Stockholm first city to get mobile 5G network in 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelocal.se/20160123/stockholm-first-to-get-mobile-5g-network-in-2018 <comment><USER2> Even the PR people from Telia and Ericsson (who are partnering to do this again, just like how they launched "the world's first 4G network in Stockholm in 2009") say (when interviewed by Swedish media) that this will be similar to the 4G preview/test. So what we can expect to see is city-wide coverage and a few thousand heavily subsidised end-user 5g terminals (probably USB 3.0 modems at first - at the 4G preview in 2009 they came from Huawei.) Making Stockholm/Tallinn-wide coverage a reality with that few users isn't super costly.

Ericsson are happy because they get a realistic field test of usage, handover between base stations etc. They also get a credible proof of concept for further sales.

Telia are happy because they get to project the apparance that they are ahead of the curve to their customer base.

Telia and Ericsson have had this symbiosis thing going on for 100+ years now, btw. It seems to be working quite well for them both.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if, like 4G, it actually won't be 5G [1]

[1] 2010 [http://gizmodo.com/5680755/the-dirty-secret-of- todays-4g-its...](http://gizmodo.com/5680755/the-dirty-secret-of- todays-4g-its-not-4g)

<comment><USER4> Anecdata: long long time ago (~2005), living in central Europe, I used to use a direct-connect p2p client where you could connect to the "hubs", see the members and see the actual file lists of those members. I quickly learnt that Swedish hubs and people with [Telia] prefix in their nick were the best bets - getting stuff from them was like downloading on a LAN.

I believe those guys are able to deliver it.

<comment><USER2> Hehe. And we (Swedes) felt the opposite when getting connected to people from the rest of Europe. :)

(I'm only slightly confused that you learned to recognize the Telia prefix rather than the B2/BBB/Bredbandsbolaget prefix. Telia was predominantly ADSL with like 15/1 and B2 was Ethernet with either 100/10 or 10/10.)

<comment><USER5> From my experience, Telia was always known as quality, and BBB as the lowest tier crap. The routing quality difference was huge. Although yes, the Telia connections were business/edu class.

<comment><USER2> Strange.

BBB actually (sorry, I simplied above) had two types of customers, ADSL and Fiber/Ethernet. Maybe the routing to eastern Europe was different.

Hmm, actually: I do know that Telia Networks invested quite a lot in eastern Europe during the past two decades. Perhaps what you were seeing was a result of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still want to see the potential of 4G realized. In most places its illogical to want to run fiber to the home to everyones house when you could just setup cell towers at the 20-40mb rates 4G usually gets and provide everyone with Internet that way.

For most people, their phone really should be their router and gateway. Getting new-classification broadband to everyone would be so incredibly cheap if all we had to do was give everyone 4G modems and let them use unlimited 40mb/s data over them, but its blatantly apparent the spectrum mafia is holding technology back - we need vastly more spectrum liberated for public consumption, especially that which is corporate controlled today, so that we can better provide the world with wireless connectivity. Right now the allocated spectrum is like a tap barely open where if regulation would let us we could get so much more bandwidth out of if archaic ideas about the private ownership of mathematical patterns would go away.

<comment><USER7> What kind of latency would people get on 4G vs. fiber? People don't know what to call it, but they _do_ care about lag in voice/video calls and games.

<comment><USER6> Having used 4g for calls all the time, that has never been a problem. Conferencing is fairly latency tolerant.

Games are always the exception, but I'm not sure how many would truly value low latency in games over the aggregate savings of millions not having to supply and support wired uplinks in the last mile.

But I'm not really talking about places you already get 20+ mbps by wire - I'm talking about places like my grandmothers town in rural PA where 4G coverage and speed can be up to 10x faster than the low rate dsl / cable options available to her ranging from 1.5 to 10 mbit. Whenever I visit sprint 4g is 50mb/s and her best landline option is 10mbit residential cable from the township.

<comment><USER7> _Conferencing is fairly latency tolerant._

It's easy to say this until you've experienced six remote people all trying to say something and, because of the latency, nobody knows who actually started first :). Also when you haven't tried something like Mumble.

[http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page](http://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page)

<comment><USER6> I run my own mumble server and regularly conference with people from Europe (and my server and I are in the US). In my experience, 4G doesn't have the insane latency variance 3G does - its usually only around 200-300ms. If you are having half second or more delay it gets really hard to hold a conversation, but there is also the factor that people adapt fairly alright to asynchronous verbal communication - people with good manners get in the habit of waiting for responses. People on my server usually get 150-200ms just from the hop across the bay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As far as I understand, 5G will require IPv6 support. That will drive IPv6 adoption.

<comment><USER9> Even so, it doesn't mean web servers have to adopt IPv6 IPs. They can stay with IPv4 addresses as they do now.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but as more and more phones go 5G, they may see their traffic drop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, what is 5G anyway?

<comment><USER11> 5G requirements:

\- 1-10Gbps connections to end points in the field (i.e. not theoretical maximum)

\- 1 millisecond end-to-end round trip delay (latency)

\- 1000x bandwidth per unit area

\- 10-100x number of connected devices

\- (Perception of) 99.999% availability

\- (Perception of) 100% coverage

\- 90% reduction in network energy usage

\- Up to ten year battery life for low power, machine-type devices

[http://networks.nokia.com/news-events/insight- newsletter/art...](http://networks.nokia.com/news-events/insight- newsletter/articles/5g-is-moving-beyond-the-hype)

Many new industries like automation outside factories (self driving cars, drones, smart grids, etc.) want more reliability, flexible adaption, lower latency and more coverage, everyone wants more bandwidth.

<comment><USER12> Do you know how they're accomplishing higher bandwidth? Is it adding more frequencies (such as bands used by the navy when there's no ships around?) or is it more complex than that?

<comment><USER13> I am not sure but the way from UMTS to LTE was purely technical. In UMTS the sender just spams out the signal for all receivers and you need to retransmit more because the error correction keeps kicking in. So the more devices in a cell the higher the latency, variance and lower the bandwidths.

With LTE each device is measured by the tower about how well it can receive data and the tower time slices specifically for this device. So when the tower sends there, it does not send to any other device.

(That's my understanding of the situation)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lab-made diamonds: It's a giant scam, but you're still going to buy one - <AUTHOR> http://iwantwhatitsworth.com/blog/diamond-foundry-lab-made-diamonds-scam/ <comment><USER2> I only want a synthetic diamond if it is monoisotopic and has 10x the usual heat conductivity.

</comment><comment><USER3> when i was younger, i hoped that in the future lab-made diamonds would make it feasible to buy one the size of a baseball for not that much money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mined diamonds. It's a giant scam but you're still going to by one.</comment>


I Want My Slice of the Pie: A Look at Startups and Ad Spending - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/startups-and-ad-spending <comment><USER2> Ha, I knew I read that post already over at [http://www.darrenherman.com/2007/11/25/i-want-my-slice-of- th...](http://www.darrenherman.com/2007/11/25/i-want-my-slice-of-the-pie-a- look-at-startups-and-ad-spending/)</comment>


Alarm over talks to implant UK employees with microchips - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/11/alarm-over-talks-to-implant-uk-employees-with-microchips <comment><USER2> Right.

So, without the implant, someone who wants to break in to my place of work has to steal my card or convince me to give it to them.

With the implant, someone who wants to break in to my place of work has to cut it out of my finger/wrist/whatever.

Well, I think I'm done with this interview. Best of luck, chaps.

<comment><USER3> A bank of mine, years ago, proposed me to move to their biometric system on their ATMs. Faster, easiet, no PIN to remember.

They also said "safer". I told them that I much prefer to give the gentleman with a baseball bat my PIN then my hand.

They told me not to worry because it did not work with a detached hand. I asked them if the gentleman with the saw also knew it.

I am still with a PIN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like the question to ask here is _why_? What on Earth are the benefits to implanting RFID chips into an employee to begin with that cannot be achieved via traditional means like badges or smart cards?

This seems like a huge hassle for employees themselves, especially if they decide to change employers and both for whatever reason want you to be chipped - so now you have multiple chips implanted or have to remove one and replace it with another. Again, for what benefit?

I'm not even going to get into tinfoil hat privacy territory, because it's not like these are going to be active RFID chips so they'll need to be in close proximity of a reader to be picked up. Worries like that are as far fetched as the people who think the government is spying on you using RFID equipped credit cards or transit passes (which annoyingly has led to most wallets these days having a small faraday cage woven into them, I literally couldn't find a wallet I liked a couple months ago that didn't have some RFID-blocking feature and it drives me nuts).

<comment><USER5> > What on Earth are the benefits to implanting RFID chips into an employee to > begin with that cannot be achieved via traditional means like badges or > smart cards?

No fan of the technology per-se, but presumably they can't be lost or stolen.

<comment><USER6> > _No fan of the technology per-se, but presumably they can 't be lost or > stolen._

Yep, just like fingerprints can't be stolen. Wait, what are you doing with that knife?!

<comment><USER7> You don't even need a knife for fingerprints, you can lift them off of whatever that person has touched.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but you can use a knife for biometrics and implanted chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ... And this isn't even the Onion. I always have the feeling that the UK is obsessed with surveillance and security in an even creepier way than the US, but I can't quite put my finger on the reason. It's not like the US and other countries aren't trying very hard to control and monitor their citizens, it just feels a lot more dystopian in the UK. Maybe it's because movies/shows/stories that are dystopian are set in the UK more?

</comment><comment> King-Aaron Fry: What if I don't want to be a delivery boy?

Leela: Then you'll be fired...

Fry: Fine.

Leela: ...out of a cannon, into the sun

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure there is some novel combination of technologies out there that would be a net positive to the employees. But rather than putting a bit of work into finding it, they propose the cheapest, privacy invasive, spookiest solution I can image. I guess we should be glad they didn't suggest a large tattoo on the forehead. With the right camera's you could verify your employees tattoo before they entered the building.

If they have of come up with something like FIDO2 embedded in the arm, something that allows multiple identities and allows me to select which identity is released by just thinking the right thing (perhaps move a muscle or two) it would be useful to all sorts of things. (Finally a real solution for the password problem.) Gee - I might even volunteer to pay for it myself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Coming soon to an airport near you: the e-implant gates.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone who submits to this, and allows their employer to perform a surgical procedure upon them in order for them to work, needs their head examining. I'd personally be straight out of the door for a new job.

<comment><USER11> That's not how they get you though. They get desperate people to do it, then build momentum in the number of people with it. Then sooner or later everyone has one.

<comment><USER10> That's definitely how these things are played, no argument at all. But, this is one of the things I would never, ever compromise on. Allow my personal being to be violated for a job. Never.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of the clothing you buy has RFID in tags sewn into the item. If you don't know this and don't remove these tags, you find that they will set off the exit/entry scanner at various stores unrelated to where the item was originally purchased.

I have a pair of shorts that this happens to on a regular basis. I cannot be bothered to remove the RFID tag at this point.

So if RFID tags are inserted into your body, how often will you trigger such scanners when you are doing your normal business?

<comment><USER13> What's the easiest way to detect this? Would an NFC phone app work in all cases?

<comment><USER14> Easiest way to detect if there's an RFID tag is to put your shorts in the microwave for 10 seconds. Jokes aside, the only cases I know of where the RFID tag is sewn into the item permanently, is major Hotel chain towels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You'd never sell this to people unless it was part of some bigger system that let you load your travel pass, building access, car access, maybe even contactless payment systems onto it. It'd have to be universal, completely reliable and completely risk-free.

And it'd have to come with some substantial therapy for my proper anxiety- disorder-level phobia of needles. I need that therapy anyway because I have to be given drugs before I'll let anybody stick a needle in me for any reason at all, but fortunately nobody's making a giant chip-inserting machine compulsory.

<comment><USER16> They also have to convince folks it is safe. The sealant used for the pet chip injectors was causing cancer in animals for a while. Also, I dare anyone with this implant to go within 500 meters of Defcon or Blackhat. Everything unhackable is hackable there.

<comment><USER16> What timing. See related [1]

[1] - [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3k9q49/how-i- lost...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3k9q49/how-i-lost-and- regained-control-of-my-microchip-implant)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the thing that is lacking here is the human user UI to go with this. What I mean is some sci-fi like vision overlay that allows you to approve someone reading the implant. If they had that and it means I never needed to carry an ID, credit cards, cash etc. it would be very interesting.

<comment><USER18> Yes please technology take over my agency! I've been squandering and handing it over for decades but please it's not been enough!! And since you're so listening technology can you make me into a flying buzzing drone, any size works!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't implanting something in a human be considered surgery? I doubt getting a licensed medical staff to insert and remove the things will come cheap.

<comment><USER20> These procedures are mostly done by tattoo shops. From small RFID tags to matchbox sized electronics. It's just considered a form of piercing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have no issue with this. I work at a place where I carry a card and have to use fingerprint scanners. Fingerprint scanners are very moody. I suspect temperature is one factor, coming in from the cold with cold fingers. There are occasions where the things just won't allow me in. They're also revolting. Sometimes you put your finger on and it slides in some sort of oily goop. On other occasions you can feel a roughness of some dried crud. Undoubtedly a viral and bacterial hot spot.

<comment><USER22> I'd rather wash my hands than have some chip implanted in me.

<comment><USER21> Waste of time, waste of resources, inconvenient, intrusive - chips can be more easily removed than fingerprints.</comment></comment></comment>


How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world's most boring lunch - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/7/20887473/norway-norwegian-lunch-sandwich-matpakke <comment><USER2> I'm a Norwegian, and where I work I have the option of eating a big warm lunch, but I very rarely do. I've noticed that eating a big lunch makes the following hour extremely unproductive, so for the last year I have made a matpakke with 3 slices of bread. Normal _pålegg_ is liver paste, cheese or peanut butter. I can easily go through my lunch in just few minutes, and even while working at the same time.

My thought process is that I'd rather be more productive during working hours and go home early, than waste 2 hours in the middle of the day on a heavy calorie lunch.

<comment><USER3> No offense, but honestly your lunch sounds depressing as hell.

I never understood this nordic lifestyle I saw in Scandinavia, Benelux and Northern Germany where people refuse to take a proper lunch break and just eat some random cold food in front of their computer for the sake of _productivity_ for their employer. It's just depressing to see and unhealthy in the long term.

In southern Europe(Austria) having a walk to the bistro for a warm lunch with freshly cooked quality food, away form my desk is not only healthy but also gives me a refreshing physical, mental and morale boost.

Sitting glued to my chair in front of the computer for 8 hours straight is not only unhealthy but would just burn me out quickly.

<comment><USER4> It's kind of sad to see the meal culture eroding in other parts of the world. The "quickly ingest some food at your desk so you can keep working" mentality has taken hold. I'm French, and at my first office job - almost 15 years ago - the entire office was empty from noon till 2p.

People would go get their kids at school, have lunch with them at home, and bring them back before returning to work. Or child free people would go have a nice lunch out together. I personally would go back to my apartment and cook with my girlfriend. It was really nice. Adding to that, French companies have to give you a "ticket restaurant" if they don't provide you lunches, which is essentially a 10 euro or so coupon that you can use at any restaurant, or even to buy food in grocery stores, so you get a lot of flexibility.

It was all very pleasant. I haven't worked in France in many years, and I hear from friends that this culture is eroding, and places that still follow this kind of pace are getting rarer and rarer.

In my current team (US), we all take an hour long lunch break all together every day. That is a surprising thing to most other people at the company, and I suspect we started doing that because many of us in the team are European.

<comment><USER5> > It's kind of sad to see the meal culture eroding in other parts of the > world. The "quickly ingest some food at your desk so you can keep working" > mentality has taken hold.

I really preferred eating at my desk while clocked in to eating a slow, luxurious lunch while clocked out. The slow lunch just means less time for the things you actually want to do.

<comment><USER6> But taking a break with decent food is exactly one of the things I want to do

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but not everybody shares that preference. Either is good. Take a break with decent lunch. Do it with colleagues if you want. It's fine. Or if you want, stay at work and eat something simple while you keep working. That's fine too _if that 's what you want to do_. But this criticizing people for their preferences is just annoying and unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Former Norway resident here, 3yrs.

Their lunch traditions are definitely basic, as they were not a wealthy country for hundreds of years before striking oil in the 60s.

The point to remember is that while the fare is basic, the quality is typically very good. Their cheese is extra creamy and nutritious, as is the bread. The same goes for the milk.

Many Europeans won't drink the milk here in the States because the quality tends to be much lower, due to feed/living conditions for livestock. Garbage in = garbage out.

<comment><USER9> > as they were not a wealthy country for hundreds of years before striking oil > in the 60s.

I was surprised by that statement and had to look it up and it was, of course, false. Norway was a wealthy country back to the 1800s: sources: [https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/no-norway-was-not-a-poor- count...](https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/no-norway-was-not-a-poor-country- before-oil-was-discovered-b58dd365e5) and [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the- economic-history-of-norway/](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-history- of-norway/)

<comment><USER10> The second paragraph of the first link specifically makes it clear it is a question of point of view and concedes Norway was poor relative to today. Meanwhile the distribution of wealth was a bigger issue.

Even in my lifetime - I'm 44 - the growth in wealth in Norway has been astounding.

Ironically, for example, whale meat is something I remember from my childhood as a cheap meat substitute (but that is now an expensive "delicacy"; we never saw it as a delicacy then - it is tough and oily) because my parents despite both having good jobs could not often afford beef in the early 80s. Even then we'd usually have it only once a week.

When I was a kid, a packed lunch was an economic necessity for many families.

This was also in some sense exacerbated by more income equality: eating out is relatively expensive in Norway because serving staff are also paid reasonably well.

But I think the main reason the matpakke has survived is basically that this was much closer to the norm _a lot of places_ with low population density (~13 per square kilometer in Norway) berfore urbanization and well into early industrialisation and that Norway also for a long time was very severely lutheran, with a puritan streak. Even if you have money, showing it off is not the done thing.

<comment><USER11> > The second paragraph of the first link specifically makes it clear it is a > question of point of view and concedes Norway was poor relative to today. > Meanwhile the distribution of wealth was a bigger issue.

Every rich country was once very poor relative to its current status though. This doesn't change the fact that Norway was not poor relative to other European countries at the time.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the _change_ was very rapid and very noticeable. My parents grew up with very noticeable, very visible poverty around them. A lot of the habits the post war generations grew up with, and that still affected society throughout the 70's still permeates the culture.

<comment><USER11> Every european society had this kind of change though. Norway isn't unique.

Here's an Italian movie from the 1970s, showing a family in a large slum around Italy.

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0074252/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0074252/)

<comment><USER10> While "everyone" has seen growth, Norways GDP per capita went from ~167% of Italy in 1967 around the time of the start of the oil wealth to about 230% that of Italy in 2017 (world bank numbers). The oil contributed substantially to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I grew up with matpakke and the 1/4 of milk every day and I hated it. It was depressing. Only good side was you got more time to play outside at school since you just wolfed down the food to get it over with.

My kids go to a school in Spain and they get a 3 course meal every day for about 5 EUR a day. As a parent its great because you know they've had a full complete meal every day and you can just make a small evening meal.

<comment><USER13> I also grew up with a madpakke (I'm in Denmark) and also hated it. Was pretty jealous of Swedish kids since I knew they got a hot school lunch and didn't have to eat boring, open-faced sandwiches and room temperature milk. I guess Norwegians have it just as bad as Danish kids.

<comment><USER14> I spent 17 years in Denmark, and now a couple years in Norway, and I can say that the Danish lunch culture is far richer than the Norwegian one. I studied at a Danish gymnasium and university. I now work at a Norwegian university.

For starters, Norwegians do not employ rye bread.

Furthermore, Norwegian open-faced sandwiches have not evolved into full-blown smørrebrød - where stacking multiple ingredients is such essential part, that you cannot eat the common smørrebrød without cutlery.

Case in point: [https://www.valdemarsro.dk/luksus- stjerneskud/](https://www.valdemarsro.dk/luksus-stjerneskud/)

At my university, we would lunch in groups, building such works of art during lunch-time from shared packs of ingredients.

It may be that Danish school children get a "boring" lunch, similar to the Norwegian one. However, as Danes grow up, their lunches evolve in tastes and complexity. It seems less so in Norway, and that's OK, but a tiny bit boring :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like this article somewhat undersells brødskriver. They can be delicious.

Most important is good bread, which is super common here, despite it being totally unavailable in most other countries. All ordinary grocery stores get freshly baked bread every day, whole in paper bags of course.

For example - with a thick slice of butter, then some oven-baked liver paste and two slices of gherkin on top and boom - you have something delicious in a single minute.

<comment><USER16> > Most important is good bread

Having lived in Norway for two years, and resorted to deep frozen baguettes from Meny (an upscale supermarket chain) because the fresh bread was so bad, I'm... not sure about this.

Glad to be back in Finland where the bread is good (seriously!) and the lunches are substantial, healthy, warm and filling.

<comment><USER17> IMO you can't get good bread in grocery stores in any Western country, Norway included. Good bread has about 2-3 times the density of store bread, for one thing, which would make it 2-3 times more expensive to make (2-3 times more raw ingredients + more time & energy in the oven). That takes the price into ridiculous territory, so it's just not reasonable for supermarkets to stock them.

My recommendation: get a decent bread baking machine. What's decent? One where the bread, container and rotor all come out of the machine after baking, so they can be easily washed. It takes about 2 minutes to mix in everything, and the quality is honestly pretty indistinguishable from hand made (as long as I remember to put the rotor back in after cleaning it :).

Dwarf bread refined over decades: 400g wheat flour (coarse if you can get a hold of it), 300ml water, 1ts salt, 50ml olive oil and ½ts dry yeast, which goes in a separate compartment in the machine to be dropped in when ready. To this you can add up to 200g or so of goodies - pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts or grated carrot.

<comment><USER18> The built in bakeries in Lidl and other stores have great bread imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems there are three types of people based on what they deem most important regarding the meals they consume. There are people who primarily eat for sustanance, there are people who eat for pleasure and there are Americans.

I'm solidly in the sustance camp, I tend to go for quick, easy and nutritious. Occasionally I will splurge and eat out at a good restaurant and enjoy it a lot. My wife is in the pleasure camp and doesn't want to waste any opportunity to have a delicious meal and even hates to have a simple breakfast or lunch. My three year old son might be an American, he just wants to eat McDondalds three times per day.

<comment> yoz-y If you skip the fries and take a drink without sugar then McDonald's fits the first category quite well.

<comment><USER20> I was unemployed in my early 20s for over 2 months during the 2008-09 recession. My bank account was overdrawn and my credit cards were maxed out. 2 $20 McDonald's gift cards from the "random stuff" drawer was a God-Send. Double cheeseburgers were still 99 cents then, and had nearly 500 calories. I'd get 1 a day and supplement that with some flour-water mixture I pressed into a cookie sheet to make hardtack [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another Norwegian here. If you don't find the matpakke boring enough, I am happy to tell you that we have an even more boring culinary tradition for breakfast, namely oatmeal. Preferably water boiled with a dab of butter. Crazy Norwegians might use milk instead of water, and sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on top. On the weekend, it is allowed to use a little cinnamon as well, but only sparingly.

<comment><USER22> You _boil_ yours? I take my oatmeal raw, with milk and a light sprinkling of sugar.

<comment><USER23> In Norway, the oatmeal is often steel-cut oats, which you really can't eat raw. If you're eating them with milk, you've probably got rolled oats, which are already cooked.

<comment><USER22> Yes. I am aware of this, but it's a distinction that I've never really seen in everyday use of the Norwegian language. Basically, there's two common versions of the product, they have the same name, but one of them is pre-cooked. I've always used the pre-cooked one for oatmeal though. Which might not quite make it the common American oatmeal, I don't know :P

A common theme, the language often doesn't make subtle distinctions when it comes to food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In Chile, eating this kind of sandwich is also very common. Not so much for lunch but for dinner. Sometimes even just bread and butter. I feel in the US people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat.

<comment><USER25> This is just like Dutch lunch. Indeed, I'm not sure what's special about it. Definitely not limited to Norway.

My previous girlfriend was also Dutch and used to this kind of lunch. Her employer sent her to London for a month, and she got used to expensive lunches. Spending a couple of pounds everyday on lunch, hoo boy, that adds up.

<comment><USER26> I worked in the Netherlands on and off for several years, and the thing I never got used to was how appalling the lunches were. I did a presentation at KLM corporate headquarters, and at lunch asked the people I was presenting to - "How do you put up with this, day after day?" They all looked glum, and said "There is no alternative". And don't get me started on what passes as Chinese food in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER27> What is wrong about our Chinese food? I quite like it but I can't compare with other countries. Do bear in mind that Dutch "Chinese" food is really a combination of Chinese and Indonesian food, it's not really a real thing that exists anywhere outside of NL.

<comment><USER28> I have noticed, um, great variation in "Chinese" food when I've travelled, and other than immigrants adapting to local tastes, I have wondered if different countries haven't had more immigrants from differing regions of China, thus affecting what "Chinese" food is like in these places. I the USA, in addition to the crazy sweet dishes (concocted to please the American palate), you also get a lot of quite spicy Szechuan influenced dishes. I found "Chinese" food in London to be shockingly bland and tasteless by contrast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The worst part isn't really that they eat poor sandwiches for lunch all their life, the worst part I'd say is that they often think it's the most healthy way to eat, and have no idea about good nutrition!

(I'm Swedish born and raised, moved to Norway at age 20 and have lived here for 10 years.)

I have had some arguments with colleagues about food during my years here. I have mostly worked at places with a canteen, with the option of eating a real, hot lunch for the same price as the bread.

The most common thing is that many Norwegians think that their simple bread (almost never wholegrain) with a slice of cheese is a healthy lunch. People argue and think that eating two hot meals a day makes you fat. They think they gain weight because they eat a hot meal for lunch, and that the solution is switching back to bread again. To no-ones surprise, they don't lose any weight by doing the switch.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's kind of a bummer to see so many comments going straight for the judgmental angle. I think you will be happier as a person if you try to take on a more curiosity driven mindset. There are a bunch of pros to eating like this, and there are a bunch of cons.

It would be equally silly to have a thread about long Spanish lunches, socializing, and siestas being filled with comments about how it's a "waste of time".

</comment><comment><USER31> Australian here: Cheese and Vegemite (yeast extract) sandwiches are what a lot of people grew up having for their school lunches. My kids like it because it's quick to eat.

For the Norwegians, is Jarlsberg your typical cheese in a matpakke? Probably my favourite sandwich cheese!

<comment><USER32> I still generally eat a vegemite sandwich for lunch every day, but these days it's nicer bread with vegemite, cheese, avocado, and tomato. While not as basic as the Norwegian one, I like having a simple lunch that's the same most days. Stops me pigging out on random convenient crap, but is enough to get through the day.

My kids are vegemite fiends too, and despite us giving them plenty of options, they'll nearly always choose a vegemite/cheese sandwich for lunch.

<comment><USER33> I notice all the people I know who naturally stay in good shape tend to eat really simple lunches most of the time. I'm not sure if it's just less temptation to overeat when you have the same stuff every day or if they're just wired to get less enjoyment out of food and are less prone to overeating as a result.

<comment><USER32> I see it as a form of self-control. I actively enjoy the simple foods I eat, and I'm not someone who gets sick of eating the same thing lots (as long as I like it in the first place), so it stops me eating random stuff and over- eating without realising it. It's also easier than trying to count/track macros/calories/etc with everything you eat, because you just have set things you always eat.

People also regularly bring up the "food enjoyment" thing, as though eating the same few things means it's not enjoyable, but I personally very much enjoy the routine things I eat, and that's why I made them routine. I'd much prefer to eat my regular lunch that I know for a fact I'll enjoy, than some random cafe/takeaway/pub lunch that will be hit or miss.

I think maybe some people are just wired to get bored of eating the same thing, and others aren't, because some of my friends think I must hate food to eat the same things all the time, but I see it as quite the opposite. Just like these comments here are full of people who think the Norwegians are insane and boring, and others "get it" and do the same or similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is not unique to Norway. In the Netherlands I was basically raised on a "Norwegian" sandwich lunch, although peanut butter could be used as a topping as well.

<comment><USER35> As a German, I'm confused why this article was written. Doesn't the rest of the world eat bread with cheese on it?

> They typically consist of two or three slices of bread, smeared lightly with > butter, each topped with a single slice of cheese or meat, or perhaps a thin > layer of jam, liver paste, or tubed caviar.

<comment><USER36> I'm pretty sure it is written for Americans, they eat for lunch what I would call dinner a lot it seems?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Small pieces of wax paper, precut for packing sandwiches together? Wonderful!

I would love for my own culture to adopt such a convenience! So much better than cling film or foil.

<comment><USER38> I thought that looked kind of wasteful, here in Australia we just put the two buttered sides together with the filling in between. Then you put that in your reusable luchbox that you take to work everyday.

<comment><USER39> Ah, but in Norway slices of bread must be eaten individually. So if you did this you'd need to peel them apart, which ends up with one slice having more of the topping than the other. Especially so with the pate toppings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The British version is the plowman's lunch. Without the add-ons one sees today.

The Japanese version is Calorie Mate Balanced Food Block, from Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company. Available in convenience stores and vending machines.

<comment><USER41> Fun fact: the ploughman's lunch dates back to the 1950s when cheese companies promoted it in order to sell more cheese.

<comment><USER40> The cheese mafia has gotten completely out of control. Over half of Dunkin (formerly Dunkin' Donuts) items now include cheese. Every lunchbox at Starbucks includes cheese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "why must everything we consume be happy and exciting?"

Because life is short.

<comment><USER43> Life is short, so we should focus on what's important, not on distractions. Look at Google where they got so obsessed with eating gourmet meals all day and fighting about perceived drops in qualt that they have 100K people just churning 15 year old products (while a few create new meaningful things).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The saddest thing in the world. To waste 20,000 opportunities to enjoy good food is squandering a significant part of life.

</comment><comment><USER45> Clearly the author has never been to the Netherlands.

</comment><comment><USER46> There are people who eat to work, and other who work to eat.

I can totally see the need for simple, sandwich lunch, especially in rush periods. But sandwiches can be SO GOOD with the right bread and the right ingredients. Why waste an opportunity for a nice lunch, even if you cannot take a long lunch break ?

</comment><comment><USER47> It is amazing how similar the comments on today's article, are from a HN thread about matpakke 9 months ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186)

<comment><USER43> It's amazing how HN has a tradition of every day I'm+ making the same tired comments on the same topics (matpakke, Apple, Google, China, Java,...) including mockery of other bland repetitive traditions like matpakke lunch. Over on Reddit they call this "self-awarewolves".

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> 3rd generation American, 100% Norwegian decent. This looks like my school cold lunch in the 80's. I've eaten the brown cheese, braunschweiger, head cheese, and venison summer sausage. Some toppings were better than others.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is almost exactly like in Belgium. We do have similar word for på leg which is 'beleg' or 'toespijs'. And we also pack it in the morning, 3 or 4 slices. It is not as beautifully wrapped in paper with in-between papers, though.

Moreover, we have decent bread in Belgium. And it doesn't come in a plastic bag. It's more similar to the bread described in the article about bread in the UK seen on HN frontpage some days ago.

I've seen people stating in the comments that this is heavy on calories. But that's entirely not true. The butter is probably soja based, the cheese and meat are thinly spread.

</comment><comment><USER50> > Plus, it might help cut down on the dreaded decision fatigue faced by > workers every time lunch rolls around during the week.

> "Maybe then you realize how simply eliminating the decisions on your weekly > lunches gives you more mental clarity during the day, the week, the month."

I didn't know this was common. I struggled with this so much years ago that I created a simple tool [1] so I wouldn't have to make the decision everyday.

[1] [https://easydecisionmaker.com/](https://easydecisionmaker.com/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Serious question: how is this enough _calories_ for lunch?

Assume you need 2,500 calories/day. Suppose you need a third of those at lunch, that's 830. (And given the traditional light continental breakfast, I'd expect an even larger lunch to compensate, so probably closer to 1,000.)

A single sandwich with three layers of bread and three single layers of cheese or meat, can't be over 400 calories.

I'd be starving and unproductive all afternoon. What's the secret?

<comment><USER52> Supper/dinner is normally larger and not late in the evening. Many make it right after getting home from work at 16-17. Your body is adaptive and get used to when you eat and how much you eat at any meal. Try to skip a meal and you will notice that the hunger feeling goes away around 1 hour after your normal meal time

<comment><USER15> Yeah, and we often eat the additional meal "kveldsmat" (evening food) right before bedtime, which is often just another pair of brødskiver or left-overs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> That makes my go to peanut butter and banana look gourmet. :)

<comment><USER54> It seems like this is the us equivalent to me. The nice thing about this approach is you don't have to use so much wrapping paper like in the linked article's video. Both the banana and sandwich come in their own case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> "With the exception of employees at some large companies that offer hot lunches, he adds, traditionally everyone from the lowest-level worker to upper management would eat their own individually wrapped, brought-from-home matpakke."

Virtually no one eating lunch at cafes has a big impact on the economy. Imagine how many cafes, food carts, etc in the US would close down if everyone stopped eating lunch out.

</comment><comment><USER56> This seems pretty good to me! One of my most vivid memories from visiting the Netherlands as a child was the simple, but delicious breakfasts that consisted of a choice between a variety of delicious breads, and a few cheeses or other toppings to choose from to top it.

Certainly a more enjoyable and healthier way to have a utilitarian meal than Soylent, which is honestly just degrading.

</comment><comment><USER57> Whenever anyone says that local traditions should be respected, they tend to gloss over the fact that most traditions are like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> By the definition in this article, Italian cooking would be the most boring thing you could possibly eat.

<comment><USER58> Personally I find Italian food pretty boring and very overrated. Most people seem to disagree with me when I say that though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is this the only thing they eat between breakfast and dinner? I think I would be hungry again in 2-3 hours.

<comment><USER60> Our bread contains a lot of whole grain flour. Don't underestimate how that effects how full you feel.

When losing weight I found I could easily get away with skipping lunch entirely, just two or three slices of bread as a late breakfast. But only if the bread had sufficiently high amount of whole grain flour (>90%). The days I only got hold of 50-60% whole grain bread I had to top up with a small lunch.

<comment><USER61> It's probably the fiber content, if I had to guess. Fiber is really good at making you feel full, which is why psyllium husk is sold as a dietary supplement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Still fancier than a Dutch sandwich, which is just two slices of buttered bread with some cheese or something in between. Or just one slice which is folded.

(Although in recent years a lot of Dutch workers have discovered the fancier lunches from foreign traditions.)

</comment><comment><USER63> This isn't so different than once in Chile, except that comes later. Typically once is marraqueta or hallulla and tomatoes, avocado (palta), or chicken and mayonnaise. It is almost always with tea (it is a form of high tea) and served after a big lunch.

<comment><USER28> What you describe is completely different from the bland food shown in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Could this also be correlated to a very long dark winter? I'd find a little sad to eat bread every day and not something warm and hearty but if I could get out of work maybe an hour earlier and that meant it wouldn't already be dark outside...

</comment><comment><USER65> This is the lunch I grew up eating in the U.S. Personally, I much prefer it over all the crap most people eat for lunch. But then again, my family is Swedish, so no surprise I guess.

<comment><USER66> Interestingly, Sweden and Norway differ _a lot_ when it comes to lunch culture. Here, people generally bring leftovers of yesterday's dinner in boxes to heat up at work or they go out to a lunch restaurant. Almost invariably proper, hot meals. If you bring just a sandwich or two to work people will kind of look at you funny like "that's not REAL food"

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Only partially related but still somewhat interesting IMO: First time I randomly enter into a site supported by scroll.com after I got an account.

</comment><comment><USER68> Whats with the obsession with Norwegian food and lunches. Feels like we are entering this subject on a regular basis.

</comment><comment><USER60> As a positive aside from the short lunch breaks is that you get home earlier. I'd hate having an hour+ lunch break.

</comment><comment><USER69> > The typical Norwegian workday lunch break is only about 30 minutes.

That's also pretty much the way it is in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER70> Question to matpakker's out here. Don't you feel hungry after eating only few slices of bread?

<comment><USER71> I'm pretty stuffed after eating two slices of bread with "pålegg". The bread is not a sugary white bread but it has whole grains and much more fiber.

In general I don't think I'm a big eater though, most food servings I get outside of home are huuge.. I might be able to eat a 160g cheeseburger if I'm really hungry but that's without any side dishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> As an American who has eaten two pieces of cheese with two pieces of bread And a piece of fruit for lunch for at least a decade now, I was happy when I saw an article on this a few years ago. I started telling people I wasn't weird, I was just Scandinavian.

After the fifteenth article on the same topic, I'm sick of it. I didn't even read this one.

</comment><comment><USER73> Popular in Russia as well and known as buterbrod (butter bread).

</comment><comment><USER74> Where are Norwegians getting their vegetable intake?

</comment><comment><USER75> Best served with a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar!

</comment><comment><USER76> Sounds pretty good to me.

</comment><comment><USER77> Well, unlike the US we usually have tasty bread here. That helps :)

<comment><USER78> The first time I went to the US, the waitress brought over extra bread, "I know you Europeans like bread, so I brought you extra".

It was awful. Like ecological packaging pellets. I didn't want to offend her, so I hid the extra rolls in my bag.

(We had other meals that were excellent. The quality of meals was very erratic, and had little relation to the price.)

<comment><USER79> I feel in Europe people are obsessed with eating "nice and flavorful" stuff instead of eating something because you actually need to eat.

Oh wait, that's what someone was criticizing the US for earlier in this thread. Weird. So is that the case or not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 9 months ago, 137 comments, with a less obnoxious title: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18830186)</comment>


Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway - <AUTHOR> https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201 <comment><USER2> The only social networking I do anymore is twitter. The list of the thousand people I follow is so intimate, I feel like just flipping through that would reveal everything about me and be a huge violation of privacy.

But even on this platform I've spent almost 10 years curating the perfect feed on, the one that should know absolutely everything about me, I still get served endless garbage ads for junk food and pickup trucks. I can't think of two products I care about less.

Amazon is a similar story, they seem convinced that I'm a woman despite having some pretty detailed purchase history going back to 1998 suggesting otherwise.

The targeting algorithm is often wrong, they just don't seem to know it be willing to admit it.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a common misconception that "the algorithm" is responsible for this, when what is actually happening is that an advertiser is bidding on the wrong users and effectively buying bad ads.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a common misconception that "targeted" advertising in any way involves the ad viewer's interests. Showing you only ads for things you are interested in was never a goal. The advertiser targets who should see the ad, which may or may not match what the viewer's interests.

Advertising junk food and pickup trucks to someone that "can't think of two products I care about less" isn't an _error_. It's an attempt to make you care (if possible), and reinforce the brand so their name is familiar= if opinions change about junk food or pickup trucks in the future.

<comment><USER5> > _Advertising junk food and pickup trucks to someone that "can't think of two > products I care about less" isn't an error. It's an attempt to make you care > (if possible), and reinforce the brand so their name is familiar= if > opinions change about junk food or pickup trucks in the future._

This sounds just like what people in the ad industry would tell worried clients. The actual reason is likely to be more mundane: the guy is, according to the tracking database, in an age and income group with high statistical correlation with interest in junk food and pickup trucks. Not all targeting is as detailed and personal as everyone thinks after reading scary articles.

<comment><USER6> I don't know, I suspect it's in ad agencies' interest to keep people under the impression that _they_ aren't susceptible to ads and the ads must be for those _other_ people who are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, Instagram is pretty spot on with their ads for me.

I've always taken pride, like I think most tech nerds of being "ad resistant."

However I've probably bought more stuff as a direct result of ad exposure on Instagram (3 things in three years) than in the entirety of the 25 years I've been on the internet.

<comment><USER8> "However I've probably bought more stuff as a direct result of ad exposure on Instagram (3 things in three years) than in the entirety of the 25 years I've been on the internet."

Could you specifically describe the ads and the products involved ? I am very curious and would love to have a sense of what they succeeded with (for you).

I have been of the mind that targeted ads are terrible and that ad firms and ad-tech firms and (that entire ecosystem) are fleecing the ad buyers who will eventually wake up to that fact...

It's 2019 and if I search for "volkswagen emissions scandal" I will get banner ads for new volkswagen cars. For a week.

Or, I would, if ublock origin was disabled ...

<comment><USER7> Well most recently it was for a service for knife sharpening called knifeaid. You mail in your knives and they sharpen them for a flat fee, comparable to what I pay now to drive to a sharpener.

I can only assume cause I've posted stuff about me cooking and have searched knife sharpening in the past. Not that hard to target really.

<comment><USER9> Going off on a bit of a tangent, but some time ago I bought a sharpening stone for $30. It takes about 10 minutes start to finish from dull blade to sharp blade, which is a lot more convenient than going to the knife sharpener or mailing your knives. I also use it to sharpen my hair clipper blades once a year.

<comment><USER7> I'm actually very handy with a whetstone, however I'd contest the 10 minutes part, and as much I use mine its a non trivial amount of work. Professional sharpening is just way better in my situation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Targeting is rarely as sophisticated as you think. Many campaigns are run wide and cheap (all users in a region, maybe some particular hours, etc). It's easier to optimize after this initial run based on actual performance rather than trying to figure out the exact people who would respond.

2\. Some companies are also taking ad auction bidding in-house and running their own algorithms with their 1st party data, like upselling their own customers. This doesn't need any relevance matching since they know exactly who they're going after.

3\. Targeting is not free. There is a continuum of price vs precision and high precision is rarely worth the costs, especially if the product itself cannot support those margins. Again this is why optimizing after a wide start is better than targeting upfront, and also why if you're trying to reach a very narrow audience it's easier to just send them email, or even direct mail.

4\. People only notice the bad ads, not the good ones which they like or are influenced by. This is no different than complaining about bad CGI in movies when your average sitcom is 50% artificial but nobody notices because it just works.

5\. Recommending movies as entertainment with cost in a subscription plan is nothing like finding relevant ads on the internet.

6\. The adtech industry has 2 of the most valuable companies in the world and generates petabytes of data and billions in profit proving how well ads work. A random blog post by an outsider who has no idea how the industry works but claims it's all broken in direct contradiction to the data just comes across the same as a flat-earth conspiracy theorist.

<comment><USER11> I think it's a little harsh to relate this to someone who thinks the earth is flat.

<comment><USER12> No, I think it's actually pretty spot on.

A flat earth makes sense if you only spent 5 minutes thinking about it and have no background in or exposure to basic science.

Similar to this blog post. It makes sense if you read it, think about it for 5 minutes, and have no background in the advertising industry or the dynamics of effective/efficient advertising.

Not to mention that advertising and content recommendation engines for a paid service are each wildly different in their underlying dynamics and economics. But who cares about nuance anyway.

<comment><USER4> > A flat earth makes sense if you only spent 5 minutes thinking about it and > have no background in or exposure to basic science.

Not that I particularly want to jump to the defense of people that believe in a flat earth, but they are _not_ people that "only spent 5 minutes thinking about it". A _lot_ of time has been spent trying to back up their beliefs and to form a coherent theory. They're _wrong_ , of course, for many reasons, but it's incorrect and dismissive to call them intellectually lazy.

The core of flat earth and similar beliefs is often a legitimate reaction against the large established systems in society that, from their perspective, appear to be failing in obvious ways while lying to them regularly that everything is fine. The are recognizing a problem, and attempt to apply something resembling science to try and find answers.

I recommend hbomberguy's recent investigation into recent flat earth belief: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFsOoKAHZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFsOoKAHZg)

<comment><USER12> Oh wow I had no idea it went that deep! I concede my point then.

I guess the flat earthers I've heard have been media personalities who had very few arguments to articulate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Let's be clear: the best targeted ads I will ever see are the ones I get from a search engine when it serves an ad for exactly the thing I was searching for....I don't know anybody who complains about this sort of ad.

This has actually _nerfed_ search engines in my lifetime. It used to be a crawler returned _as much as it could_ and you could search through the results; Now i get to only search through the big players who pay for their rankings.

>Never give positive feedback to an AI.

Funny; i wonder how Google profiling handles me occasionally using Google as a spell check.

<comment><USER14> > using Google as a spell check.

I do that all the time!

<comment><USER15> Same here. I sometimes use incognito mode if the spellchecking is... off pattern.

<comment><USER13> I sometimes blank on words that sound the same, like typing through when i mean threw, and of course google won't correct it unless its in context, so i type something like 'i through a bomb' which corrects to threw, i know I'm on a watch list somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The point of ad targeting isn't to generate relevant ads. It's so the advertising platform can put you in a more expensive targeting cohort, increasing the revenue from serving the ad. The "optimal" bid for serving you an ad to your cohort is proportional to the product of expected relevance and the revenue per conversion.

If a programming placement firm makes $100 per lead (after various filter steps) on your targeting info, and a witty t-shirt makes $10, your cohort has to convert ten times as often on t-shirts to match the recruiting firm's ad bids.

<comment><USER17> This seems fallacious. The whole reason for that "more expensive targeting cohort" becoming available after tracking _is_ its increased relevance. Otherwise, everyone would be getting the $100 ad in the first place-- the $10 ad would simply be uncompetitive!

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying relevance is meaningless. I'm saying it's scaled by the _profitability_ of a conversion as well. This business logic works on traditional non-targeted ads as well, like on broadcast TV.

For example, do you remember seeing ads along the lines of "if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, call the law offices of such and so"? Mesothelioma affects less than 30 people per million. Why run an ad that so few people care about? Because the payoff is so high for reaching the people that do care, and the higher the payoff, the less people have to care for the ad campaign to be worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A-fucking-men. YouTube's recommendations are effectively worthless to me because they're full of garbage I'll never watch instead of videos actually relevant to the one I'm watching (no, YouTube, just because I watched an antivax conspiracy video because it was linked on reddit and I want to laugh at it doesn't mean it's something I want to watch every day after watching entirely-unrelated things).

On another note:

"But everyone sucks, except Pandora."

No, they suck, too. Thumb-up one song and it'll commandeer the station. Half the songs are live recordings (and I haven't checked if they finally added the option to exclude them, but given that it hadn't been added many years after the original feature suggestion by the time I switched to Spotify, I don't have high hopes); thumbing down said live recordings doesn't actually stop them from showing up (in fact, my "fuck this, I'm switching to Spotify" moment was when Pandora queued up three live recordings in a row, all of which I thumbed down, then on the fourth in a row wouldn't let me thumb it down because I had too many "skips" today).

Fuck Pandora. Spotify's radio feature is just as good (which ain't saying much, but it _doesn 't_ bombard me with live recordings, so that's a start), and of course Spotify supports use-cases besides procedurally-generated radio stations. Way more useful.

<comment><USER19> I've used Pandora for nearly a decade. For half of that time, I've also kept a subscription to an on-demand music streaming service. But I always kept using Pandora for the auto-stations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The last time I was on Facebook (2015) I accidentally logged on without an ad- blocker. The best it could come up with was a package discount on gay scuba diving. I admit I was intrigued, but I did not click, simply because I could not discern what the product actually was.

<comment><USER21> Had a similar experience a few years ago. I cleared cookies and visited YouTube a couple days later. It showed me an advert for an oven starring Florence Henderson (Brady Bunch mom), who died not long afterwards. Google has all this data on me, but you take away their cookies once in a while, and they think you are a housewife.

<comment><USER10> What did you expect when you cleared cookies? How do you think they know who you are otherwise?

<comment><USER21> My IP address is surprisingly stable. (Know this because I have to update a work app when it changes.) I'd logged into and used many google properties after I cleared cookies. What I searched for on Youtube was not oven or housewife related.

My guess is these targeters are maybe too sophisticated and rely on reams of data, social media logins, and etc. If you run a adblocker and clear cookies once in a while, you can "hide in plain sight".

<comment><USER22> People over attribute things to The Algorithm. In truth, with little information to go on, it's often the case that no valuable ad was available to be shown and so it falls back. It's not that it's oven or housewife related. It may even be a wholly untargeted ad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What a wonderful article. I like the part where you don't need to rely on too much data to be good at something. Same goes for science in general. You dont need a million of experiments to do something great, you need ingenuity.

<comment><USER24> Ingenuity gets you from 0% to 90%. Millions of dollars and little experiments gets you from 90% to 99%. All of the money in the world won't get you from 99% to 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Targeted ads" is just a euphemism for "tracking". The not-so-threatening term allows the practice to exist in the first place. It may have been the initial plan, and the promise made some people a lot of money, but ads are no longer the primary goal or the only way the data is monetized. We should be using the term "trackers" when talking about targeted ads, it's more accurate and sounds scarier.

<comment><USER26> So when Zuckerberg says users want targeted ads, he actually meant users like being tracked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > the job of most modern recommendation algorithms is to return the closest > thing to porn that is still Safe For Work

Loved this part. About 99% accurate for "read this next" suggestions I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER28> Advertising was not made for OP. It was made for people who do not see the difference between ads and search results. It was made for people who impulse buy to improve their mood. For people who care about pictures, not stats.

Personalization tech for ad tech is top of the line. Really pushing that part of ML forward. It drives the internet with billions worth of profit. Ad tech companies can know more about you than intelligence agencies, and sometimes they are one and the same.

Targeting is changing how people vote. It is influencing social mobility. It can turn startups into money printing machines. It is not something you can debunk in a single blogpost, just because it does not apply to you.

You are the vocal minority.

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't say OP is a vocal minority; certainly you've heard your non-techie friends talk about the ridiculous recommendations these algorithms have wrought. I'd like to think that this is the majority, and the minority who can't tell an ad from their search query would make those impulse purchases even without ML. You're just swapping out their random impulse purchase with a different impulse purchase, and neither side knows why they met.

The key point in this blog post, I think, is the ineptitude of ML algorithms.

<comment><USER30> > the ineptitude of ML algorithms.

Computer vision can show greater-than-estimated-human-performance, while still failing hilariously unhuman once in a while. People remember the 1 in a 1000 wonky recommendation that made them do a double-take. Recommendation engines work best for the mean and stereotypical person. That way, you can use information of similar profitable people to effectively recommend.

Facebook, for instance, got mined for "suckers". If you are scummy, you want a list of gullible people who click the most stupidest, poorly designed, and shady ads. Ad tech knows where they are and delivers them on a silver platter. Going back 2 decades to serving ads without ML would kill a business. You don't think they thoroughly test a new recommendation engine and see relevant stats go up before they deploy it? You don't think they can serve you more relevant ads when they know you are a 17 year old male vs. a 42 year old woman? Both the data gathering and the algorithms have improved year over year. To say ad tech personalization is terrible, is akin to complaining we don't have AGI.

<comment><USER29> Yes, as OP mentions, machine learning can be applied quite well in other fields "like image processing or winning at strategy games."

And yes, they test out their new ML algorithms to see how effective they are. But they don't need the machine learning to create their list of "gullible people." Rather, they don't even -need- that list. If you just serve stupid, shady ads that look as close to porn as that platform can get away with, you'd get your desired click-through rate. The actual personalization aspect is just a myth to validate our invasion of privacy.

<comment><USER28> They need that list for max profit. Just serving ads without an intelligent platform behind it to know where and when to serve them, will hurt the CTR (which hurts both the ad tech platform and the advertiser).

Why would ad tech companies gather data and invade your privacy, and then not use it to sell more profitable ads? That makes no economic sense, but is a costly form of voyeurism. The "myth" you refer to sounds like a poorly thought out conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If I understand this correctly he is saying that much of the private information collected is actually not needed in order to achieve the desired outcome ("everybody wins").

He points out that tracking companies pay websites to allow them to collect this information, but (through examples) he argues that companies do not actually need the information that is being collected.

This begs some questions: Do these tracking companies remain solvent? Who is buying the information they collect? Are the buyers happy with the product/service? Is their usage of the data effective or just experimental?

I am willing to bet those tracking companies are operating based solely on investments, not licensing/sales of the data. That is, their future is uncertain.

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Whether or not the data works for the purposes it was collected, copies of the data will still exist. If the tracking companies fail, who gets the data then?

An ongoing effort will continue in trying to find a use for all this collected personal information by whomever shall come into possession of it.

How do you all think that will turn out? Should there be more regulation on how that data can be used?

BTW, another nice bit of work from this author which only got two points when it was posted on HN a few weeks ago:

[https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cookbook/container/](https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cookbook/container/)

</comment><comment><USER32> User data has become a currency that has intrinsic value without having to prove itself in any way. Not sure how long this is going to last but I suspect as long as there is this feeling of 'potential' in tracked data, it is always going to sell. On the other hand, the existence of pervasive tracking especially those done unethically, exposes people to a new attack surface that not only malicious (in the traditional sense) actors but govts. are prone to exploiting.

</comment><comment><USER33> > This is, by the way, the dirty secret of the machine learning movement: > almost everything produced by ML could have been produced, more cheaply, > using a very dumb heuristic you coded up by hand

lol, too true

</comment><comment><USER34> A major issue this does not consider is that ads which are too accurate are often deemed 'creepy'. Turns out there was some recent research on this topic [1]. In another thread on digital advertising a user shared an anecdote of a company that met with poor response after targeting locals who were pregnant with new baby related promotions. But after masking the promotion in a packet of otherwise unrelated offers, it met with much better results.

Another thing here is that this information isn't going anywhere. All the information that you give up to companies can be exploited at their whim and to whatever end they choose. In this regard I think Cambridge Analytica was a really great thing. They were, all things considered, probably a very small player. But for people to realize that their personal information could be used for more than to try to sell them crap was an important lesson.

There are also things like the NSA who are now hoovering up immense amounts of information, facilitated by participating companies including Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Recent issues should show the problem here. The NSA is not immune to hiring people they should not (from their perspective) hire. Their secret tools get leaked. They themselves get hacked. And now there is this immense trove of potentially sensitive information that they're sitting on. That data is going to eventually end up in the wrong hands. It's also not out of the question that the NSA themselves eventually end up being the wrong hands. Without invoking Godwin's law here, it should suffice to say that bad people can get into positions of power and do very bad things. Pair this with profiles on everybody in the nation, and increasingly even the world, and it opens the door to some really catastrophic scenarios in the future.

So no, don't forget privacy.

[1] - [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150408171201.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150408171201.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> Weirdly comforting.

<comment><USER35> It's a long series of epic burns somehow delivered in a calm style. It offers peaceful resignation with a world of insanity. Or something like that. I see what you mean, though.

<comment><USER19> I meant because it suggests an eventual end to the world of insanity, when all the emperors realize they don't have any clothes

<comment><USER35> Ok, I guess I didn't see what you mean. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am guessing the targeting can be done better. The problem is, there is more products supply than eyes demand. As a result, the companies have to push down the throat products, even if they don't match users' preferences.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've noticed this with recommendations, too. Something about it seems off.

I'll watch a documentary about World War II, and then next thing you know it's recommending another 50 hours of Hitler and Nazi stuff. Or other war documentaries.

Medium is similar, too. I read a couple of articles about cryptocurrency, and then there's nothing but crypto articles. I ended up having to actively find a bunch of stuff to follow to get some variety.

I thought one of the key ideas in stats and ML was intelligent sampling? That would suggest you should sometimes throw in something the person hasn't expressed interest in, just to see if maybe you're on a local minimum. But I rarely see that.

I often wonder if it would be smarter for Netflix to just hire a guy who watches a lot of content, and he can just tell you what's similar to what.

</comment><comment><USER38> OP is my spirit animal

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm poor so no ad is for me. plus I have an ad block in every browser. also I'm kind of ad blind</comment>


Google launches BigQuery - Analyze big data on the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://cloud.google.com/products/big-query.html

<comment><USER2> I tried running some simple SELECT queries on the sample Wikipedia dataset of a few GBs. Most queries took 5 to 10 seconds, which is not exactly fast.

Moreover, it is super expensive with their 'data processed' based pricing. It actually costs more than $1 to run a single query on a database of 30 GB. So it will cost $300,000 to power my analytics app with 10,000 queries a day. This cost will further skyrocket if your database size is anywhere near a terabyte.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I work on the BigQuery team.

Keep in mind that you only pay for the columns you query. The Wikipedia table as a whole is 35GB, but if you only query one column, it might only need to scan a couple of GB. If you can limit the columns you are querying, you can save a lot of money.

If you have a high-traffic analytics app, it would probably make sense to cache some of the materialized results, which are usually orders of magnitude smaller than the source data. BigQuery supports writing its output to another table, but it would probably be even faster for you to cache these results client-side.

<comment><USER4> What about query latency? 5-8 seconds?

<comment><USER5> 5-8 seconds isn't a problem at all.

It's Analytics, not an online database for website authentication or something.

It competes with datawarehouse solutions where the typical reporting models involves submitting a job, waiting an hour and then getting a report.

I'd expect a lot of the most useful applications running on this will use queries that take many minutes (if not hours) to complete.

<comment><USER6> "...waiting an hour..."

Uhm... Ke?

I work in Business Intelligence and anything over 5 seconds to return a typical (eg: year to date/daily sales) report is unacceptable by my standards.

Could you perhaps go I to more detail as to the definition of 'job' in your post? Are we talking about giant year end actuarial runs here or something like that?

<comment><USER5> No, I'm talking about ad-hoc reports over large datasets.

For example, find the original source of all users who bought more than 6 different items over any 6 week period during the last 5 years, then find every web page loaded by IPs form the same subnet as those users in the same time periods.

<comment><USER6> Got it, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Queries on hundreds of TB in seconds?

Anyone know what powers this? Is this custom SQL optimization on top of BigTable and/or Map Reduce?

<comment><USER8> Dremel, as described in <http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html>

<comment><USER4> Cool. Columnar, read-only, nested records.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The ability to JOIN (even if it is limited to 8Mb) is pretty useful for a couple of specific use cases we came up against recently.

It can reduce the disk (& therefore more importantly, cache) space requirements of the materialised views you otherwise have to maintain with a product like Cassandra (which is still ACE! IMHO).

[https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/query- reference#...](https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/query- reference#smalljoin)

</comment><comment><USER10> Considering they started it, there is still more scope for Google to leverage Map-Reduce paradigm and probably build more products around it like the Hadoop ecosystem has done. This looks quite useful to start with.

<comment><USER11> This is not MapReduce though, rather an execution engine specialized for data analysis: <http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does it compare with <http://www.vertica.com> ?</comment>


United States of America, the Enemy of the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://lawless.tech/united-states-of-america-the-enemy-of-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> Let's admit, all strong governments are trying to grab the biggest piece of the pie called 'the power of Internet'.</comment>


Immigrants invest in U.S. businesses in exchange for visas - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/09/AR2010010901056.html?wprss=rss_business <comment><USER2> This is exactly what I have in mind when I say that instead of a Startup Visa program I'd like to see a Visas For Sale program. It keeps everything on the up and up and reduces administration costs.

<comment><USER3> Um, would you mind explaining how this program would fill the need for a startup visa? I don't know how many people applying to the startup school have $500k -$1M to fork over before even starting to work on their startup, but I doubt it'll be a resounding success...

<comment><USER2> The Startup Visa proposals seem to be "Let's anoint a group of VCs or angels with the ability to decide who gets to come to the US", which I think opens the possibility for _ahem_ corruption and gives a governmental or semi- governmental group the authority to pick winners in the market. If you just sold visas, it would just be another capital-raising barrier to hop over. No nonsense about "Must create 10 jobs" or "Must win the favor of a particular bureaucrat", just "Convince someone -- _anyone_ \-- that you're a good enough risk to put #{PRICE_OF_VISA} on the line."

You could also let the market price the visas for you if you want, via an auction mechanic or something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My usual question: what country in the world offers a better visa policy than the United States?

A) In what country of the world could an American college graduate in a high- tech major field get off the plane and immediately start working with the prospect of long-term employment and permanent residence?

B) In what country of the world could a college graduate from India or China in a high-tech major field get off the plane and immediately start working with the prospect of long-term employment and permanent residence?

C) In what country of the world could a college graduate from an arbitrary country with an arbitrary college major get off the plane and immediately start working with the prospect of long-term employment and permanent residence?

D) In what country of the world could a person from an arbitrary country with no schooling beyond compulsory instruction get off the plane and immediately start working with the prospect of long-term employment and permanent residence?

E) More generally, which countries in the world enjoy net immigration rather than net emigration?

<comment><USER5> Btw, A through D are false even with respect to the US.

It is very rare for American companies to hire foreigners not already present in the US. They usually hire young people who've come to the US to study for a BS/MS/PhD. It's a myth that people can "get off the plane immediately start working".

It's exceedingly difficult for a foreigner to get hired to work in the US unless he's already in the US (IMHO, mostly because of the costs/hassles in doing an in-person interview, and the cornucopia of talent in the US).

Having said this, I still think the US has one of the best visa policies in the world.

To answer your question: so far as I know, India's work visa program is easier than USA's. But that means nothing because there's very little demand to go work in India. :)

<comment><USER4> _A through D are false even with respect to the US_

Your statement is correct. My questions were asking for general information, and were not meant to imply anything about policy in the United States.

 _Having said this, I still think the US has one of the best visa policies in the world._

That's what I wanted to get a reality check about by asking my questions in the grandparent comment. I appreciate seeing your point of view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a somewhat european computer scientist, and I would love to work for 2 or 3 years in the U.S. just for fun and getting a better english, but with such immigration laws I prefer to stay in Europe.

By the way, you highly skilled americans are welcome to work and live here ;-)

<comment><USER7> I don't know about highly skilled americans, but Europe's immigration policies seem to be no better for highly skilled asians.

P.S. - I'm an Indian.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. And I'm ashamed of it more than I can express in a forum but there seem to be enough xenophobes here to ensure that's going to be the status quo for quite a while.

Even within the EU there is plenty of that, witness the friction between western Europeans and immigrants from Poland or Romania.

We have a long way to go in this respect.</comment></comment></comment>


Koding goes open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/koding/koding <comment><USER2> At GitLab we're very excited about this. We think it is great to quickly get started on a new project without installing the dependencies locally.

Docker containers helped a bit but still need local compute power (draining the battery, making your laptop hot, and spinning the CPU fan). Worse, sometimes you can't run the same things as you run in production (Elasticsearch cluster, etc.) because you don't have enough memory.

We think Koding is a great way to get the compute power of the cloud while still being able to use your local editor (Vim, Emacs, Sublime, Textmate) with their kd client. We're working on the integration in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/merge_requests/4769](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/merge_requests/4769)

Please let us know what you think, will this enable more 'drive-by-commits'?</comment>


PC Shipments Decline Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332842 <comment><USER2> Its more telling the US PC sales had a decline of 8% in Q4. The PC has gotten 'less' personal and more of a household appliance where you have it next to the printer that everyone in the household can use for special purposes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if there is a correlating increase in custom built PCs but I'd imagine that those numbers are very difficult to come by as you'd be asking individual component makers (Corsair, EVGA...) for their shipment figures.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else bothered by Gmail's "Changes may not be saved" popup? - <AUTHOR> So, there are two problems that frustrate me on a daily basis.
The first is that despite having a pretty decent internet connection, if I close a GMail tab within, say, 20 seconds of some operation (delete, archive, etc.), closing the tab shows the '"changes won't be saved" modal.
This in itself is frustrating and somewhat baffling to me. surely it doesn't take that long to do a request to the GMail server-side?
But then it gets worse. What makes this problem worse is that once the popup appeared, even though Chrome is still the focused app, I can't interact with it unless I do some tab-switching foo. This is on MacOS and Chrome.
Am I just unique in the particular workflow I've settled on, or is this an inexplicable annoyance to anyone else? Or is there a valid reason to explain why this happens? <comment><USER2> The fact that email is so critical but people have allowed their web browser to take over their email workflow is bothersome.

My recommendation is to try making sure background sync is enabled in your browser settings. However, it wouldn't surprise me one bit for it to be on their end.

The best solution though is to work on eliminating Gmail altogether by supporting and donating to open source solutions that provide Gmail-like functionality without a web browser requirement, preferably IMAP and virtual mailboxes with labels.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed this too.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think Facebook will survive the privacy controversies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 100%, yes. When was the last time the US killed a public company with legal action? Enron? And that was a very different situation, and a far less valuable company.

Banks like Wells Fargo have done astonishingly evil and illegal things and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. Hard to see why FB would be different.

While Zuck is too rich and ruthless to ever be relegated to the sidelines of power, we can at least hope FB gets broken up.</comment>


If there is one thing you should know about your medical record - <AUTHOR> http://www.epatientdave.com/2013/07/19/you-can-ask-to-see-or-get-a-copy-of-your-medical-record-other-health-information/ <comment><AUTHOR> You have a legal and civil right to get it! Seriously. This is the one thing _everyone_ should know and DO to change healthcare.

The more patients ask for their records, the more the establishment will twist/turn to make good on that legal obligation >> more disruption >> more innovation.</comment>


Being a Man in the 21st Century (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/being-a-man-in-the-21st-century-part-1.html <comment><USER2> I'll note that, at least in business, some research indicates that women do _not_ earn less than men: "Women executives who do not have children follow career paths that closely replicate those of their male peers. Successful M.B.A. couples have similar work patterns, said Dr. Bertrand. Women without children married to high-earning spouses are just as likely to work and accumulate post-M.B.A. work experience at an almost identical rate, she said. Call a woman without a child a man."

Rather, they _work_ less than men: "When women executives return to the office, after several months of absence, they typically start to work shorter hours, the study shows: 52 hours per week, compared with an average 58 hours for their male peers, as they adapt to their new double task."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/business/global/29iht- ried...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/business/global/29iht- riedgenper.html)

This is not brushing away the problem, but pointing out that wages are a symptom of an underlying cause.

<comment><USER3> Equal pay for equal work, I absolutely believe in, but it goes both ways. Taking a year off - for any reason, for anyone - _should_ mean forfeiting a year's seniority and pay. The truth is that men have always had to choose and to compromise between work and domestic life, there are many men who rarely see their kids not because they don't love them but because they need to earn to give their kids a good start in life.

Incidentally here in the UK, deputy PM Harriet Harman (known as Harriet Harperson as she's so PC) had her figures on pay savaged by the National Audit Office - she compared pro rata salaries of women working part-time to those of men working full-time.

<comment><USER4> _deputy PM Harriet Harman (known as Harriet Harperson as she's so PC)_

What a delicious sample of British wit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must provide a counter-point in the argument. Whilst only 1-in-5 Young Adult readers are male, the actual reading rate for males is only ~10% lower than females. So with such a small margin of difference, what are the males reading if not Young Adult?

I know when I was 12 years old, I wasn't reading young adult. I was reading LotR and Discworld novels. I think I had a brief period of reading YA before I was reading adult fiction. There weren't many good YA fiction when I grew up, most was targeted towards girls and I stopped reading YA before good books like Cirque Du Freak (which I narrowly missed) and Inkheart (which I missed by a few years) appeared.

I personally read Terry Pratchetts YA books, but quickly progressed into his adult fiction with the Discworld (there was no Tiffany Aching YA discworlds until the same time of release as Inkheart and I was already well into Discworld by then).

Does it not say that if boys are only reading slightly less than girls, but not reading YA, that those boys who do read books are more advanced readers?

</comment><comment><USER6> The change in action figure suggests to me that our innate drive towards physical violence is not getting a natural outlet elsewhere.

Traditional outlets include contact sport (ritualized warfare), litigation (ritualized warfare) and chess (ritualized warfare). That's because the purpose of physical violence is war: to defend the territory that the tribe and family depends on (and attack it).

We don't need that any more (...?), at least not in that form (...?), but we can't yet escape our own nature - and it might not be a good idea (consider "The Warriors", Larry Niven).

I think humans (men especially) have an inbuilt tendency towards physical violence - just as we have innate curiosity, humour, aptitude for language, mathematics, trade, fairness, cooperation, kindness and a wish to understand. But nevertheless, one of them is violence (consider your experience of anger).

Better to harness this productively, or dissipate it harmlessly, than to ignore it blindly. Because there is a very convenient outlet for it readily available to all governments: actual war.

<comment><USER7> I think it is still a cruel and competitive world out there. Since you mention chess: maybe it is not all solved on the physical level now, but other fights can be just as dangerous. We are competing for jobs, success, ultimately for food on the table and attractive women to marry.

<comment><USER6> True in a way, although much of those things follow naturally from creating wealth (i.e. creating value in the world), so much so that if we focus on that, the rest of it works out pretty well. It's like how you can work on building a better app and getting it adopted... vs. fighting piracy/maximizing revenue from customers/trying to beat your competitors.

Of course, an organization can do both; but it can't skip the first one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I personally believe that a lot of the issues that Men in general face has come from the changing definition of what a Man should in the face of our growing reliance on complex, possibly automated, electrical and mechanical systems.

I think a good indicator of this is the reduced standing of skilled trades within most people's minds. Not so long ago being a carpenter or a plumber was considered a great job that paid well, nowadays many people perceive working in a trade as a last option for those that don't have better prospects. Canada is suffering a serious shortage of skilled trade workers and I feel this directly reflects the change in attitude toward those jobs.

While this transition is not so bad for those that are more intellectually minded, I have to question whether this change is badly warping what society feels a Man should be...

Traditionally I would say that a Man was perceived as someone that could be relied upon in nearly any situation, his working knowledge of the systems around him (mechanical or otherwise, and simpler than they are now) was fairly good and could be brought to bear whenever there was a problem. These days I think it is harder and harder to find people (in my generation at least) that match this description.

I think that one of the effects of this is that the stereotypical unthinking, unimaginative young man doesn't see the number of options for his future that he would have 30 or more years ago. Rather than being respected and happy in his job in a trade he feels that he is being marginalized by society. This clearly has the possibility to lead to resentment of and violence toward the world that put him where he is...

</comment><comment><USER9> Despite the surface appearance that the gender divide in the workforce has narrowed, it's actually amazing how deep it really is. Men still dominate the "making things" segment of the workforce - manufacturing, engineering, construction, agriculture, transportation. Women are still concentrated in education, healthcare, human resources, administrative, and non-profits. Part of the reason for women doing so well in the work force is the continued growth of government and psuedo-government bureaucracy that generates more education/healthcare/administrative jobs.

In the 19th century, the model for wealthy families was that the man would be the bread winner, and the woman would live off the man's support and would work in charity or the arts or reform movements. Now the pattern of work is the exact same at the 19th century. The difference is rather than marrying a man for the income, women vote to tax the income away, and then women get jobs in non-profits or government agencies. Then, to add insult to injury, you get articles like this claiming that men need to get with the program. Would society benefit if the machinist or truck driver who drops out of high school, instead continues his education and becomes a civil service paper pusher? I don't think so, in fact, it is the reverse.

(Note, these two paragraphs are observing very general, aggregate trends, obviously there are a gazillion exceptions on the individual level)

</comment><comment><USER10> The new SkyWalker is a men's Barbie. It's not tougher, it's just more sexually attractive to the oppossite sex, and a physical model for boys.

That's how I see it, at least.

<comment><USER11> It's not a new development, either. The action figures for He-Man looked just like the updated Luke, if not more exaggerated, and they came out around the time of the old Luke.

("He-Man"... _There's_ a subtle product name. I bet it won only narrowly over "Male Role Model Plastic Toy Adventure Hour".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When function (of manliness, say) is removed, the form is free to be expressed in exaggerated and grotesque ways. Including a more gangsta Luke Skywalker.</comment>