the cover is everything.

I know this sounds anal, but if they were to simply clean up the site a bit like by removing all the excessive icons and cleaning up their button text, they would come across as more credible.

Perhaps if they came across as more credible, people wouldn't be leaving and google wouldn't get the wrong signals.

Simple and quick list of changes that would make their site feel more trustworthy:

1\. Remove most if not all of the icons 2\. Do away with borders on non-white background - basically just make background white. 3\. Tone down your button text. "I'm ready to learn" sounds really shitty and obnoxious. 4\. Stop screaming with all caps buttons 5\. Consider a different logo entirely. 6\. Consider different color palette entirely 7\. Do away with old button styles 8\. Restore normal font size to sources - right now it makes me feel like you are hiding them. 9\. List author credentials on every content page 10\. Do away with ugly callout styles and excessive icon usage 11\. Re-work all the weird "Scientific Research on ___" tabs so that they do not require so much clicking to find basic info.

Overall, the site is just over-designed. I realize everything I say would make the site look more WebMD-like, but that's what triggers trust when it comes to medical info sites.

Lastly, I fully expect to be downvoted for this as design is not something that's very respected around these corners of the web, but I felt it was important to make that point since this is a perfect example of a website that while looks great, does the opposite of creating a trustworthy browsing experience.

<comment><USER4> Thanks - I will dig into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I wonder if the issue is liability- people suffering from various ailments are liable to Google their symptoms in hopes of finding an at-home cure instead of going to a doctor[0], and if this turns out badly they could conceivably turn around and try to sue Google for providing harmful medical advice[1]. De- ranking sites that provide medical advice, which aren't whitelisted well-known sites like Mayo Clinic or WebMD, might prevent this- or at least provide a better defensive position in the courtroom.

[0] Especially likely in countries with badly-structured healthcare systems, such as the U.S.

[1] Especially likely in countries with badly-structured legal incentives, such as the U.S.

<comment><USER63> Not in the US. Section 230 gives Google civil immunity (for any information provided by another information content provider), and even without it, they'd be protected by the First Amendment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Even though your website serves static pages, I don't think that's a good idea to hide all the contents when JavaScript is disabled... I'm surprised the "SEO analysts" did not notice that.

</comment><comment><USER65> I never knew examine.com and now I've taken a look. I've found a lot of pieces of information which are, as far as I know, legitimate and good to know.

</comment><comment><USER66> What about Duckduckgo.com results?

<comment><USER67> I found a couple random articles on examine on duckduckgo just now, I am now switching to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The other related issue is that no one can judge for something's legitimacy because it all comes down to opinion and "root beliefs".

This applies to any organization.

It also links with free speech and private companies.

</comment><comment><USER69> The content seems reasonable.

However, it looks really dodgy.

The layout, titles of articles, illustrations and just about everything makes it look like part of a cheap ad farm.

</comment><comment><USER70> Perhaps we need government regulation to stop near monopoly indexes like these from curating results so heavily.

<comment><USER41> Why? If google finds that curating their index in a particular fashion aligns with their business objectives, why should the government dictate how they do it?

It sounds like what we really need is a government maintained search index that is accountable to the people in a way that corporations are not.

<comment><USER70> At the end of the day it's an ideological argument. Google has an almost immeasurably large influence on the public commons and society. In my view anything that has such a large influence needs to be regulated to ensure the public interest and good.

Capitalism serves society which serves the people. In that order.

<comment><USER41> > _Google has an almost immeasurably large influence on the public commons and > society._

I disagree. Google does not have much in the way of meaningful influence over the public commons and any influence they do have is offered up voluntarily by the public to google. If google wants to curate specific content that is their prerogative and if people don't like it they should boycott and protest against google. Every single google product is non-essential unlike e.g. corporations that dominate food, real-estate, and medicine. If the people determine that access to an internet index is a human right, the government should create its own index instead of picking a particular corporation and effectively nationalizing its product.

> _In my view anything that has such a large influence needs to be regulated > to ensure the public interest and good._

I agree that tech companies need regulations, but those regulations should apply to all companies instead of being applied to companies that we personally disagree with.

<comment><USER70> I don't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means. I think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence over society. Information, and the control of access to information, is power. In many ways it's one of the most important resources in existence. Google is in such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it was broken up into the baby bells. As such, it will require unique regulatory action; though probably I would deal with through blanket legislation rather than a limited and targeted regulatory approach. As such, all indexes would be subject to the same rules.

It's not a novel idea that corporations must serve the public good. We have long past decided that this is something government facilitates. See, public utilities, common carrier status for telecoms, and hundreds of other industries.

We won't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position.

<comment><USER41> > _I don 't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means_

It means to personally disagree with a company's behavior or ideology.

> _I think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence > over society_

They don't have unchecked power and influence over society. Why do you think they do?

> _Information, and the control of access to information, is power_

That's a vague platitude, additionally, picking and choosing what google is allowed to curate does absolutely nothing to mitigate the amount of information they collect or control. Now, if you were proposing a law that prohibits companies from gathering certain types of information or storing it for more than a certain amount of time, or mandating that companies must allow you to delete or otherwise manage data collected about you, that would make sense (and I would personally agree with the sentiment behind such laws)

> _Google is in such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it > was broken up into the baby bells_

I am not necessarily opposed to breaking up google (i.e. alphabet), but that doesn't really hamper their ability to collect information about you, nor does it dampen google's search dominance, in fact, it is likely to amplify their dominance since it would force google.com to focus primarily on the core- search product rather than on cross-cutting concerns across all of alphabet.

> _We won 't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position._

Fine. Not sure what I'm supposed to take from that statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> because google is following their bottom line. they're getting paid push healthline and webmd to the top.

</comment><comment><USER5> Edit: I since looked at the MSG page linked as there first example in the OP, which was exactly what I expected based on the "for" comments. My original comment below:

\---

Well I read a few comments here saying it was click-baity and such, and other comments pushing back hard against that saying it's a detailed, trustworthy, researched site with citations.

So, I visited via an "about" link, then clicked through the menu to supplements (arbitrarily) then randomly to "creatine": lots of links in the claim-heavy content, but the two links I followed were to definitions, not to proof of the claims being made.

At the head it gives a researchers name, says their work was reviewed. Looks great so far.

>"Our evidence-based analysis on creatine features 746 unique references to scientific papers. " //

Wow, I'm expecting a massive citation section.

But, nothing, it's just a sales page, it doesn't _have_ citation supported information but it tells me it sells such information ...

Am I missing something, people Googling "creatine" are looking for the info, not a sales page offering to hook them up to the info. If other sources have the info directly then that would be a huge reason that Google wouldn't rank this examine.com site highly?

How many people google something looking for a for-pay resource that they, it seems, can't even sample first?

I'm not googling looking for a site to sign-up with to get emailed a factsheet either, even if it's free (which is a common fraud that I'm hugely wary of).

Ok, so now I'm looking at the questions, cool, click through - something about caffeine interactions with creatine, surely the link is to the cited scientific paper, nope just to another uncited page by the same person.

I'm not impressed upon that this is a site that should be high in google rankings; it seems low value unless you're looking to sign up to a resource -- like if I search online for "Steven King novels" I actually want the list, not a link to a library I can sign up to in order to find out at some time in the future some of the novels that could be on that list.

FWIW the summary given was good, readable, seemed like it might be true, but there's no reason to trust it at all. I'd rank it below even Wikipedia for the content I was presented. Whatever content they're selling behind those pages could be incredibly good, but that's not what SERPs are linking to so of course they don't rank for that, they rank for the shallow sales page with the same generic info on a million other pages.

<comment><USER4> Uhh - what?

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/) \- just scroll down.

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#effect- matrix](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#effect-matrix) \- that's not selling anything.

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#scientific- researc...](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#scientific-research) \- click on 'fully expand' \- there's all your science + citations.

And the references themselves have carrots next to each reference so you can click and see what is being referenced...

Here is an example of what IS being sold: [https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...](https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/erd/sneakpeek.pdf)

And that creatine caffeine page... [https://examine.com/nutrition/does- caffeine-counteract-creat...](https://examine.com/nutrition/does-caffeine- counteract-creatine/) \- literally has 7 references right at the bottom. Again, with carrots to see where the claim is.

<comment><USER5> I was on mobile. I just re-checked. No citations show on the page I'm looking at [https://examine.com/nutrition/do-you-need-to-cycle- creatine/](https://examine.com/nutrition/do-you-need-to-cycle-creatine/).

Apologies, [on desktop now] the entire visible prose section of the page has no citations _visible_. The weird expanding section hides all the citation links and somehow _I_ missed the references at the bottom of the mile long page because scrolling down and following links showed no references, and the pages linked showed no references.

Once you come to the second call to action button "send me the fact sheet" that wants an email address, I gave up looking for source-cited material (having already gone through a few links).

[https://ibb.co/jRYBRQD](https://ibb.co/jRYBRQD) \-- circle the references on that one for me?

You say ~"not selling anything" but the page above has a call to action button to get the info which links to this:

[https://ibb.co/RT4F87H](https://ibb.co/RT4F87H)

Which is a massively long call to action page -- which also isn't the supplement guide with the creatine citations that one might have expected when following the FAQ link -- trying to sell me a pile of reports for $150 (which is fine, but again if I got there from a google search I wouldn't ever go back to your site looking for similar info).

FWIW I've never been to the site before, have absolutely nothing against it, was on mobile (with standard plugins, ublock) and just called it as I saw it as a user coming to your site fresh with no preconception other than that seemingly half the people here felt it was junk and half the people felt it was the best thing since sliced bread (ie really good).

>literally has 7 references right at the bottom //

My opinion from a UX perspective: Your page structure needs changing, you have the vitally supporting info that gives credence to the info buried below the "other junk" parts that signal the end of the pages relevant content. You'd probably do well to break down the page completely, shorten the summary info and provide banner links to pages with un-collapsed content. The short summary page would include some primary citations in a highly visible manner (the first lines of the content having superscript links) OR would have have links to a full -- default visible -- page with highly prominent citations.

The other way to go would be to flag right up front "this bit has no citation links in" by providing an index to the page content -- the pages are super- long --right below the info box. This is the page structure:

* non-cited summary

* get a fact sheet (requires email)

* Things to Know & Note: links to other pages

* Cautionary notices

* Use notices

* get the same fact sheet (requires email)

* FAQ (citations on some linked pages)

* Human Effect Matrix (citations linked in titles of study names in the modals <\-- not at all obvious to me fwiw)

* Scientific Research on Creatine (this is the actual detailed info -- the page that was promised -- but it's all hidden [on mobile] for some reason).

Unless you're on hand to point out everyone's mistakes ;o) ... maybe it's just me that missed the good content, but I think your structure is at least in part to blame, YMMV of course (my email is in my profile if it's helpful). Perhaps you've looked at the site so long it all seems obvious and natural to you; that happens to me when making much simpler sites.

HTH.

<comment><USER4> Thanks - I will dig into this.

<comment><USER5> I think it will serve well to do so, FWIW I'll definitely visit the site again now I have been directed to the depth/breadth of content you have there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Google has no problem promoting government sanctioned media outlets promoting lies about drugs e.g . That cannabis is a gateway drug or it makes your brain shrink. Hypocrites.

</comment><comment><USER73> Why does there seem to be a pack of Examine employees swarming this comment section? That's not a good look, guys.

<comment><USER4> I'm the only employee here (co-founder).

You do realize we started off of reddit, have had tens of millions of visitors, and so it only makes sense there nerdy people who like what we do? [I have a comp engineering degree myself]

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> The core problem with examine, in my opinion, is that it embraces the attitudes that:

1\. A wide range of subtle personal, emotional and health problems can in principle be solved/mitigated by taking supplements and unregulated drugs.

2\. Positive effects from small-group trials are akin to mild recommendations to take a supplement, rather than to attempt to reproduce the effect in a larger trial.

The very premises upon which people base their visits to examine and other sites is flawed. Examine has zero incentive to address or repudiate them.

The success of their business is dependent on there being a perceived efficacy for supplements and unregulated drugs, and the idea that reading online about more varied and obscure supplements will eventually find you the one that fixes your problem. But for a lot of perceived problems, there will simply be no supplement-based solution.

<comment><USER4> 1\. This is literally untrue. We consistently say supplementation is last. Exactly one month ago: [https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0tmWZA1CG/](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0tmWZA1CG/)

2\. Yes, we know this. That is why we note # of trials, size of trial, size of outcome, and quality of trial.

> Success of their business.

Wrong. It's analyzing nutrition research. Here's an example: [https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...](https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/erd/sneakpeek.pdf)</comment></comment>


Next Wheel of Time Book: The first review - <AUTHOR> http://www.keepingthedoor.com/2009/07/31/next-wheel-of-time-book-the-first-review/

<comment><USER2> Take this message back to Sammael. Every death he has caused since waking, I lay at his feet and call due. Every murder he has ever done or caused, I lay at his feet and call due. He escaped justice in the Rorn M'doi, and at Nol Caimaine, and Sohadra. More of Lews Therin's memories, but the pain of what had been done there, the agony of what Lews Therin's eyes had seen, burned across the Void as if Rand's. But I will see justice done now. Tell him, no truce with the Forsaken. No truce with the Shadow.

Oh fuck off. How can people read this stuff? They're like romance novels for nerds.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is the last 10% always so hard? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a small side project that I am hoping to finish soon. I did 90% of the work: set up the infrastructure, wrote all the code, made it all work end to end. What's left is to polish it all and release, but I find it harder and harder to get motivated to do it. Has this ever happened to you and how did you get through it? <comment><USER2> One possibility is that your 90% is an overestimate, and that there is still more work to do than you consciously admit.

<comment><USER3> "Coding, for a counterexample, is '90 percent finished' for half of the total coding time. Debugging is '99 percent complete' most of the time. 'Planning complete' is an event one can proclaim almost at will." -Mythical Man Month, page 154

<comment><AUTHOR> I will order that book now. :)

<comment><USER4> Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're a typical geek and into the coding and "setting up technology" aspects of a project, it's natural that adding the shine, doing design tweaks, thinking about marketing, and the "soft" elements is going to be less fun and, therefore, "harder."

I suspect if you took a print designer who was asked to design and then code a Web site, they'd spend a ton of time on the design and enjoy it, but then find the "10%" of time taken to try and turn it into HTML and upload it someplace would be similarly difficult.

<comment><USER6> Exactly.

Polishing takes time, because it's similar to design: You spent hours trying how different options look or ensuring that the use flow is flawless. There are lots of front-end coders who consider this as the fun part, they like making things look good.

People enjoying backend programming doesn't realize this, they just think that it is the trivial part of the programming (and thus requiring a little amount of time), although totally different skills are needed.

Also, many UI libraries are very cumbersome for this kind of microtweaking. CSS is very good for it, but you still encounter lots of problems when you try to make just small change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Back when I took probabilistic combinatorics with Richard Karp, he discussed the "coupon collector problem": How long does it take someone to collect all twenty of a set of coupons, each of which appears randomly in a daily newspaper. It turns out that to get the last ones takes a good percentage of your time, since as you collect coupons, the chances of getting one that is new-to-you goes down. I think the structure of a lot of tasks has a similar diminishing returns quality. You happen to find some ingredients but getting every piece is going to be inherently harder (aside from any other factors you could name).

</comment><comment><USER8> When you're coding, progress is immediately rewarded by a mechanism in the brain that releases pleasurable chemicals whenever you hit a milestone. It's like playing Diablo II and hearing that "ding" when you level up. (At least, this is the case for me. Especially when writing new features or refactoring.)

But the reward system for the other work (release) isn't built into your brain yet. You can trudge through it, or you can try to hack together a reward system for your brain until it's burned into place. You can promise yourself that when you ship, you'll go out to a fancy dinner, buy a video game, or go to the beach. If you have a spouse / significant other, you can ask them to take you out to dinner if you ship (this is, in my opinion, one of the best perks of not being single).

Your brain isn't a bulging mass of sheer willpower, although it's pleasant to pretend it is. You've got to figure out a way to get yourself to do the things that you want yourself to do, as much as that sounds like it doesn't make sense.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule>

</comment><comment><USER10> Ya, the last 10% is where 50% of the work is actually done. That is the polishing. What you think is 90% is on paper only. In reality, there is more to be done..

</comment><comment><USER11> I've faced this situation before and still face it with my side-projects (most recently with <http://weekis.com>). I've realized something simple though. The last 10% got difficult because I took up 110% of work. As you progress through a project, you'll be tempted to add more features. The features may be small, but they still alter and prolong the course. Do less, work in iterations, and you'll be able to easily get past that last 10%.

</comment><comment><USER12> What I do to overcome that is to severely reduce the scope of version 1 and to push out releases (even private ones).

This works for client work and for my own projects, too.

Having a usable something pushed out completely change the remaining part, based on feedback.

To cut your scope and try to keep a very small part of it, you can use the following techniques:

\- <http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening>

\- <http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring>

\- <http://www.scrumalliance.org/resource_download/284> [pdf] -> most recommended

Another tip: try to find how handling the "polish/release/promote" bits could be fun for you. For me it was: learning a bit more of css/sass, monitoring the effect of promotion etc. There's almost always a way to do it in a fun fashion.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm exactly in this position myself. I'm 80%-90% done with a product but there's the last things that needs to be finished before I can launch, like configuration, setup procedures, small details etc.

I find it extremely hard to finish it. In my case I think it's simply because all the juicy problems have already been solved. It's darn boring coding when you need exactly what needs to be done, but you still need to do it.

A couple of tricks that worked pretty well for me. Change enviroment, if you work somewhere "fun" like a café or other public place that might give a much needed boost to finish it. Listen to interesting stuff while working, like podcasts and audio books. Visualize your product being done and all the positive things that will lead too in order to get some motiviation

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that usually when people say that 10% of the work take disproportionally longer than they expect, it's because they're measuring the wrong thing. If you find coding easy, then writing 90% of the code doesn't equate to 90% of the work. Polish is very hard, and in most cases it isn't 10% of the work, it's more likely something about half the work. After all, that's exactly what distinguishes your product and makes it worth using. Not sure if thinking about it that way makes it feel better, but at least for planning purposes, consider calling the polish phase 50% of the work.

</comment><comment><USER15> If it is user oriented, I would release the project and make sure you have a feedback loop to see how the project is being used by the end users. You are finished when they are happily using your project, you usually don't get to decide for them. If the project is presentation oriented, or if you only think you get one shot, then I usually step away, come back, make a punch list, and complete the project by completing the punch list.

</comment><comment><USER16> You may be afraid to ship, and the excuses are running out.

</comment><comment><USER17> That 10% is the difference between a hobby and a product.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think the last part is hard in the sense that there's a lot of work to be done. You've stated so yourself, "what's left is to polish it all and release".

I think there's a subconscious fear of something else that you need to get over. My guess is it's possibly a fear of rejection and/or failure once you do release it.

My only suggestion is to get over that fear and like the Nike commercials say, "JUST DO IT!"

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER19> For me, it's because most of the puzzle has been solved which just leaves grunt work. I hate grunt work. For web projects at least, it's like building bridges--you meet in the middle--and the other guys speak a different language. It's always off by an inch or two.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have run into this problem before. I find the best way to get motivated is to send it out to a few friends. Usually they look over it and tell me it's awesome, which is a great inspiration towards getting it out to that general audience.

</comment><comment><USER21> There's a saying in project management: "The first 90% of the work takes the first 90% of the time. And the last 10% of the work takes the next 90% of the time".

</comment><comment><USER22> It just feels like the last 10%. The first 90% was actually the first 50%. It just felt like 90% because it came in big chunks.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is the easiest 90% so easy?

<comment><AUTHOR> The first 90% was new stuff, where I got to play with new tech (new to me that is) and different constraints. What's left is the stuff I have done many times before. Also the last part involves a lot of UI work which can get tedious.

<comment><USER24> And that, sir, is your answer. As far as the enthusiastic part of you is concerned, the problem is solved. It's like doing math in early high school -- you've already figured the thing out, but now you have to transcribe your method to the appropriate format and attend to the stupid details that will get you full marks for "showing your work" when you hand in your homework sheet (or notebook or what have you). Nobody who actually liked math for its own sake ever liked doing that crap -- I know I never did, and it wound up being the main reason I had for dropping out of school. And that same attitude is still with me, and still something I have to put a lot of effort into overcoming -- "dropping out" before the payoff really isn't an option for an adult. So yeah, it's tedious, "unnecessarily" detailed and completely uninteresting, but somebody's got to do it -- and waiting for a volunteer to drop by probably isn't going to work. Close your eyes, hold your nose, and swallow your medicine as quickly as you can -- you don't want to spend too much time tasting it.</comment></comment></comment>


Jane Austen shaped a vision of personal flourishing that still feels modern - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/jane-austen-is-everything/534186/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> What always come through for me in Jane's writing is the love she has for humanity in general and her main characters in particular.

Yes, I get that her writing is consider by some to be about spoiled, stupid, privileged white people and why the heck should anyone care? But I feel like this is a red herring. She writes about a group that she has chosen (for whatever reason) and uses the interactions within that group to explore love, life, civility -- all the human foibles. The Regency nobility is her palette and humanity is her paint.

Let's talk plot and pacing? She's a master, imo. Her prose is beautiful and satisfying. Her books are fast reads, wonderfully skillful, funny and ironic. For those that have never read her, please do, you'll be doing yourself a favor. "Pride and Prejudice" or "Emma" are great places to start.

Yes, I guess I'm a fanboy. :D

<comment><USER3> "Gentry", surely, rather than "nobility". I remember no titles other than the obnoxious Lady Catherine de Burgh(?) in P&P; but then I'm not really a Janeite.

I don't think that you have to be a fanboy to enjoy Austen's novels. Some readers do seem to read her novels an awful lot, it's true.

(And I do not and will not believe that she would have tolerated the expression "personal flourishing" in her prose.)

<comment><USER4> > And I do not and will not believe that she would have tolerated the > expression "personal flourishing" in her prose.

No, I think she would have used it. It would be something the heroine would be chasing at the beginning of the book, and came to see as foolish as the book went on. (Or perhaps learned that it wasn't found by chasing it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a young man of low social acumen I particularly benefitted from the TV/film adaptations. The best are faithful to Austen's texts and contain added knowledge from the actors and directors. For instance they show something of how the author's scenes might manifest in terms of speech tone and facial expression. My favourites are:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_(1995_TV_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_\(1995_TV_series\)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility_\(film\))</comment>


What Exactly Did The US Government Ask Lavabit to Do? - <AUTHOR> http://xato.net/privacy/lavabit-shutdown/

<comment><USER2> It seems pretty clear to me (Occam's razor):

1) he was told he had to use the same monitoring process all the other providers were using

2) as a state secret, he couldn't reveal he was doing it ever to his users

3) if he complied he would totally undermine the nature of his service

Anything else is superfluous.

</comment><comment><USER3> So long as uninformed speculation is running loose... Lavabit's comment that "If you knew what I know about e-mail, you might not use it either." points in a email specific direction as opposed to simple sniffing of traffic.

Perhaps he is referring to the Stored Communications Act ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act) ). I haven't seen it referenced in coverage of this but the gist is under the right circumstances email that is older than six months and stored on a server that you don't own can be accessed without a warrant. Lavabit's encryption process as described would interfere with that. Not being able to comply AND being unwilling to take steps to comply in the future is the sort of thing that feds don't like.

This wasn't a big deal when it was passed in 1986 and small mail quotas were the norm but now with IMAP, multiple devices, and archiving it becomes a pretty big issue as you are talking about someone's electronic life instead of abandoned mailboxes.

AFAIK the issue of Fourth Amendment issues and SCA hasn't made it to the Supreme Court yet so interpretations vary depending on circuit.

<comment><USER4> Had it been because of the Stored Communications Act, would that explain why he couldn't talk about it?

<comment><USER5> The concept of a gag order is orthogonal to specific laws. But I believe it was the Patriot Act that gave the Executive the power to make NSLs with a similar effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In reality all it would take is a few lines of code code to log the user's original password which allows you to decrypt the private key which in turn allows you to receive and send mail as that user as well as access any stored messages."

Is this any different to writing a few lines of code to sniff the PreMasterSecret or even just a plain ol' MitM attack?

</comment><comment><USER7> Are there currently any alternatives, in terms of secure email providers? I never even knew it was a thing before the lavabit fiasco.

<comment><USER8> Could you trust any that remain operating, after the Lavabit fiasco?

<comment><USER9> Many people seem to forget that there are still countries where US laws are not in effect.

Even more interesting is the fact that even Lavabit's founder seemed to have overlooked this fact, and instead of relocating his servers and all the user data to Iceland, Norway or New Zealand, he chose to shut it down for good.

Why?

<comment><USER10> Because if he got a NSL requesting a backdoor on his servers, then it doesn't matter where the servers are located. What matters where he personally and his company are located. And you can ask Snowden how fun it is to be persona non grata.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hypothetical question:

What if the founder of Lavabit took the documents that the US government sent him and gagged him with and put them somewhere where they could be stolen or illegally accessed? For example, what if he put them on a computer with a public facing ip address, or even left them on his desk in his office? If he could have plausible deniability couldn't they get stolen and leaked without him really getting in trouble?

This may seem like a stretch, but when you consider the government is using secret interpretations of laws how is it any different than what they are doing?

<comment><USER12> >This may seem like a stretch, but when you consider the government is using secret interpretations of laws how is it any different than what they are doing?

The difference is that they have the guns, the tanks, and the full weight of the Department of Justice behind them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As long as we don't have a statement from either the government or Lavabit, we can only speculate. The most reasonable thing is then of course to assume the worst - complete surveillance of all customers. The rest is pretty much details.

<comment><USER14> Until we get someone to risk going open with this we won't ever know. You can't fight a secret law in secret very well. But only people served with a secret demand has standing to challenge it. The barriers are too high as long as the Government can keep the secret. Once it's out of the bag you have more options in court. But you also risk everything they can do to you in secret.

Secrets have no place in a "democracy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kickstarter idea: $xxx,xxx for the network operator who sniffs network traffic that discloses the basis for the Secret TSA ID law. Goose, gander, etc. I'd happily kick in 1%.

<comment><USER16> Accepting the money would be a death sentence, essentially. Nobody would do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A device or piece of software designed to sniff the mail server to mail server connections would also be an option for broad based surveillance. Only a handful of mail providers (like Google) have the option to encrypt traffic server to server. Most mail servers transmit messages in the clear to each other and only encrypt the server to client side.

<comment><USER10> > Only a handful of mail providers (like Google) have the option to encrypt > traffic server to server.

SSL/TLS is available for everyone.

> Most mail servers transmit messages in the clear to each other and only > encrypt the server to client side.

I hear this again and again, but I can't really find any data that confirms this claim one way or another. Anyone on HN running their own mailserver wanting to comment on how large portion of connections get encrypted?

<comment><USER18> The entire email transation between a sender and a recipient usually looks like this:

Sending Client [--A---> Sender SMTP Server [--B---> Recipient SMTP Server [--C--> Recipient IMAP/POP server <\---D----] Recipient Client

Connections A and D are easily possible to encrypt, provided your provider provides SSL/TLS on their SMTP and IMAP/POP servers. Most usually do. Connection C is usually local to a single machine, or for large email providers will go over an intranet of some kind.

What is at issue is connection B, which goes over the public internet. That is almost always in clear text, as most of this infrastructure was designed 30 years ago and hasn't evolved much since then. If you are sending email within a single provider (e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com to firstname.lastname@example.com), such delivery can be trivially encrypted.

<comment><USER10> > That is almost always in clear text, as most of this infrastructure was > designed 30 years ago and hasn't evolved much since then

Email has definitely evolved since it's inception. STARTTLS (RFC3207) is the relevant standard here.

<comment><USER19> I don't suppose anyone has any stats (or even educated guesses) about how many mail servers you'd not be able to connect/send to if you enforced TLS connections from your outgoing SMTP server (as in, refused to send data to servers that didn't respond appropriately to a STARTTLS command)?

<comment><USER20> Having run a mail server that used to have a self-signed cert and that now doesn't offer starttls at all, I can tell you I experienced zero failed deliveries (well, nobody has ever complained, and I still get all the mail I expect to get). Maybe incoming mail will use starttls if available, but if it's not (mitm, fake mx record, etc.) the remote server isn't going to stop. It just delivers in plaintext.

I mean, it's trival to see this is true. Open up your mail server's configuration file. Where's the line that specifies trusted root CAs for relaying to remote servers? Oh, there isn't one? So how does it verify the chain of trust?

(I realize I didn't quite address your question. Solid answer: at least one. But I'm fairly confident the number of server configured as you suggest is extremely close to zero.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article gives no new information, it is stupid.

Now i will speculate:

As long as he does not know his customers passwords he can't retroactively view the customers mails, once the mails have been encrypted and the plain- text thrown away the stuff is unreachable.

So the US gov probably wanted him to save his customers passwords when they logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right and the important point being that this isn't just about sniffing his network, it is the most invasive surveillance possible that would make his whole business a lie. The point of the article was to go through the logic to show that this would have been the only possibility for what they requested him to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article seems to speculate on things that are not necessarily true. It's possible that the government simply told him that he had to be able to supply information arbitrarily on demand without an explicit warrant. This does not mean that they required him to install their own software on his machines.

Of course, one certainly still argue that this a line that the Government should not cross - I'd wholeheartedly agree with that. However, statements such as "We've had a couple of dozen court orders served to us over the past 10 years, but they've never crossed the line," do not imply that the government required him to install software or otherwise compromise his security in a way that he was not already able to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually the whole point, in the past he complied with warrants because there wasn't much he could supply in the first place. Yes there is a lot of reading between the lines here, but there was a clear line they crossed. In other words, he would no longer be able to just turn over a bunch of encrypted emails, this was a full compromise of the security he had in place.

If you look at the quotes he made, he strongly hints that this affects all his users, that they want to collect data for later review, and that they would have the ability to decrypt any emails they wanted. Yes, there is a lot of speculation going on here, but it is based on facts--what they technically would be able to do based on how Lavabit worked.

Edit: this wasn't just some casual speculation, I did quite a bit of research on this and carefully reviewed every statement he has given to the press. I carefully analyzed their infrastructure and encryption techniques. I'm fairly confident with my conclusions.

<comment><USER22> What I don't see is these three statements:

1\. Force Lavabit to provide their private SSL keys and route all their traffic through a government machine that performed a man-in-the-middle style data collection; 2\. Change their software to subvert Lavabit's own security measures and log emails after SSL decryption but before encrypting with the users' public keys; or 3\. Require Lavabit to install malicious code to infect their own customers with government-supplied malware.

It sounds like he already has the ability to comply with demands for information. I don't see where this new stipulation by them requires any meaningful change to his existing infrastructure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, that's the whole point. He _wasn 't_ able to provide them with what they wanted, and doing so meant that he either had to allow them to intercept messages (or passwords) on Lavabit's application servers, which is the only place they could be intercepted. Doing so would require either impersonating their servers through a MitM or code changes on their server.

I do acknowledge in the article that this could simple be an overhyped reaction to placing a black box on his network, but the statements Levison made seem to indicate otherwise. And hey I could be wrong about this whole thing, it still is largely speculation based on circumstantial evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Modal Programming - <AUTHOR> http://stevenjewel.com/2014/04/modal-programming/

<comment><USER2> I think this article has rediscovered the very old technique of writing pseudocode[1] and given it a new name ("modal programming").

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback (I'm trying to improve my writing, so I really appreciate the comments.) You're right, it's not a new technique by any means. The difference between this and psuedocode is that when I'm done, about 90% of the code is already written and working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A similar approach is used in TDD. Before implementing a library, you first write a test case which uses the library and invent the necessary function names & parameters. Then you implement the functions to make the test work. This way the test drives the development of the library.

This pattern produces a simple interface and a complex implementation, e.g., the "MIT approach" ([http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is- better.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html))

</comment><comment><USER4> Start with a low resolution and iterate to higher resolutions.</comment>


A markdown/pandoc previewer with fast (mathjax) re-rendering, built with node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yyjhao/markmon

<comment><USER2> good job.

i'm guessing some people would appreciate having directions for how they could put this on a shared-hosting i.s.p. account, like hostmonster, dreamhost, etc.

-bowerbird</comment>


Ask HN: Non-valley startup guy. How do I find an entrepreneur community? - <AUTHOR>

I live in Jacksonville, FL. It's not known for its booming tech scene. Although there are a few folks doing some interesting things, I don't know anyone in the area that might be experiencing some of the same things as I am and no one I can sit down and have a beer with and talk shop with someone who understands.<p>Any ideas, online or otherwise? <comment><USER2> I launched a meetup when I moved to a new city that targeted self-starter developers of any sort. I knew some folks in that category would be entrepreneurs naturally or that I could convince them :-)

You can launch your own with us. I'm trying to template our once-a-month freeform hackathon approach so anyone (like you) can launch a "Code Until Dawn" meetup in their town. * <http://codeuntildawn.com> * <http://meetup.com/codeuntildawn>

I was and still in truth am a beginner developer, and I took that time to continue learning and asking for advice. It was one of the best decisions I've made professionally.

The community may be disparate in your city, but you can stand as a magnet for the right kinds of folks just by making an effort to organize.

</comment><comment><USER3> In short, go to things. Lots. I've talked about this a bit here: <http://bit.ly/MbQOkf>

If there are no things, start hosting.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://nreduce.com/> is pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> Meetup.com

<comment><USER6> Yep. Get a paid Meetup.com account and start a "FOO Area Startup Group" meetup, give it all the correct tags, and once a few people join, start doing meetups. They don't necessarily have to be anything fancy, just meeting at a Barnes & Noble or Starbucks for coffee is a good way to get started.

Go from there. Practice marketing the group the way you'd market a business. Mine LinkedIn for leads, cold-email people, ask for referrals, all the normal stuff.

Edit: Almost forgot... use the "Hackers & Founders" name, and be sure to join the national Hackers & Founders mailing list. When you have meetings, announce them here on HN, use Twitter, G+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

If there isn't much of an entrepreneurial scene locally, you might not be so much _finding_ one as helping _create_ one. Good luck.</comment></comment>


Panasonic's human blinkers help people concentrate in open-plan offices - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2018/10/17/panasonics-wearable-blinkers-concentrate-open-plan-offices-technology/ <comment><USER2> Though appropriate, since it serves much the same function, the choice of the term blinkers seems rather unfortunate given its origin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_(horse_tack)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_\(horse_tack\)).

(Then again, given the number of workplaces that reportedly treat their employees like livestock, perhaps the term is fitting after all.)</comment>


Raspberry Pi Available for Purchase - <AUTHOR> http://www.raspberrypi.org unfortunately, the shop websites seem to be down at the moment... <comment><USER2> The RS website just seems to be taking details atm, there is no purchase process available.</comment>


Support is the unsexy thing that no one wants to talk about - <AUTHOR> http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Everyone-wants-to-own-the-relationship-until-they-actually-do.aspx

<comment><USER2> That's why most companies have a terrible customer support...</comment>


No Deal, No Review – No to Elsevier's Unfair Deals - <AUTHOR> http://www.nodealnoreview.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some previous discussion on HN about Elsevier's policies: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161538) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187315)</comment>


The two-value syntax of the CSS Display property - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/10/the-two-value-syntax-of-the-css-display-property/ <comment><USER2> Unrelated, but I am looking forward to the "zero-value" display:

        display: contents

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-display- contents](https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-display-contents)

Will make for far easier separation of style and structure, especially with flex/grid layouts.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, wasn't aware of this. I'm just thinking about it though and I think I'm missing the usecase. If it ignores the parent element for styling, why not just not have the parent element at all? Or is this for situations where you don't have control over the markup but you do over the CSS?

<comment><USER4> For example, let's say you want to create a DOM structure which groups together other elements in an outline like structure, so this:

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Becomes this:

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Hi world!

Lorem ipsum...

Now you can easily select any h2-level group (heading and elements "belonging" to that heading) by just using the `.h2-group` selector. To my knowledge, there is no way to do this with css selectors alone, so you need the divs, or some other element for grouping. But layout might be getting screwed up because of those divs, so add `.h-group { display: contents; }` and it's like those divs were never there to begin with. Problem solved!

<comment><USER5> This _should_ be accomplished with the more semantic sectioning tags, i. e.
 and
.

It's possible that there are other examples where this isn't possible, but I can't think of any right now. Tags can also be nested, and levels can be selected using CSS dsecendant and child combinators.

(This obviously wouldn't change OP's point)

<comment><USER4> Ironically, I actually used section tags in my original snippets but changed to divs before posting simply because I didn't want the discussion to turn into this-vs-that. :o)

In any case, the point of course is that at times these groups are added to create a kinship between elements that is otherwise not possible to express via css selections, or because it just makes manipulation easier, and you don't want these grouping elements to participate in layout but the children should. In those cases, `display: contents` is the knight in shining armor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Is there a valid reason for not splitting this into 2 properties?

I mean, this has always been a pain, and it's great that they are refactoring it. But the way a block behaves and the way it treats its children really are two distinct concepts.

If I have a list of items, I may very well want the same "outer display" and a different "content display", and yet, I'll have to define outer display everywhere.

Not a massive issue, but display: block flow could be a shorthand for display- outer: block; display-content: flow. In the same way margins or padding work...

<comment><USER6> The existing values for "display" have long conflated "inside" and "outside" display models, so it can't really be separated now.

But at one point there was a proposal to add two new properties, "display- inside" and "display-outside". And "display" was then redefined as a shorthand which combined both. This have been removed ([https://www.w3.org/TR/css- display-3/#changes-wd](https://www.w3.org/TR/css-display-3/#changes-wd)) with this justification:

 _Removed display-inside, display-outside, and display-extras longhands, in favor of just making display multi-value. (This was done to impose constraints on what can be combined. Future levels of this specification may relax some or all of those restrictions if they become unnecessary or unwanted.)_

It seems this is to restrict combinations with "display:none" and "display:content" and the various "display:table-*".

<comment> d--b Thanks much for digging that up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What we really need is the ability to specify these two properties _as separate CSS properties_. This problem has been the bane of writing reusable components for me. If I want a context to override a component's _outer_ display, I have to go check and make sure I'm preserving its _inner_ display, which is an incredibly fragile practice and prone to being messed up later.

<comment><USER8> That really does seem like the much saner approach, doesn't it? Like, keep display for outer display as it has the history, and use "flow" for the inner. flow: flex, flow: grid, flow: normal, or something. But HN comments aren't in charge of specs, so I look forward to screwing this up for years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Worthy read—-Learn CSS the Pedantic Way (by Mikito Takada): [http://book.mixu.net/css/](http://book.mixu.net/css/)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you wish you'd known to get your first 100 customers? - <AUTHOR> For those under 100 customers:
What do you feel would be helpful to know right now to get your first 100 customers?
For those with 100+ customers:
Was it important to know who your competitors are? Or did you ignore them?
Did you do a product launch? Where/how did you launch (e.g. did a press release + outreach, Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt)? Did you consider it successful? Or a flop?
How did you determine your price point? Did you have any pricing strategy?
What was your go-to-market strategy after the launch? <comment><USER2> Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/e2itn7/saas_found...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/e2itn7/saas_foundersdevelopers_what_do_you_wish_youd/)</comment>


J.P. Morgan Flags $2 Billion Trading Loss - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396511420792008.html

<comment><USER2>
      The Journal reported in April that hedge funds and other
      investors were making bets in the credit-default swap
      markets to take advantage of volatility that stemmed from
      the trades done by Mr. Iksil, who worked out of the Chief
      Investment Office.

After everything that's happened, they're still allowed to play the CDS lottery? I'm really disappointed regulators haven't put a stop to this.

For a great insight into the role of CDS'es in the recent economic events, I highly recommend this documentary:

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall- str...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/)

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of a quote from Lawrence Lessig in this talk at Occupy DC:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZPB6DqCO6M#t=08m29s>

"It is the first time in American history where we have seen a collapse followed by no fundamental reregulation of the financial services sector because they have the power to block change from either the Democrats and Republicans, because they can say to the Democrats and to the Republicans, 'If you don't back us we guarantee you will lose in the next election.'"

I don't know history or politics well enough to judge the truth of the statement, but if he's right, that's pretty scary.</comment></comment>


Software-Defined Networking at Riot Games - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/running-online-services-riot-part-iii-part-deux <comment><AUTHOR> One of the authors here. Happy to answer any questions.</comment>


Hacking the System - <AUTHOR>

How can we all together _hack_ the system for our own good?<p>(With respect to issues like 1. Security of Women 2. Bribery etc. )<p>(Context: Whats been happening India) <comment><USER2> When OS (Politicians/Govt) layer of your system is inefficient, old, slow as hell and has pathetic security subsystem, you need to format the system and install a new one based on today's need. It is a drastic step but a much better then keep on patching the current system and hope that we can get rid of this hell.</comment>


Show HN: Nanosupply.co – Free and open sharing of nanomaterials - <AUTHOR> http://nanosupply.co

<comment><AUTHOR> Please leave your comments/ideas/suggestions about nanosupply.

current stack is nginx, Laravel, MySQl, Elastic Search, Bootstrap 3, jQuery

Also if you like this project, I am available for work so send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

thanks!</comment>