Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/wikipedia-english-six-million-articles/ <comment><USER2> 6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution:

3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Witcher...).

In summary: The top 7.2% of Wikipedia pages earn 87% of all the monthly views.

Yesterday I posted a deeper analysis on how these pages get their daily views:

\- [https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-the- top-2019-wiki...](https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-the- top-2019-wikipedia-pages-d3b96335b6ae)

Apparently the most popular pages are all related to movies (Avengers, Joker, ...), series (Ted Bundy, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones), and deaths.

<comment><USER3> > 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian, > The Witcher...).

So they could cut their network costs by a lot if they just removed pages about current popular culture, which have the highest view rate and a cultural value of exactly zero.

Edit: I'm being sarcastic and a bit bitter, the comments below all make good points. However I find it sad, though unavoidable, that the highest page views are for highly marketed entertainment franchises that have a slim chance to withstand the test of time.

<comment><USER4> This is dangerously dismissive. Cultural value is subjective, and in any case these articles provide an in-road to other articles, giving the opportunity to expand people's knowledge further.

I would, however, support Wikipedia having ads on articles in such pop culture categories – and those alone, of course, to avoid conflict of interest where factual accuracy is more vital. This would have to be carefully managed by the Wikimedia Foundation — marking articles for monetisation should be handled only by a specific role – but if done quite carefully and in a privacy- and user-respecting manner (eg Carbon ads [0]) could potentially subside the academic content without damaging Wikipedia's brand.

[0] [https://www.carbonads.net](https://www.carbonads.net)

<comment><USER5> That's a terrible idea in my opinion, any advertising at all on Wikipedia would be the thin edge of a very unpleasant wedge. Wikipedia is many people's first stop for knowledge, we _really_ don't want people being able to buy eyeball space next to what's supposed to be unbiased content.

Additionally, expanding advertising generally is a bad move when exposure to advertising has been shown to be negatively correlated to quality of life and contentedness. We need to be transitioning _away_ from advertising as a primary driver of the online economy, not fuelling it further. Advertising should only be employed when there's no better option in my opinion, not the first thing you reach for monetising a site. We should see advertising like fossil fuels, a regrettable necessity that we should aim to phase out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of Wikipedia. It's not perfect, and plenty of pages are outright bad, but repeatedly clicking "random page" [1] is a great source of entertainment to me. There's so much info out there, yet I reliably get something surprising, interesting, or funny within maybe 10 random pages. And because it's random, I learn things way outside my normal interests.

Try it if you find yourself mindlessly scrolling! It's pretty easy but you find way more cool things (that typically people don't broadly know about, if you like that sort of thing).

I donate a few bucks a month and it's well worth it.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:random](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:random)

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia is AWESOME and I admire your selflessness & generosity in donating to a cause :)

However, before giving them any more money I would recommend reading through the (Wikipedia-hosted, ironically) article titled "Wikipedia has Cancer". The revenue vs. employee count/operating costs ratio is _way_ off. Like, orders of magnitude off.

It's a tough pill to swallow considering how useful the site is and their respectable "information should be free for all" mission.

Again, your generosity is admired and there are far worse causes to donate towards. Just want to make sure people see both sides of the coin before spending hard earned cash!

<comment><USER6> I remember this essay, the author's main argument was: Wikipedia seemed fine 10 years ago with 5% of its current money, so the increased spending (and calls for donations to cover it) seems unjustified.

I side with the author in requesting more transparency about what exactly donations get spent on, but this strict argument in terms of how spending growth just "looks" unreasonable isn't convincing. Namely, it's pretty plausible to me that scaling big to very big is more costly than scaling medium to big, so this comparison of increasing costs to cancer makes me skeptical.

I don't have any proof that Wikipedia uses donations judiciously, but the scale and quality of the service they offer relative to the annual revenue (about 100m) and expenses (about 80m) seems...pretty good.

At any rate, I mostly view this as "paying a little for a good service" rather than "donating efficiently".

But thanks for the pointer.

<comment><USER8> They're actually pretty transparent in their annual report [0].

The issue is that their ads are slightly misleading in that they hint that they might have to pull the plug ("we depend on donations [...] we need your help [...] time is running out in 2019 to help us") even though the time is running out in 2019 part is because they're running the ads during the end of the year, not because they're running out of money. They spent 46 million in salaries out of 120 million in revenue, while the hosting expenses are one of their smallest line items at 2.3 million.

[0] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikim...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_- _FY18-19.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's easy to forget how amazing Wikipedia is because people are so used to it. It's also an anomaly in todays internet landscape - no ads, popups or auto- play videos. I think it's literally the best website in existence.

If you suggested 20 years ago that there will soon exist a free online encyclopedia, which has two orders of magnitude more words than Britannica, is updated daily and is mostly unbiased - they would probably think it's impossible.

<comment><USER10> > _no ads, popups or auto-play videos._

Also, there are no 100 JavaScript tracking scripts on Wikipedia, and it's probably one of the fastest sites among the top-100 websites in the world.

<comment><USER11> Most websites start out like wikipedia and then they feel the constant pressure to expand and now they have a mountain of expenses to cover so they tarnish the website in an effort to squeeze every last $ out of the user. I like how wikipedia has stuck to its original goal and kept a lean budget while delivering one of the most used websites on the internet.

<comment><USER12> Agree with everything except the "lean budget" part. My other comment has breakdown of their costs. They spend way too much money imo:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22135938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22135938)

<comment><USER10> Yes, it's my worry too. The Wikimedia Foundation kept expanding, and it may be unsustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's only shame that Wikidata doesn't get as much attention. It's a knowledge graph that runs _some_ of Wikipedia's content. I became involved recently and what I'd like to do is to get Wikipedians to use Wikidata more (e.g. automatically loading births and deaths on people's profiles), because once these two services are more interlinked, we're gonna get more knowledge graph info for free since people editing Wikipedia will keep improving this structured dataset.

I'd encourage people to get involved in either of these two projects - there's always a niche you know about and could improve its presence in the Wiki world.

<comment><USER14> Is Wikidata how, for example, when a particular football team wins the Super Bowl, its articles are updated, the articles about the Super Bowl are updated, the article about the list of teams that have won multiple Super Bowls is updated, etc... all very quickly? Or is that just an army of volunteers.

<comment><USER13> There are two aspects of this:

1\. If all superbowl-related articles used an extraction mechanism that links wikipedia with wikidata, then only the wikidata entry needs updating and all these articles get updated automatically. 2\. That wikidata update I mentioned was manual, but a lot of data in Wikidata is updated automatically (e.g. births and deaths from some databases, city population counts etc.), so some things get updated across the board automatically. That's a source of pushback against this - articles being updated automatically, so bad actors can change a lot of things at once.

<comment><USER15> Surely having fewer points of information control makes auditing for suspicious/malicious edits easier than relying on auditing individual articles?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wikipedia is the most incredible creation in modern times. Because it's not about some law of the universe that people have learned enough about to use to their advantage like electricity or nuclear physics. It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of quality. The culture around Wikipedia - the culmination of knowledge, the importance of said knowledge, the random curiosity of such a wide variety of topics and so much more, says so much about us as people.

If you had asked me half a century ago if something like this would ever work - I would've said absolutely not. And yet, there it is.

<comment><USER17> > It's something inherent to us as a species that we came together to create a > resource for everyone to access and that it has such a high level of > quality.

Oh man, if only it were true! If anything, wikipedia should be seen as an overcoming of our terrible human nature in making something good in the world, not as a property of humans. It is SO precious and fragile in our mortal hands.

The story of the Encyclopédie's origins is _incredible_ and a great reminder that works like wikipedia are the exception, not the rule. The Philosophes worked very hard to get the volumes out and were under constant threat of censure. The very _idea_ of the Encyclopédie was a direct threat to the Ancient Regime and it's publication was a direct cause (among _many_ ) of the French Revolution. A revolution whose effects we feel until this very day. The Encyclopédie was a lit cigarette in a powder cache. It's head editor, Diderot, is _still_ a controversial person. If you can have haters and lovers nearly 250 years after you dance your last, well kiddo, you've done _something_ right.

Even today wikipedia is vandalized by powerful interests and is routinely censored out of existence for many of the people of the world. Governments are still afraid of the free knowledge that wikipedia gives us. It is still a lit cigarette in a powder cache. But it is a fragile thing.

Cherish it: DONATE

[https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi...](https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org)

<comment><USER18> > _of our terrible human nature_

The ability to learn and teach is the very core of human nature that sets us apart from other animals.

<comment><USER19> Does it set us apart, though? Crows, apes and dolphins have all been known to teach both their offspring and fellow animals.

<comment><USER20> We do it so much better that the quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wikipedia is an incredible achievement. It's one of the only information sources I find to be consistently useful across a broad range of topics. It's also one of the only remaining sources I feel to be mostly trustworthy.

These days I append either "wikipedia" or "reddit" to most of my Google searches in order to get useful information. There's so much SEO'd garbage out there, but Wikipedia remains a breath of fresh air.

<comment><USER22> Why not skip the middleman and go directly to wikipedia or reddit?

<comment><USER23> Reddit/Wikipedia search are an order of magnitude worse than Google

<comment><USER24> I don't know about Reddit, but for Wikipedia I just write a guess for the title of the article I'm looking for, and if I'm not redirected to the proper title of the article, then I'm normally sent to a disambiguation page. I've never found myself in need of something like Google for Wikipedia.

<comment><USER25> That works if you know the article you want, but for something more abstract wiki search is terrible

I just came up with this example on the spot, searching wikipedia for "inventor of paracetamol", the first result on wiki search is "Polymorphism", then "Diphenhydramine", then "List of Suicides", then "Menstruation"

Searching google for "inventor of paracetamol wiki" links to the wikipedia Paracetamol page subsection History

<comment><USER24> Oh, indeed. I think Wiki's search is based on just the titles and probably their redirection aliases, not the article bodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you speak other languages Wikipedia certainly gets very interesting. German Wikipedia is pretty good, for some topics it is better than English Wikipedia. But Spanish Wikipedia is quite sad to read, todays articles have the quality I remember from when Wikipedia was 2 or 3 years old even though there are many times more Spanish than German speakers in the world. Then there are the Swedish and Cebuana Wikipedias which are large but were mostly created by a bot with almost useless stub articles.

It makes me wonder what information sources other countries like China, India or Japan use.

<comment><USER27> What's always struck me is how large the Dutch Wikipedia is (1,992,551 articles), given the relatively low number of people that speak that language. They would appear to be a pretty tech-savvy/well-connected nation.

It's certainly consistent with the number of comments that I see here on HN that start with some variation on "Here in the Netherlands...".

<comment><USER26> This page isn't up to date but it mentions that many Dutch articles were created by bots: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Wikipedia)

This up to date graph from the German Wikipedia clearly shows the jumps: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wikipedi...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Wikipedia- Artikelanzahl-Entwicklung-Top8.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wikipedia is great. Every time I create an article, it ends up being tended to by a bunch of gardener bots who fix up all the markup and make it look nice and put an infobox in, and then other people add a little and so on and it just gets better. Honestly, pretty astounding.

</comment><comment><USER29> How's [https://golden.com](https://golden.com) doing? I have come across some really detailed Wikipedia articles (for sports events, for example) and at times some really drab ones which I try to edit to improve. But _original research_ articles sometimes do contain a lot more specific information that doesn't survive editor scrutiny on Wikipedia. And the less we talk about numerous advertisment/PR/fluff articles and socio/geo-political edit wars being played out, the better.

Take tech pages for example, I really think an enormous amount of information in blogs, online magazines, research papers need to be out there in Wikipedia pages too, if not as actual texts but as references.

For instance, here's an article on HAMT [0] and another on Radix Trees [1] but the corresponding Wikipedia pages [2][3] for those aren't as _consumable_ as the other two.

There are also cases where pages are deleted because _original research_ , like Willy Tarreau's EB Trees [4] that powers routing, caching on HAProxy.

I tend to research more on Wikipedia than search engines, to be honest. May be, the search engines can get smart enough to amalgamate a page on the searched topic given the amount of open-web they crawl?

[0] [https://blog.mattbierner.com/hash-array-mapped-tries-in- java...](https://blog.mattbierner.com/hash-array-mapped-tries-in-javascript/)

[1] [https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2017-ipv4-route-lookup- lin...](https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2017-ipv4-route-lookup-linux)

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

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

[4] [https://wtarreau.blogspot.com/2011/12/elastic-binary- trees-e...](https://wtarreau.blogspot.com/2011/12/elastic-binary-trees- ebtree.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> The article count would actually be much higher if they weren't diligent about deleting or merging articles that they don't find notable.

<comment><USER31> My thought on seeing the headline was along the same vein. 6M seemed like a rather low number.

Not to say it isn't an impressive one by any means. I was just a little surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wikipedia is becoming so much more than an encyclopedia. I am constantly amazed at the level of detail people are willing to document things in.

For instance, I wanted to find which episode I was up to in a particular series, so I Google it, find a Wikipedia page for the series, and sure enough there's a table listing every season and every episode, with a short synopsis of each episode.

I'd say a very large portion of all page views are due to media related queries (TV shows, movies, books etc.).

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't forget to thank the WikiGnomes for their work.

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

"What is your favorite good article that you contributed significantly to, or assisted significantly in it obtaining good status?" Ser Amantio di Nicolao : I have not worked on any good articles.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't read the article because the consent parameters for data collection are hidden behind layers upon layers of misleading UI and links, with a broken captcha inserted in the middle.

So, Techcrunch can fuck off from now on I guess.

</comment><comment><USER35> One step closer to the Ancient Database[0]. Which one of you is going to build the holo room?

[0] [https://www.gateworld.net/wiki/Ancient_database](https://www.gateworld.net/wiki/Ancient_database)

<comment><USER36> I always thought of wikipedia as an Encyclopedia Galactica - even though it's edited more like the Hitchhikers Guide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_En...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_editors_on_English_Wikipedia_over_time.png)

<comment><USER38> Looks stable?

<comment><USER39> It's impressive that it's stable considering there's probably a lot less to do on Wikipedia today than there was in 2007.

<comment><USER38> In what sense is there a certain "amount of work to do" defined independently of the number of volunteers and their interests?

The only thing I can think of is that as the wiki grows in size, the amount of work that needs to be done to maintain fixed quality (combating vandalism, counteracting normal decay, fixing link rot) goes up roughly proportional to the number and length of articles.

I guess you mean something like "Wikipedia ought to have an article on X, and didn't in 2007 but does in 2020". That certainly tracks the fact that there was more low-hanging fruit in 2007, but I don't think writing that article means there's any less work for a fixed number of editors to do. The amount of work left to do -- between here and a complete encyclopedia of all human knowledge -- is damn near infinite, and is limited mostly by editor interest.

<comment><USER39> Wikipedia's rules on notability and article length prevent it from growing infinitely (in theory). So my point is exactly that - all that "low-hanging fruit" is mostly gone, and most of the actual writing work that's left is either writing a new article on a subject that is at the margin of notability, which one would expect the average adult to have less interest in than writing a new article on a truly notable subject, or rewriting a section of an existing more notable article which tends to annoy whichever editor last edited it.

But you make a good point that the maintenance work probably grows linearly with the size of the corpus, so really the flat number of active editors shows that the number of editors actively engaged in the research and writing of entries has probably actually declined significantly since 2007.

<comment><USER40> > Wikipedia's rules on notability and article length prevent it from growing > infinitely (in theory).

That doesn't appear to be true. New people are born, new events occur, new things are discovered, and new entertainment is released every day, all of which increase the pool of eligible topics on Wikipedia. As long as history continues to be made, new articles will continue to be written.

<comment><USER41> Companies, sport, politics, arts, endless churn. It's not unusual to find out- of-date articles on Wikipedia. It also seems to be that a surprisingly small proportion of edits add new information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wikipedia also is dominated by a elite class of early contributors, PC censorship people or people working directly for the cooperation or on their behalf. There are many accounts with more edits a day the humanly possible or 356 days of the year or article edits from IPs directly from government agencies whitewashing ... they do not even try or know how to hide it. When it comes to info outside of like nature science then wiki is NOT a re

liable and unbiased source at all.

<comment><USER43> [dubious—discuss]

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wonder what a 6M set would cost these days, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia)

<comment><USER12> For 2018

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual- report/](https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual-report/)

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual- report/fin...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual- report/financials-leadership/)

[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries)

They are spending 81 million in expenses, a lot of of which is salaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> First love: Books

Second love: Wikipedia

</comment><comment><USER46> The only problem with Wikipedia is figuring out in what revision was a certain text added. There are 2 tools, but they are not very good.

</comment><comment><USER47> Really isn't that many when you compare it with things like the English language has over 40,000 words that are 8 letters long. Something I looked up recently out of curiosity with regards to the UK TV show Countdown, which has been running for years and is of French origins.

</comment><comment><USER48> There's only 6 million notable places, people, businesses, abstract concepts, historical occurrences, species, theories, etc?

Does this mean wiki is actually missing a lot?

Or are there less things of note than one would think?

<comment><USER49> There are competing philosophies on Wikipedia, deletionist vs inclusionist. Overall the inclusionists tend to win more than they loose, but the deletionists are a source of resistance to overcome. Some deletionist decisions have been decried as anti-intellectual, but they also contribute to the density of quality, so it's hard to say they're evil. More like neutrals with an incentive, but from the perspective of the self-ascribed "good" inclusionists, the vector between inclusion and deletion points toward evil, and is thus forever frustrating.

<comment><USER48> I didn't know about that, thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Just 6,000,000 topics of interest to cover all of history. That's about 1 per 1,000 people on the planet.

There are 5.6 million small businesses in the United States alone. [1]

Imagine a Wikipedia that had more like 6 trillion articles. I'm enamored with a startup named Golden ([https://golden.com](https://golden.com)) which aims to do just that.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/257521/number-of- small-b...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/257521/number-of-small- businesses-in-the-us/)

<comment><USER51> I don't think that startup will succeed to the same degree as Wikipedia. Making an successful online encyclopedia isn't a tech problem, it's more of a community problem. And it's stupidly hard to maintain such a vibrant community, moreso if for-profit entities are involved. I've seen so many cases where the contributors leave the website due to clashes with corporate members (see StackExchange for an example) In a for-profit service where content is made by contributors without any pay, there's an inherent power imbalance between the contributors and the platform owners, and it's natural that tensions will arise.

<comment><USER50> But what if it did succeed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is this now a positive metric? They could have had 6 million 5 years ago if they didn't delete quite so many.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ha, well intersting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_in_Small_Pieces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_in_Small_Pieces) has been deleted.

Apparently it was considered ambiguous promotion.

</comment><comment><USER54> Are there any AI benchmarks that use Wikipedia as a corpus?

</comment><comment><USER55> Does anybody remember knol from Google ?

</comment><comment><USER56> Unfortunately, the .ORG domain registry is being sold to a private equity firm.

Could Wikipedia just switch to .com? How technically difficult would it be?

<comment><USER57> If the Wikimedia foundation lost their .org domains, not only would they need to find a new domain, but they wouldn't be able to redirect requests from the billions of links to Wikipedia on the internet, and all those links would die.

I also don't think that will happen. If the new .org owners took down a world- beloved high-traffic site like Wikipedia, the public outcry from people of all political persuasions would make government regulation of the domain become quite likely and I'm pretty sure .org's new owners don't want that smoke. I also don't even know the rules, it might be impossible for them to do so for some technical reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> To take a contrarian viewpoint: maybe Wikipedia isn't so good after all.

In a capitalistic model it makes little sense why Wikipedia should thrive without enriching someone so massively in the process, therefore, it must be corrected. If we assume that line of thinking is valid (which I'm not saying we should or shouldn't) then it follows that an alternative Wikipedia riddled with ads would be a superior model, in terms of capitalism. It'd be much more similar to imdb perhaps, owned by Amazon. Wikipedia (in the film category) provides information in a much effective way and can stay on top of change by issuing revisions way better than imdb can ever do. If we jump to the most logical conclusion of the set of assumptions made above I think it then follows that readily accessible knowledge cannot necessarily be a good thing, otherwise, the market would have rewarded that. But we see in the case of imdb market did not reward it enough for it to achieve the same pedigree as Wikipedia.

It's not good for people to learn facts that easily. There should be a higher cost associated with that. This is of course a ridiculous conclusion but I think it could make sense why it would be true. It is a whole other post for why it would be true but I will only give an example or two.

One example is if knowledge is that easily accessible then anyone could achieve it without necessarily having enough desire to achieve said knowledge, and since we have limited capacity for knowledge acquisition and retainment we are most likely sacrificing knowledge that we are truly passionate about.

Second example is maybe it isn't good for people to know so much anyway. After all there are many things that due to the laws of nature we are inherently incapable of ever knowing such as what is beyond knowable universe (nothing can travel faster than speed of light so we cannot learn about it since the knowledge or light from stuff beyond the knowable universe won't have enough time to ever reach us.)

<comment><USER59> Man, I should really stop bothering to read comments that start off complaining about capitalism in completely unrelated threads.</comment></comment>


Kansas Police shutdown cannabis oil activist's Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://kansasexposed.org/2015/04/17/kansas-police-shutdown-cannabis-oil-activists-facebook-to-prevent-her-from-raising-money-for-her-legal-defense/

<comment><USER2> Wait, how, exactly, does a local police department have someone's Facebook page taken down? Is there any source anyone can find that verifies that's what happened?

Radley Balko did some reporting on this story, after Ben Swann broke it, and neither of those two reporters said anything about Facebook.

Other reporting I've found actually _points_ to Facebook advocacy pages for for Banda, who currently does have Facebook pages.

<comment><USER3> I don't like Facebook but I am finding it hard to believe that they would take down someone's page based on a police request. You would think that a Judge's order would at least be required.

<comment><USER4> I have a little problem believing that Garden City PD was actually able to make contact with someone at fb who could do that, but I'd at least hope that fb has a system in place for law enforcement to make contact with a fb staffer who could expedite proper law enforcement requests. I don't have any problem believing that fb would take a page offline after some sort of "administrative subpoena" or other similar sketchiness. I also don't have a problem believing that a judge could be found in a small Midwestern town who would sign off on something like that. But I don't see anything to indicate that's what has happened. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Banda consulted an atty who promptly told her to 'shut down all the things' lest she make her legal defense much more difficult and expensive.

<comment><USER5> At least in Germany, Facebook doesn't even comply with court orders.

The Facebook Germany office just tells courts to talk to the Irish office, in the knowledge that international judicial assistance is a big obstacle for smaller cases and likely won't happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The Garden City Police Department had cannabis oil activist Shona Banda's > Facebook account shutdown because she was using her social media network to > raise money for her legal defense

On what grounds is it illegal to raise funds ?

<comment><USER7> Probably on the grounds that it's hard to push around a defendant who has a lot of money for lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nevermind the Facebook page, they took her son into custody and questioned him without parental consent or legal representation? I truly hope this ends badly for the 'authorities' responsible, as it sounds to me like kidnapping.

<comment><USER9> Kansas is what happens economically and socially when Republicans are completely in charge. No balance. They are throwing the book at this woman, and punishing her via her kid. That was their first and second course of action. And this particular batch of social conservatives get vindictive when they're made to look bad, so I'd expect her mistreatment to get worse before it gets better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > her next custody hearing is set to take place on April 20.

How… appropriate

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish it were 100% legal like beer already. So many people use it, and it harms just as much as alcohol. Stop putting normal people in prison with murderers and rapists.

I've never done drugs before in my life but I know a ton of professional that do. These are lawyers, doctors, accountants and the occasional taxidermist. Do these people belong in jail? Fuck that.

<comment><USER12> >I've never done drugs before

I can only assume you mean cannabis is a drug, when, in fact, it is a plant. Keeping with the idea that cannabis is a drug, am I correct to assume you have never had a Pepsi or a cup of coffee?

<comment><USER13> If you're going to be pedantic at least do it well. Going by the dictionary definition of drug: "a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body" both caffeine and cannabis fit the bill.

<comment><USER12> Cannabis is a plant that _contains_ cannabinoids that are drugs. As a chemist, I typically don't refer to unrefined plant material as a drug. Because people don't typically consume caffeine raw, most people don't consider coffee consumption "doing drugs"; so, I believe cannabis deserves the same consideration.

Language matters, and I don't consider it to be pedantic to make this point (however subtle the distinction is).

Edit: And, for reference (since you missed the definition of cannabis): Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three different species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica and Cannabis ruderalis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the best thing that could have happened

<comment><USER15> Yep. Let's Streisand her GoFundMe: [http://www.gofundme.com/rw8p88r](http://www.gofundme.com/rw8p88r)

<comment><USER16> _$20,500 of $15k Raised by 820 people in 4 days_

That was fast.

Edit: now up to $20,735, an hour later. She's certainly getting lots of support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > On March 24, cannabis oil activist Shona Banda's life was flipped upside- > down

And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air

<comment><USER18> It made me laugh too. I don't know why you are been down voted.

I guess there is no room for humor.

<comment><USER19> There is a culture of down voting for no-value-add. I think people use it as an opportunity to shape the community which may be fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The Garden City Police Department had cannabis oil activist Shona Banda's > Facebook account shutdown

Citation needed

<comment><USER21> Her profile appears in my friends' list but when you click on it, it goes nowhere and opens back up my feed.

<comment><USER22> Great, but where does that prove the police were involved? The source article mentioned no evidence for that, and it doesn't strike me as the most reputable source in any event.

<comment><USER23> She doesn't seem to have taken it down. Facebook doesn't generally take down random peoples accounts.

The simplest explanation is that it was taken down against her will. Likely by someone with pseudo-legal authority to do that.

i.e. "legal" authority, even if the application of that authority doesn't actually follow the law.

<comment><USER22> I simply think that when presented a dubious claim with no evidence from a shady source we should be skeptical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lets hug of death her GoFundMe. They are attempting to destroy her ability to attain funding for a defense. Thats what the motive here is.

[http://www.gofundme.com/rw8p88r](http://www.gofundme.com/rw8p88r)

</comment><comment><USER25> This article only mentions Facebook in one sentence. No supporting facts or links...?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there another source that is neutral?

<comment><USER27> The Washington Post, at least, independently confirmed the account of the school's actions on the day of the program. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2015/04/17/s...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2015/04/17/state-seizes-11-year-old-arrests-his-mother-after-he- defends-medical-marijuana-during-a-school-presentation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > her next custody hearing is set to take place on April 20.

Oh, the irony.</comment>


Visual Studio Update 1 RTM - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/11/30/visual-studio-update-1-rtm.aspx <comment><USER2> > The Visual Studio editor now provides built-in syntax highlighting and basic > IntelliSense support for languages including Go, Java, Perl, R, Ruby, and > Swift.

Nice!</comment>


D3.js Tutorials, Screencasts and a Newsletter | DashingD3js.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.dashingd3js.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This website is a small project I've started to help people learn how to make Data Visualizations with D3.js.

<comment><USER2> Nice work! The background information at the start covering the Stanford Visualization Group and Ben Fry's approach to Data Visualization are very nice touches

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - glad you liked it! Anything you'd want to see covered or explained?</comment></comment></comment>


For Mobile Apps, It's 1996 All Over Again - tomh- http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/19/mobile-apps-1996-all-over-again/ <comment><AUTHOR> While I agree that the apps market is a huge new thing, I really don't think it is going to continue to take off with no end in sight. We are in unprecedented times, and I think looking at any prior history really doesn't do it justice. But the notion that apps are taking over the internet is somewhat backwards, internet adoption as a whole is up as well, and fervently increasing.

The big change here is that more and more people are adopting smart phones, and smart phones happen to be app focused. Once the web on the phone is even better, e.g. when companies can build 1:1 web:app experiences, you will see less apps.

On a side note, the whole iOS explosion is going to tail off, there are only so many people that buy apps, and it is not a majority that push that market. I think when you compare iOS to Android app purchase rates, you find iOS in a screaming lead if all things else were equal. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I feel it is more related to who the people buying the devices are. The people buying Androids (the massive amounts now) aren't nerds/geeks like everyone seems to think. No, they are regular people that would have got a feature phone but jumped into the Android platform. Where as iOS users are usually people that have been using smartphones for a while, or even iPod Touches that upgraded to the phone experience.

<comment><USER2> "On a side note, the whole iOS explosion is going to tail off, there are only so many people that buy apps, and it is not a majority that push that market."

Last admob stats survey says 50% of iOS users bought at least 1 paid app a month.

"No, they are regular people that would have got a feature phone but jumped into the Android platform."

And, those people won't buy a 99 cent game or utility app? Somehow I doubt that. I think if anything, it's a psychological barrier that prevents them.

Back in 1996, we didn't trust the web. We heard these crazy stories about hackers being able to blow up your monitor by just sending you a file, and some having their whole identity completely wiped out like in "The Net" with Sandra Bullock. As such, ecommerce wasn't really that big in those days. Fast forward to today, where Amazon is galactically large and people only go to the store to physically touch a product before buying it on Amazon or Zappos or Newegg.

The same is going to happen to smartphones and app stores. Once google checkout is seamless enough to purchase as easily as the App store, you can possibly see 50% of Android users purchasing an app a month. And, no matter how you slice it, 50% in this space is a BIG number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Most of the argument should be native apps versus browser based apps and history really has answered this for us even though we are talking about a different client in the form of a smartphone.

<comment><USER4> Right, but the desktop web apps typically did not require any access to hardware devices such as the webcam. If they did, Flash solved that problem and we all know what direction that model is heading into.

Mobile apps are interesting because of the access to GPS, camera, accelerometer etc. Until all hardware is accessible through HTML5 providing an excellent UX, the app trend will continue in my view.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the performance penalty you'll pay by trying to process that data (camera images, video feeds, accelerometer data) in Javascript.

Some types of apps might work okay as a mobile web app (Facebook comes to mind), but there are definitely many native apps that simply aren't feasible to do in HTML5.

Can you imagine Word Lens being implemented as a web app? Yeah, I didn't think so.

<comment><USER6> Of course I can imagine Word Lens being implemented as a web app. Perhaps not at this moment, but within 5 years? And what about technologies like NaCl? It is shortsighted to take such a view of applications that exist within a browser.

<comment><USER4> In 5 years? Well that is an eternity in the mobile space and you are probably right, there is likely going to be a shift to a standard approach to app (web or native) development. What if a virtual machine such as the JVM existed for both Android and iOS was standard/consistent enough to write cross platform apps?

This topic is very popular amongst hackers lately. I find the web developers in particular resist the native app trend, to avoid Objective-C (iOS) and Java (Android). Typical web developer lives in Javascript and a chosen high level language (Ruby, Python) on the server side.

<comment><USER3> Writes once, run everywhere has been promised forever and delivered never.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SMASH – A Dance Concept Video - <AUTHOR> Hello, I'm Kiana Perreault. I am a Dancer/Artist from New Hampshire. I created a short film including dance and concept about Suicide and Mental Health to raise awareness. I did this because my greatest wish is to make a difference in our society by "Standing Up to The Stigma" (of anxiety, depression, Bi-polar, and other mental disorders). I want to share this video with you in hopes that you will share my art, and join me in this movement. Thank you for reading, and I really hope to hear back!
 - Kiana P.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgZXgb1lGko&t=1s
| Choreographed & Edited by Kiana Perreault | | Dancer: Pressley Frazier | | Produced by Bryant Ragas|
                  -Checkout my Social Media- SoundCloud - https://m.soundcloud.com/kianammoore Facebook Page - https://m.facebook.com/kianaperreault/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/kianaperreault/ Twitter- https://twitter.com/kianamperreault/
SMASH | A Dance Concept Video <comment><USER2> You posted this 3 times in 5 hours.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgZXgb1lGko&t=10s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgZXgb1lGko&t=10s)</comment>


Ask HN: Does one feel they are contributing positively to society? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't know what society is. I don't think there's been a society for me to contribute to. All of us have our group of friends maybe, and our work life. But the rampant individualism and abandonment of the family unit leads us to no dialogue between peoples. Things just happen and we react to it. Go accumulate money and take vacation. I can't remember the last time I've seen more than three neighbors within a year time span. So no, I don't think I'm contributing to society. I'm only a student, after all.

<comment><USER3> >But the rampant individualism and abandonment of the family unit leads us to no dialogue between peoples.

It's not like that everywhere. I live in a midwest metropolitan area (~230k people), when I walk passerbyers always say hi or wave. People are relatively friendly by default. Yesterday an older lady I'd never met before told me about the pace maker she had put in the Friday before.

I'm rambling, but if you desire a sense of community or whatever there are parts of the US where this is very much a thing.

<comment><USER4> I live in San Francisco. Grew up in the South Bay. Last month I took a motorcycle trip up to Seattle along the California and Oregon coastline. I took my time, stopped a lot along the way. I was shocked at how friendly and inquisitive the people from the <5-digit-population towns were. Everyone was polite, seemed genuinely interested in conversation with me (a lot of questions about my motorcycle, but other topics too). Completely the opposite of the urban/suburban areas I was used to. This began immediately outside the greater Bay Area and let up only when going through medium sized towns or larger. Portland and Seattle were much like being back in SF.

Anyways, I'm also rambling, but just wanted to add another piece of anecdotal evidence to yours. It's almost enough to make me want to try living in one of these towns for a while, which never really occurred to me before (at 25 it seems like everyone I know wants to be as urban as possible).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im working in automatization. So no! Im a wrecking ball to societys foundation, im taking peoples jobs away or prevent those from existing in the first place. I secretly wish this whole Ponzi scheme would come crashing down to bury this nightmare.

I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology, like others can, that this is for some greater good and 72 virgins after the singularity hits, but logic, that cruel mistress wont allow those too last.

<comment><USER6> Automatization is one of the best contribution to society that can exit, i can't wait to live in a world where we all acknowledge that not everyone needs to work and we can focus on really important things like NOT reinventing the wheel and spend life on useless jobs.

That is at least if everything (or almost) goes as planned and things like universal income become a reality.

Also, i thought everyone from hackernews thought this.

<comment><USER7> The benefits from automation still exist, even if currently the only way to realize them at scale is to steal from the rich robot owners.

Thus, working to increase automation is still useful, because it is likely that we will soon either tax the owners of automated capital more, or economically disenfranchised people will have a bloody revolution, and the new owners of the automated capital will be slightly more inclined to voluntarily share for the next 70 years or so.

The end result is that mopping floors and cleaning toilets becomes a robot job, and no human anywhere does it, freeing them up for tasks that actually require human brainpower. I think everyone needs to work, but the BS jobs we have been inventing are not fit for that purpose. Everyone needs to _do_ a thing that is productive by the loosest definition and makes them happy. Like jarring your own pickles. Or making an online comic with stick figures. Or domesticating foxes. When freed of the requirement that people have to do work to perform certain critical functions that keep civilization running, like growing food and paving roads, people can instead put more effort into things that are niche interests.

It might be playing video games for 12 hours a day. That's okay. You don't need that guy to raise chickens for your dinner. But you might need him later, when you decide to spend 4 hours every week to play a video game, and you don't want to waste your time on one that is not fun, or too deep for that level of time commitment. That guy will soon become an subject matter expert on video games, and you can trust him to blow away the chaff, because he _loves_ video games.

Some people still do the niche stuff even after working 40 hours or more in a week. If you think about what they can do in their leisure time, just imagine what they would accomplish if their hobby was their full time job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for bringing up this nice discussion.

My answer right now would be a timid yes. But in no way in an impactful way, even to very few, so I still feel I need to work on this regard.

Now, I want to merge this topic with one that comes naturally to HN: startups. I keep feeling like the projects that are for the good make no money, and that the easy money is to be found in negative or maybe irrelevant solutions. I know this is not 100% accurate, and that's why I keep trying to think of projects I can pursue, make a living on, that feel just RIGHT. But hell is this hard.

</comment><comment><USER9> I struggle with this.

I work for a company which is owned by a big health insurance company and we make consumer-facing applications. Our products have a varying degree of public benefit from online insurance open enrollment (turbotax for benefits) to provider transparency (find doctors and see how much common services cost).

In general, I'm glad I'm working on improving consumer experience in one of the more stressful human experiences, but I know at the end of the day, I'm still improving the bottom line of a huge company and enabling the propagation of a broken system.

Having things like Juicero exist gives me a little bit of relative ethical reprieve: "at least I'm not wasting a ton of money to make an elitist, wasteful food fad product".

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe that simply treating others the way we'd like to be treated is a positive contribution to society. Treating others with respect, and trying to keep common places clean already goes a long way for society as a whole.

<comment><USER11> I guess sometimes it's the smallest of things that can make a genuine difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a such a great question. I find it fascinating that 'contributing positively to society' is not necessarily related to; financial compensation, legality or societal status.

Not implying it should of course, many of us don't have the option to choose our jobs too easily. But some of us certainly are in a position to choose a job which pays higher but has less moral standing.

My next door neighbour works for a pay-day loan company, and seems to be well rewarded. I don't know if he considers this question. Another friend of mine moved from accounting into private equity, with much higher pay. Similar to the high-achieving doctors who go into cosmetic plastic surgery.

Is there any incentive to consider your contribution to society?

</comment><comment><USER13> Assuming of course you mean contributing positively...

I felt that way for dozen or so years I was in our Airforce, less about fighting down under, more about helping out.

But then...

I left for money, now I have a fancy business card, a house, more cars than I can drive at once and habits I couldn't have sustained in uniform, now if I'm contributing, it's not positive, and sleep, it was easier before.

<comment><USER14> Spending your money on that stuff is contributing. By purchasing a house you contributed to the housing workers. And contribute more property tax. You supported the salaries of people in the automobile industry. You are literally contributing by consuming.

Don't apologize for it. Every idea about society has been tried a dozen times over. Capitalism has the best track record. Some of the worst hell holes on earth had great intentions in the minds of their leaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a mixed bag for me. I work in children's entertainment and educational apps. While I feel quality fun educational experiences on devices are positive, I also feel like they are contributing to kids getting addicted to these screens at a young age which concerns me deeply. I'm not really sure where to go from here to address these concerns.

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, from someone in the education arena.. Would you think augmented-reality style apps would be a step in the right direction?

I remember being told it would bring forward the 'outside world' to people otherwise glued to their phones. But then, I drove past a pokemon go party the other day and the only difference was they were all stood outside...

<comment><USER15> I think AR and VR have incredible educational potential, but I don't know that it will do anything to decrease screen addiction in children. It will likely only increase it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes! I'm the lead developer for the ground control software for the Mars rovers. The missions are expanding the bounds of human knowledge, and doing my job right means we get more/better science data back from the rovers!

<comment><USER9> That's fantastic! Could I bother to ask if you write at all about it or if your team has a blog or anything like that? I'm quite interested : )

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did for the last couple of years, working in the public sector for GDS. While personal circumstances changed and I've gone back to agency life again, I'd recommend digital transformation of government services to anyone who's a bit burnt out on the steady diet of startups destined to fail and brochureware sites. The USDS even advertise their open positions as 'tours of duty': [https://www.usds.gov/join#tours-of-duty](https://www.usds.gov/join#tours-of- duty)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think there are a lot of cases where people (likely yourself) contribute positively to society but don't realize it. There are so many facets to how technology can interact with someone's life during some circumstance. Some of these positive circumstances may not be obvious or frequent- but that doesn't mean your efforts aren't worthwhile or that you shouldn't look at your work from different angles and appreciate your positive contributions. IMO affecting one stranger's life positively is worth celebrating.

Ex. I work on on a social music app[1] in my spare time. From my perspective I'm just making it easy for devs to share music while they work: marginal contribution to society at best. But a little while ago I got an email from a father who thanked me for the building something which gave him the opportunity to reconnect with his daughter across the world. Remembering nice stories like that help keep me motivated and hopefully you can find some nice stories in your line of work as well :).

[1] [https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm)

<comment><USER20> It is true that contribution can often seem intangible. However, if you lower the cost of goods, or increase productivity in any way, you have helped large numbers of people. Repeat that for 20 years and you have probably helped a few million, or if you are lucky a few hundred million people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's funny. I have a philosophy that work at its core should be viewed a generous act for society so work-wise that's all I've cared about doing for years.

And yet, I've found it hard to actually contribute positive tangible things. The only thing that philosophy has brought me is a kind of smugness about my unnecessary poverty.

Honestly, the whole experience has given me quite a reverence for capitalism. At it's best, it helps direct a human being toward a path of contribution. There are problems[1] but I think the thing I've learnt is that the task of finding and following through on something that _actually contributes_ to society is hard, and the fact that capitalism makes it easy is kind of amazing.[2] Left to your own devices you tend to massively underestimate the difficulty of whatever scheme you come up with, and burnout/get demotivated without others around you who are doing the similar work.

Ahh well, hopefully I figure how to properly do this "contribution" malarky in the next ten years.

[1] Apart from avoiding externalities, the other major issue is that capitalism serves dollar-weighted humans, and with the current wealth distribution that is vastly different from serving humans.

[2] Find a job that isn't obviously evil. If you succeed, you're probably contributing positively to society.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work in international development - studying why some developing countries prosper, learning lessons from that, and seeing if it can be applied elsewhere. We do a mix of theoretical paper-publishing and also small policy engagements. Nothing _I_ do (data munging / backend / ops / web dev / bit of data visualization) single handedly saves anyone or improves anything, but I think it helps the people actually working on this stuff, so there's that.

</comment><comment><USER23> In a way, I am through my work. However it is primarily from doing tickets of people complaining about $feature or $bug or $access_rights. It certainly feels soul-sucking doing it. And most certainly does not _feel_ like positive contributions. But I know that what I work on, many millions of people count on in the end. And my hands are a small part of that.

In the grand stream of things, I've done more actionable and powerful work outside of my job I attend 5 days a week. If I had more time, I could push more innovation in many areas. The money would be nice as well. It's a hard choice, balancing money and time.

I yearn for the days when we finally have UBI or something guaranteeing us the rights to live without being coerced into selling our bodies and minds. Because right now, I feel there's little between me selling my body and mind and that of a prostitute selling theirs. I just don't do sex as work, so it's somehow "better".

And having rights to live for everyone would allow me to work much more in automation tech without the ethical qualms that I am putting many more people out of work - and thusly depriving them of living. Automation tech can work for a limited amount of people (now), or it can work for everyone.

Perhaps I'm just an idealist.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is heavily dependent on what you think "society" means.

Is it the entire human population of the Earth? Just the people of your own nation? The people in your hometown? Just rich and influential people?

Most of the time, I'm contributing to my own nuclear family by exporting my labor and importing other people's money. And that's "society" enough for me.

Other people can derive some ancillary benefit from what I do, but for the most part, the majority of them have been quite rude to me for no readily apparent reason beyond my general homeliness, so I stopped trying to satisfy them a long time ago.

The only contributions I feel are valuable in the ultra-long term are development in more efficient space launch technologies, space habitats, space propulsion, and ecological remediation here on Earth. But I don't do any of those things, so I don't value my own work very highly. I'm just workin' for The Man, and he doesn't love anybody or help anyone except Himself.

</comment><comment><USER24> Working in public health research, absolutely.

I don't save lives myself, but I help collect the data that's used to do so.

</comment><comment><USER25> Spent the last 17 years working for a university, writing custom code to support teaching, learning, and research programs. I've written code for projects related to climate modelling, tracking polar ice movement, studying traffic related air pollution, optimizing electrical grid construction in developing countries, helping law practitioners understand collateral consequences, improving counseling for domestic abuse victims, supporting HIV counseling (deployed in a successful study in clinics in South Africa), and teaching world leaders to detect and properly react to pre-genocidal warning signs.

Currently looking for a new gig and wondering whether I'd be able work on shitty adtech and still look at myself in the mirror.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes. I'm working to advance technology. Technology creates the economic surplus that makes everything good possible, it is the reason the old aren't starving and children aren't working the fields.

Also, I'm part of a country that has one of the highest standards of living in human history which was built on immense toil over thousands of years by my ancestors and millions of others, which only continues to exist based on mutual support between myself and many others.

I may question the value of what I'm working on at the moment, but I don't question the value of knowledge, technology, and the society that allows me to pursue it.

</comment><comment><USER11> No.

Like many, I help in a number of small ways I'm sure, and perhaps I've even made a big impact on a few lives for the better, but I can't help but think I should be able to scale up and do more for a far, far greater number of people.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hell yes, Jacques Fresco and his project Venus definitely fit to this category. They contributes by educating the world the ill effects of current monetary system infers we all are circling our way slowly to destruction. He calls for change to the resource based economy and envisions a great future. It is not an Utopia as many think so. But it is feasible when we push our way to it collectively.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes, at least I hope so. I've done my fair share of volunteer work, am involved in politics, and at work we build software for high schools.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, yes. I am currently working at a Tribal community college. We're trying to help the next generation get a start.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yeah. I'm working on an app that helps people manage their diet (for weight loss and dietary issues).

</comment><comment> d--b Working for hedge fund here: nope, I don't feel like I am improving society in any way.

<comment><USER9> No judgement intended in asking, but does the contribution question factor into you deciding to work for a hedge fund? If it does, what keeps you there?

I'm curious because I've had a few coworkers come from hedge funds and they left for a lot of reasons.

<comment> d--b Sure no problem. No the contribution question was left aside. I went to work for a hedge fund because I wanted to live in NYC and go through the immigration process easily (I'm French). It turned out that the people I work with are very smart and super nice. So overall I don't feel like contributing much, but I kind of sorted the money issue and I work on challenging problems with a bunch of smart guys, so I feel fine.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the answer! That's great that you've found work and people you're happy with. Best of luck to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not really. I am doing custom software development, and it is clearly a zero sum game.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not really. If I were to disappear forever the company I work for would easily continue on with all current work with probably no noticeable change.

<comment><USER33> That can be a very good sign. People like to feel important but it's very dangerous to be irreplaceable. Key man risk is often underestimated and can kill companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Of course I do. I work, pay my taxes, donate some to charity and fundraisers, and contribute to the economy as a consumer.

</comment><comment><USER35> yes, I help individuals and small businesses build sensible web strategies and mentoring where required, my clients are nice people running socially conscious enterprises in interesting and progressive fields, that's positive, for me anyway.

</comment><comment><USER36> There is a reason I work in public government, and it isn't the pay. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes. My job is to automate tasks at a cancer research institution.

</comment><comment><USER38> basics science researcher. Yes, but in an abstract sort of way.

<comment><USER39> You are directly contributing to humanity's knowledge, I can't imagine many way in which someone could be positively contributing more concretely !

(That's what I tell myself about my phd anyway)

<comment><USER38> well, it's work that is several steps removed from directly impacting an individual. Nobody's ever come to my lab to tell me I saved their life. (but if our work bears fruit, everyone will have better hearing aids!)

I worked EMS in undergrad; none of my patients ever found me afterwards to thank me, but we _probably_ saved a life or two. (narcan is magical)

it's a fun conversation to have over a few beers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm a software engineer at a very large adtech vendor.

The basic argument for display ads not being evil is that they give journalists and other content creators a way to get paid for their work. A lot of people, concerned about incentive distortion and other problems with ads, would rather see this happen through alternative models like subscriptions or microtransactions, but it's not clear to me that that can work. In particular, the amount that publishers would have to charge in order for such models to be revenue-competitive with ads far exceeds the average reader's willingness to pay—which suggests that ads provide a significant consumer surplus.

The question that currently worries me a bit is where that surplus comes from. One possibility is that the cost to consumers of being shown ads is much greater than it appears, because ads strongly influence consumers' behavior in ways that directly oppose their own interests. (Note that this is different from the hypothesis that publishers manipulate readers' behavior to maximize ad revenue; this is about the what advertisers do directly.) Obviously there's some of this going on; the question is whether it's enough to negate the consumer surplus. (Some also argue that there should be zero tolerance for this, even if the consumer comes out ahead, because it undermines their ability to navigate the tradeoffs in their own interest; I won't get into that argument here.) I think this hypothesis can't yet be ruled out, and if true certainly means that I'm making the world worse, but I'd like to see stronger evidence for it before I believe it with much confidence. In particular, lots of people who argue strongly for it seem to be basically motivated by their own aesthetic revulsion towards ads, and rarely present much real evidence.

Another hypothesis is that advertisers are basically engaging in a dollar auction against one another, paying more than they should for ad inventory because if they don't their competitors will, and/or because they can't measure the effectiveness of their ad spend well enough. (Obviously we try to give advertisers the tools to measure and understand the effects of what they're doing, but some argue that it still doesn't work well enough for that purpose.) The proceeds from this dollar auction effectively wind up subsidizing publishers, readers, and me. If this is true, then I think I'm making society better, by moving wealth from things like consumer product marketing (less socially valuable) to things like journalism and content creation (more socially valuable). Such an arrangement may not be stable in the long term, as greater competition increases selection pressures against companies that waste money like this, but I'm okay with crossing that bridge when I get there.

There are likely other possible explanations that I haven't thought of.

Two other relevant factors in defense of what I do: 1\. My job in particular is significantly about defending users' interests. As HN readers are well aware, there are a lot of ways that display ads these days just plain suck for users, and much of what I work on is about finding ways to make that less true. 2\. I donate a significant fraction of my salary to the most socially valuable causes that I can find, and I intend to increase that amount a lot more once I've got a financial safety cushion built up for myself.

I don't think I could do much more social good than this while still working on pure technology. I do think I could do a lot more social good if I took a job that involved significantly less programming and more of other kinds of less-pleasant work that I'm worse at. I frequently feel bad about not doing that, but it does seem reasonably likely that I'd burn out if I did.

</comment><comment><USER41> Too philosophical for HN...

<comment><USER35> I was not aware of degrees of philosophising, is it not binary ?</comment></comment>


The Curious Use of Language in the Lance Armstrong Decision - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-keith-devlin/lance-armstrong-blood-tests_b_1829050.html <comment><USER2> > In which case, I find it troubling. The USA should have far higher standards > of proof than that.

True. They should have.</comment>


As programmers, why we never finish our projects - <AUTHOR> http://programmer-hek.blogspot.com/2014/11/as-programmers-why-we-never-finish-our.html

<comment><USER2> One thing I've learned over many years [of discarded projects] is that if you don't put effort into completing it, it'll never get finished. The problem isn't a lack of talent or vision. It's not an inability to finish a project. It's a problem of discipline and focus. Discipline is the ability to do what needs to be done, regardless of your want to do it. The further I go through life, the more I understand is achieved in life because of relentless self discipline and focus than because of raw talent. Talent and vision are only 2/3 of the equation... without discipline, nothing gets done.

This is why most real entrepreneurs aren't afraid to share their ideas and get it in front of people, while most developers go into "stealth mode" afraid someone will steal their idea. Entrepreneurs know that without execution, your idea is worthless... and execution is equal parts talent, vision and discipline. Take any one of those 3 pieces away and just like the fire triangle, your idea dies.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Brag until you Fail

>Share your idea, it'll validate (or invalidate it), shape it and most importantly, commit you to it. We don't want to let people down and we do want to save face, so tell people what you're working on.

I'm not sure if I agree with this last point. Studies have consistently shown that discussing a goal with others reduces your motivation to actually meet the goal[0]. I've found this to be true in my own experience with side projects. I'll spend a few days excitedly discussing the details of some idea with my friends online, and then never end up finishing the project.

Social pressure does work, but it's likely better for more definite goals. You could tell your friend "You know, I think I'll run that marathon with you next month," and be obligated to prepare for it. However, side projects are mostly self-motivated and there's no use sharing all your excitement with friends instead of working on something tangible to show.

[0]: [http://www.newsweek.com/does-announcing-your-goals-help- you-...](http://www.newsweek.com/does-announcing-your-goals-help-you- succeed-79645)

<comment><USER4> Over my quota, so can't read the NW article, but your point matches my experience strongly.

I think of it as a delayed gratification problem. There's a bunch of gratification that comes from building something cool, and having people around you appreciate it. If you can get a lot of that based on just the _idea_ of the thing, then you've got much less motivation to actually build it.

If you're going to get 1000 plaudits for finishing, that might keep you going through 10 ergos of work. But if you cash in 800 plaudits right off, now you're faced with 10 ergos of work for only 200 plaudits: and that's an exchange rate it is difficult to justify.

A similar thing happens with releasing little and often, for the same reason. It is massively motivating, until the 4th or 5th release, then you hit the wall of rapidly diminishing returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to have incomplete projects, but now I set goals and work on the project until that goal is met.

I've worked with many other programmers on side projects and many times, unless someone is getting paid, they get bored and lose interest when they have to start working on something that's not cool or interesting.

I learned the hard way that these are also the same types of developers I don't want to start a company with.

<comment><USER6> Same here. My barrier for "starting" a project is much higher than it used to be. I might think about a project, or bounce the idea off some friends. However, if I commit to starting something, I finish it. I usually have some sort of deadline, but will finish the project regardless of whether I think it's still worth pursuing after I've started.

<comment><USER7> I think having this "barrier to entry" is important. When I have an idea, I tend to let it sit and re-evaluate after the "lust" stage has died down. Often times, I realize perhaps it wasn't as cool as I thought. If something is still nagging at your days later, perhaps it's a good candidate to evaluate.

Regarding your last point, I think also what a lot of developers struggle from (myself included) is project ADD. Having discipline to scope something out, set sane (and near) deadlines and focus only on that is important to seeing it through to completion. Good work on developing that discipline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've got quite a few projects that aren't "finished" because there are additional features I'd like to add some day. However, they are "done" in that they currently work for me. For these applications I just use them as-is, adding a feature whenever inspiration strikes.

I had one open source library that gained some traction, which I lost interest in. Luckily for me, another took over to finish it.

<comment><USER9> I've had the same problem. Not just programming projects but also blog posts, articles, music tracks, and even a novel that I want to launch, but somehow, seem stuck at 90% complete.

I was actually thinking of launching a platform to help people get the last 10% done. Often, people have the entire thing figured out but lack the confidence or the expertise to go live. Perhaps if an expert was to look over the project when it was about 90% done, you would feel more confident about launching.

Either way, the demands of someone looking for help before launching, vs. someone who wants something built from scratch are very different. I thought a dedicated platform for the former would help.

<comment><USER10> That's actually a really good idea. A lot of times people have big dreams for projects they really enjoy, but little knowledge and expertise in those areas, and so they aren't confident enough to see it through to the end. I myself have a website trading business that is in this state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because programming gives us very easy means of getting _something_ on the screen (just write a line of text and computer will execute it; magic!) but makes it very hard to accomplish _anything_ (due to extreme indirection AKA "Yak Shaving" and archaic computer-centered text-based "tools"). Also because we generally lack culture of Developing things (i.e. understanding that production and polishing of things takes 95% of effort which takes enormous amounts of perseverance, focus and discipline).

<comment><USER2> But what we all fail to ask is how much of a return on our investment does that 95% of effort get? Would something with 20% of the work give us 80% of an ROI? You have to pick your battles. Of course, something that looks slick and professional makes us feel a lot of pride - _yeah, that 's right I did that, doesn't it look slick? Isn't the UX amazing?_... but did we spend 80% of our time attempting to increase our ROI by only 20%? If so, we're concentrating our efforts in the wrong place. It's really easy to get sucked into making something look perfect, but you always have to have an eye on the goal. [Does the extra work I'm putting into this increase or decrease ROI? Is it costing the company more to pay me to fix this bug than it's going to yield in income?]

<comment><USER11> That's partially my point. Unfortunately, it seems to me that with modern tools, libraries, OSes (Yak Shaving is actually one consequence of those) it's extremely costly to actually finish something of genuine robustness and quality. As I was telling to my friend once, at university we made database- centric applications using Delphi in under an hour and how much does the simple (couple screens, HTTP request, couple buttons wiring them) iOS application cost now? About a $1000? And do you feel that people mostly building not what they want or what would enrich the community but what their tools _allow_ them? Why after release of _golang_ everyone started to develop data-storages with it? Does world need 100 more database systems (while few of currently existing properly support ACID)? Why people not building next- generation GUI tools with _go_? Because it does not easily allow it (it would be too cumbersome/costly).

<comment><USER2> Indeed. 90% of the time, the reason it's so costly to get anything done in industry isn't the developer's technical ability to get the job done, it's operational constraints: build pipeline, ops, company policy, communications breakdowns. If you can remove most of those impedances by only doing 20% of the work and still making 80% of the return on your investment, there's little reason to sink budgets into the other 80% of the work. It might seem wasteful when you look at something and see optimizations left here and there, optimizations that are a cake walk to the average developer, but the optimization doesn't always save/make as much as it costs to implement/deliver.

Even though the 15 lines of code seems simple and you can knock it up in a prototype in 6 minutes... that 6 minutes of your effort then needs to have tests written for each workflow, it needs to go through a Product Owner who needs to assign acceptance criteria, it needs to go through a QA test plan, it needs to get through acceptance testing and hopefully you've got a battery of tests that means it doesn't need to go through regression testing... and then assuming you've got CI/CD in place, it initiates the deployment pipeline and makes it to production without any major headaches. So you see, the optimization even though simple on your own project, and may not appear to "cost" much - certainly not in terms of technology actually has a massive amount of "hidden" costs - which is why it takes large corporations so long to deliver anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me, the reason is that things are never done, they're just "done".

Once I got past that mental obstacle and started releasing things that were _done enough_ , then I got a bit addicted to it.

<comment><USER2> Done enough is good enough, as long as you achieved the goal you set out to achieve, it's done. No more energy is worth spending on it - unless you change the goals.</comment></comment>


Is a PR/Legal Mess in Store for Facebook fbFund? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/facebook-fbfund-emails

<comment><USER2> It's exactly to avoid these kinds of issues (and perhaps a little for union- related issues) that entertainment production companies return unsolicited screenplays and ideas unopened.

Since unsolicited business plans and ideas basically never get funded, it's a little surprising that VCs don't follow that same policy. In Facebook's case, my guess is that you've got no chance at a "grant" unless you put together an app to demonstrate at least a little of what you want to do.

And be wary of comparing it to YC. Besides requiring more than an e-mail (and informally promising not to blab about your product), YC is on top of you for three months in carefully structured environment. They don't just give you some money and wait to see what happens.

<comment><USER3> It is legal to steal a business idea. It is not legal to steal copyrighted material. That is the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mark Z is not your best bud. He's not gonna hold your hair while you puke in the toilet and he's not going to compile your program for you while you take a nap. He runs a company now, it's called Facebook, have you heard of it?

As a company Facebook do things that makes Facebook worth more so that Mark Z can pretend he's Steve Jobs of Bill Gates of Web 2.0 and that includes convincing people that just because there's an "investment fund" for making FB apps, you can be rich. You won't.

You can design for the web or you can design for Facebook, but 10 years ago everyone would have laughed at you if you said you wanted to make a living designing a channel or chat room just for this little thing called America OnLine.</comment>


Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure From the DOD - <AUTHOR> http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/resource_library/guidance.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Podcast describing it: [http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/freakonomics- radi...](http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/freakonomics- radio/freakonomics-radio-govt-workers-gone-wild)

Link [word doc]: [http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete...](http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete.doc)</comment>


California Coastal Records: Aerial photographic survey of California Coastline - <AUTHOR> http://www.californiacoastline.org/

<comment><USER2> I will forever connect 'California coast' to the Streisand effect! :)

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

<comment><USER3> EDIT: Found 'em - [http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=2...](http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=201309517&mode=sequential&flags=0&year=2013)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now this is the proof that Los Angelinos are insane

[http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=2...](http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=200802881&mode=sequential&flags=0&year=2008)

<comment><USER5> Your photo is a stone's throw from the well-known "Sunken City" in San Pedro (a neighborhood of LA). If you go two photographs northward, you can see a nice view of the remains of a sudden subsidence event in 1929.

There are still remains of roads, sidewalks, and other infrastructure. It's now a pretty well-known hiking spot, although you're formally not supposed to go there:

[http://www.welikela.com/sunken-city-san-pedro-hidden-l-a- adv...](http://www.welikela.com/sunken-city-san-pedro-hidden-l-a-adventure/)

The land was moving as much as 11 inches per day, but most houses were able to be moved before they were destroyed.

So many of the houses along the Pacific coast were built before the geologic truth was known/admitted.

<comment><USER6> With the insurance these homeowners probably have, they may be pretty happy to see their houses slide into the ocean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Washington state has this, with a historical option as well. [https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/coastalatlas/tools/ShorePhotos.a...](https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/coastalatlas/tools/ShorePhotos.aspx)

<comment><USER8> If you click on "Time Comparison" you can see images from older datasets.

One interesting thing is that the California Coastal Project isn't funded by the state (as far as I know.) Just one guy, his wife, and his passion project. I like the fact that Washington State seems to be funding its own project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this legal under california law? [http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=2...](http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi- bin/image.cgi?image=201312418&mode=sequential&flags=0&year=current)

<comment><USER8> Are you talking about the wall in the center/right portion? I'd assume it was built a long time ago as a safety measure to keep people from getting stranding in the beach/cave and they haven't taken it down. Just a guess though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can see my (childhood) house from there.</comment>


K-9 Mail 2.4, an opensource email client for Android came out today - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fsck.com/2010/01/k9-mail-2400-for-android.html

<comment><USER2> I can't understand how anybody could release an Android app with no screenshots! I know we're all coders and not salesmen, but we all experience the frustrations of liking a project and skipping it because it gives the impression of being all talk and no game.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just installed it. An excellent client. Seems full of features and well thought-out. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> Today as in over a year ago

I've been using for a year too, works pretty good.</comment>


Tips to log software bugs so your developers are happy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sourcemetrics.com/tracking-software-bugs-in-social-media-commerce/

<comment><USER2> I worked with Henry for a while, and I have to say, he really was the best at logging issues.</comment>


Is "Startup" a word? - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/google-add-the-word-startup-to-chrome-s-default-dictionary Most spell check dictionaries find the word "startup" as a misspelled word. Does that mean I'm wasting my life?? Help me write this wrong by signing the petition:<p>https://www.change.org/petitions/google-add-the-word-startup-to-chrome-s-default-dictionary <comment><AUTHOR> I'm dying to know!!

[https://www.change.org/petitions/google-add-the-word- startup...](https://www.change.org/petitions/google-add-the-word-startup-to- chrome-s-default-dictionary)</comment>