Dear Google: please let me ban sites from results - <AUTHOR> Given the current high-ranking thread about spammy sites in Google results, it strikes me that a very simple solution would be to let logged-in users blacklist sites.
Bam, no more wareseeker or efreedom.
This would solve a lot of people's complaints in one fell swoop.
There are greasemonkey etc. scripts to do this, but they're tied to a single browser on a single machine. A global filter (like in gmail) would be so much more useful.
Would this be particularly hard to do? <comment><USER2> I see a lot of people asking what happens when a group of people downvote a site just to ruin its ranking. Sure that's a problem, but there's an easy solution on Google's end: your blacklist only affects you. Yes, that means all of us have to hide efreedom ourselves. Doesn't seem like a problem to me...

Plus, we are talking about a company whose core business demands that it can identify groups of bad-faith voters. Given time, they may find a way to incorporate this data safely into the ranking data (if anyone could, it would be Google).

And I know there are extensions to do this (mine mysteriously stopped working recently), but doing this on the client-side in a way that's bound to a single browser install just seems wrong to me, especially for Google.

<comment><USER3> "Yes, that means all of us have to hide efreedom ourselves. Doesn't seem like a problem to me..."

efreedom is monetised by Google ads. Might seem like a problem to Google.

Let's say it starts with personal blacklists. Then trusted lists that you can subscribe to (AdBlock-style). Then word spreads and enough people are using it such that AdSense revenue drops 20-30% or more?

(IME, CTR on ads is much higher on these content-light sites than it is on more reputable sites.)

<comment><USER4> To be honest, I think this is the reason Google doesn't have this feature. The sites everyone wants to blacklist are the spammers that game Google search and show Google ads. If they don't get traffic, they don't show ads. If they don't show ads, Google doesn't get that money either.

It's to Google's benefit that people end up on these pages, see a ton of ads, and then click on one out of confusion or desperation.

<comment><USER5> That's strange, though, because it should be clear to them that the long term effect of this is pretty dangerous for them - if their search results were always the best, then they would be largely unassailable in the search market, but as it is, they're decreasing satisfaction with their product. It's hard to improve everyone's perception of your product once that's happened, and it opens them up to usurpers.

<comment><USER3> It does, but Microsoft's thrown loads of money at the problem and not made huge inroads so maybe they figure it's worth the risk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No, it's not particular hard, but it will make the problem worse.

Why?

99% of users are non-tech oriented.

Those users will not really be aware of the specific problems with the search results, they won't understand the concept of a good vs bad result and they certainly won't bother to tweak/ban/filter their results.

The 1% that do care and are currently being vocal about it will start filtering their results and they will perceive that the problem is solved. They will stop making a fuss.

So now, the complaints have gone away, but 99% of users are still using the broken system, so the good sites that create good original content are still ranking below the scrapers and spam results for 99% of the users.

The problem must be solved for all (or at least the majority) of users.

(And you can't take the 1%s filtering and apply it to all users in some kind of social search because the spammers will just join the 1% and game the system)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think 99% of users are too stupid to click 'report spam' when they get a spam email?

<comment><USER6> Not "too stupid" no.

I think 99% of email users have not been adequately trained in why or how they should report spam, and even if they were I think most of them would still not care enough to actually do it with any regularity.

When pushed many may acknowledge that they know it exists, they will probably even be able to find the button when asked if given a chance. But they won't remember to do it when they see spam, they'll just ignore it and move on to the messages from people they know.

<comment><USER7> Do you think this could be improved by alternate wording? Instead of reporting 'spam', ask the user 'was this useful?' or 'did you want this?'.

After all, the real goal is giving people a better, more relevant experience, detecting and removing spam is just one facet of that. Whether it's email or search.

<comment><USER6> In general yes, I think improved UI can guide user behaviour to more desirable outcomes.

However I don't think it's as simple as changing the button text. Even a process driven UI, like a wizard style interface where you have to click next to progress through each step might work, but users very quickly become immune to dialogs. They don't read them, they just evolve the actions that get them to their goal the fastest, and the users goal does not include reporting their spam.

<comment><USER8> Maybe something more automatic : a user makes a search, clicks on a link, if it is spam, he'll probably hit the back button within a couple of seconds. The average time spent by a user on a result before going back to Google could be used a as metric of quality.

<comment><USER9> I'd be very surprised if Google does not already implement this in some form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes that would be good. They could then look at the number of people blocking certain domains and de-weight them in the global results.

Traditionally google seem against human powered editing (as this would be), but I think as the black hat SEOs run rings around them, its needed _badly_.

<comment><USER11> An extremely easy way for a bunch of people to get together and destroy someone's ranking? That doesn't sound like such a good idea.

<comment><USER12> Given that Google gets hundred of millions of search and visitors, then you'll need a hundred of thousands of down votes to get black-listed. No black hatter can really do that (create a 100K account/IP to avoid Google radar and down vote the website).

<comment><USER13> Hundreds of millions of searches and visitors in aggregate: yes.

Hundreds of millions of searches and visitors in any one keyword niche: not so often.

Many websites live off a handful of visitors a day coming from a few core keywords and associated long-tail traffic. For a keyword that only gets 100 searches a day, it wouldn't take many down-votes to affect the rankings of the relevant sites.

<comment><USER14> _For a keyword that only gets 100 searches a day, it wouldn't take many down- votes to affect the rankings of the relevant sites._

Why do you assume a flawed implementation?

Naturally there would be thresholds. There is no reason to devalue a site that's only displayed in 100 search-results/day at all.

The sites we want to hit are orders of magnitude worse at polluting the results. We're talking about the Mahalo's and expert sexchanges.

<comment><USER15> Is experts-exchange really a spam site? I always thought they had real users who ask&answer questions. But that they are just a crap site that hides this behind a paywall (I'm aware that the actual content is at the bottom of the page).

<comment><USER16> That sounds like trying to excuse junkmail and spam because someone out there finds it useful and orders the products being offered.

<comment><USER15> I'm not trying to do that. I'm just arguing that classifying it as spam is not fair. I remember (before SO) finding some useful info there from time to time. Whereas junk mail trying to sell me a bride from Russia for 50€ is defenetily a hoax :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google does provide this service: it's called Google Custom Search. You can prioritize or blacklist sites and it's pretty easy to add it to your browser searchbar. I don't always use it, but I'll switch to it when I encounter a spammy topic, usually dev-related searches.

<http://radleymarx.com/blog/better-search-results/>

<comment><USER18> I can't believe this isn't the most popular comment. Kinda makes HN look a bit like a knowledge vacuum with all these recent discussions of how to ban results when a google service that's existed for nearly 5 years can do the job. The format of the results isn't quite a nice as the normal google search though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Err, I mentioned this well before the comment above:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2075437>

It's not so much that it's a knowledge vacuum, just that someone didn't read the whole thread before replying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Gmail already does it, and the global system uses an algorithm to look at reported spam results in order to automatically move future emails from that party to the spam folder automatically, not just for the person that reported it, but for everyone.

If they're not looking into integrating that nicely into the existing search results page (not a separate form that the average user will never find or use), especially after all the internet chatter about it recently, then they definitely should make that a top priority in 2011. I definitely don't want them to do a rush job on it though. I don't want competitors to start reporting each other as spam in search results to try and game the system even further. I'm assuming they have anti-gaming measures in place for Gmail, so they won't be completely starting that from scratch...

<comment><USER20> I don't see how you could anti-game this, the SEOs would just use mechanical turk to hire 100s of people (with valid Google Accounts) to do the reporting.

At best G could use the information as a list of potential spammers and filter domains manually, but I really can't see this being automated without giving the SEOs another weapon.

<comment><USER14> I don't think anyone wants to filter sites that could be gamed with "100s of votes". We want to filter sites that will require tens of thousands of votes to get rid of.

<comment><USER16> And even then it should consider the votes themselves to be suspect and watch for blocks of users who only vote in unison (qualitatively and temporally).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google were experimenting with voting on results: [http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/straight-out-of-left- field-...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/28/straight-out-of-left-field-google- experimenting-with-digg-style-voting-on-search-results/)

Also there is this form for reporting spam sites: <https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport>

Integrating the above into standard search results would be difficult unless it was restricted to users with a good "karma". That might be possible in our increasingly socially networked world

<comment><USER22> The thing is, the SO scrapers like efreedom aren't spam, strictly speaking. It's just that they clone existing content without adding value, and as such are just noise in the results.

Perhaps we need to frame the discussion differently, considering what the searcher wants, rather than "spam-free hits".

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my point really. _I_ don't want to see eFreedom hits, _I_ consider them spammy, so I'd like to be able to click-ban them from _my_ results.

If Google use that information to gradually adjust their ranking overall, then fair enough -- won't affect me, I can't see them anyway.

 _EDIT:_ Even if they _don't_ let that affect everyone else's results (because of gaming), then I still don't care, I still don't see the crap in my results ever again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also, I would like '[any widget] review' to take me to an actual review, not pages upon pages of spam. I usually end up looking at comments on a few trusted sites (e.g. Amazon). This seems broken...

<comment><USER22> Yes, most of the results for this query wind up pointing to pages saying "be the first to review [any widget]".

As a workaround, try searching for "[any widget] sucks" and "[any widget] good".

EDIT: tying this to other discussions on the topic, it's a symptom of Patio11's observation that natural language search doesn't work very well. If you want to find something, you need to paint a picture of what it looks like, rather than asking a question about it.

<comment><USER24> I've noticed for years that "[product] hosed" brings up good results on how to work around bugs in various software products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the worst culprits are the ones that skim StackOverflow questions and rehash them into their own supposed original "question and answer" site

<comment><USER26> What do you think most StackOverflow answers are? It's a karma-paid labor pool where you can post questions and a lot of under-employed people will rush out and do the necessary Google searches, collating and slightly rewriting the results to yield the most votes.

Everyone is ripping off someone's content.

And just to be accurate here, SO content is creative commons (created by the community). Are those just cheap words?

<comment><AUTHOR> _What do you think most StackOverflow answers are? It's a karma-paid labor pool_ ... said the comment on Hacker News, earning the poster 3 points so far.

<comment><USER26> 2 points. I started at one. I desperately hope for more, though, as this is going to give me my big break. I'm trying to earn six more trophies, a ribbon, and link this profile on my resume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As programmers, our typical complaints are for sites that bog us down in common (expert's exchange, stackoverflow scrapers, etc.).

What I found interesting: I was doing a search on something I normally have no interest in (a sewing machine manual for my wife) and I was _amazed_ by the level of spam I was encountering.

We have no idea how bad the problem is for others whose topics we do not usually see. The web is far more full of spam than we even realize.

</comment><comment><USER28> Proof that true AI is a long way off?

If the best and brightest (arguably) on the planet can't figure out how to filter out search with algorithms, what makes us think we can mimic true human intelligence any time soon. (I think it will happen, just not as soon as some claim)

<comment><USER29> Or maybe it just means that the day we can algorithmically emulate human intelligence is the day spam becomes useful (or the day we get impossibly good at fooling ourselves).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That will never happen, if they ever did that it would be an admission that there is something inherently wrong with their algorithm. They won't do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah. They let people 'report spam' in gmail -- they're happy to admit that algorithm doesn't always guess right. Also there's already a "give us feedback" mechanism for reporting bad search results, it's just too slow and manual.

<comment><USER31> People are used to spam buttons, and would realize that the lack of "report spam" would mean that Google might be marking too many things as spam if they think the user doesn't need a "Mark as spam" button.

People are also a lot less tolerable of spam in their inbox than they are of irrelevant search results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd definitely make use of this feature. Some ancillary features might include:

a) Google could warn you if it thinks the sites you have blacklisted seemed to have regained credibility.

b) Google could suggest additional sites you may wish to blacklist, based on other user blacklists.

c) Google could allow outside parties to curate blacklists.

d) Google could list the most commonly black-listed sites publicly. For the webmasters that find themselves listed who want to run an actual honest business, this is a good sign they should change their tactics. For the folks that aim to spam and profit... well screw those guys.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe this could be implemented in the way of sticky search operators?

So for example, I could define -site:efreedom.com as an operator to be applied silently for every search I make.

</comment><comment><USER34> How many gmail accounts do we need to band together to lower the rank of stack overflow against our super-duper question-and-answer site QandAdsWithMe.annoying.com?

<comment><USER35> An excellent point. Blacklisting works both ways, and there's nothing stopping spammers from creating hundreds, maybe thousands, or even more, of throwaway Google accounts just to blacklist the original site. Sure, the logged in Google users wouldn't see the spam site (if they blacklisted it), but it would still appear, and outrank the original site, in standard search results for those that aren't logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> So don't use the blacklisting stats for re-ranking everyone else's then. I didn't consider that when I put the post up. An instant way to filter sites just for yourself would solve 90% of people's complaints straight away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks like a lot of people are assuming a solution would some sort of voting system like stackexchange, etc.

Why not allow individual users to hide sites from their own search results and save the info in their google account? For example, provide a "hide this site from my results" link next to each result. Each person decides which site they don't want to see and SEO and global results remain unaffected.

<comment><USER37> I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Am I the only one that remembers this EXACT feature on Google about a year ago? You had to be logged in to iGoogle, and each search result had a small [X] to the right of it that would appear on hover.

If you clicked it, that result wouldn't appear for you again. I used it all the time.

Then, lately it's gone. Maybe I was part of a small, randomly-selected test group?

<comment><USER9> That was part of Google's SearchWiki experiment. [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make- searc...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your- own.html)

That experiment was replaced by Google "Stars" in March 2010 because, according to Google:

> In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a > website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of > Google's organic search results.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search- mor...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more- personal.html)

I personally think there is much more going on here than Google admits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wasn't this a problem Google Search Wiki tried to solve?

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make- searc...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your- own.html)

<comment><USER39> Yeah. I miss searchwiki. :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure how this would be implemented. Where would the blacklist be held and how would it influence the search results? I know that they already do a lot of search customization but most of it is just aggregate statistical computations. It's not that they return results specifically tailored to you but more like results tailored to a very fuzzy average version of you. A blacklist seems way too specific to each user to be susceptible to meaningful aggregate statistical operations like spam filtering which is one of the reasons that spam filtering in google is so good. Each user contributes something and everyone benefits. I don't see that happening with blacklists. I think to make it worthwhile they would need to figure out how to feed the information from blacklists into providing more meaningful results for everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the point, what I want is _exactly_ a user-specific blacklist.

I can even do that already with Google's Custom Search, all that's missing is a little 'block this site' button. Instead I have to go and configure Custom Search manually for each URL mask.

<comment><USER41> You could write a little GreaseMonkey script or extension to do that, shouldn't be too hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How about decentralizing the search page? Hear me out for a bit.

My theory is that these complaints are coming from specific interest groups, not the general public. For example, spammy-content is created and targeted at a developer/programmer audience, and that is the source of some of these complaints.

So my suggestion is Google should platformize their search; and give out dedicated search instances to specific communities. The community should have enough levers to govern/influence what is spam or not. In addition, the community can promote certain high-value resources, which are otherwise unfairly listed in search results. Invite some high-profile communities for a test-run, and let the communities make their own choices.

The public Google can still handle the general public. This can also bring in some transparency in the way spam is determined.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here is a conspiracy theory for you guys.

1\. How does Google make money? Search Ads.

2\. How do people click on search ads? Bad real search results.

</comment><comment><USER44> In the interim, you can do your searches by adding -wareseeker -efreedom to the search string.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've discovered you can also set up a Custom Search Engine, with no included sites (default to everything), and specifically exclude the sites you don't want. Then do all your searches through this.

<http://www.google.com/cse/>

Usability-wise, though, it's not nearly as much use as a 'ban' button next to each result would be. But it shows Google already have the infrastructure and code that would allow this -- they just need to make it instant to use.

 _EDIT:_ The other downside of this is you lose a load of bells & whistles, e.g. previews, "pages from the UK" (without typing), icons for images/news/etc. Time will tell if I miss those.

<comment><USER45> But its not free, right ?

<comment><USER46> From the signup page:

"Standard edition - ads are required on search pages"

There's an ad-free premium version as well, but you definitely can get it for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Didn't Google have downvotes for results - shouldn't they be sufficient to achieve the result you want? Presumably Google would learn that you consistently downvote wareseeker and exclude it from results in the future.

I haven't used it because I don't want Google to remember my search history. But if you are willing to stay logged into Google (which would be required for your proposal), it would not be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER48> It seems that it might be more helpful to whitelist sites. The web grows too quickly, and the mass of spam sites overwhelmingly so. If I had some way to blacklist sites, I'd end up spending a lot of time doing so. In fact, it could quickly take up most of my search time.

If, though, we could whitelist sites, it seems that results would get cleaner faster. I don't care about how many bad sites are out there, as long as helpful sites make it to the top. Plus, I typically use just a few sites to access reliable information anyway (the number's about 7, right?), so if I can whitelist results from those sites, I'll probably find my desired content more quickly.

What about the case when there are 30 spam sites listed before 1 good site? That hasn't happened too often for me. Instead, the results I'm looking for are usually just 4 or 5 spots down the front page, and very occasionally on the second page.

White listing seems like it would still be faster and easier for now.

</comment><comment><USER49> For those wanting Google to put a penalty on the sites who are banned/removed from the user's view, what's to stop someone from gaming that system via Mech. Turk (or some other way)? Just pay people $0.12 to open gmail accounts and ban a competitor or whatever.

That's the only negative I can think of - other than that, I say bring it!

</comment><comment><USER50> I'd ban eHow.

<comment><USER51> And mahalo.

<comment><USER52> And ExpertsExchage and About.com

<comment><USER22> I don't get the hating on About.com. There are sub-sites there that I actually read intentionally, e.g., <http://heavymetal.about.com/>

This sure looks to me like real, original content.

EDIT: how about the courtesy of an explanation for the downvote?

<comment><USER53> About.com's content is decent sometimes. The problem is finding it amongst all the ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I want a search results page similar to the "Priority Inbox" we got recently in gmail. Set sane defaults and let me override them with "Important/Notimportant" buttons (or thumbs up/down or whatever) next to results.

Let it learn what I think is a good result for my needs.

If you make it a little bit social, make sure you weight other people's opinions by how much they agree with my own in other areas (making it harder for sockpuppets to muddy the waters)

</comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone remember when google had this feature?

Well sortof, you could block individual responses from coming up under a specific search term.

There was a little x by each result if you were signed into google and it said "never show this result again"

Not enough people used the feature for it to stick around...

I would love this ability but google please, good UI and consumer education. I love your features but don't love when they get taken away because users don't know they exist.

</comment><comment><USER56> It doesn't seem like it would be hard, but if the rankings aren't driven by money, then there will be attempts to game the system. The problem I feel is Money. As long as everyone has to compete for it (meaning money doesn't work for the people, people work for money - in a system owned by the few), we'll have shady marketers, shady products, spammers etc... so, I think that it will remain a cat and mouse game.

</comment><comment><USER57> It seems like a obvious answer, but why not just use "-site:annoyingpage.com" in you search? In fact "-TotallyUnRelated" has helped me narrow down searches effectively too. You are asking for a feature that only a small subset of the users will benefit from and use, it makes more sense for google just to find a way to rank sites better then it does to build a additional filter on top of the current system.

<comment><USER58> Because I'd want to add a list of excluded sites for pretty much every single query I do.

Would you want to type out a string of 20 or 30 excluded sites every time you search Google?

Ranking clearly isn't going to be good enough, because algorithms can be worked around and gamed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I use a Chrome extension called Google Search Filter which solves this exact problem - [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eidhkmnbiahhgbgp...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/eidhkmnbiahhgbgpjpiimdogfidfikgf)

It lets me sync my config accross multiple machines.

Has nice hacker-ish config. Basically a text file you can share with others. This is my current config:

# Make these domains stand out in results

+en.wikipedia.org

+stackoverflow.com

+github.com

+api.rubyonrails.org

+apple.com

+ruby-doc.org

+codex.wordpress.org

+imdb.com

+alternativeto.net

# SPAM - never show these results

experts-exchange.com

ezinearticles

</comment><comment><USER60> Sounds to me the web search is not yet a solved problem. As the hardware (storage and memory) is getting cheaper and cheaper, and the emerging enabling technologies such as cloud computing, building your own search engine may not sound impossible any longer. Wonder how feasible it is to apply anti-spam algorithms that work well on emails to web pages.

</comment><comment><USER61> Google Domain Blocker: (userscript/greasemonkey), for those interested.

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/33156>

You can also sync them for Firefox across multiple machines using Dropbox, as the preferences are stored in your profile (IIRC, in a javascript file).

</comment><comment><USER62> Wouldn't implementing this feature be a tacit admission that there's a problem with search results?

</comment><comment><USER63> _"This would solve a lot of people's complaints in one fell swoop."_

And doing this would _spawn_ a lot of people's complaints in one fell swoop.

If you owned a site, and created enemies, they could band together and flag your site as spam.

<comment><USER64> I don't think you understood his suggestion. "Banning" a site would be local to your signed-in google account, not a global ban from results (which would indeed suffer the backfire you mentioned.)

<comment><USER63> doh!

You are totally correct. I completely missed that. Maybe I should drink a bit of coffee and wake up ;)

Although... I have a suspicion that at some point it would effect non-logged in users. Many logged in users banning a site is a signal that may effect the global results. Maybe in the same way marking spam in Gmail...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Startup idea: Create a service around google custom search. Select the "Search the entire web but emphasize the selected sites" Then create a gui to allow people to prioritize or ban their search results.

</comment><comment><USER66> In the old days we had killfile. Why can't we PLONK content sources like authors or sites by handles like nicks or domain names? There should be some standard protocol for that. Httplonk.

</comment><comment><USER67> So what we are talking about is censorship. You are suggesting a non- traditional type where a government does not do the censoring, but a few people do. How many votes would it take to put a website on a blacklist? 50, 100?

Who decides if a site is spam?

So is free speech dead under your proposal? What is I build a site that criticizes the Governor of your state. Or a federal agency. What would prevent my site from being blacklisted in your proposal? Even if I had great content (your argument is about poor quality content) my could be voted into a black hole in a few hours. Lets think about this carefully. Is that the price we are willing to pay to get rid of EE?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did I say _anything_ in the OP about my blacklist affecting other users? Please read before ranting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> My question is why stackoverflow hasn't banned efreedom yet?

<comment><USER69> SO provides their database content for free under creative commons license. efreedom is not doing anything illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Although it's sad because it speaks volumes that we're fed up with all the garbage in many of our search queries.

I do hope those working on _the algorithm_ are taking note.

</comment><comment><USER71> you can do it with seeks... <http://www.seeks-project.info/> <http://www.seeks.fr/>

on your local machine and/or remote server... and it's free software.

blekko ? try this query, <http://blekko.com/ws/?q=debian> duh ?

</comment><comment><USER72> Just use Google SearchWiki.

Oh, yeah – they pulled it.

</comment><comment><USER73> the problem I have with this is that some black hat people can do this to any site they feel they are competing with. what would prevent someone from blacklisting a legitimate blog or website just because they did not like the content?

<comment><AUTHOR> So what? All that would mean is that the site wouldn't show up in _their_ results.

I never said anything about it affecting other people's results...

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> me gusta esta idea, muchos de los resultados iniciales son spam, y los resultados que de verdad me sirven aparecen dos o tres paginas después, apreciaría mucho que se pudiera banear los resultados alejados o que considere spam, thxs

</comment><comment><USER75> YES. Like the useless chromeextensions.org

This would be an awesome feature.

</comment><comment><USER76> great idea. Let this be the first question asked at any Google event.

In fact, let there be a sea of hands all gesticulating wildly to present it.

</comment><comment><USER77> Can't this be done with a browser plugin?

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I said in the OP: "There are gresemonkey etc. scripts to do this, but they're tied to a single browser on a single machine. A global filter (like in gmail) would be so much more useful."

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> simply add -site:foo.com to your search request.

And no, this doesn't solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER79> blekko . com is doing this and much more

</comment><comment><USER80> And no more bloody experts-exchange...

<comment><USER81> I honestly don't mind that site - about half the time I search for an issue, I find it's been resolved by someone over at Experts Exchange.

Do people realise that if Google is your referrer, you can scroll all the way down and see the solutions to the question?

<comment><USER82> It seems like every few months, EE tries to cloak its site in a new way ... then Google catches them and they revert to merely misleading people (by putting the answers several page-scrolls down) into thinking that they need to pay to see the answers.

Actually, I sort of sympathize with the predicament EE faces. They want to show up high on Google search results, because that's how they get new customers ... but they don't want to give away their content for free.

Here's an opportunity for a search engine start-up: Allow users to search (by default) for only free content -- but also allow them to search, if they so choose, for content that's behind a paywall. Pay-for-access sites would love something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Actually, I sort of sympathize with the predicament EE faces. They want to show up high on Google search results, because that's how they get new customers ... but they don't want to give away their content for free._

I have no sympathy _at all_ for them. All the answers are community-generated for free, aren't they? So they're trying to charge for other people's generosity. And plenty of sites on the web give away better content than theirs for free, with no attempt to trick people into paying.

Their business model is broken and I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

<comment><USER35> I thought that the experts that answered the questions got paid? Guess I was wrong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ddgjlkmkllmpdheg...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ddgjlkmkllmpdhegaliddgplookikmjf)

Is there something I'm missing here?

It's not in Google's financial interest to provide this feature, but it already exists rather trivially.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still tied to a specific browser though. Which isn't available on all platforms.

<comment><USER83> Which platforms are that? I'm using Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux. It can be run on FreeBSD if you're willing to deal with the bridge troll running the show there.

<http://i.imgur.com/1Amu3.png>

Do you really think this feature doesn't exist for Firefox?

Further, it'll even sync with your google account making it global if you give it access.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well iOS for one.

Also much as I like Chrome, I can't run it on my Linux box because the font rendering is _terrible_ and it lets sites' font choices supersede the user's. That means I can't overrule their painful font choices with ones that look good, like I can in Firefox.

But that's another rant...

<comment><USER83> >iOS for one

 _whistles and pops finger_

> it lets sites' font choices supersede the user's

Googled, found it 5 seconds. Sure there are at least 3 other ways to do it, one of them while rubbing your tummy and patting your head.

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=2121...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=21218cb9950ed044&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I'd like to see an option for searching only ad-free sites, or perhaps just sites that don't use AdSense, as well. Surely Google would have no problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER85> Use duckduckgo.com. Its pretty good with excluding spam. And with a new service there is an indicator of how spammy a site is.</comment>


Free online CS courses from Udactiy & Coursera starting over the next 2 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/b/107809899089663019971/107809899089663019971/posts/PRVMrgLYTF1

<comment><USER2> I almost feel as if it isn't fair. My university offers none of these things at the undergraduate level -- compilers isn't even offered at all. Although I am an advocate of this paradigm shift taking place, and am happy to be alive during a time where radical changes to education are surely to be made, these courses being offered make me really have second thoughts about putting all my time towards my university's summer courses to graduate as soon as I can. I hope they don't start charging by the time I finish undergrad.

TLDR: i jelly

<comment><USER3> why not work within the system you're in? At my university a bunch of grad students got together wanting to do ml/pgm/nlp-class, so we put together a small group, added a semester project plus paper presentations to make it worthy of a grad class. It's a bummer that the coursera courses started so late, but otherwise it's working out great. We help each other out and teach each other new stuff, and in the end get credit ;)

If you can't get departmental approval for something like that, then you should at least be able to swing an easily justifiable independent study out of one of the free classes.

<comment><USER2> That's a damn good idea. Gonna ask my advisor about it Monday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One other website that people might find interesting is MITx's program. <http://mitx.mit.edu/> So far, I've tried Coursera and Udacity. Udacity: 1\. Of the classes I took, only Udacity had programming exercises. For one of my friends, who had never taken programming, the course managed to capture his interest.

Udacity's courseload is:

i: video followed by a short quiz(multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc.) or a programming exercise(Create a function that takes 2 numbers and outputs the bigger one, etc.) There are generally anywhere from 25-40 videos, each 30 seconds to 4 minutes long.

ii: A series of homework assignments. These can be either quizzes or programming tasks. You can submit them, but you don't know whether you got it correct until some deadline, when your homework is graded. THe programming exercises are quite a bit harder.

One of the ones my friend struggled with for a while was a task to build a function that checked whether a sudoku square was valid when entered in a certain format. iii: At the end of each week, there is a time where they have some kind of IRC/audio channel set up, and you can ask them questions live.

2\. All the courses are the same quality. Also, they seem to truly have adapted learning into a digital environment, as opposed to certain other places, like MIT's OpenCourseware

Coursera, on the other hand, seems to be a series of lectures that they then overlaid questions on too.

Some teachers' classes are quite obviously just lectures, with some quizzes added on as an afterthought, while other teachers have incorporated them quite nicely. Coursera, my guess is, will also probably have more courses on offer than Udacity soon, since it's a collaboration between several schools.

TLDR: Try them both. I personally prefer Udacity, but there's no harm in signing up for one and then dropping it.

<comment><USER5> _Coursera, on the other hand, seems to be a series of lectures that they then overlaid questions on too._

It sounds like you haven't really looked at Coursera? It has assignments, including programming assignments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug but here is something similar I am currently working on: <http://coursebacon.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Can very much recommend the Udacity's courses. They are well planned and a big plus is that the homework spans from quite easy task, to some rather difficult.

</comment><comment><USER8> I will also add that if you're finding scheduling conflicts to be a problem with finishing homework, Udacity is offering CS101 and CS373 without homework deadlines. [http://www.udacity-forums.com/cs373/questions/34839/we- are-l...](http://www.udacity-forums.com/cs373/questions/34839/we-are-looking- for-feedback-about-next-run-of-these-courses)

<comment><USER9> Who grades the homework assignments?

<comment><USER8> They're graded by a computer program. Usually you are writing function(s) and need to return a correct value.

As CS373 progressed it got more complex: you worked from some helper code (like a matrix class) and had multiple test cases to test your program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any repercussions on choosing more courses and then dropping some after a couple of weeks? I guess it will be hard following more than two with college semester coming to an end, but I like at least 4 or 5 of these online courses and I'd like to see how some of them are going for a few weeks

<comment><USER11> There are none. I've signed up for everything that looked interesting two months ago and have been active in... 6 of them (counting CS101 that just finished). The rest I'm glad to have registered for since I can still keep up with the materials and lectures without doing the assignments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I signed up for the 'build a web browser' class. Sounds like a fun challenge to write a HTML and js parser

<comment><USER13> Which class is that? udacity or coursera?

<comment><USER14> Udacity. <http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs262>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When these courses started coming out I was very excited. Now that there are so many of them, I find myself being interested in too many and being paralyzed by excessive choice, to the point that I've gone back to good old books for my self-learning.

<comment><USER16> It boils down to choosing the top 2 courses. It's difficult to do beyond that if you have a day job. One can still score high on the exams but you will have very little time left to reflect on the material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am in a fix after seeing Coursera's list of classes as to whether to take the automata class or the compiler one? Any opinions on this? I have not done both at university level as I am a self taught programmer.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any opinion on Udacity's compiler classes versus Coursera's? There is a gap of one week between them, so we can try both and choose the one that suits us, but still, any gut feel?

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like Udacity's compiler class would be more practical and more entry level as compared to Coursera. Its target audience are the people who finished the recently concluded CS101 course. Coursera's version would be more theoretical, thorough and closer to a Stanford level undergraduate class. Coursera's version has midterms as well exams. So I feel like it would be around 10 weeks long as compared to 7 weeks for Udacity.

Like you I plan to try both of them and ideally finish both of them. I am also waiting on them to announce a part 2 of the Data Structure and Algorithm class.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for chipping in. I am leaning towards the Coursera one after reading your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there anything like Udacity/Coursera for non-CS courses? I'd love to do some Advanced Japanese.</comment>


Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2014/02/_thats_one_of_t.php <comment><USER2> This is an interesting essay - I definitely think there's a lot to be learned about graphic design from 18th century print culture, especially people like William Hogarth with his "Line of Beauty." Incidentally, John Overholt, who offers up a comment excerpted at the end of the piece, is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He's the curator of early modern books at Harvard's Houghton Library so it's basically a series of gems that he unearths in the stacks:

[https://twitter.com/john_overholt](https://twitter.com/john_overholt)

</comment><comment><USER3> > The point being, of course, that the ergonomics of smartphones as reading > devices are not only kind of rad, but historically so.

You can also turn this around and say that smartphones throw away three centuries worth of ergonomic improvements in reading. I personally find smartphones completely unusable for any kind of longer text.

<comment><USER4> In what way? In my opinion, a high resolution 5" AMOLED smartphone is superior to any other reading device including paper and e-paper, except for works that are diagram/table heavy, and for reading outside where glare becomes an issue.

\- AMOLED means perfect blacks, use white on black for nighttime reading

\- internally self illuminated for night time reading

\- light weight and lack of page turning allows wide variety in reading positions. The use of volume keys for page turning allows easy one hand operation, improving the number of positions available

\- narrow width eliminates horizontal eye scan. This is important -- most people do not read a word at a time, their brain processes an entire phrase at a time. If that phrase spans two lines, being able to focus your eyes on the end of one line and the beginning of the next at the same time significantly improves your ability to read the work quickly with full understanding.

<comment><USER5> It's not just about how a single page looks.

Even assuming that a nice backlit AMOLED is preferable to ink on paper in good light (which I'm not sure is true), physical books have pages that are easily turned, quick random access to different parts of book, and lots of subtle cues to reader about current location, etc. This is an advantage over ebooks.

Ebooks can be digitally searched, which of course is an advantage for them. But it's hardly clear that any electronic reading experience is hands down superior to physical book in all situations. And if one were it would not likely be an ebook in a 5" form factor, that's too small. 5" is good for portability, but for sitting down in a chair at home for a 1 hour session, I can't imagine anyone preferring a 5" smartphone to a larger tablet. (I say all of this as someone who probably reads 40% on 4.5" smartphone, 30% on 13" laptop, 20% on 8" tablet, and 10% physical books.)

<comment><USER6> > physical books have pages that are easily turned, quick random access to > different parts of book, and lots of subtle cues to reader about current > location, etc.

Even if that were true, the benefits of a digital reader far far outweigh its drawbacks over its physical counterpart:

1\. Digital means, no space required. A library full of books can be easily accommodated on your 64GB MicroSD card!

2\. Digital means no wear and tear. History is evidence to the loss of thousands of books and corresponding knowledge due to calamities. With digital, you can backup it to your Google-Drive/Dropbox and they will survive the ages.

3\. Digital means no tyranny of authorities. Gone are the days when books used to be "banned" by state authorities for whatever reason. With digital, no one can subvert your freedom to read anything you like.

4\. Most importantly, digital means easy sharing. If you have a book in PDF/EPUB, you can just email it, in case you want to share it with someone. With physical books, you have to physically snail-mail it which is quite cumbersome.

A lot of concerns you have made (like page-turning) in fact relate to our age- old habits since we are accustomed to physical books, and like many other things in life, all we have to do is just adapt to this new technology!

<comment><USER5> Oh, yes, that's a good list, and I agree almost entirely. I wrote the post you're responding to, and I'm basically a digital convert. Just this year I got rid of thousands of physical books that I'd accumulated over last 30 years, and which were huge drag on my life, both from space requirements and from weight (made moving residences more difficult).

Having said that, I would generally prefer to read a physical book. If I had a physical book and and a nice tablet with the same (but digital) book in front of me, I would likely be reaching for the physical book. Ink on paper in good lighting is preferable to any screen I've seen. And there's an ease to paging through a physical book that none of the devices I've read ebooks on can match. So, yes, I agree ebooks on are on the whole preferable. But I would never go so far as to say they always provide a better reading experience. So far my ebook reading experiences are not quite as satisfying as physical books, but any deficiencies are outweighed by other advantages of digital medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wrong title. Cart before horse. Should be: "Why Smartphone screens still look like 18th century books."

When it comes to how to combine graphics and text, smartphones offer little new compared to thousands and thousands of years worth of artists and authors seeking to catch the eye of viewers.

</comment><comment><USER8> The large font size might also relate to the unavailability of cheap mass- produced reading glasses, perhaps it was aimed at an educated older readership.

</comment><comment><USER9> One difference, in the 18th century, they cared about the format.

Now if only ebook publishers (a) hired proofreaders (b) could figure out how to properly render diagrams, specialized fonts and pictures such that reading an ebook containing such was anything other than a disappointment.

I thought the "sloppy" era would be over by now as the technology and acceptance increased, but for whatever reason, ebooks still are given lesser priority than printed matter when it comes to editing and layout (and still are kind of a ripoff compared to the printed edition because of that).

<comment><USER10> Could it be due to the perception (loosely based in fact) that the hard copy is forever, and therefore you better do a good job first, whereas the electronic media could be corrected post-release?

<comment><USER11> No, it's because ebooks flow the text and images dynamically to accommodate different screen and font sizes whereas a book can be statically typeset.

<comment><USER9> If only there were a technology which was screen and font size agnostic that could display text interspersed with diagrams in various ways including alternative layouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One major difference is that the printed book has hyphenation.

<comment><USER13> Some smartphone reader apps (e.g. Marvin, for iOS) provide automatic soft hyphenation, which neatly solves that problem without requiring any effort on the part of the publisher.

<comment><USER14> FBReader on Android has decent hyphenation. Not TeX quality, but still pretty good.</comment></comment></comment>


We Brake for Mars - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G0asOKx5Xp0

<comment><AUTHOR> JPL engineer Mike Meacham explains how an inflatable decelerator will help larger spacecraft land on Mars. The device will be tested at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii in June, 2014.

</comment><comment><USER2> One more step to migrating to Mars. I'm looking forward to retiring and living on Mars in 20-30 years.</comment>


AMD Readies Ryzen 3 2200GE and Ryzen 5 2400GE APUs with Reduced TDP - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12428/amd-readies-ryzen-3-2200ge-ryzen-5-2400ge-apus-with-reduced-tdp <comment><USER2> this is great news for those wanting to create a Mediacenter PC</comment>


How the driving force behind DirectX got fired - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/06/getting-fired-from-microsoft/

<comment><USER2> This is really interesting. Before now, I'd always viewed DX as this monolithic _thing_ from Microsoft, and reading about the people behind it, especially in a moment of weakness, really helps humanize such a faceless piece of software.

</comment><comment><USER3> A very interesting read, especially some of the linked articles and posts. Interesting additions to the history of the 3D graphics "wars".</comment>


Startup Quote: Roger Ehrenberg, managing partner, IA Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3362840664

<comment><AUTHOR> Do not let failure dictate your future choices.

\- Roger Ehrenberg (@infoarbitrage)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3362840664></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else seeing Amazon US east issues (Management portal)? - <AUTHOR>

My sites appear fine and everything is functioning but I can't successfully access the web console to manage anything.  Just curious if anyone else is seeing the same or if I am just experiencing a me issue. <comment><USER2> The EC2 API itself is experiencing some trouble in US East-1. So the console as well as the CLI and anything that depends on the API, like boto, is going to be flaky. <http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense, I am slacking as I forgot to check the status page. Man, some days.

Thanks for the reminder and help.</comment></comment>


Agile Memes, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-memes-part-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> While this isn't normal HN fare, it's tech-related, it's a pet project, and it's a holiday weekend, so hopefully it'll be okay.</comment>


Engineer debunks theory of flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/engineer-debunks-theory-of-flight-20120126-1qjrc.html <comment><USER2> why not just link to the youtube video of the professor explaining? <http://youtu.be/UqBmdZ-BNig></comment>


FCC Chair Ajit Pai "jokes" about being a Verizon shill - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/leaked-video-shows-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-roasting-himself-1821134881 <comment><USER2> Ajit Pai being an ass is not news.

The more interesting item is the FCC's implicit assertion that submitting comments under fake names is not against the law.[0] That's the part that should have people overturning tables.

 _The FCC also said that Schneiderman has not "identified any specific law or legal authority" to support its assertion that submitting comments under fake names violates state law._

[0][https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/fcc-chair- still-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/fcc-chair-still- refuses-to-help-investigate-net-neutrality-comment-fraud/)

<comment><USER3> So what is the "specific law or legal authority" that makes it illegal?

<comment><USER4> So if it's not against the letter of the law, that makes it ok?

<comment><USER5> I would say that submitting a public comment under a pseudonym is OK even if it was against the law.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's not actually the issue in question. The comments to the FCC board were made using (publicly available) real name and address pairs.

Someone submitted a comment using my legal name and current address. Whether that person should have been able to comment pseudonymously or not is beside the point. What they actually did is make a public statement in my name, which may or may not reflect my actual views, and which definitely impedes my ability to express those actual views if and when I desire to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will probably get me some hate, but that speech was genuinely funny. Anyone who can't put aside their political differences and laugh along with it is a wet blanket.

 _And_ it points out how ridiculous the Verizon shill claim is — Pai worked there from 2001-03 when he was 3 years out of law school, then worked for DoJ and various congressional committees, _then_ went to the FCC in 2007. Claims that he's beholden to Verizon are exactly as absurd as that Manchurian Candidate sketch.

<comment><USER8> > Claims that he's beholden to Verizon are exactly as absurd as that > Manchurian Candidate sketch.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171205/10255738745/days-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171205/10255738745/days- before-doing-verizons-bidding-ajit-pai-gives-talk-verizon.shtml)

He sure isn't making a very good job at not looking corrupt beyond any doubt.

<comment><USER7> Color me unimpressed. Tom Wheeler spoke at the 2016 event and their 2015 annual convention.

[0] [https://www.iicom.org/events/telecommunications-and-media- fo...](https://www.iicom.org/events/telecommunications-and-media- forum/item/tmf-washington-2016)

[1] [http://www.iicom.org/events/item/annual- conference-2015-conf...](http://www.iicom.org/events/item/annual- conference-2015-confirmed-speakers)

<comment><USER9> Tom Wheeler didn't promote the removal of net neutrality protections, an act which would benefit Verizon. This "it's just a joke" is about as funny as if Tom Wheeler had said the _same thing_ Pai did while taking the _same stance_.

That's because it's indefensible, which is why you're pointing fingers to Wheeler instead of defending it.

<comment><USER7> It's almost like speaking at an International Institute of Communications forum is not correlated with shilling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pai's speech was funny, but his behaviour as chairman is completely indefensible, especially with all the evidence that the comment submission process was fraught with irregularities.

To put it more concretely: if you think he has no ulterior motive in acting the way he is acting, what betting odds would you give against him being given a very lucratively paid sinecure as vp in some sort of telecom as soon as he is legally allowed?

</comment><comment><USER11> Whether or no Pai has a confict of interest is not very relevant.

Whether Pai's conclusions are based in personal opinion, or not is irrelevant.

The problem is that Pai is ignoring those whom it is duty to serve, and abusing the authority of his chairmanship to dictate policy for an entire country without any meaningful discussion.

</comment><comment><USER12> It always helps to remember that our political opposites may also possess a sense of humor

</comment><comment><USER13> I saw the quotes around "jokes" and didn't read the article.

Bias is obvious, it's not going to be informative reading.

</comment><comment><USER14> A line from THGTTG springs to mind...

 _...A bunch of mindless jerks who 'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes..._

<comment><USER15> First against the wall? More likely they'll be sipping margaritas in the Caymans, Vanuatu, or wherever they can go to avoid extradition.

Former mass murdering dictators freely roam international waters, what's a bit of crony capitalism.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing you're not familiar with the referenced _work of satirical fiction._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> IMO proving the guy has some form of Antisocial Personality Disorder.

</comment><comment><USER17> FYI Those were not fake names, they were stolen identifies, including correct addresses and phone numbers. I know that because my mom who passed away 2 years ago was on the comments list posted in August of this year against net neutrality.

Regarding duplicates entries, that is explained by multiple sites making it easy to post for net neutrality, using the same language for each person who posted.</comment>


U.S. tried Stuxnet-style campaign against North Korea but failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/29/us-usa-northkorea-stuxnet-idUSKBN0OE2DM20150529

<comment><USER2>
        Jim Lewis, an advisor to the U.S. government on
        cybersecurity issues and a senior fellow at the
        Center for Strategic and International Studies,
        said there are limitations to cyber offense.

        A cyber attack "is not something you can release
        and be sure of the results," Lewis said.

Which is exactly why they should be banned. The U.S. is putting the security of my computer at risk for the sake of their diplomatic pissing contests.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hard to infect a country that pretty much has no computers. /jk

</comment><comment><USER4> Just one of the benefits of running OS/2</comment>


Princeton Grad Student And 'Brilliant' Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide  - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/07/bill-zeller-dead-princeto_n_805689.html <comment><USER2> I've been pushing this idea: "A half-way house for suicidal people" Basically, if you're intending to commit suicide, you simply register for the project, and you get an all-expenses paid trip to Iraq, Afghanistan or Congo or some other really dangerous place. Spend two to three months helping people out, then feel free to commit suicide after that.

No counseling, no attempt to talk you out of it, just a chance to be somewhere that will put you within a new world.

<comment><USER3> Nice idea but don't you think others would abuse the system?

<comment><USER4> Yea this is basically the system suicide bombers are in. Only there, the point is to make the suicide useful for political goals, here it is to make miserable life useful for said goals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The opening of the note is my favorite part:

"I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning."

It occurs to me that suicide was widely accepted in many cultures, for a long time, certainly in pre-Christian Europe. Roman generals might kill themselves after their forces were routed, if they feared being captured. Japanese samurai might kill themselves after defeat, even if they evaded capture. Christianity brought in a belief that most of the time suicide was wrong, but many Christian writers allowed for some exceptions. In his book "The Education of a Christian Woman", published in 1547, Juan Luis Vives praises the mass suicide of women in a Greek city whose walls were about to fall to seige. He argued that it was better that they die with their honor intact. [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=sy...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3627078)

I say all this to suggest, the current trend in psychology, which views all suicide as irrational, is perhaps somewhat misguided. There are surely times when a person is in so much pain that, barring any hope of ending that pain, suicide becomes a rational option. We have, in recent years, begun to accept this line of reasoning as it applies to end-stage cancer patients, and others facing terminal diseases, but if you allow that this reasoning is valid anywhere, then you have to allow that it is valid everywhere that certain conditions are met, in particular, a great deal of pain, and no hope for ending that pain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very sad indeed. It might just be semantic, but it seems that this person died from wounds inflicted during childhood, it just took a while for him to succumb.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just FYI, here's another HN thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2074109>

<comment><USER8> Be sure to mind BigZaphod's comment in that thread about the suicide note.

<comment><USER9> It seems this wish is being fullfilled:

Tumblr: <http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/suicide?before=1294400750>

Scribd: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/46479466/Bill-Zeller-Suicide-Note>

Also, his twitter account is alive (his last tweet is from last year): <http://twitter.com/billzeller>

<comment><USER10> His friend asked for help on HN and posted the suicide note, but later deleted it. <http://documents.from.bz/note.txt> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059862>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I never suffered the molestation, I can still relate to this guy. I also came from a fundementalist background that I'm only now coping with in middle age thanks to health consuling, a support group, and a family who have likewise forsaken those closeminded ways in favor of a more loving, "truer" version of the faith.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's quite incredible that the Huffington Post posted the entire suicide note, particularly without a warning before it.

In any case, I'm disturbed and outraged by the religious comments (ranging from wishing him well in the next phase of his life to saying how much God loves everyone even despite this to how he should forgive himself for the suicide). I thought respect was fundamental to religion.

<comment><USER13> I don't really get what you find disrespectful. Religious people generally believe that death is just a transition into a different plane. Why shouldn't a religious person be able to represent this in a comment?

For the record, I read the note, and there's nothing in it that would make it inappropriate to leave a comment like "hope he is happy now" or whatever. Even if he asked people not to say this about his death, which he didn't do, or even remotely hint at, they still would. It's just the common way of addressing death. Most people are religious.

<comment><USER14> The problem here is that these things are not disrespectful for individual Christians to say, but they are inappropriate for Christians 'as a group' to say. The group should stfu and take a long hard look at their shortcomings as a group. You don't get to address this guys death in your religious way, if you don't address the religious ways that caused his death. If there is anyone in the position to get fundamentalist Christians to change their ways, it's the moderate Christians. But I don't hear them speak out against, _on religious grounds_ , against the extreme, religiously inspired, stuff that gets shouted around by national celebrities that get to keep televising that propaganda for decades. Instead, everyone expects the atheists to carry the burden of moderating the extremists, who are naturally much less eficient at that. To add insult to injury, in the public debate moderate Christians continuously choose the side of the fundamentalists when push comes to shove. I continuously moderate the quacks in my scientific family; you moderate yours, damnit.

<comment><USER15> Guilt by association is also handy when you don't want people to build mosques.

<comment><USER14> A fallacy that could not be used if Muslims openly and harshly criticised their fundamentalist brothers, instead of remaining silent and ocasionally nodding in agreement when others are described as unworthy, because that feeling is most fundamental and hardest to overcome. The core of what binds people together is the united enemy and appeals to hating the enemy are easy. At least they have the excuse that most of them are usually being repressed, by the government or the direct social community, and don't dare voice their opinion.

Moderate American Christians, on the other hand, could easily wipe out the ridiculous overpresence of fundamentalist Christians on national television. This is assuming the majority actually consists of moderate Christians. If that assumption is false, then the feelings of nopassrecover are justified by appeal to the probability that the commenters are actually the type of people that are guilty of this mans death.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for making my point for me. Yep. That's one thing that could make things better for American Muslims. If they'd just change their behavior, just a little bit.

<comment><USER14> American Muslims are a minority, who can hardly be expected to change the public perception of 'Islam', which depends on what millions of foreign Muslims say or do. Those foreign Muslims have a hard time being moderate and because of that my appeal to Christians does not equally apply to them. The American Christian majority has both power and freedom of speech. They're just not using it efficiently to shut down the blowhards that keep hijacking 'Christianity'.

I admit it's a fine line between what I'm trying to argue and the 'guilt by association' fallacy, but the difference is the answer to the question: how responsible is a powerful majority subgroup for taking action against the minority leading the group, when the majority subgroup is suffering from that leadership, because members of the majority subgroup are being held accountable for opinions and decisions of the leadership that they don't even agree with? Humans use fallacious reasoning and pointing that out doesn't change a thing about that. Taking away the origin of the fallacy does change a thing _and_ makes the world a bit better. I'm not committting the fallacy in my argument: I'm just pointing out that others will commit the fallacy, which is an unchangeable fact of human nature the majority subgroup should better acknowledge.

<comment><USER15> Guilt by association is guilt by association however you choose to wield it. Have the last word, if you'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't fault him for what he did and I'm sure his state of mind wasn't anything most of us could relate to- but the one thing I feel like he could have done before this was to open up to _someone_ about what happened to him. Maybe it wouldn't have changed anything but maybe it would have been the first step to dealing with this a different way. I understand why people commit suicide, but at least try _everything_ first.

</comment><comment><USER17> Bill's family & friends have set up a page on 1000Memories to share memories of his life.

<http://1000Memories.com/BillZeller>

If you knew Bill, please join his page.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there any doubt it was suicide, or is the word "apparent" in the article heading unnecessary?

<comment><USER19> It might be for some legal reasons until there is an official statement on the matter. In a similar way that journalists always have to say "allegedly" when talking a case that hasn't been closed. (IANAL obviously, neither a journalist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Terrible loss.

Based on his note, he is a compelling writer. If it were not published posthumously, it could have done a lot of good for himself and for others. It probably would not have received the same amount of attention though.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why he didn't name the person? I don't know why, but it bothers me...almost as if he never found the strength to confront it, and he died never being able to do so.

I feel bad for the guy. I'm certainly not one of those self-righteous "suicide is selfish" types, but it does bother me that the victims always seem to lose in these cases. Such a loss.

</comment><comment><USER22> If something bad happens to you that you can't forget or forgive go to chats and tell your story to anonymous people over and over as many times as necessary until you get eventually bored with it. It may take a year or more.

You will be then less likely to tell it to yourself again in your head.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why the quotes around the word brilliant in the title? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> Because it's quoting a comment from Anil Dash. (More of the comment is quoted in the body of the article.)

<comment><USER25> That may be true, however there is still quite a disconnect between the intended "quoting" and resulting 'scare quote' issue. Basically, without knowing the quote, it adds a pile of sarcasm to the title roughly equivalent to:

so-called smart guy kills himself

It's just sad.

<comment><USER26> wow, I couldn't believe it either. A scare quote headline with a full suicide note republished. I did notice no one at the Huffington Post would attach their name to this trash.

<comment><USER27> If you look at about half the comments in this subthread (including the grandparent of yours), you would see that these are not scare quotes — they're the normal kind of quotes, which indicate a quotation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Never knew him. But reading the letter made me bawl like a baby. And I don't remember the last time I shed a tear

My intensely normal upbringing means I can't ever hope to comprehend what he must have gone through

RIP

</comment><comment><USER29> You know, me and my friends were talking just the other day about how massive myTunes was in college, pretty much everyone was using it. What a sad loss of a fantastic talent.

</comment><comment><USER30> He discusses counseling but not medication. If the latter was never tried, I find this even more sad.

Talking about suicide is a taboo subject. And doctors and others in caretaker positions are legally required to alert the authorities if they suspect someone may harm themselves. If it is discussed, there is a reasonable chance the person discussing it will be sent to a mental institution, the experience of which may be less appealing than suicide.

I wonder what would happen if physical suicide could be replaced with social suicide, administered by something analogous to the witness protection program.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a tough one to swallow. I never knew Bill personally but it did hit home as shared some common connections. Sucks. Sucks that its too late to help him. I won't comment on what I think should be done to that person but they deserve the worst and then some.

Someone posted a great quote in the comments on the story on Gizmodo: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

RIP Bill Zeller.

</comment><comment><USER32> It always makes me feel sad how goddamn _unfair_ life is to some.

</comment><comment><USER33> For some reason, I kept picturing Dexter (particularly S5) when reading this. I wish he used his intellect to somehow get back at all those other f-ing child molesters.

</comment><comment><USER34> Eternal rest grant him.

<comment><USER35> Why do solemn events Yoda Speak more acceptable make?

(Offtopic, I know, but doesn't this strike you as weird?)

<comment><USER34> It's not out of the blue; it's a very, very, very old formula in the Catholic liturgy (funeral and requiem Masses and vigils), translated from the Latin "requiem aeternam dona eis". The usual response is "And perpetual light shine upon him" ("et lux perpetua luceat eis").

It seemed appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> one must probably understand while reading this that the mental abuse was in his life constant,

tried to get rid of it, go to school etc. , but had to communicate with his family and probably that nullified his self-help totally every time.

Its probably something like working like mad on some programming project for a year and then someone hacks your system and deletes everything... after that one year to restore the system and then someone again comes and deletes it ..one more year to restore , and back to zero again

</comment><comment><USER37> You don't solve a problem by running away from it. This guy would have been very useful. He just needed counselling, attention and love to overcome the 'darkness and his ghosts'. But I don't think he was smart. He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people don't take their own lives. Brilliant is misused here. Anyway R.I.P.

<comment><USER38> > He might have been clever in class and books but smart and brilliant people > don't take their own lives.

Honestly: How do you know? Should I invoke Alan Turing or look up suicides on Wikipedia?

I think we, who are not going through these kind of things, tend to underestimate just how damaged people can be. I'm not saying he made the right choice, but I'm definitely saying that it's not as clear cut as you imply.

<comment><USER35> Maybe he's defining "smart and brilliant" in such a way that his statement is tautologically true? It's obviously pretty silly otherwise. Of course, such a definition is also silly, since it has such a large mismatch with the conventional definitions of those terms.</comment></comment></comment>


Unix koans - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/~esr//writings/unix-koans/ <comment><USER2> ESR koans, more like. Has the man ever written _anything_ which lacked barely veiled subtext of "Look how smart I am!" IMHO _The Art of Unix Programming_ has as little of that as anything of his that I've read, but only when he's relating facts; in any place where there's scope for opinion, his high opinion of himself shines forth.

<comment><USER3> I had read all these, before I got to know about ESR.

I was like, Wow!!, and it never ever came to my mind who wrote this or why. It was just some cool stuff and as a linux newbie I really liked these micro- stories or unix zen fables.

It happens with me as well that when I read something by an author for whom I hold some kind of prejudice, my reading is maligned a bit and I wish I could see what the author had to share from a completely neutral point of view, because then in that case, what I take away from my reading would be closer to what it had meant to be for me.

<comment><USER4> You might find Alan Perlis' epigrams interesting [http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html](http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining.

Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable, but it can sometimes be uncomfortable for people that respect the philosophy.

<comment><USER6> "Misuse" of koans has long history.

After Zen master Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Records - collection of 100 classical koans with his commentary verses - started to spread around, his successor Dahui noticed how monks and laypeople treated the collection as intellectual and artistic work (Yuanwu Keqin wrote and spoke very beautifully, so they _do_ have artistic value) and burned all copies he could find.

The original use of koan is to be meditation aid (huatou-method, koan practice) not subject of philosophical inquiry.

ps. The original MIT AI lab koans are more clever than these ESR ones. [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/dae/notes/ai- koans](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/dae/notes/ai-koans)

<comment><USER7> I still think of this one whenever some lab apparatus starts working after an expert walks in and fiddles with some wires or power-cycles it --

      A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on.
      Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly -
      "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding
      of what is going wrong."
      Knight turned the machine off and on.
      The machine worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you like this, you might like the Tao of Programming: [http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of- programming.html](http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of The Codeless Code

[http://thecodelesscode.com/contents](http://thecodelesscode.com/contents)

</comment><comment><USER10> The images-of-text make the website partially unreadable when using a non- graphical browser. I suppose I should take that to mean something deep.

<comment><USER11> With a graphical browser, the images-of-text are ideograms I (ignorant westerner) do not understand, so the experience is the same. That's probably intended as humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These are really clunky and artless, it's like one of those webcomics that's really just poser models.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of those things where I read it and was just like, "What the hell does that mean?"

<comment><USER14> Good! just like a koan should

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some people seem to forget why we still use cli, from discourses on the graphical user interface, they think that it's not 'modern'...

<comment><USER16> In the beginning was the command line: [http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html](http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html)

<comment><USER17> I'm curious why people still throw around this essay even though Stephenson said he changed his view on the topic.

Of course the points made are still valid but they are by no means absolute truth and never were.

<comment><USER18> A question and a comment.

Q: Do you have a source for the change in viewpoint?

Comment: Just because an author changes his views, doesn't mean that other people don't still agree with what was written. Authors don't get to tell people how to interpret and understand their writings.

Actually, scratch that last bit - As the author of this comment, what it really means is that you love it and should send me lots of dollars in gratitude.

<comment><USER17> Source: see question 8 here: [http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal- stephenson-r...](http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson- responds-with-wit-and-humor)

Comment: I fully agree that a change of opinion does not invalidate the old argument. I thought I made that clear, but apparently I was wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


DevJobs – Minimalist, functional and transparent job search mechanism - <AUTHOR> http://jobs.thevigilante.xyz <comment><USER2> Requires a login in but no https? Ok friend.</comment>


Apple plays hardball with FBI, but not China - <AUTHOR> http://www.france24.com/en/20160219-usa-apple-plays-digital-privacy-hardball-with-fbi-but-not-china <comment><USER2> I didn't see Apple treat FBI and China any different in this case:

Apple gave FBI the iCloud backup data for US customers (under some US law); Apple will give or might have been giving China gov the iCloud backup data for Chinese customers (under a China law).

you may not like Apple or China, but it's not fair to blame Apple for favor China in any known privacy case so far.</comment>


Claude Shannon built a machine to game roulette (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat <comment><USER2> One more tidbit: Professor Arthur Lewbel knew Clause Shannon personally as a fellow member of the MIT juggling club [1]. At one point, he photographed Shannon's "toy room" [2]. In the center photo. is that the $1500 roulette wheel mentioned in the article?

[1] [https://www2.bc.edu/arthur- lewbel/Shannon.html](https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/Shannon.html)

[2] [https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/toys2.jpg](https://www2.bc.edu/arthur- lewbel/toys2.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Great find! Wish I had a chance to walk through that you room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thorp's paper: [https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/thorp.pdf](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/thorp.pdf).

Submitted by pg ten years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=148395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=148395).

</comment><comment><USER5> One time at a hackathon a few friends and I tried to game roulette. We got decently far in around 18h.

We used a Myo, which you could wear on your forearm. Every time the ball went past a specific number (00, say), you would flex your arm. At most casinos you can make bets after the ball is "released", so this was a viable strategy.

Surprisingly, we got it to be fairly accurate! I forgot exactly how accurate - but I think we were able to predict which quadrant the ball would land in - perhaps 60% of the time? If you memorized the order of numbers, I think you could do reasonably well.

We never tried it in Vegas, since we didn't have much money, so the upside was limited. And like the article says - the downside was unlimited. So the EV was fairly negative for us.

Instead, we tested this on a bunch of roulette videos (from youtube). I think we also considered buying a used roulette wheel from Vegas, but they were very expensive ($10k+).

We didn't pursue it any further - but I would love to see if somebody can try this again. With a Myo (or perhaps nowadays an Apple Watch), you can do input and output pretty discreetly.

<comment><USER6> Went to a couple casinos in Louisiana and they did not allow smart watches to be worn at the table, if they found out they'd request it be taken off or you're removed from the table.

<comment><USER5> Interesting! I think that's why we used the Myo - if you wear it under a jacket, you can input (flex your forearm), and receive output (vibrations), while still staying totally discreet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The wearable computer discussed in the article is preserved in the MIT museum. See photo in [1]. Shannon was well known for eccentric pursuits such as juggling and making game machines. I collected a list of the latter at the gaming site BoardGameGeek [2].

[1] [https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=obj...](https://webmuseum.mit.edu/detail.php?term=Shannon&module=objects&type=keyword&x=0&y=0&kv=75606&record=18&page=1)

[2] [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude- shannon...](https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man- games-and-machines)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a wonderful book about this by Thomas Bass, which I adored as a teenager in the early '90s. My British copy (which I still have) is entitled _The Newtonian Casino_ , but I gather the original US edition was called _The Eudaemonic Pie_.

I've often wondered why this book isn't better known. I would recommend it.

<comment><USER8> You can apparently borrow this book online for 14 days: [https://archive.org/details/eudaemonicpie00bass](https://archive.org/details/eudaemonicpie00bass)

It's also available on Kindle for $7.99: [https://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic- Pie-Thomas-Bass-ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas- Bass-ebook/dp/B06XGM7K64/) They also have it as an audio book on Audible.

Note: this book is about a different, later group that built a wearable computer to hack roulette rather than Shannon and Thorp. Shannon and Thorp's work is mentioned a bit, but most of the book is about Farmer, Packard and associates, and the Shannon and Thorp work is discussed more as general background to help in understanding Farmer and Packard's work.

Farmer and Packard do not seem to have been aware of any details of Shannon and Thorp's work. They had read Thorp's book on blackjack, and Thorp mentions briefly that he had way to beat roulette but had not implemented it yet. When Packard and Farmer read that, they were skeptical. Later, they independently came up with the idea of using physics to predict roulette, and only after that did they realize that this was what Thorp was getting at, too.

I don't recall anything in the book indicating that they knew Shannon had been involved with Thorp. They made use of Shannon's work in areas such as information theory when trying to understand chaos and apply it to roulette, of course. It has been over 30 years since I read the book, so I possibly missed something (although just before posting this I found my copy and skimmed the first 60 pages, which covered up to where Packard and Farmer got the idea and started working on implementing it).

<comment><USER7> Thanks! It's remarkably reassuring to hear from someone else who remembers it. And thanks for the extra detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thorp recently wrote a book about his life and work - there's a chapter in there about Shannon and his adventures in the casino. Definitely worth a read. "A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market"

<comment><USER10> Ed Thorp also wrote the seminal work on card counting, "Beat the Dealer" (1962).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just yesterday I finished up a biography of Claude Shannon that I recommend to anyone that ones to learn more. It briefly covers this as well as ton of his other "toys" \- [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented- Informatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented- Information/dp/1476766681)

</comment><comment><USER12> This video is interesting I thought, on the topic of beating roulette, about the Eudaemons.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYIGGBXlTL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYIGGBXlTL8) 'Beat the Wheel'

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

</comment><comment><USER13> See also the first chapter of Kevin Mitnick's "the art of intrusion", about a group that hacked video poker after reading "the Eudanomic Pie"

</comment><comment><USER14> A fascinating, related read:

A Man for All Markets (by Edward O. Thorp) [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733505-a-man-for- all-m...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733505-a-man-for-all-markets)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always thought Shannon has been a bit underappreciated as a scientist</comment>


This is a perfectly circular phone, and it's wonderfully weird - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8140023/smart-pocket-watch-mwc-gadget

<comment><USER2> On first glance, sign me up for the first batch!

When I started reading though... it's a neat idea with "meh" execution. It takes round photos and you have to rotate the device to zoom in and focus? What?

<comment><USER3> It makes sense in a way that the photos would be round, by way of the fact that the screen is circular. Granted, one could scale a rectangular frame within it for previews and while taking a photo, but then you're left with a potentially super tiny window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that it runs Firefox OS.</comment>


Tech stocks are getting slammed, Dow tanks more than 500 points - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-news-tech-getting-slammed-dow-drops-over-300-points-2018-11 <comment><USER2> Hm. this is next-level cherry-picking.

The Dow Jones is higher today than it was last Tuesday. It went up for a few days, and now it's going down by a bit.

It's still 1300 points higher than it was 2 weeks ago. and 500 points higher than it was a year ago.

A few stocks are doing poorly, others are doing well. Same thing as any other day, seems like?

Disclaimer: I'm not a stocks person, I'm just reading the graphs. So maybe there is something significant that a layperson doesn't understand... but it certainly seems disingenuous to make it seem like there's a huge problem with the Dow.

</comment><comment><USER3> A sale just in time for Black Friday / Cyber Monday!

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like the Dow dropping 500-ish points in a day is the new normal, it seems to happen fairly regularly. It generally makes those losses up with massive gains on other days, which do make headlines, but they don't receive the same kind of attention. Regardless of whether it's up or down on a particular day, the underlying theme is that the market has become very volatile.

<comment><USER5> Since the Dow is at 25k, 500 points is about 2%, which really isn't too unusual. It fluctuates about 1% a day. I wouldn't even say the market is "very volatile"; the VIX is only at 20, which while more than average for the past two years, is hardly unprecedented. Earlier this year it was at 37. But it definitely is somewhat volatile, I'll give you that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This feels a lot like deja-vu for me from the dot com days. After all Tech was a huge part of the economy, and big swings in tech were seen as big swings in the economy.

Except that much of tech is fashion, like skinny jeans fashion. That people become disillusioned with the latest "cool" platform and then move to some other "new" platform is like the tech equivalent of the circle of life. Actual engineering, like new kinds of computers or appliances that were not possible before but now are, Etc is a relatively small part of the 'tech' stock makeup.

I note that after the dot.com crash there wasn't a lot of talk about how hard it was to find a house in the Bay Area, so you might have that to look forward to again.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Dow (actually, the Dow Jones Industrial Average) only represents 30 stocks, _without_ emphasizing tech.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looking at the long view, Warren Buffet says the Dow will reach 1,000,000 in a hundred years.

I wouldn't bet against him.

<comment><USER9> I would bet against that - mostly because it would probably get split/rescaled, so that the daily movements are easier to comprehend. Imagine a headline which says "Dow drops by 10,000 points", only to find that it has dropped by 1%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And they say cryptocurrencies are volatile.

<comment><USER3> Tbh, that comparison is unfair. Stock is meant to be an investment. If crypto wants to satisfy its goals of being a _currency_ , it has to be much more stable.</comment></comment>


Apple's Universal OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.mutualmobile.com/posts/a-universal-os-its-coming Apple's Universal OS forecast. <comment><USER2> This is definitely one explanation for why Forstall was fired.</comment>


SOSML – Online Standard ML Interpreter - <AUTHOR> https://sosml.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the source: [https://github.com/SOSML/SOSML](https://github.com/SOSML/SOSML)

Standard ML (SML) is a typed functional programming language from the ML family (the same family that OCaml is from). SML doesn't seem to receive the same spotlight that OCaml and Haskell do, so it's cool to see an SML project.

Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d1es7v/try_sta...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d1es7v/try_standard_ml_in_your_browser_courtesy_of/)</comment>


Do We Need a Web Ruled by Articulate Whiners? - <AUTHOR> http://www.digital-dd.com/do-we-need-a-web-ruled-by-articulate-whiners/

<comment><USER2> 1\. how is EJ a whiner? Are you saying that she shouldn't have voiced her experiences with AirBnB? Is that how you would approach customers dissatisfied with your own company's services?

2\. Are you saying that simply because some people aren't articulate ... you shouldn't pay attention to the articulate ones? I don't get this at all.

 _This is one downside to the ostensibly democratizing effects of social media: it creates a "filter bubble" in which good writers and popular bloggers get good service_

Or maybe it draws attention to bad customer service which, in the end, improves the service level for all customers.</comment>