Psychedelic stickers that interfere with AI image recognition - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/02/these-psychedelic-stickers-blow-ai-minds/ <comment><USER2> It actually does kind of look like a toaster.

<comment><USER3> Indeed ... looks like a toaster... I would say the AI is pretty dang good.

<comment><USER4> I think the point is that even though it's smaller and less obvious that the other objects, it's still sufficient to "hijack" the recognition for the whole image. If they had a little sticker with a normal picture of a toaster on it it's unlikely that it would've prevented the banana from being recognised, and the image only looks a bit like a toaster, whereas the banana is unambiguously recognisable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It appears to me that this mostly fools whole-image classification algorithms. If the system performs object segmentation first and then applies classification to each object in the scene, this method is unlikely to be effective.

One can paste such a sticker on top of the face or other objects to be disguised and it might reduce recognition accuracy a bit, but applying some "paint-in" algorithms to fill in the blank covered by the sticker would basically remove its effect. That is unless it is used to cover some prominent features, although that is often unpractical in many circumstances.

<comment><USER6> This sticker only works against _this_ classifier. If you start changing the algorithm, you'd need to change the attack to match.

If you think you can write a better image classifier by first segmenting the image before using ML, then I encourage you to get your own computer vision paper published and see how that works for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that the technical term for these should be "squirrels".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg)

</comment><comment><USER8> A potential application of this could be some kind of "privacy sticker" that you'd wear on your hat or your face in order to disable automated facial recognition systems.

<comment><USER9> Not sure if it can fool all cameras, But LEDs seems to bright for some cameras and you can buy hats with embedded LEDs.[0]

Unfortunately this will make you stand out like a Christmas tree on the video. But this must cripple automated facial recognition technology.

[0]: [http://odditymall.com/justice-caps-hide-your-face-from- surve...](http://odditymall.com/justice-caps-hide-your-face-from-surveillance- cameras)

<comment><USER10> I think infrared LEDs can solve the problem quite easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Psychedelic stickers that interfere with one specific model used in AI image recognition.

If necessary, next week these system can learn to ignore these.

<comment><USER12> Check out the 34C3 talk on adversarial AI. They found that the percentages of fooling are still high if one gets the adversary model completely wrong when designing the attack generating network, so it seems surprisingly stable.

<comment><USER11> I think that working around these type of fooling is easy but not really worthwhile for now. After all, adversarial models are designed to improve the performances of the models.

Also in the article, they test a detector that has to identify a single object in an image that contains two: place an actual toaster next to the banana and call it fooled.

<comment><USER13> The point there may have been that the sticker over-powered the banana. The article does leave me with more questions than answers.

<comment><USER11> Ask them, I may have some answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's pretty funny seeing this post directly under this: "Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance"

I guess we'll see people sticking these on their faces?

<comment><USER15> I would guess that if that becomes an issue, such behavior will rapidly be criminalized, and in China, harshly punished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These are the types of fun details that are totally going to be part of future history lessons (no matter which direction, positive or negative, all of this is heading towards).

<comment><USER17> Hardening production ML systems are going to be fun. I think exploiting ML will be the new kid on the block just like how we were introduced to XSS exploits. See [https://github.com/cchio/deep- pwning](https://github.com/cchio/deep-pwning)

<comment><USER18> Indeed. It's already starting to happen:

[https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/fooling-googles-image- recogni...](https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/fooling-googles-image-recognition- ai-1000x-faster)

<comment><USER19> Trying to "harden" million-parameter models trained on a relatively small number of relevant examples will be a nightmare to make web security look easy.

PS -- NIPS is in Long Beach now? What a shame.

<comment><USER20> It left Vancouver a few years ago and has been moving around. It's getting too big for many cities now.

<comment><USER19> Too bad... Vancouver/Whistler was an awesome place to have a conference, even if the weather was rainy and the skiing so-so. A NIPS too big to be hosted by anything but a mega-city sounds depressing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That reminds of the old days when automatic "self-learning" SPAM classification began.

Back then, spammers sent deliberately gibberish messages. The goal was that users (rightfully) marked those as SPAM, somehow disturbing the machine learning and thus weakening the overall SPAM recognition.

Alas, I don't know if this was actually working, and if so, how large the effect was. This would be an interesting bit of history.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I saw the "oily" legs on reddit I was curious if such an illusion could be used to fool AI camera surveillance. The recent article on China's surveillance network came to mind.

Oily legs illusion [https://i.imgur.com/14U9rqn.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/14U9rqn.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interestingly, William Gibson includes something very much like this as a plot point at the end of "Zero History."</comment>


Szl, a Tcl-inspired embeddable language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dimkr/szl <comment><USER2> This 3-letter name is already taken [0], might be worth at least considering a different one.

It looks like this probably qualifies as a Show HN as well, if you can edit the title.

What are your future plans for the project? Are you using it regularly?

[0] [https://github.com/google/szl](https://github.com/google/szl)

<comment><USER3> If Google can reuse names like "Go" and "Dart," then their "szl" is fair game for reuse.

<comment><USER4> Fair game sure, but unfortunately confusing. If there was another dart that was an actual programming language ( Is there ? ) you would have to qualify every time which dart programming language you meant. I imagine searching for things online would be tricky.

<comment><USER5> > f there was another dart that was an actual programming language ( Is there > ? )

I don't believe so. We changed the name to "Dart" from "Dash" because the lawyers did a trademark search and felt the former was a safer bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The language manual: [http://dimakrasner.com/szl](http://dimakrasner.com/szl)

<comment><USER2> The writing in here looks pretty clean. My one suggestion would be to get some more examples in there. Most of the descriptions are one line and as a total outsider I just wanted to see some in action.

This document is much more appealing to me than the project's README. Since people often browse just the README when visiting a repository on GitHub, I wonder if you would be better off getting some of the language from sections 1 and 2 into the top of your README. The current README Overview just didn't do it for me. As soon as I saw the first two sections of the user manual, I was more interested because it showed what problem you were solving and how.

> Warning - This manual may reflect a future state of szl.

Got a chuckle out of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does every command start with a "$"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because everything is an object, including built-in functions

<comment><USER8> Then why the $, you already know that it's an object.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. The first token in a statement is treated the same way as those that come after it. This way, you can do stuff like this (i.e. imagine a dictionary that maps HTTP methods to hander functions):

        >>> $local functions [$list.new $puts $sleep]
        puts sleep
        >>> [$list.index $functions 0] hello
        hello

<comment><USER7> I think it might be better to special case the first word in the command, just like sh and tcl do. The list.index case you mentioned is much rarer than just calling a command directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cannot find the actual differences to Tcl?

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't Tcl, but a language inspired by Tcl. I think the manual tells the difference, once you see the more restricted syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fundamentally it is more like tcl (function chaining) than like bash (process chaining), where process pipelining is the central operation, and where functions and programs are equivalent. In that sense, it has mostly the advantages but also the inconveniences of tcl, javascript and similar non- shell scripting languages. My opinion is that they have quite missed the ball in bash on non-nestable arrays when they introduced them quite recently, but besides that, bash is still pretty much my favourite tool.

<comment><USER10> Yes, in writing my bash parser/interpreter (see below) I explored the non- nested arrays and assoc arrays issue.

I think it mainly has to do with the fact that bash has no references and garbage collection. When you create an array like [1, 2, [a, b]] in Python/Ruby/Perl, you are introducing the concept of references, as well introducing hte potential for reference cycles.

In contrast, an array in bash is just a value, and it took me awhile to figure out how to even copy it. None of these work:

        a=('x y' z)

        b=${a}
        b=${a[*]}
        b=${a[@]}

        b="${a[*]}"
        b="${a[@]}"

        b=( ${a} )
        b=( ${a[*]} )
        b=( ${a[@]} )

        b=( "${a}" )
        b=( "${a[*]}" )

This works:

        b=( "${a[@]}" )

In other words, it takes 11 characters to properly copy an array! This syntax is horrible.

<comment><USER11> What's more horrible about it is that the simpler sh constructs are somehow not respected in bash culture.

In sh, each function has a local array, and you use that array with _" $@"_. And typically you can get along with only that array. Not so bad.

        my_b() {
            somefunc foo "$@" bar
        }</comment></comment></comment>


Machine Learning from scratch: Bare bones implementations in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eriklindernoren/ML-From-Scratch <comment><USER2> One quick comment: in general it is a bad idea to compute the inverse of a matrix (to solve a linear system). It's much better to compute the QR factorization or SVD instead (or simply call least square solver).

See for example: [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/19/dont-invert- that-m...](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/01/19/dont-invert-that-matrix/)

<comment><USER3> It's usually even better to use iterative methods

<comment><USER4> GMRES is definitely my go-to these days. Though it is worth noting that direct methods do have a benefit of letting you quickly solve many successive linear problems involving the same matrix, but different right-hand sides. But iterative methods scale very well for large sparse problems that they are very often the only tool to consider.

Block Krylov methods are a thing , but I haven't experimented with them yet.

<comment><USER3> For solving linear systems there are recent mind-blowing methods by R. M. Gower and P. Richtarik:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03296](https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03296)

[http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~richtarik/papers/SDA.pdf](http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~richtarik/papers/SDA.pdf)

Plus R. M. Gower is fantastically nice and enthusiastic so there's that

And thanks for the link !

<comment><USER5> Only scrolled through it, but AFAIK if its results are comparable to Kaczmarz, then note that it is extremely slow.

If your goal is to solve say a LS problem, why not go for CGLS? [http://web.stanford.edu/group/SOL/software/cgls/](http://web.stanford.edu/group/SOL/software/cgls/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great resource, but it could be a phenomenal resource if you documented each method and explained how and why it does what it does.

Don't get me wrong, having working code to play with is key, but when you don't fully grasp the concepts behind it, an explanation can become so valuable.

That being said, you've included names, so research can be done. Great work and I hope you're enjoying it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Given the amount of publicity this repository has gained I will make sure do put more work into documenting the code. And also add references. Thank you for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a nice project. I think it would be great to add references used for the implementations and some tests that demonstrate they return what is expected (or perhaps the same result of sklearn maybe).

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are great suggestions. I will look into adding that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just tried it with an equities dataset [http://18.104.22.168/recommend/datasets](http://184.108.40.206/recommend/datasets) and it seems to have performed nicely. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar project: [https://github.com/rushter/MLAlgorithms](https://github.com/rushter/MLAlgorithms)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is impressive, and kindof exactly what I am in the process of doing. It's certainly the best way to get familiar with the internal workings of these methods than just tune parameters like an oblivious albeit theoretically informed monkey. How long did it take you to do them?

<comment><AUTHOR> It certainly is! Thanks. :) I have been working on it for about three weeks now.

<comment><USER3> > I have been working on it for about three weeks now.

That's not a whole lot, you're quick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would you suggest any books/resources to learn the theory behind these implementations so a newbie can follow along?

<comment><USER12> Pattern recognition and machine learning by Bishop is one of the canonical text books. It helps to have a linear algebra background, it includes a refresher though

<comment><USER13> Bishop is good but reads a little too much like a literature review sometimes. That may or may not be a problem depending on what you are looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This could become a fantastic resource for anybody who is teaching machine learning.

One vital improvement suggestion to make that path attractive would be if the Jupyter notebook format were used. It would be easier to add more documentation and references.

But in any case, thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER15> Better yet, write your own simple versions. That's what we did in undergrad and grad classes in AI, ML, Neural Nets, etc. There is nothing like building one yourself, even a simple model like kNN!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome! I'm working on something similar for JavaScript. Definitely will be using yours for reference. Thanks, dude!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In your RandomForest implementation, on the line in fit() where you're building the training subsets to give to each tree, it appears that your bagging approach doesn't use 'sampling with replacement' strategy.

        idx = np.random.choice(range(n_features), size=self.max_features, replace=False)

It would appear that the replace=False prevents the 'sampling with replacement' behavior usually implemented by bagging algorithms. Should the replace=False be changed to replace=True?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! I have read up on the feature bagging part of the algorithm and I believe that you are correct. This is fixed in the latest commit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> sci-kit learn is excellent, but their implementations are a bit to complicated to learn from.

this is for people who don't just want to tune parameters but build the whole thing from scratch

I can buy buy a pie all the fix-ins from a bakery, or I can buy the ingredients myself, and make it to exactly my liking. it may not be a professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad that you liked it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A friend sent me a link to this - nice work, and I happen to be intermittently working on a very similar (and unfortunately similarly named) project - [https://github.com/jarfa/ML_from_scratch/](https://github.com/jarfa/ML_from_scratch/). Check my commit history if you suspect me of copying you ;)

I don't think I'll be implementing as many algorithms as you though, I should force myself to work on more projects outside my comfort zone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, cool! Haha, that's unfortunate. Maybe I should have done a better job finding an original name. Good luck to you anyways!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool! How long did it take to learn and implement these models?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have taken some ML courses during my university studies and have also done some model implementations in other programming languages. So I didn't have to start from scratch. But I have been working on this project for about three weeks now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice! I have started brushing up my maths and reading about machine learning in general. Next step is to get my feet wet in the implementation. I think looking at your project can give me a good idea as to how to implement some of the most basic algorithms. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! :) Doing the nitty-gritty has been a great way of learning the limitations and benefits of using certain models for a given task. Good luck to you as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For the future, if it meets the guidelines, this likely should have been a Show HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome. I am currently building a decision tree from scratch in Java and will use yours as a reference.

One comment I have. in kNN, it is best to ensure that the neighbors list occupies O(k) space.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice project! I'm doing something similar in julia, with the added advantage that as I build it the numerical types are variadic so I can play around with numbers that aren't IEEE FPs.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very nice project! Very very useful for a ML beginner like myself. Thank you very much !

</comment><comment><USER26> Very cool! I have actually been planning to do exactly what you did, sir :)

<comment><USER27> Not sure what you had in mind, but a Python 3 version of this would be great!

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the comment, will have this in mind!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel happy to see your wonderful work you share so freely

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Very nice project! Learning stuff makes me happy.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is really cool and inspiring!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The response here has been amazing. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Amazing, thanks for sharing :)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://vschool.io/en/apply/](http://vschool.io/en/apply/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Deliver and release stuf that people actually use. Or work on projects that do.

Delivering value trumps painting every day</comment>


Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/match-com-lawsuit-ftc.html <comment><USER2> Juicy part from the actual complaint.

 _Since at least 2013, Defendant has maintained the following five deceptive or unfair practices to induce consumers to subscribe to Match.com and to keep them subscribed.

First, until mid-2018, Defendant sent consumers misleading advertisements that tout communications from persons Defendant identified as potentially fraudulent users of Match.com and led consumers to believe that the communications are from persons interested in establishing a dating relationship with them.

Second, until mid-2018, Defendant exposed consumers to the risk of fraud by providing recent subscribers access to communications that Defendant knew were likely to have been sent by persons engaging in fraud.

Third, until mid-2019, Defendant guaranteed certain consumers a free six-month subscription renewal if they fail to "meet someone special" but failed to disclose the requirements of its "guarantee" adequately.

Fourth, Defendant has misled consumers with a confusing and cumbersome cancellation process that causes consumers to believe they have canceled their subscriptions when they have not.

Fifth, until mid-2019, when consumers disputed charges relating to any of these practices and lose the dispute, Defendant denied consumers access to paid-for services._ [1]

[1][https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/match_- _com...](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/match_- _complaint.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Wow, apparently they had a stock line they used when customers paid them money to try and view those messages that were sent by fake accounts, got a message saying the account was unavailable instead (because it had been deleted for being fraudulent), and complained to Match.com that they thought they'd been swindled:

"Please be assured, Match.com does not send members misleading notifications, e-mails or winks professing romantic interest. We have too much respect for our members to ever compromise their trust. If you have received communications from members with profiles that are not immediately available, the member may have temporarily hidden their profile."

That is impressively scummy.

<comment><USER4> > _That is impressively scummy._

It's also indistinguishable from every other company doing business.

<comment><USER5> CRAPitalism at its finest!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've tried a number of dating websites in the past year, and _all_ of them are like this.

First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs.

The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engagement. All services show you a whole load of super attractive people on the first use (either fake or just popular profiles), only at the second day of use you get to the real profiles.

Due to the imbalance and fake accounts, as a male you rarely get response on messages. Most men just give up after a while and start to spam generic pickup lines to just about every profile. Woman get loads of messages per day and stop responding. It's vicious circle. As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone.

The marketing is optimised badly towards your emotions (loneliness or sexual drive), I regularly got email messages where they "urgently need men to sign up for the next dating event, because only woman have applied so far". One of the services send me a total of 8 (!) reminder emails after I cancelled my subscription, that suddenly all these photo models were trying to send me a match request but couldn't because my account was closed.

I like meeting new people but online dating just raises my anxiety and frustration. I don't think this can be 'disrupted' either, it's just a terrible business to be in since the incentives are completely misaligned.

<comment><USER7> > I'd say it's about 80% male.

It's more like most women will go for 20% of the men. If you're part of the 80% you'll feel alone. As an experiment just make a fake profile with some model's picture to discover how many women are around.

<comment><USER8> This is correct. It's become a winner takes all situation.

<comment><USER9> It probably was that way since the dawn of humanity. In 100 BC it was probably worse, if anything

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a fatal flaw in the dating site business model, to be honest. Their incentive is for you to stay on the site for as long as possible. If you could find a relationship quickly and then they would leave the site quickly. This would reduce the amount of ad and subscription revenue, in addition to reducing the size of the pool of "potential matches", discouraging those who have more trouble finding someone.

<comment><USER11> It would be nice to have a dating site where potential matches were verified, including height, weight, and photo. Perhaps have them visit a kiosk in a participating business to get a photo taken from a standard angle (no "myspace" angles) along with a verified height and weight (stand on a scale!)

<comment><USER12> Is people misrepresenting themselves something you encounter frequently? Seems like a short sighted move.

<comment><USER13> It's completely understandable to put yourself out there as the best version of yourself, but yes I have frequently seen people exaggerating themselves to the point of misrepresentation.

You see profiles with only pictures that clearly were taken 5-10 years ago, or only picture of the face with a filter so heavy they are barely recognizable. It is certainly short sighted because you can only hide behind a carefully curated profile for so long. If I was looking for a dating service I would certainly pay for one with just verified, unedited photos. At some point this could get creepy but other stats like height, age, and weight could be optionally verifiable and public.

If this could save me from even one awkward date a year with someone I don't find even remotely physically compatible it would easily be worth it.

<comment><USER14> _You see profiles with only pictures that clearly were taken 5-10 years ago_

Again my experience is long ago but I would occasionally be matched with someone I knew IRL and women shaving 5-10 years (e.g. moving into a lower age bracket) was very common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Former CTO of a multi-mllion user dating app. I am certain Match will claim plausible deniability here, the reality is such an argument would be a total farce.

While spam prevention is technically not a "solved" problem, simple and clever techniques in addition to shadow-banning go a long way. Once an account has sufficient activity, which for spammers takes anywhere from 30s - 4hr, even modest systems can confidently identify the vast majority.

A company like Match that has conglomerated other upstarts in the space surely has spammer identification systems far in excess of smaller apps. Yet somehow those competing apps often cite account authenticity as an advantage over Match. The Ashley Madison scandal exposed this business tactic. Match clearly followed suit and has been just-subtle-enough to evade legal action until now.

<comment><USER16> Speaking of plausible deniability, those 1000s of illegally downloaded videos on my harddrive were uploaded to my computer by a botnet.

But come on, if you are a large business then you should know what is going on in your company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I worked for about 3/4th of a year for a dating website. The market is ...unique, to put it nicely. Employees are constantly poached. When my boss told me this I couldn't believe it but it actually happened. During lunchtime, it became an often occurrence for someone to come and talk to me to try and reveal secrets.

Also they had a lot of people on payroll to pretend they're available girls on the website, in order to increase engagement and lure subscribers. One of them was a huge biker dude and it was hilarious. The truth is that on all these dating website, as someone else pointed out, the ratio is about 30 guys to 1 gal so building a dating platform is hard.

</comment><comment><USER18> Rewriting one of my earlier comments: I have used Tinder (owned by Match) before and it was one of the must frustrating experiences ever.

First, they do shady things with your data. Since I made a Tinder account I been getting constant ads for random dating sites. This have been going on for months. God knows how many companies now have my data.

Second, they employ dark patterns:

1) Easy account deletion. Why does that matter? Because they own nearly all dating sites. Including: "BlackPeopleMeet.com, Chemistry.com, Delightful, FriendScout24, HowAboutWe, Match.com, Meetic Group, OkCupid, OurTime, People Media, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Twoo, Hinge" So, they don't care if they lose a user as long as they can shuffle them around.

2) They will keep a tab of the number of users who have like you. Then eventually that user will shown to you and you will swipe left or right. In that case the tab count will decrease. This is a complete scam. They would withhold these users to push to a pay subscription. Example: [https://i.redd.it/e13yeek795x21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/e13yeek795x21.jpg) . Moreover, most of these likes a bots and fake profiles.

3) Fake notifications: [https://i.redd.it/r0lheira9rh31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/r0lheira9rh31.jpg)

4) Shadows-bans: I saw that my profile was getting no matches. So I made a new profile, ban! a match within minutes. Essentially they shadow ban users as a form of Neg.

<comment><USER19> To be fair on the last part, shadow ban can be an extremely efficient moderation tool, though for people caught up as false positive collateral damage it can really suck.

This is true even in hackernews I would assume, certainly it is any other place I've moderated before.

<comment><USER20> On a free product, I have no problems with shadow bans.

On a paid product, shadow bans seem like a pretty clear case of fraud.

<comment><USER18> Yep, having used Tinder's paid boots and seeing no results. And then making a new profile with the same photos and bio! and getting results within minutes left me feeling rob and manipulated.

<comment><USER21> This is an excellent case for a chargeback. It's up to the merchant to prove they were in the right, and in the meantime you get your money back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A decade or so ago I worked at AdultFriendFinder.com, then the largest dating site. We had 20 or so different properties, covering every niche from "jewishfriendfinder" to "alt.com"

On paper we had about 50 million users. The reality was that we were a porn site, and our business was entirely driven by porn site referrals. Our smarter referral partners would game the system to setup thousand of users to get extra bonuses, and we encouraged it, so that we could ethically claim that we didn't create the fake users.

These sorts of lies are pretty much status quo in the dating industry. Zoosk is _far_ worse, I walked away from a contract there when I realized how much of a sleazeball their founder, Shayan Zadeh, really was/

</comment><comment><USER23> Back when I was single, I was on a dozen dating sites. It was frustrating as heck to keep getting led on by fake profiles.

eHarmony is the worst: they actually sold my email address to spammers. How do I know this? I have my own domain, and use a unique (hard to guess) email address for each site I have to give an email address to. So it was trivial to nail eHarmony as the culprit.

Someone has already linked to the OKCupid blog post which explained pretty well why you should not pay for a dating site. Then they were bought out by Match (how did the anti-trust people let Match accumulate so many sites?), and any principles they had went down the drain.

Basically, the market is ripe for a _respectful_ dating site. But OKCupid started this way; and in the end they sold out. What makes you think you won't sell out when the money is right?

<comment><USER24> I do the same thing with a gmail address -- just do email@example.com, because gmail drops everything after the + for routing the email but still tells you which address it was sent to.

<comment><USER25> I used to do this, but it is troublesome some times because some websites use libraries that strip or replace the plus sign and the final email ends up being an address that you don't have access to.

Most of the time this is not a problem because you can create the account again with the correct email, but I have lost a few good usernames in some popular websites because I pulled this trick on them, Gravatar is one of these websites and the simplest one to explain.

I wanted a specific username that was available; I signed up with an email that looks like firstname.lastname@example.com and the operation went through, then when I tried to log in, the website kept saying that the email was incorrect. I tried to reset the account using the username instead, which would force them to send a reset link to the email associated to this account, but the emails never arrive. I gave up that and other good usernames in many websites because of the inappropriate handling of email addresses by some popular web libraries.

Also, the same way you learnt this "trick" other programmers discovered it too and implemented a stripping algorithm to remove the unique ID during the registration process, so it is not very useful nowadays unless the website is very obscure and their developers either are rookies or do not have time to prevent this.

<comment><USER26> > are rookies or do not have time

Reputable websites don't have an incentive to strip out the ID. It is only websites like "sold out" dating websites or otherwise nefarious websites that have that incentive in the first place. So, email@example.com is still useful for filtering and indexing, and in fact if a website does strip out the ID you should ask yourself why would they need to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The FTC needs to come down hard on this. Extremely hard.

This isn't just a trick, it's outright fraud. They're playing with people's emotions and not just giving them nothing - they're abusing people's most basic need of feeling loved.

Think about how vulnerable people become when they're searching for love. And then this corporate giant comes in with an army of psychologists, A/B tests, and analysts to figure out how to best extract their pound of flesh and offer nothing in return.

Forgive me for saying this, but fuck Match.com. The FTC should evaporate half their liquid assets / market cap in fines.

<comment><USER28> I agree and will add that all dating apps do things like this. They prey on lonely people using false hope.

Tinder even introduced paid "boosts" (pay to be shown to users who otherwise might never see you), which is identical to a slot machine.

<comment><USER27> OkCupid charges more for your membership the older you are. By the time you're in your 30s the rate is outright highway robbery.

<comment><USER29> There used to be a loophole where you could change your age and gender to be an 18 year old woman, pay the lowest (pretty much token) rate, and then switch back to your actual age and, if necessary, gender. Now I think it looks at your history of age and gender changes, finds the combo with the highest rate, and charges that group's amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All dating apps are filled with fakes and scams mostly perpetrated by those who own the app to milk you of your money.

Ive used match on and off for awhile and the crap stunt of them sending me a bunch of likes, messages just as my subscription is expiring has always ticked me off. Ummm where were these matches the first few weeks and oh wait if i want to find out if they are fake or not i have to subscribe again. Though after the first time of realizing I was being hookwinked by match I never re- up my subscription.

<comment><USER31> I on occasion would like to browse Tinder if I have time. One time after like half hour I get a pop up that I have used all my likes for the time being but if I pay I can continue to swipe right on people I like. Ok not interested in that so I will wait the 12 hours or whatever it is and not pay anything. We I forget about it and of course they send me a notification telling me someone likes me find out now who! So I load up the app and then again hit with the I have used too many likes and have a few more hours to wait. I felt a little annoyed and I have no idea if they are measuring some metric or not but like to believe they are so after I get hit with a like paywall I exit the app and do not load it for a couple days. I like to think it scares them into thinking I am leaving which is ultimately what I ended up doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Years ago, I briefly consulted for a dating website and fundamentally their business model is broken and their incentives are completely misaligned with the users': [https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating- website](https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website)

<comment><USER33> That was a good read.

> Even when you are paying for the product, you may still be the product..

Damn ... can you think of any other segment where this works as well?

From my experience, most fraudulent businesses seem to be with one time customers.

<comment><USER34> Television

<comment><USER35> Yeah Cable TV wasn't like that, but what's better, money or more money??

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> TFA is a bit imprecise with the wording, so it's not exactly clear to me, but from what I understand, there's two different things that could be happening.

In one case, a dating site company internally creates fake profiles and/or operates bots which cause the fake profiles to interact with real potential users in an attempt to get them to sign up. This is like what AM did on their site, where there weren't actually very many women on the site at all.

Alternatively, a dating site can be rife with scammers who have themselves created fake profiles on the site and are messaging potential victims. For example, I read that Tinder used to be particularly rife with bot accounts that would message obviously bot-y greetings to attempt to get a user to click an external link (to what end, I'm not sure).

In the second case, dating sites may have a somewhat symbiotic relationship with the scammers, who create appealing looking profiles and make the site seem to have more activity than it really does. But the real users are potentially being targeted for fraud / scams, so this is just as--if not even more--egregious than the false marketing fake account scam, because at least the company bots aren't trying to convince you to share your bank account number.

It's not entirely clear to me if this is a case of #1 or #2, but it seems like it's #2. And because Match wouldn't even let potential users read the message (or see who it was from?) before signing up, the bot accounts would provide a significant signup boost to users thinking they had a potential match waiting for them on the site.

If it is #2, then the immediate question is how prevalent was this, and did Match take action to close bot accounts that were reported / flagged as such. Any social network will have at least _some_ bad actors, and the platform should be judged on how they respond and defend against those actors, not whether they existed at all. I think TFA does not provide enough information to reach a conclusion.

<comment><USER37> One time on Match I got a wink from someone who passed me a web URL that was for an event, a performance of performance art IIRC. My entertainment tastes range all over the place, but at the same time I can only be in one place at any given time so I have to reject ideas.

When I shared my rejection of that particular idea with my fellow Match participant, there were no further messages. So I have no idea if maybe this was some sort of cult-front come-on or there was actually an attempt to fill some small venue with paying attendees for a legitimate entertainment, based on keywords in my profile that indicated a likelihood of interest perhaps? The latter of course is the most charitable guess. It was clearly not my sparkling personality they were interested in.

It was "in the middle" of my time on Match so I don't think there was any link with getting me to renew. Also the process passed the Turing test, so the term bot seems misapplied. But scammer in a gentle sense does apply in the sense that apparently romance was not the goal, but was a lure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There is only one universal law that applies to online dating, and that is: women don't need it as much as men.

For women, online dating just doesn't make sense. Even on Tinder, where the ratio is kinda okay, women are bombarded with messages and likes. To the point that they can't even respond to everyone even if they wanted to.

This means men are left with unresponsive women and just start to send cheaper pick up lines to more women faster. Thus continuing the cycle of women getting bombarded...

There was a blog post I read once where some employee used statistics from the dating site to show what the relationship between male and female profiles where, who had good chance of getting dates etc... Conclusion: it really doesn't work for 90% of men.

<comment><USER39> I know a few women that use Tinder: they are alone, late thirties and never got anything serious out of Tinder, but they use it to reassure their attractiveness by the continuous flow of likes they get. It is a morale booster, nothing more.

<comment><USER40> I know plenty of straight couples who are married or in committed long term relationships and met on tinder.

<comment><USER6> I think there is a big early adopter advantage of any dating platform. After a while, the platform just deteriorates and starts attracting opportunists.

I also know a bunch of couples that met on tinder, but it's all from 3 years ago. I haven't heard of someone else who has been successful in finding a long term relationship on Tinder since.

<comment><USER41> That's because quality people have all moved on to something else. Tinder is mainly for hookups now: people who are traveling and want something casual, people who are married and want a 3some, people who are cheating, etc.

Everyone else has moved on to a better dating site, like Bumble, CMB, OKC, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This happened to me when I tried subscribing to match years ago. Near the end of my 6 month period I got the first introduction from a woman after months of rarely getting responses. This email never resulted in anything. Paid dating sites all ended up being worthless to me and the only dates and reasonable correspondence I got on was from OKCupid (where I met my wife).

</comment><comment><USER43> If its proven then its obviously criminal in its nature as it clearly a scam to enrich owners. If FTC prevails, does anyone have any idea what sort of consequences are we looking at? Company? Owners?

</comment><comment><USER44> Do you think that an open source dating app or a decentralized dating protocol would be a good idea?

<comment><USER45> Dating apps are a failed idea. If you're a man and have any imperfections appearance-wise you'll go on these sites and get no responses. In college I did hundreds of swipes and sent a bunch of messages on OKC and got nothing because I wasn't a human Ken doll. I could've spent all day in the gym and gotten plastic surgery and spent hundreds on whatever wardrobe was in style but why do all that for people who can't appreciate you for anything else but how likely you are to be in a Calvin Klein ad? I've seen experiments where they put male model pictures on tinder profiles that say stuff like being nazis and convicted rapists and surprise, they got more matches (a ton) than me (0) with my well-thought-out profile/pictures but not literally Brad Pitt.

<comment><USER46> The people on dating apps aren't really bad. The problem is the male-female asymmetry. On most dating sites men outnumber women five to tenfold. Additionally, most guys will spam likes and messages to hundreds of women. The hyper selectivity of women on these sites is mostly the result of trying to keep their heads above water.

You should be aware that the "experiments" people have posted online aren't necessarily unbiased either. There are a lot of bitter, loveless men writing content on the internet.

<comment><USER47> Although I don't condone the "experiments" (of which the bias shouldn't be a concern so long as they're accurately presenting the data - you can't get much more accurate than screenshots, which out of the principle of charity it makes some sense to give credence to at first glance) I wouldn't blame men for feeling bitter and loveless after online dating experience. You'll find countless men (and women, but for different reasons) feeling utterly hopeless and defeated after experiences on online dating apps. You've put yourself out there, people have seen your profile, and people didn't like you. Getting _zero_ matches (other than bots) after a few months can cripple one's self- esteem.

If you were to complain about it, you're either hit with advice from the infamous rules 1 and 2 (1. be attractive; 2. don't be unattractive), or you'll get some advice which is well-meaning but hardly actionable. The one I see most frequently is "try and meet people at bars" (it's hard to imagine this working today, and it almost requires one to be a drinker - and even then it's harder not to come off as creepy) and "join some activity groups".

The real kicker is that many activities that you already enjoy are biased to one gender or the other (say, compsci/engineering hobbies and chess tend to be heavily male-centric in real life meetings), and it's very hard to find the passion for an activity if you started doing it just to try and find a date (and people will usually pick up on the fact). It can also leave one feeling superficial and creepy to do so.

I know many men (and some women) who've decided to give up. Men because they have lost hope on account of not having a strong enough appearance to persuade someone to read their bio, which often reeks of desperation anyway (one may be short, another may be fat, yet another may be ugly, yet another just prefers Android[0][1]). Women because they only feel valued for their appearance, or just for being a woman, rather than what makes them who they are.

I expect the problem to get worse, where online, centralized dating platforms become the norm, and when it's harder to make friends in real life, in which getting to know someone first outranks any consideration of appearances. If you're not already friends with someone, it's very easy to accept or reject on what _is_ immediately visible - one's appearance.

[0] [https://www.cultofmac.com/563567/iphone-vs-android-could- be-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/563567/iphone-vs-android-could-be-ruining- your-dating-life/)

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14619158/apple-iphone- goo...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/14/14619158/apple-iphone-google- android-judgemental-dating-study)

<comment><USER48> > of which the bias shouldn't be a concern so long as they're accurately > presenting the data - you can't get much more accurate than screenshots, > which out of the principle of charity it makes some sense to give credence > to at first glance

You can change profiles after the fact. One of the examples I saw, it was clear the person had changed their profile to say something much worse than what it was when the conversations happened

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> To all those ITT complaining about bots... check out the fetish/kink/niche dating sites. Granted there's still a problem with thirsty dudes if you're female but at least no bots.

If you're looking for random sex, many swinger clubs also allow single men (single females are almost universally welcome), either always or at special events. If you're in a relationship and your s/o is interested, I can also recommend visiting swinger clubs for a change.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if I would be successful today, were I looking for someone using an online service. 11 years ago I met my wife on Match, and I had had dated a few other people from the site before I met her. I am just average looking for sure, maybe these days I wouldn't get any responses at all.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm quite hesitant to tell this story and unfortunately, because I'm ashamed of myself, and for privacy reasons I had to create a new account for this but I wanted to tell the story of the day my mother fell in love with me.

Long story short, many years ago I was working for a provider that was building algorithms for various dating websites.

The goal was simple: Increase signups.

A Little Bit of Background \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

As a small group of rather "creative" engineers in their early twenties encouraged by large sums of money we came up with the idea of building "Matching Personas" which would be able to have a basic conversation, as well as have similar interests in the target subject.

Keep in mind that some of those dating sites have various "upgrade" (read payment) paths. Some had a "3 private messages" limit so that you can start chatting with someone but to continue the conversation, you needed to upgrade to premium.

The typical path for a user was: 1\. Visit the website and search for what they're interested in 2\. See a few profiles and decide whether online dating was their thing 3\. Invest personal time creating a profile and putting down their interests, photos, etc.

Point #3 is where the magic came in.

I had been working on automating the creation of accounts, and more importantly the creation of what we used to call smart-accounts. After a few months we had increased the conversion rate by about 30% on average (Which is MASSIVE) and our internal funding was getting larger and larger. Our smart accounts ended up being able to recognize certain items in photos, understand the interests of new users, have "similar" interests that are either the same or tangentially related, similar number of kids, etc. etc.

Based on real matches we built an engine that learnt what people look for when they convert. How the conversations go, the type of language used when discussing, the similarities in interests and family, etc. Honestly a really wide set of super interesting machine learning problems from object recognition to natural language processing to recommender systems to LTSM, etc.

It was pretty simple. A user signs up and they put some of their information in. Our engine picks up the latest user's information, creates about 10 different "smart profiles" that the new user is likely to match, and then in the search results display those smart-accounts to the new user who just joined. The new user would see smart accounts, and start chatting with them on their free accounts. Because we knew based on previous real matches and real conversations how people ended up "being together", the unsuspecting free users.

The conversion path was: Signup -> Fill profile -> See someone you like -> Converse -> Upgrade.

The Day my Mother Fell in Love with Me \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Now that you have a little bit of background, the story begins. I had been working for many of the dating companies (most of them competitors) for a few months and our smart-profiles were getting quite clever.

One night after my mother invited me for diner. We started eating and drinking wine and just talking in general. I never talked about the general aspects of my work but she knew I worked with computers and back then statistics now machine learning now everything-is-AI-anyways.

Whilst on the topic of computers, she said: "Oh I haven't told you, I've actually met someone online". I didn't think anything of it, I thought it was quite nice.

Then she proceeded to tell me the following: "He also has 3 kids, he likes a lot of the same stuff I like which is really nice, and we started chatting and he's really nice. He's gone on a business trip now so we haven't talked in a few days but I'm looking forward to talking to him again".

At that moment I became very suspicious because all the signs pointed to exactly what we had been aiming at achieving. Get users to like someone, signup, chat (Which had a limit of 50 free messages at the time for that particular platform if I remember), and convert (pay) to have more chats. The trick was when people upgraded, within hours, we had some canned answers like "I'm going on a business trip won't be able to talk for about 2 weeks".

Either way, I started asking my mother a few more questions and she explained to me that she had found him after signing up and they chatted a little bit but she had to upgrade yaddi yadda and it wasn't cheap but she was glad she didn't end up wasting so much time online dating like all those other people online dating. Then I asked her about the particular website and it was one we had been working with.

She had actually fallen in love with my bots. I felt terrible not only for my mother but for the thousands of other people we had basically scammed, and only at that moment did it hit me. Up until then it was a fun challenging ML engineering problem with real-world subjects.

I quit the following day and have never been affiliated or interested in either working or using online dating since. Even though I do have friends who got married to people they have met online dating, it made me a cynical.

<comment><USER51> Apologies for the broken format. I thought HN would let me use newlines rather liberally but I was obviously wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You mean there aren't really hot girls in 94027 zip code looking for a date?!

<comment><USER52> I like having an ISP with most of its customers in another region.

It separates the low-end and the high-end geo-targeters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> They also didn't honor their free extra months for users who didn't find a match the first six months. The whole site is a scam and shouldn't be operating.

</comment><comment><USER54> What about other fakes ? likes, followers, stars, collaborators, upvotes, star-reviews, backlinks, and clients. Where do you draw the line between fraud and Fake it until you make it ? Social proof is game-able and there is a whole industry dedicated to faking it. Should fakes be punished, or are you too naive for using these metrics when choosing - for example, what library to use, who to hire, or what restaurant to go to?

</comment><comment><USER55> Whenever I read stuff like this, I think in my head: names. We want names. We want these people to never do this again.

<comment><USER56> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Levin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Levin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Japan has "Pairs" with no free tier. Doesn't seem to have fake profiles. "Dine" also has no free tier for men but seems to be 50% fake profiles just based on how professional the profile photos look relative to all other sites .

</comment><comment><USER58> Unrelated, but I'm thinking about using one or more dating sites. Which ones do people here use, and what are your thoughts/observations?

<comment><USER59> Short answer? They are all trash and the space is ripe for disruption. The best of the bunch is probably Hinge, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel.

But like I said, getting a date off these apps is like pulling teeth. I've reverted to asking girls out in person at coffee shops, social gatherings, etc. Even if you get rejected, it at least makes for a good story.

<comment><USER60> What would you change if you were to build a new dating app to disrupt the market?

<comment><USER59> I have a lot of thoughts on this, so excuse the long post (maybe I'll write a blog post on it at some point):

First, there's a clear (and artificial) skewing of supply-demand curves. There are probably like 30 (active) guys for every 1 (active) girl on these apps (looking at you, Tinder). This creates an imbalance where women are _incredibly_ selective while men end up being incredibly _non-selective_ (e.g. swipe right on everything). Clearly, this needs to be addressed -- this "marketplace" is a sham.

Second of all, a lot of women (but also men) use dating apps to increase their social following (be it Snapchat or Instagram). This probably only pertains to people in their 20s or 30s, but it's a huge problem when trying to seriously find someone to date.

Third -- the botpocalypse. About 70% of my matches on Tinder this past year (I actually quit all dating apps around 4 months ago) have been bots. Not sure if this is a tractable problem, but after a while, it just gets old. At this point, matching with bots is a meme on /r/Tinder, for example.

Fourth, there needs to be an in-app incentive to meet in real life. I feel that my generation (millennials) are kind of broken. I blow people's minds when I tell them that I work remotely at a coffee shop and started making friends with people there, hanging out, etc. In other words, we absolutely suck at real-life social interaction. So we need these apps to "nudge" in the right direction. A potential solution would be a cross between a meetup and a date.

Fifth, I think hookup culture really is starting to show its dark side. Tinder was very popular as a hookup app a few years ago, but nowadays it's more or less abandoned. People actually want deep and long-lasting connections. None of the apps out there really attempt to solve this. It's a tough problem to solve because building a relationship (like building a friendship) takes time.

Anyway, these are some issues I have with dating apps off the top of my head. I will say that it also probably doesn't help that I live in LA, which is a pretty superficial city to begin with. But the women are gorgeous, so I probably shouldn't complain :)

<comment><USER61> > First, there's a clear (and artificial) skewing of supply-demand curves.

What makes it artificial?

Also, there's strong evidence that roughly twice as many women have reproduced than men across human history [0], so if we're reducing it to a number game women have _always_ had the ability to be more picky than guys.

What's different today is Tinder/OLD let's them access a much larger area, whereas in the past they would have to find a partner within their local community. Dating apps may look unfair on paper but they're just a more efficient dating market than in times past.

So to sum up my point, I'm struggling to see a solution here. Human nature can't be rewritten, no matter how hard we try.

[0] [https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the- missing-...](https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the-missing-men- in-your-family-tree/)

<comment><USER62> > So to sum up my point, I'm struggling to see a solution here. Human nature > can't be rewritten, no matter how hard we try.

You could write an algorithm that subtly punishes women for being too picky and at the same time punishes men for being unselective (only swiping right, then filtering later). Of course, as soon as it comes out that you are rebalancing the market that way no one will use your app anymore, but it would be a theoretical way to bring the numbers closer together.

<comment><USER61> Ah yes, social engineering for the modern age. I'm not sure which path is worse, your suggestion or the status quo.

<comment><USER62> Something will have to give at some point.

I remember someone at HN posting a graph that showed that for something like 40 years the amount of singles reporting 'no sex within the last year' had been relatively equal (both men and women around 18%), but since the rise of Tinder et al men had shot up to 30% whereas women were still at 18%.

On an individual level I won't pass judgment on women for doing whatever they want, but on a societal level such a sea change in behavior and it's attached consequences does not seem healthy or stable.

<comment><USER61> > Something will have to give at some point.

Care to place any bets on what will happen?

Obviously I can't prove this but I'd bet the inability to get into an emotionally stable (or any) relationship is one of the contributing factors to soaring youth crime across the world. It's not the only one (economy, political divide) but it's a biggie.

<comment><USER62> > Obviously I can't prove this but I'd bet the inability to get into an > emotionally stable (or any) relationship is one of the contributing factors > to soaring youth crime across the world.

I can do you one better: if you look at history, whenever a society had large contingents of single, young men with little chance of entering into a relationship, that society invariably eventually went to war. Since most big players in the world have become so economically intertwined this is not really viable anymore, so yes, I'd say it is very possibly a factor.

> Care to place any bets on what will happen?

On the short-to-mid term? Nothing. Tech is vastly outpacing our ability as society to adapt. You see this with issues of privacy as well.

Long term? The pendulum probably swings in the other direction _hard_. Maybe men everywhere decide to adopt the Japanese way: with the insane pressure on young men there to perform in all aspects of life, a lot of them simply opt out of dating (which ultimately leaves women without relationships). Or maybe realistic, AI-driven sexbots become a thing: if you don't want kids and don't need a relationship, why deal with all the extraneous stuff? This again leaves women out in the cold.

To be clear: I wouldn't celebrate such a thing. We'd lose something very essential about ourselves if our whole dance of courtship and sex is permanently reduced to dating apps and sexbots.

But to continue, we're in a weird state of flux vis-à-vis male/female interaction. For example, most women prefer to date 'up' (having a good job on your dating profile leads to something like 85% more right swipes), but at the same time most universities are 40/60 men/women, plus women below 30 outearn their male peers. Obviously those two things are fairly at odds with each other.

You can also ask questions like: why are high schools still plastered in posters encouraging women to attend university when the numbers are already skewed? Surely, if back in the 90s 60/40 men/women was bad, the reverse should also be bad? Where is the promotional material to get more men into universities? Where are the special men-only scholarships? Or the effort to combat the male pay gap below 30?

Apologies for the long response- the overarching subject is something I take quite to heart.

<comment><USER61> > For example, most women prefer to date 'up'.

So my hunch was sorta correct? We've gone from most people marrying somebody they meet organically to "here's a list of candidates within N and their job title" which has massively magnified that particular behaviour.

> Apologies for the long response- the overarching subject is something I take > quite to heart.

No problem! I was hoping for a response this interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> How weird, yesterday, someone signed up using my email on match.com and firstmet.com, what a coincidence...

</comment><comment><USER64> I have no doubt that Tinder is also loaded with fake profiles to encourage user engagement as well.

<comment><USER65> I am also of the mind that all the social media platforms do this. I hardly ever use Instagram, but whenever I get a notification from someone I know is obviously fake I always get caught in the rabbit hole of my feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> "How to lose all your users in 30 days"

</comment><comment><USER67> I dunno how you can possibly quantify human emotions based on metrics and algorithms.

Level 5 self driving cars is a more realistic goal to achieve than this one.

<comment><USER68> psychologists have done it for centuries

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> OKCupid and Tinder, I think, are the only honest dating sites, and they've gotten far less so the past few years.

<comment><USER69> Not surprising... the new owners of both OKCupid and Tinder is Match Group.

<comment><USER22> OKCupid held onto their integrity as long as they could. After the HotOrNot- derived dating apps popped up, and the Match purchase, they definitely lost their way. If I had to date again, I would just meet people at bars, without OKCupid's rather effective personality matches (engaged to one person I met there, married another, slept with dozens), dating apps mostly seem pointless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> If authorities dig a little bit more they will find all these dating websites break the GDPR laws a lot.

<comment><USER34> Dont need no cookies if i can just [https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs2](https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs2) you

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Unrelated to the post, but I am just wondering how come NYTimes still able to detect the incognito mode or if you are using private browser like Firefox focus

<comment><USER72> It's an arms race. [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google- chrome-i...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome- incognito-mode-can-still-be-detected-by-these-methods/)

<comment><USER73> I wouldn't use the term 'arms race' because that implies each side can continue to escalate.

A better way of looking at it is that there are bugs that leak information in browsers, and sites like the NYT are spending developer effort to discover those bugs and publish them (in the form of javascript) so that browser developers can fix them. The browser developers will eventually win this one.

<comment><USER74> Whats the incentive to publish them? Isnt it in NYT's best interest to be able to detect incognito mode?

<comment><USER75> They're not _intentionally_ publishing them, but they effectively have to because the detection uses Javascript, and you can view that JS and figure out what it's checking for.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clang fails with "unable to rename temporary" 0.2% of the time - <AUTHOR> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-April/098177.html <comment><USER2> The link is to a mailing list post by John Regehr dated April 10, with no followup on the topic. He has since made other posts to the lists on other topics, so it does not appear to be a permanent issue.

How might this be interesting to HN readers? Or did I miss something?</comment>


Ask HN: Code that made you smile for a moment :) - <AUTHOR> I'm curious about some code that made you smile, while coding.
Example:
try{
//some code in c#
}catch(Exception up) {

  //log exception

  throw up;

}
 <comment><USER2> I remember coming across a Java program which accepted user input, did some simple data transformation and printed an output. It had the following comment:

        public void somefunc(int ip)
        {
            ....
            //act like the program is doing some heavy
            //calculations
            Thread.sleep(2000);
            ....
        }

</comment><comment><USER3> this: [http://www.forgetfoo.me/images/blog/code- brackets-90452345.p...](http://www.forgetfoo.me/images/blog/code- brackets-90452345.png)

Makes me chuckle every time :P</comment>


No, Really, Regulate the Bullets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/no-really-regulate-the-bullets/266332/ <comment><USER3> Technically, the article is flawed. It's easy to make your own ammo.

Legally, the article is flawed. The Supreme Court is very very _very_ clear that restricting someone's ability to exercise a right is a restriction on that right; they've said it over and over again about free speech, political donations, the exercise of religion, the right to avoid self-incrimination. and many other areas. Including the right to own and bear arms. Like it or not, the Supreme Court has said - twice! - that you have an individual right to own a gun for, among other things, self defence. That doesn't mean "so you can bludgeon an intruder with it" it means "so you can shoot an intruder with it". With bullets. And any law you make that meaningfully restricts the ability of law abiding citizens to shoot an intruder in their home will not fly without a constitutional amendment which is - needless to say - <USER2> happening. And anything which does _not_ restrict the ability of a law abiding citizen to shoot an intrude in their home will not stop future school shootings.

(Yes, I know. It's crazy, and it's not how it is in other countries. But it's also objective reality.)

<comment><USER4> _Technically, the article is flawed. It's easy to make your own ammo._

I've reloaded ammunition using commercially available components (cases, bullets, primers and gunpowder). A complete black-market operation would be quite a bit harder, but not harder than say... manufacturing designer drugs.

<comment><USER5> You can even remove bullets from the market and still easily make your own. A proper die can be machined by anyone with the proper tools, and lead can be easily obtained from any auto repair or tire shop, as they frequently discard large quantities of lead weights when rebalancing tires. Adding a copper jacket is also very simple.

Primers and (smokeless) gunpowder are the only things that are unreasonably difficult to manufacture at home. And even then, gunpowder recipes and materials are easy to come by.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the author would defend so gleefully the idea of the government restricting access to newspaper ink? Anyone promoting the idea of subverting the constitution through perceived loopholes should really question their principles.

Also, the word "cartridge" or "ammunition" is what the author means to be talking about here. Bullets are only the metal part that flies out of the gun, not the whole cartridge.

<comment><USER7> > Anyone promoting the idea of subverting the constitution through perceived > loopholes should really question their principles.

What is the purpose of the Constitution? Is it like the 10 Commandments that have been passed down from the sky and now we have to worship it unquestionably? There are large numbers of people in this country that seem to believe so.

So take the gun issue. Why is that in the constitution? For hunting? Protecting from bears? Foreign invaders? Maybe. Would it make a difference now if anyone attacked us if we all carried guns? Probably not. We'll probably use our drones and tanks to fight back. Maybe it was for people to protect from an abusive government? Is that realistic today? You'd need to be able to bear tanks, helicopters and fighter planes if this hypothetical militia is ever to even register as a blip on government's threat radar. So why even bother both defending the idea or trying to find a loophole to bypass it. Both seem rather pointless to me.

Are people defending themselves better with guns? Canada and other countries have legal guns and don't seem to have issues with such crimes as we saw recently. Some countries outlaw guns and experience much worse violence. Is there any credible study that shows a linkage between legal arms position and violent crime?

<comment><USER4> It's about policy and mechanism.

Let's assume for a moment that severely restricting ownership of firearms and ammunition is a good policy. The mechanism necessary to do it in the straightforward way - a constitutional amendment - is almost impossibly difficult. Perhaps a roundabout mechanism would be easier.

If that sort of thing was allowed by the courts (it isn't), similar end-runs around the constitution could be used to do things you might not be so happy about. The fourth amendment, for example says people have the right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". It doesn't say anything about tapping your phone or using a laser microphone on your window, but the courts have held that it means a warrant is required to do those things just as it is to search your house.

It's much easier to change policy than mechanism. You probably don't actually want a mechanism for bypassing constitutional rights at will in place.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. The point of the constitution isn't to protect the popular rights; popular opinion will do that. The constitution is there to protect the _unpopular_ rights; the ones that, for whatever reason, seem out of place, outdated, downright silly.

(The same argument applies to individual rights. The right to free speech protects both popular and unpopular speech, but you don't actually need protections to talk about how awesome a cure for cancer would be. It's the unpopular opinions that need protection. And people say "well, I support free speech, but that shouldn't mean these people get to spill their filth and hate in public venues!" But that's exactly what it means; the only purpose a right to free speech serves is to protect what is (for now) deemed dangerous, stupid, crazy speech. Because just because something is unpopular _now_ doesn't mean it will always be.)

There's always _some_ wonderful reason why abridging some fundamental right is a good idea. Terrorists. Communists. Neo-nazis. Actual nazis. School shootings. Pearl Harbour. The 1919 Anarchist Bombings. And in retrospect, sometimes they were good reasons, but not always. And so we have constitutional rights _specifically_ to stop us from enacting the really obvious clever solutions to the problems of the day. That's the _point_.

<comment><USER7> Well ok but what is the purpose of the gun amendment?

This is getting back to my original question, do we know the purpose and use of the Constitutions or are we just following it like a holy commandment passed down from above?

I can see the purpose of the "Free Speech" it makes sense today more than ever. What is the purpose of the "right to bear arms" how does it apply?

You say:

> The constitution is there to protect the unpopular rights

What if unpopular rights are those that kill children. What if there was other crazy stuff written in there. Would you still defend it because it was signed by a few guys that started a country a while back in 200+ year ago?

> And so we have constitutional rights specifically to stop us from enacting > the really obvious clever solutions to the problems of the day.

> And so we have constitutional rights specifically to stop us from enacting > the really obvious clever solutions to the problems of the day.

Ok but doesn't that imply that the founding fathers somehow foresaw the advent of nuclear arms, school shootings, the internet and created a concise set of laws that would prevent us from sneaking in laws by creating loopholes. I doubt they did.

<comment><USER4> _Well ok but what is the purpose of the gun amendment?_

To reduce the likelihood of a totalitarian state. It was written by people who had recently participated in a violent secession from the world's largest empire. Self defense against ordinary criminals was another factor, and the Supreme Court has ruled that individuals have the right to own weapons for that purpose.

 _I can see the purpose of the "Free Speech" it makes sense today more than ever._

Limitations on the right to free speech are active political issues today. There has recently been a major push to limit "blasphemous" speech in western Europe and the US, for example. Source code as speech when the code does something governments want to regulate, like cryptography or DRM circumvention is not an entirely settled question, to provide another example.

 _What if unpopular rights are those that kill children_

I count at least six out of ten amendments in the Bill of Rights as likely to have led directly to children dying. Free speech has led to violent action. Availability of weapons makes violent people more deadly. Four more amendments protect the rights of those accused of crimes, some of whom are required to be released when they would otherwise have been jailed. Some of those have killed children after their release.

Rights that are just a little unpopular don't need so much protection. The important rights all have the potential to get people killed, as does the lack of them.

 _Ok but doesn't that imply that the founding fathers somehow foresaw the advent of nuclear arms, school shootings, the internet and created a concise set of laws that would prevent us from sneaking in laws by creating loopholes._

Of course not. That's why we have courts.

The courts try to apply the original intent of the Constitution to modern situations. The authors of the Fourth Amendment probably couldn't have imagined laser microphones, but the courts have held that using one (or anything else high-tech) to eavesdrop on conversations you have in a private place is just like a search and requires a warrant. In other cases, the courts have limited the application of rights to new, unforeseeable technologies. The Supreme Court ruled, for example, in DC v. Heller that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to unusual and dangerous weapons; it protects the right to own handguns, but not nuclear warheads.

It is, of course perfectly reasonable to have a discussion about whether a right protected by the Constitution has a place in a modern society or if it should be eliminated or changed. My original point in this discussion is that we should not want it to be trivial to bypass Constitutional rights, e.g. by banning ammunition instead of guns because it would then become trivial to bypass any of them, at any time, for any reason.

<comment><USER7> > To reduce the likelihood of a totalitarian state.

That is my beef with that Amendment -- it doesn't apply anymore. It will not make a difference. One can say we have been slowly sliding towards totalitarianism (plutarchy maybe) and the fact that some people in Michigan are gathering regularly, putting face paint on and then shooting beer cans from AK-47s doesn't make a difference at all.

As you agreed Founding Fathers could not have predicted massive surveillance that would make Gestapo proud, satellites, tanks, nuclear weapons, etc. So in their time 100 militia people with rifles could take 100 government solders with rifles and it would be a nice match.

> Of course not. That's why we have courts.

Alright I agree only if the courts would correctly reinterpret the amendment and let me have a couple of nuclear weapons, some drones with weapons, tanks, and fighter planes. Because what is really meant by "arms" these day. But I can't even buy a fully automated machine gun.

To me personally, most times guns are used in this country against someone by a civilian they are used either by drunk family members against each other or by criminals.

> The authors of the Fourth Amendment probably couldn't have imagined laser > microphones, but the courts have held that using one (or anything else high- > tech) to eavesdrop on conversations you have in a private place is just like > a search and requires a warrant.

But their hands are tied. So they can reinterpret the Second Amendment (which I have concluded they haven't as citizens don't get access to matching arms as the government does) but only up to a point. Like it can't reinterpret it so take away the guns. At some point if it is written it is followed blindly like some magic book from the sky.

The original article was trying to use the "reinterpretation loophole". I don't agree with using loopholes. But I agree with the intent (remove the weapons) by do it by fixing the Amendment. If Amendments can't be passed anymore (practically) then there is something broken about this country.

The way it is now, the Amendment does more harm than good.

<comment><USER4> _it doesn't apply anymore. It will not make a difference._

The continuing difficulty the US military is having subduing militants in Afghanistan armed with relatively unsophisticated weapons suggests otherwise. A subtle, boiled-frog style slide in to totalitarianism is still possible, of course, but the direct approach would likely bring reasonably effective armed resistance.

A nuclear weapon, tank or drone is effective against an isolated base or compound, but when insurgents are mixed in with the population of a city, soldiers go after them with rifles. Very similar rifles are sold at Walmart[0].

That said, the self defense argument is more applicable to a modern society. Unfortunately, it turns out to be really difficult to evaluate its effectiveness. Comparisons to other countries are problematic due to the huge number of variables involved. Every study I've found purporting to offer a number of self defense incidents is severely and obviously flawed (studies with low numbers only count incidents where the police took a report of a crime; studies with high numbers include self-reported incidents of dubious veracity). The number of violent crimes in which a criminal was visibly armed falls between the high and low numbers for self defense, so it is not possible to say whether guns are used by civilians to stop crimes more often than to commit them.

One less-problematic correlation I've been able to find is that states enacting right-to-carry laws generally saw their murder rates fall faster than the national average afterward - often substantially faster, suggesting that the perception that any person might be armed provides a deterrent effect.

 _I can't even buy a fully automated machine gun._

The Supreme Court has not made an unambiguous ruling on whether or not you can have a machine gun. As the law is currently written, you cannot own a newly- manufactured machine gun as an ordinary civilian. DC v. Heller established a minimum level of protection - that guns in common use for lawful purposes cannot be banned - but not a maximum. US v. Miller suggests that guns suitable for militia purposes cannot be banned. Given that (selectively) fully- automatic rifles and light machine guns are the standard weapons for infantry soldiers, it is very likely that a legal challenge to this prohibition would succeed.

 _If Amendments can't be passed anymore (practically) then there is something broken about this country._

The last amendment was 20 years ago. That's not an unusually long time. I didn't mean that all amendments are impossibly difficult; I meant that a repeal of the Second Amendment would be impossibly difficult.

[0] [http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sig-Sauer-M400-Enhanced-Carbine- OD...](http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sig-Sauer-M400-Enhanced-Carbine-ODG-with- Rifle-Bag/21677318)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It all feels a little like handwringing, doesn't it? We think we can solve the problem by gun control but then you realize there are too many guns out there already that it won't work (or at least not for many years).

So we go for the bullets, but then people who grew up around sport shooting can tell us it's nothing to sit down and create dozens of rounds in a free night. My own experience reminds me of loading a dozen shells with my Dad when I was 10 in just a couple hours so we could hunt the next morning. So the idea of limiting the bullets (or at least shells) won't work unless the materials are also regulated.

The mental health aspect seems to be one of the best ideas but then that might just depend on universal health actually being put into place. Without it, many people will go without due to the expense of mental facilities.

So yeah handwringing. We want someone to do something and fast but none of the options seem easy, quick, or realistic. So we might need to pick the one or two that will work eventually, maybe 5-10 years down the road, and take it from there.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, instead of universal healthcare, we could have a program that tried to fix people that were a danger to society? It would function like a cross between police and public broadcasting, both things already accepted by mostly everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author of this article seems to be under the impression that 3D printing a firearm is easy while loading your own ammunition is difficult. With the proper equipment (less than a thousand dollar investment), loading ammunition is only slightly more difficult than baking a cake.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seriously, I'm pretty damn solid on the need for gun control, but this plan seems pretty half baked. Trying to regulate the primary components of a bullet seems like it would be a practical impossibility. You thought the war on drugs was a losing battle, try the war on gunpowder.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Not has hard as you think really. Have you tried to buy more than one box of cold medicine that contains certain elements used in cooking meth? Buy too many and you get flagged. Maybe that isn't the policy everywhere, but it _could_ be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That article is utterly unimpressive, and its attempt to be smug at finding a "loophole in the constitution" is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER13> How would we regulate bullets? People have been packing their own bullets since guns were created.

<comment><USER14> One proposal has been microstamping[1] the bullet casings, although this was really meant for forensic identification, not regulation. I don't know how it could be used to prevent home handloading[2] though.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_microstamping> [2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handloading>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't 'arms' include both the weapons and ammunition though?

<comment><USER6> define:arms

      arms plural of arms (Noun)
      Weapons and ammunition; armaments: "they were subjugated by force of arms".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My problem with this is two-fold: 1\. Spree killings still happen without guns (see the similar school attacks in Asia where bladed weapons were used.) 2\. This focuses the conversation on the tools used in the incident instead of the source of the problem: mental health.

<comment><USER17> 1\. Those attacks were rather less lethal than the ones involving guns.

2\. It focuses the conversation on achievable solutions. No country on earth has managed to solve the identification, treatment and care of mental health issues enough that would prevent one slipping through the net. Many, many countries have managed to reduce gun deaths to very low numbers indeed.

<comment><USER18> 1\. I don't think the argument is that firearms are less lethal only that attacks and death will still occur.

2\. It focuses the conversation on, what I think is, the actual problem rather than something that is achievable but clearly does not solve the problem.

<comment><USER17> 1\. The argument is "how about we have less children dying". Which every other comparable country manages.

2\. The problem is "being are being murdered with guns in astonishing numbers". You say mental health is the root cause, which may be correct. But the root cause is effectively unsolvable, and other countries show that the _problem_ can be fixed by addressing contributory causes, like the widespread availability of bullets.

<comment><USER18> To be clear you replyed to a previous poster who made two points. I defended those two points. These are two new points that I'll attempt to address.

If there's one argument I cannot tolerate it's a "for the children" argument. Yes great lets have less children die. How do we do that? Killing sprees in China show that you can kill several children with just knives and gasoline. So after the guns we ban knives, we regulate gasoline, we restrict the press and instill a curfew because "for the children." Better yet, while we're just naming stuff that will make us feel better, why not a TSA-like agency for all public places, a Patriot Act to protect us from killing-spree and more warrant-less wiretapping because "for the children." Pedofiles on Facebook; regulate the Internet "because for the children." Can we please find a solution that does not strip freedoms from the sane and law-abiding among us?

It won't solve the problem because we are not other countries. I don't say this out of hubris. Without addressing things like the gun-culture we have here or the irrational fear of crimes we have here people will find a way to procure firearms. I'm pretty sure in 10 years 3D-printing will have advanced enough for us to make upper-receivers. What then? Do we regulate computers "for the children?"

<comment><USER17> Fine, /s/children/people. Argument is precisely the same. And you have less of them dying of gunshots wounds by having fewer guns/ammunition. That won't stop knife crime, sure, but let's revisit that discussion when as many people are dying of knives in the US as die of gunshot wounds.

And, yes, addressing the gun culture will have to be a component of this. But violent cultures can be changed. The US is a past master at it -- look at the post-WWII reconstruction it orchestrated in Japan.

<comment><USER18> I agree that if we limit firearms we limit harm from firearms. Tell me why we should stop at firearms? Fewer children would meet pedophiles online if we didn't have an Internet. Fewer people would die in car accidents if we didn't have cars. 35.9 million people died within a year of being in a car accident [0]. Lets revisit this discussion when as many people are dying of gunshot wounds in the US as die of a car accident.

[0] www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf

<comment><USER17> In all these cases, you measure benefits against costs. Costs (eg negative impact, not price) of limiting firearms: low, mostly political. Costs of limiting cars: catastrophic, economy-devastating. That's why we should stop at firearms.

<comment><USER18> > Costs (eg negative impact, not price) of limiting firearms: low, mostly > political. Costs of limiting cars: catastrophic, economy-devastating.

Not sure where you get the idea that the cost of limiting firearms is low or that the cost of limiting cars is high. Mass transportation, tele- communication etc. seem like viable solutions and because "for the children."

> That's why we should stop at firearms.

That's why we should stop giving our rights and freedoms away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I really don't understand about this argument, is if hard to regulate guns/drugs or anything illegal, it seems completely impossible to actually stop a bullet black market! If you could get your hands on 20 bullets (a really tiny amount!), you could most definitely cause a tragedy.

I'm not saying regulating guns is the solution, it may or may not be, but regulating bullets? That seems naive.

<comment><USER5> What people don't seem to realize is that ammunition is simple to manufacture at home with untraceable materials.

Lead bullets? Go down to the auto shop and ask for a stack of their discarded wheel balancing weights. Take them home, melt them down, and pour the molten lead into home-made dies.

Casings? Gather discarded casings and reload them. Dies and tools are commercially available. If there's a shortage of casings, appropriate dies can be relatively easily made and brass can be molded as needed.

Gunpowder? People have been making black powder at home for centuries. Smokeless powder is more difficult, but nitrocellulose is not that complex.

Primer? Boxer primers are US Patent 91,818. Berdan primers are patents 53,388 and 82,587. Active ingredient is potassium perchlorate, which is easy to get.

Regulating bullets will have negligible effect _anyway._

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you don't destroy the firearms you aren't destroying the demand. Everybody who has a firearm will probably start by hoarding existing bullets and this will create a black market for ammo. When the local cache is over, it's obvious who is going to fill that need.</comment>


Time Warner Cable to shelve new Internet pricing plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/04/16/article/report_time_warner_to_stop_new_pricing_plan_in_ny

<comment><USER2> Let's presume that the 80/20 rule holds for bandwidth usage. 20% of customers use 80% of the total bandwidth. According to Time Warner, Comcast, etc. it's more like 98/2. So, much like voters approving a taxation scheme where the top 1% of taxpayers get tax increases, wouldn't most consumers be in favor of a scheme where they'd pay less on average?

So, what's wrong with the TW plan? They don't provide any evidence that the net effect of their changes would not be a significant increase in revenue. Is $15/mo + $1/gig better for them than $40/mo for everybody? Why was the marginal cost set at $1 vs. ten cents like Amazon? TW's marginal cost of delivery is negligible once coax is run into a house.

Please note that I'm trying to analyze this from a political perspective.. They're a regulated entity, so the economics of what they're doing are only an input into the political reality.</comment>


Ask HN: How does a game like Just Dance score movement? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, playing Just Dance on Switch while I am stuck inside. Can anyone explain how a game like Just Dance determines the accuracy of your dancing given a single Joy Con per dancer? Of course it uses telemetry such as the accelerometer, but what algorithms are at work? How does the game process the telemetry? Sometimes the scoring seems a bit arbitrary / not sensitive enough / too sensitive. What movements  actually matter? For calibrating the songs, do they capture many dancers/repetitions and average it, or do they take the data from one good performance? <comment><USER2> > what algorithms are at work? How does the game process the telemetry?

The term you likely want to put into Google is "gesture recognition".

Sadly it's hard to tell exactly how Ubisoft are doing it - since they're not about to put Just Dance on GitHub any time soon - but Schlömer's 2008 paper [1] about the Wiigee gesture recognition library [2] describes one possible approach using k-means clustering, hidden Markov models and Bayesian classifiers to recognize gestures based on the accelerometer in the Wiimote (similar to the one in the Joycon).

I'm guessing that the game regularly polls the Joycon's accelerometer, fires off events when a gesture (like a hand motion) is recognized, and scores you based on how close in time you were to the expected time of that gesture (with additional points for being closer to an "ideal" gesture).

> For calibrating the songs, do they capture many dancers/repetitions and > average it, or do they take the data from one good performance?

The former, both to gather gesture training data and to playtest it.

Since it's just a game, they can take a lot of liberties with what constitutes "accurate" dancing - it's far more fun to play if the game occasionally classifies a misstep as a perfect dance move and gives you a freebie, than if it consistently treats correct moves as missteps.

[1] [http://wiigee.org/download_files/gesture_recognition_with_a_...](http://wiigee.org/download_files/gesture_recognition_with_a_wii_controller- schloemer_poppinga_henze_boll.pdf)

[2] [http://wiigee.org/](http://wiigee.org/)</comment>


Show HN: Checkout my new startup Makerloom at www.makerloom.com - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \--> [https://www.makerloom.com/](https://www.makerloom.com/) \- Sharing of 3d models and designs made easy</comment>


Loaded question? - <AUTHOR>

How many people are on here are business owners? And if you are, what type of business do you own? <comment><USER2> There are two business owners. They each own a food truck.</comment>


A large proportion of Amazon's US fulfillment-centre workers are on food stamps - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/04/19/amazon-snap-subsidies-warehousing-wages/ <comment><USER2> So Amazon's business brings a bunch of low-skill jobs to depressed areas of the country that have been hit by decades of job loss and wage stagnation. (Driven in recent years partly by the Internet's effects on retail, led by Amazon itself.)

Why is it surprising that they're so flooded with applicants that they can get away with offering not much more than minimum wage?

Why is it surprising that people who work such low-wage jobs can't make ends meet without government assistance?

<comment><USER3> This article is framed to shame amazon for having so many employees who rely on SNAP. It could be framed to laud them for employing so many who are poor. It could also be completely neutral: Amazon hires unskilled labor for unskilled jobs.

Blaming and shaming does make for a saucy read however.

<comment><USER4> > It could be framed to laud them for employing so many who are poor

Oh yes, so good of Jeff to become the worlds richest man by exploiting some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

<comment><USER5> Such genorisity so I can get ping pong balls in 2 days

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's no one forcing those food stamp recipients to work at Amazon. I do believe that there are other, better paying jobs they can get.

And if they can qualify for food stamps, I'm sure they could qualify for student loans/grants that would put them out of the low-skill job arena...

Edit: ...Unless they wasted their education on some worthless degree.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to work at Amazon. Hourly workers make significantly more than minimum wage.

<comment><USER8> How much specifically?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm very happy to see this type of thing getting more attention.

</comment><comment><USER9> 12% of Americans are in food stamps.

<comment><USER7> 14.5% of Americans live below the poverty line

<comment><USER7> Seeing a few other sources that say other numbers (all above 12%, however)</comment></comment></comment>