Show HN: Search through Photoshop layers easily - <AUTHOR> http://markupwand.github.com/photoshop-layersearch/

<comment><USER2> This is great for below CS6. CS6 has search function, that can be searched via Name, Kind, Effect, Mode, Attribute and Color. It's pretty extensive.

Pixel pushers should def upgrade to CS6 - it also has auto snap to pixel grid for Vector Tools which is a godsend.

<comment><USER3> That's what I was thinking - I bet it's why he decided to open-source it. Good decision :)

Nice work, I'll be looking through the source for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a UI designer, this is an amazing plugin idea. I would use this constantly if I could, but sadly it doesn't seem to work correctly in version CS6.

<comment><USER5> There is a built-in Layer search feature in CS6. <http://d.pr/i/owMK>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a side question, is there an export each folder layer into individual image plugin somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fairly simple to build. You can fork my source and build it. I can help you out.

<comment><USER6> Cool let me reach out to you on github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would be great before CS6 since there's already a search function in CS6.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you installed it, I'd like to hear feedback.</comment>


Why are there no search results for Mocality on HN? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/NnmdZ.png

<comment><USER2> My guess would be that there is an indexer on a cron job that hasn't fired.</comment>


The History and Status of the P versus NP question (1992) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cs.stanford.edu/people/trevisan/cs172-07/sipser92history.pdf <comment><USER2> Just so you know the latest alleged solution seems to be wrong too: [https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/38832/19646](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/38832/19646)

</comment><comment><USER3> For people like me who are not sure what P/NP is about, I recently listened to a podcast episode on this topic [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/software- engineering-rad...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/software-engineering- radio-podcast-for-professional/id120906714?mt=2&i=1000390301871)

<comment><USER4> Great podcast, I didn't know it before. Thanks for sharing it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a much more recent and more detailed write up by Scott Aaronson:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf)</comment>


YouTube's Algorithm Incentivizes the Wrong Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/youtube-algorithm.html <comment><USER2> "If YouTube won't remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make significant changes, and have greater human involvement in the recommendation process.", man does this person know how many videos and how many users YouTube has? They cannot use anything except an algorithm to recommend videos. They cannot use anything except an algorithm to detect videos inappropriate for children. It seems YouTube is working on this, and this opinion seems like a ill thought out fluff piece to enrage readers and sell this persons book.

<comment><USER3> > They cannot use anything except an algorithm to recommend videos.

I agree that with the current business model it is not possible for YouTube to sort it manually.

When I was a kid, a long long time ago, it would have been impossible to conceive that a TV channel showed that kind of content regularly and continue open. If their answer would have been that they cannot fix it because it costs money there would have been an outraged response.

If YouTube cannot keep things legal, cannot respect people rights, cannot be a good responsible part of society because it is not cost effective for me the way to go is clear. And that is true for YouTube, Facebook or any other business digital or not.

<comment><USER4> How about actually demonstrating harm to children (or to anyone else) before launching a moral panic?

Is that an option?

<comment><USER5> I'd say having a 13 year old far right YouTube star post a video threatening to kill the CEO might be harmful, but maybe that's ok?

[https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social- media/2019/...](https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social- media/2019/04/rise-YouTube-ironic-teenage-right-Soph)

<comment><USER4> Do you seriously think that kid was radicalized on YouTube? Where were the parents?

<comment><USER5> 2018: "I'll pick a topic and just give my opinion about it try to be entertaining, try to be funny, try to be unique and say something other people haven't said before," youtuber said.

[https://redwoodbark.org/46876/culture/redwood-students- view-...](https://redwoodbark.org/46876/culture/redwood-students-view-youtube- different-lens/)

2019:

In response, the principal of the high school sent a note to students and parents Thursday night regarding the "hate-based video and text posts attributed to one of our students":

[https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-girl-says- she-l...](https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-girl-says-she-ll-keep- making-controversial-youtube-videos/2008692937)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, the classic "think of the children!" argument. It is no one's responsibility other than the parent to ensure their child isn't watching inappropriate content (which will be different for every family and individual).

This article suggests that machine learning and collaborative filtering are incapable of producing healthy recommendations. I beg to differ, the New York Times may not like the result but they work for the vast majority of users on any service with too much content to manually curate.

<comment><USER7> There are healthy recommender systems, like Spotify.

YouTube is a _disastrously_ unhealthy recommender system, and they've let it go completely out of control.

<comment><USER8> How is Spotify's different from Youtube?

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure all content on Spotify gets manually curated first, so abusive tagging doesn't happen, and some of the worst content simply doesn't get uploaded at all. Spotify also doesn't try to be a news site, so they can afford to have a couple week's lag between uploading a song and having it show up in people's recommendation feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think this is incentivizing bad behavior. It's merely showing the viewer more of what they are already watching with a gradual introduction to broader material. The example of a youtube serving content to "pedophiles" is borderline asinine. The neural network is just making suggestions on viewing, it's not telling people to watch. In regards to the complaint that "adult" content is being served to adolescents, there is an option to filter out sensitive content all together.

Also, as a parent to 4 children myself, the idea of letting my kids loose on the internet completely devoid of any supervision is ridiculous. When did it become youtube's responsibility to parent the children in its audience? Should we also ban HBO, Amazon, and Netflix from providing recommendations because it might be a child in front of the screen?

This is just another pointed attempt to censor free speech via the abuse of technology companies. The idea being that the platform will be restrictive if they are constantly badgered about it.

<comment><USER11> > with a gradual introduction to broader material.

It doesn't gradually introduce broader material, it gradually introduces more "engaging" material.

<comment><USER10> I would argue that your point is semantics, but even so you still have a choice of whether or not to watch the recommended more "engaging" material. It doesn't change the overall point of my statement.

<comment><USER12> I'd say it's quite a different point. My own experience has been that the recommended "engaging" material is something in the same genre as whatever I just saw, but with a clickbaitier title, flashier thumbnail, and overall poorer informational quality. It's the different between saying "I see you enjoy sandwiches, maybe you would also enjoy salads or a plate of sushi" and "I see you enjoy sandwiches--here's a candy bar, an off-brand soda made with high-fructose corn syrup, and a carton of cheap grocery store ice cream."

<comment><USER10> The semantics argument I was pointing out was in regards to "broader" vs "engaging". That's not what my statement was about, it was that no matter what the algorithm recommends to you, you still have the choice whether or not to watch it. The point you are making is purely anecdotal as I assure you the neural network is not simply showing you

>same genre as whatever I just saw, but with a clickbaitier title, flashier thumbnail, and overall poorer informational quality

<comment><USER13> You can keep telling yourself that you have a "choice", but in the end we all are just humans, with quite predictable behavior. Bias selection of content is since forever one of the more effective ways of shaping opinion. Politics is fighting hard on that front for a reason. For the first time ever are some very few algorithms selecting content for millions of people, with apparently little human oversight. Yes, this should worry us. Simply assuming the results of those will benefit mankind, especially in the long term, would be foolish. It's not quite exactly like the usual ai safety paperclip scenario, but by now it should be very obvious that optimizing watch-time, even with current "ai", comes with significant unintended side effects / drawbacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think YouTube has just exposed the kind of content people were already interested in, and possibly consuming outside of the public eye. We find it frightening that people readily click on abhorrent content. When they probably were doing it over other platforms earlier. The internet had gore videos for the longest time. I remember a shotgun suicide video that kids in my school used to shock each other with. If Google as a private company chooses to ban content, than that is their right, but an apriori expectation that an entertainment platform should control peoples social behavior and enforce morality is harmful in a free society IMHO.

<comment><USER15> People were fueling industries of creatively bankrupt content well before the Internet came around, just look at the long term existence of tabloids.

Youtube is optimizing for the underlying psychological mechanisms that put people in that mood because it makes them suggestive and because none of this stuff has substance or meaning they can graze on it like how junk food producers want to promote.

<comment><USER16> I think the analogy to junk food is instructive. Both fast food and YouTube maximise revenue while minimising costs by exploiting human flaws and foibles, and do so much more effectively than was possible 100 years ago. It is creating an environment that is radically different than the one we evolved in.

Watching hours of YouTube - obesity of the mind. Kind of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I doubt this person does not care about the subject they wrote about.

And if the algorithm is producing negative side effects, then, of course, it should be looked at and changed.

I'm no expert myself, but to my understanding: any algorithm is limited by its data set.

Based on its data set, an algorithm comes to conclusions. But one can then, of course, ask: what's the basis for these conclusions?

I recall reading that a certain AI had been fooled into thinking a picture of a banana was showing a toaster or a helicopter, after a few part of the image were changed to contain tiny bits of those items.

It turned out that the AI used the apparent texture on places in the image to determine what was on the image, rather than doing a shape comparison.

Which sounds like a time-saving measure. Though it may very well have been the method that most consistently produced correct results, _for the given dataset_.

Frankly, the attitude of "we don't know how it works and we don't care" cannot possibly end well.

Neither the attitude "oh well make a better dataset then".

I get that we're all excited about the amazing abilities we're seeing here, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look where we're going.

I recall a story of an AI researcher who didn't want to define anything because he was afraid of introducing bias. Upon hearing this, his colleague covered up his eyes. When asked why he did this, he replied: "The world no longer exists". And the other understood.

Because of course the world still exists. And just the same way: it's impossible get rid of bias.

Some human intervention is needed. Just like constant checks and comparison against human results.

<comment><USER18> The problem of the dataset is not just that AI will pick shortcuts and naive heuristics, because humans will too.

The problem of the dataset is that you're not in control of who populates the dataset and what their intentions are. There's no understanding of an adversarial model and threat handling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The NYTimes uses a very human "algorithm" to determine what to report on and if you look at the comparison of causes of death to what's reported it's wildly off:

Data: [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of- death-i...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA- vs.-media-coverage.png)

This isn't a knock against the NYTimes so much as it is of humanity, we're all fascinated by the lurid and sensational (note that the Google searches are similarly off) and this permeates all levels of life.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel like things were mostly fine until the 2016 election, after which journalists became _very_ concerned. If I had a nickel for each, "The algorithms are coming! The algorithms are coming!", I'd be rich. I mean, I didn't like the outcome either, but these types of articles seem to motivated by a) finding a scapegoat and b) wanting to use "algorithm" in a sentence.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a pleasant way of stating that humans are basically good. We just keep passing the buck. "We'd be fine if it weren't for this algorithm!"

        We believe that man is essentially good.
        It's only his behavior that lets him down.
        This is the fault of society.
        Society is the fault of conditions.
        Conditions are the fault of society.

If you ask me, "YouTube's algorithm" is simply exposing the way humanity is. And trying to get an algorithm to "shepherd" humanity to be better is simply Orwellian.

</comment><comment><USER22> > If YouTube won't remove the algorithm, it must, at the very least, make > significant changes

It _must_? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing. It's a product from a _publicly traded company_ , therefore it " _must_ " return value for stockholders. That means more behavior that increases ad revenue. The author is out of touch with reality. Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. It's a private service(youtube), not a public park.

<comment><USER23> > It must? No, it doesn't have to do a damn thing.

Subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which it operates, of course. We could - if we so wanted - pass laws to regulate this behavior. That is perhaps the best option, in my own opinion.

> It's a product from a publicly traded company, therefore it "must" return > value for stockholders.

The dogma that it "must" return value for shareholders is not an absolute rule[1]; rather it's a set of market expectations and some decisions from Delaware (which have an outsize impact on business law) that encourage it. But it's not _required_. In fact, many states allow a type of corporation that specifically and directly allows directors to pursue non-shareholder-value goals - the benefit corporation[2].

> The author is out of touch with reality.

Please re-read the HN guidelines[3].

> Stop feeding your kids youtube if you don't want them exposed to youtube. > It's a private service(youtube), not a public park.

This is the doctrine of "caveat emptor," essentially - that a consumer is ultimately responsible for all behavior. However, a wealth of regulation exists because that's unworkable in practice. The FDA and the EPA come to mind, but we also regulate concepts like "false advertising." Your stance here ignores the realities of life in service of ideological purism.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washin...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190327123200/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/businesses- focus-on-maximizing-shareholder-value-has-numerous- costs/2013/09/05/bcdc664e-045f-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?utm_term=.4c2fd1a74b58)

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

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

<comment><USER24> No we cannot pass laws that do that no matter how indignant we may be. The whole bloody point of the constitution is that no matter how pissed off the majority (or "the majority" which is just a noisy minority as it may be) is that you cannot simply legislate away rights.

The vague "do something!" regulation push has all of the marks of a moral panic and all participants should slap themselves hard enough to leave a mark and repeat "It is never too import to be rational."

<comment><USER25> Please explain what rights would be legislated away in this case. It's definitely not the 1st amendment - you can still say what you want, just not on necessarily on the platform of your choice. This was equally true in the broadcast TV days. So what other right(s) would be legislated away by regulating Youtube's content?

<comment><USER24> Broadcasters had the special pleading with some scintilla of a point in that there were actual shared commons to prioritize. In practice it was a fig-leaf as you never saw arguements in broadcast censorship over 'values' to wrestle over airwave ownership but instead bullshit doctrines like 'community standards'. The fact that the US has a long history of laying out rights for all, seeing the revolutionary implications and then saying 'No wait that can't be right it is too different.' and going back to the bullshit control they had before for a few centuries is a whole other sad topic.

One thing that did make it through that was the ruling that mediums which lack said limitation like cable and internet don't have the rationale for that restriction and thus the censorship that weak minds had become accustomed to vanished in a puff of logic. This has been the case since cable porn channels were a thing.

By regulating YouTube you effectively regulate what /all/ platforms may push. It isn't simply that YouTube decides that "You know what we don't want to post that." \- an exercise of their collective Freedom of Association but "The government doesn't want us to post that so we can't." You can't just deputize tasks to third parties and expect the limits on exercises of power to vanish. Otherwise we'd see hordes of private detectives as a work around to Fourth Amendment rights.

Said regulations on youtube would be a major infringement upon freedom of the press and speech. Not to mention it is logically equivalent to censoring your own press is whenever it fits whatever criteria they dislike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems like it takes some notes from Veritasium's theory on YouTube's recommendation algorithm which he posted after his initial reservoir shade balls video went viral. (edited for clarity)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8) for his theory.

</comment><comment><USER27> YouTube's incentives are the best among such platforms IMO. They allow a simple profit sharing model where a part of the ad-revenue goes to the content creator. This is unlike instagram, for example, where the content creators have to peddle products in their ads to make money. Take a fitness channel for example - on YouTube, the content creator can just be honest, and the views alone will guarantee income. On the other hand, on instagram, they have to resort to selling snake oil. I love YouTube for this, and I am constantly amazed by how YouTube has become a livelihood earner for so many.

</comment><comment><USER28> [http://archive.is/6lbCR](http://archive.is/6lbCR)

(Archive link for those who prefer non-broken web experiences)

</comment><comment><USER29> It's all about advertising money. TV and newspapers are dying and they need someone to blame.

<comment><USER10> I personally think this has deeper political motives as well, but yes I completely agree with you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't know if YouTube's problems are so bad that the argument applies in this case, but in general, "We can't comply with this regulation, it would be too difficult at our scale" is not considered a valid defense. Just as banks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that they can't fail without wreaking havoc on the economy, if algorithmic recommendation and moderation can't work, then maybe social networks shouldn't be allowed to get so large that human moderation is not possible.

<comment><USER31> The queue for getting your video posted on YouTube would grow infinitely. (Or, more realistically, people would give up and not bother once it takes years.)

But I guess they could charge money to get to the head of the line?

<comment><USER32> That's not true you can upload a video and not allow it to be recommended until some human review was done. Most youtube channels don't need the recommendation engine.

<comment><USER33> That just isn't feasible. Videos would literally take years to get into the recommended status - another comment pointed out there are 500 new videos uploaded per SECOND.

<comment> munk-a If there was one dude, sure. But apparently YouTube is in the business of supporting the upload of 500 videos/second so they need to deal with the consequences of it. It's not like there's any regulation forcing them to be the place everyone uploads videos to and there are some valid competitors (though they're far less into the publishing/editorializing facet - vimeo is much more often direct linked for instance)

<comment><USER34> To be clear, I am not speaking for anybody in this thread but myself.

But I will unapologetically and forthrightedly say that, yes, if we're going to assert that YouTube has certain responsibilities for the nature of the videos that it hosts, and that it turns out that the nature of those responsibilities is such that YouTube can't possible meet them, then, yes, YouTube as we know it should be essentially shut down, at least going forward.

I am NOT going to say we should deliberately craft the responsibilities in such a way that YouTube is deliberately shut down. However, if it turns out that they are incapable of applying even the bare minimum effort that we as a society deem it necessary for them to apply, then, yes, it is absolutely a consequence that YouTube as we know it today may have to be so radically altered as to be a different site entirely.

In the general case, when the law requires certain obligations of you as a business, and you as a business can not meet them, that does not mean that suddenly those obligations are not applied to you. It means that your business is not legally viable, and needs to change until it is. It may be the case that there is no solution to being legally viable and being profitable, in which case, your business will cease to exist. Just as there is, for instance, no solution to being a business built around selling torrent files containing unlicensed commercial content to people. You can't defend yourself by saying you can't afford to get the licenses; your suitable legal remedy was to never have started this business in the first place. There's some concerns around grandfathering here to deal with, certainly, but they can still be affected going forward.

There is no guarantee that there is a solution where a company exerting whatever minimal control they are obligated to assert by society is capable of growing to the size of YouTube. If that is the case, so be it. The solution is not to just let them go because they happened to grow fast first.

(My solution to freedom of expression is an explosion of video sites, where each of them has ways of holding the videos to the societally-mandated minimum standard, and no one site can do it all because they simply can't muster the resources to be The One Site, because as they grow larger they encounter _anti-_ scaling effects. Given how increasingly censorious Silicon Valley is becoming, as we are now into censoring the discussions about censoring discussions like the recent removal of Project Veritas from Twitter for its discussion of Pinterest censoring pro-life films, I expect this to increase the range of expression, not diminish it.)

<comment><USER35> Not speaking on behalf of what I _want_ , but on behalf of what is _true_ :

> It may be the case that there is no solution to being legally viable and > being profitable, in which case, your business will cease to exist.

Or your business will exist illegally.

There's this interesting interplay between law and economics, where law is generally taken as a prerequisite for frictionless commerce, and yet at the same time if activities that large groups of people wish to partake in are made illegal, the market just routes around them and black markets spring up to provide them. Prohibition. The War on Drugs. Filesharing. Gambling. Employing illegal immigrants. Usury. Short-term rentals. Taxi medallions. Large swaths of the economy under communism.

There are a couple other interesting phenomena related to this: the very illegality of the activity tends to create large profits around it (because it creates barriers to entry, such that the market often ends up monopolized by a small cartel), and the existence of widespread black markets erodes respect for rule of law itself. When people see people around them getting very rich or otherwise deriving benefit from flouting the law, why should they follow it?

Switching to editorializing mode, I think that this gradual erosion of respect for law to be quite troubling, and I also think that the solution to it needs to be two-fold: stop trying to outlaw behaviors that are offensive to some but beloved by others, and start enforcing laws that if neglected really will result in the destruction of the system.

<comment><USER34> "Or your business will exist illegally."

True.

In the context of this particular case, I was assuming that nothing the current size of YouTube could exist illegally, as that would imply that whatever authority was declaring them "illegal", but not capable of doing anything about it despite it nominally living in its jurisdiction, must be anemic and impotent to the point of being nearly non-existent.

There's already an underground proliferation of video sites, spreading copyrighted content out of the bounds of what the rightsholders want, so it's pretty much assured we'd end up with illegal alternatives. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In addition to this, seeing content creators being slaves to the algorithm is an eye-opening experience. Especially when it comes to the children's videos. It's all computer generated garbage powered by responses to changes in algorithms. If kids suddenly watch more content with alligators, prepare for that being the only thing created, recommended or playing. It's wild.

</comment><comment><USER37> Still looking for recommendations that are influenced by people's best-self intentions of who they want to be, rather than influenced by their worst-self behaviors.

</comment><comment><USER38> We know we have to keep kids sheltered from people which may have unscrupulous neural networks at play looking for a way to further their own goals at the expense of a child's well being and overall health.

Engagement on the internet is also being driven by neural networks that are learning to adapt to the users brain chemistry to statistically modify behavior for maximum engagement/profit. Perhaps it is time to realize that these services are going to be analogous to a random stranger offering your kid candy for their own twisted goals that are unlikely compatible with a child's well being. If you consider a service like YouTube as an untrusted source of interaction perhaps you'll be as likely to block or monitor it the same as random chat rooms.

</comment><comment><USER39> YouTube can be a source of astonishingly great education and entertainment that will help grow society, as well as astonishingly horrid corruptions of nearly anything that will corrode society at it's roots.

Most of these discussion posts seem to miss the point that 'engagement' or 'upvotes' does NOT equal value.

Also missing is the concept that a company with a massive platform has any social responsibility to at least not poison the well of society.

And claiming "it's the parent's responsibility" may have some truth value, but it does not and should not be an excuse to absolve the platform owner of responsibility.

The key to longer term success of the platforms is to abandon the low-hanging- fruit of "engagement" as a measure value and develop more substantitive metrics that actually relate to value delivered, both to the individual watcher and society as a whole.

As one audience member, I find their recommendations to be basically crap, nearly never leading me to something more valuable than what I just watched (sure, they'll occasionally put up a recommendation that has enough entertainment value to watch, but much of the time I want my 5min back). To find any real value, I need to search again. That already tells us that their "engagement"-based algos are insufficient to serve the needs.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think there is an inherent in optimizing for retention time. Ideally, the recommendation should help find stuff which improve people's health, make them happier, or more informed about the world. However, it doesn't seem like YouTube has metrics on those things. Furthermore, things like that probably can't be determined very quickly on new content.

</comment><comment><USER41> I mostly watch movie reviews on YouTube and I'm constantly being recommended either weird Joe Rogan, alt-right content, or makeup videos. I don't get it. I've never clicked or watched anything remotely associated with it. I suspect a lot of the popular YouTube channel's are gaming the algorithms or SEO their videos to get more recommendations.

<comment><USER10> The neural network takes into account videos that other people who watched the same one you did watched. It's quite possible that the movie trailer you watched was popular among demographics that also watched those recommendations. If you don't have a lot of data for yourself, you will see a heavier bias towards other people's videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The "wrong behavior" that Youtube incentives is promoting and encouraging clickbait garbage content (just look at the default homepage). The holy metric now is "watch time", the result being that creators stretch out their content to 10 minutes because then Youtube is more likely to promote it (and midroll add = twice the revenue). Yesterday Youtube recommended me a 10 minute video of some guy explaining how he made this simple drone shot that could've been condensed down to a single sentence - "Turn sensors off". What a waste of time.

But hey they're a corporation and thus have no accountability to the public good.

</comment><comment><USER43> Does the algorithm incentivize bad behavior or simply reflect the desires of the viewers?

Someone watching lots of DIY home repair videos will start seeing more. In that case it seems like it's incentivizing good behavior. Likewise, someone watching lots of soft porn on YouTube will be recommended more soft porn.

The algorithm isn't responsible for helping you make good life choices. The algorithm is responsible for recommending videos that you would like, and it seems like it does a good job of that, generally.

Unfortunately, some people like bad things and that's an age old problem that is hard to fix.

That said, it would be nice if users could CTOA (choose their own algorithm) instead of letting Google be the sole gatekeeper.

<comment><USER44> I guess you could compare it to criminals using the telephone. Invention of the telephone helped a lot of people, but unfortunately it also helps criminals.

Likewise the YouTube algorithm helps many people, but criminals or unwanted people (like pedophiles) can also use it.

It's ok to think about ways to prevent it, but I don't think it should be the first concern. Imagine outlawing telephony, because criminals could benefit from its use.

<comment><USER45> Telephony is an interesting example because for many many years it had very tight restrictions.

Telephone service providers were monopolies, sometimes government monopolies. There was only one type of telephone you could use, and that was supplied by that same monopoly. It was illegal to attach anything else to the line either directly or indirectly. There were even (outside the US) laws on what you could say when talking on the phone.

Here's an article from 1994 about a modem maker who had products that were not officially licensed to connect to the network. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14219263-000-technolo...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14219263-000-technology- cut-price-challenge-by-modem-maker/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Two ideas come to mind. First, make the engine recommend a few videos that it thinks you probably won't watch. That could help break up the echo chamber effect.

Second, allow users to blacklist, or whitelist, different kinds of content. If someone is struggling with sexual attraction to minors, let them blacklist content with minors in it. If I don't want to see the latest anti(or pro)-<insert political figure here> videos, I should be able to filter them out. I have no interest in Minecraft, so why should I have to keep scrolling past Minecraft videos just because I watch a lot of game related videos?

That said, all the calls for regulation or censorship concern me. I haven't seen the video, but Steven Crowder saying mean things isn't exactly something that should be censored. Any more than all the videos calling President Trump names. What I'm seeing signs of is a society that silences any speech that doesn't fit in a specific, politically correct, box. And that box is being defined by advertising companies who don't want to be associated with topics that their potential customers find uncomfortable. That's not a direction any of us should support...

</comment><comment><USER44> There seem to be some extreme cases where the algorithm fails. That doesn't imply in general it doesn't work well.

Sounds again like hyperbole from the NYT.

I find it more interesting to consider what would actually be a good outcome for the viewers. I suppose originally all those recommender algorithms simply optimized for viewer engagement. Obviously that may not be the best outcome for consumers. Perhaps enraging content makes people stick on a platform longer, for example. But it would be "better" for a viewer to see more educational content and even to disconnect after a certain while.

But how would you even quantify that, for the algorithm to be able to train for it?

The son of a friend of mine taught himself programming from YouTube videos, which YouTube had recommended to him. I wouldn't complain about a result like that.

</comment><comment><USER47> Big Media is dying and they are desperate to shut down competition. This is a political article and nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's not complicated.

They need to stop showing people the upvote and view COUNTS. Behind the scenes they can still use it to make recommendations.

Those numbers are pseudo signals of quality to people who encounter content they have never encountered before.

Even when they have doubts that are watching something unhealthy the mind goes "well if the rest of the world thinks this dumbass is important I better pay attention..."

If a dumbass hurting people on video gets 10 million views other dumbasses worldwide automatically get triggered looking at the count. "hey I can do this maybe I should run for President..."

Remove the counts and you remove the pseudo signal of quality.

<comment><USER49> It is complicated. I think thats a bad solution.

I want to see the counts. I feel it is far more transparent to see the counts than for things to just be surfaced or not opaquely. Youtube is not a discussion site and it does not work as one. How popular things are is a part of the context of pop culture, and most youtube content is pop culture.

<comment><USER50> Every single day, I watch the channel of a guy who has put out < 15 minute videos going back to nearly the founding of YouTube.

He gets an average of 10-15 views per day.

The value this guy adds to my day is literally measurable in $$$.

If I could find more people like him, that would be great, but instead these are my recommendations:

        - 5 ways to do X
        - Bill Gates breaks down blah blah blah
        - Something about Tesla
        - One video by a guy I discovered outside of YouTube who is similar to the guy I watch every day. I don't watch this one that much though.

YouTube's algorithm is not designed for discovery. It's designed for engagement. So I keep separate accounts:

        1. Account for actually useful stuff where YT's recommendations are useless
        2. Account where YT's recommendations are OK: white noise like things. Howard Stern interviews, etc

I wish you could configure the algorithm for discovery somehow.

<comment><USER24> Of course it is a matter of metrics - it has no way of knowing what is useful. The closest way to algorithmically discover (outcomes over time) would be prone to spurious correlations and be so intrusive it would make Cambridge Analytica look like LavaBit.

<comment><USER50> I'm thinking "make things more discoverable" than "find more useful things" if that makes sense. I'm willing to wade through it myself if you present me with options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> To quote Jim Sterling, YouTube has a YouTube problem.

</comment><comment><USER52> > PewDiePie, a skinny, fast-talking Swede

Is he really fast-talking? He seems kind of slow talking to me, when I watch his videos I use 2x speed.

<comment><USER53> "Fast talker" is not merely descriptive but idiomatic:

[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fast+talker)

[https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/46/Argument- by-Fast-Talking)

Cf: fast and loose:

[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+wit...](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/play+fast+and+loose+with)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> YouTube also leads you down radical rabbit holes as that keeps the algorithm happy. How many of the recent terror attacks (ISIS or New Zealand type incidents) were fostered by YouTube watching?

<comment><USER44> My guess would be zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> yet another NYT anti-tech hit piece

</comment><comment><USER56> It's pretty interesting to see the increase lately of comments defending various companies. Not _saying_ there's a conspiracy but it's a bit weird

<comment><USER57> Hacker News has always been like this. The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital-funded startups.

A very large percentage of those people are former FAANG employees, employees of companies trying to get acquired by FAANG, or employees of companies doing exactly the same things that FAANG are getting criticized for. (Some are all three!)

I doubt any of them are getting paid to AstroTurf, but they know what side their bread is getting buttered on.

<comment><USER58> > The site is specifically targeted at people associated with venture-capital- > funded startups.

Quite un-so! HN is targeted at one group only: the intellectually curious. So curiosity—keeping HN interesting—is the only thing we care about and optimize for.

As for VC-funded startups, since only about 10% of HN users are located in Silicon Valley, the number working for such startups is certainly far less than that. 50% of HN users are outside the US. This community is orders of magnitude more diverse than your image of it here.

People work for many different employers. Are their views impacted by their work experience? Of course they are—for every user here. There's nothing sinister about that. If someone posts a view that's wrong, others will correct it. As long as they do so thoughtfully, that's great. The cycle of life on HN.

<comment><USER59> 20% of Americans on HN are localized to the Valley? That seems insanely high. Can you cite references?

<comment><USER58> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521)

<comment><USER59> I stand corrected. Thanks!

<comment><USER58> Yours is the first comment I've seen that expressed surprise it's so high. The most widespread perception is that HN users are largely based in SV. That has led to a lot of misunderstandings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Google absolutely can do all of those things without an algorithm. What they can't do is accomplish that without impacting profit margins (or at the minimum, executive bonuses). "If it impacts business as usual, then it is impossible" is a naive/flawed/libertarian stance.

<comment><USER61> You do realize that to cover current needs (400h uploaded every minute), YouTube would need to employ more than 72000 people working full time right?

<comment><USER62> But 99.9% of all videos uploaded never gets more than a few handfuls of views so those are irrelevant. Of the remaining 0.1%, you don't need to watch every second of every frame - speeding it through at twice the speed should be doable. So by your own calculations, 72 000 * 0.001 * 0.5 = 36 people working full time.

<comment><USER61> You can set that 0.001 factor as big or as low as you like, but then we'd get the same nytimes hit piece saying this is _intentionally_ being done by humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I mean PewDiePie's info is rather public but what's with the need to "dox" him right in the beginning?

</comment><comment><USER64> Quite true, but let's not pretend that Twittr, Tumbler and Fakebook aren't also "incenting" all sorts of distorted behaviors of their own! These sites are "algorithms" all the same, even if the workings of these algorithms are in some ways more transparent. We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case.

<comment><USER65> > We need open and widespread federation via technologies like Mastodon, > Matrix and ActivityPub, so that if you don't like one "algorithm" you can > easily switch to another that's more appropriate to your use case.

This always sounds good, but decentralized is nearly impossible to commoditize or make appealing to the general public. Outside of evangelism and word-of- mouth, how are people going to escape the Youtube advertising budget and instead choose - en masse - the product that is better for their privacy?

There's just so much money and inertia to fight.

<comment><USER66> YouTube removing harmless content over copyright etc is one way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Wow, I'm conflicted. First, an obvious idiot statement, which helps us ground our analysis:

> Human intuition can recognize motives in people's viewing decisions, and can > step in to discourage that — which most likely would have happened if videos > were being recommended by humans, and not a computer. But to YouTube's > nuance-blind algorithm — trained to think with simple logic — serving up > more videos to sate a sadist's appetite is a job well done.

So this person is advocating that a human (ie, _another_ human besides oneself, an employee at youtube), have access to the click stream of individual users? This proposal, in 2019??? Of course this would have to be compulsory to be effective. Why would I want a megacorp to be making moral decisions for me? I'm ok with them making amoral algorithmic decisions.

The author is generalizing the problem of YT Kids, which should be human curated, to all of youtube.

OTOH, yeah feeding our worst impulses is kind of a problem. But, tweaking the algorithm isn't the solution. The machine itself is designed to thrive on attention.</comment>


Show HN: Fez, a file-based build tool for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://isaacbw.com/general/fez/2014/01/20/fezes-are-cool.html <comment><USER2> If you're interested in file-based tools, Jake [1] has excellent support for the sort of rules Fez of offers, and is quite mature.

I haven't dug deeply into Fez yet, but here's a few things Fez seems to offer that Jake doesn't:

1- Automatic concurrency. Like Gulp, Fez's subtasks run in parallel. It looks like Fez launches them in subprocesses in order to prevent conflicts, which is a good idea. I'm skeptical of parallelism in builds, though, because race conditions lead to nasty, hard-to-detect-and-fix bugs. I don't think the theoretical speed boost is worth the potential of defects getting into released code.

2- Automatic pipelining. Also like Gulp, Fez can pipe the output of one operation to the input of another. This is useful because you can avoid dealing with temporary files. Unlike Gulp, Fez has an extremely simple and non-error-prone way of constructing those pipelines. I like it.

The major advantage of Fez (and Jake) over Grunt and Gulp is that they use file timestamps to tell if a task needs to run. This can lead to major speed benefits. I recently modified my Jakefile to use this sort of dirty checking on my Sass compiler. I don't change my CSS that often, but the css task was doing an expensive "shell to Ruby" command on every build no matter what. Adding dirty checking shaved my typical build time down from 6.5s to 3.5s.

Overall, Fez looks like a really nice tool. It has a strong ideology (rule- based transformation of files) tempered by a nice dose of practicality. For example, although Fez wants every task to define a file-transformation rule, it also supports "imperative mode" for tasks that don't fit that model. It's very promising, and I'm looking forward to learning more.

[1] Jake: [https://github.com/mde/jake](https://github.com/mde/jake)

</comment><comment> robert-wallis I'm suppose I'm in the minority of developers that _don't_ think we need to learn more build tools.

make, configure, automake, autoconf, MSBuild, Apache Ant, rake, gradle, jake, grunt, gulp, fez

Sorry, I'm sure your system is nice and organized. But now you've introduced one more build dependency that will make projects based on Fez just a little more difficult to on-board.

<comment><USER2> I couldn't disagree more strongly. Sure, make is a fine (if quirky) tool, but I would hate to live in a world where that was the only build tool available. There's good reasons people choose not to use it.

Fact is, people want different things from their tools. Each of the ones you mentioned has its own strengths and weaknesses. They tend to be better than their predecessors in some way, for some specific need. And this is how progress is made... via a thriving marketplace of [ build tools, languages, frameworks, libraries ]. I wouldn't have it any other way.

<comment> robert-wallis One of the great things about open-source, is when you discover a weakness in some tool you like, you can modify that tool and submit a patch. Or you can learn from the source of one tool and add another tool to the marketplace. When the marketplace is saturated, patching or modifying the popular tools is preferable to me.

Also, I would prefer developers spend more time making general applications and less time making tools for other developers. I'm not saying people shouldn't make great dev tools, I'm saying more people should make great applications, and less people should make great dev tools.

<comment><USER3> I agree, it's great to be able to fix problems with open source projects. But there's not always one tool to rule them all

 _Fact is, people want different things from their tools._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what the pros/cons are for Fez, compared to Gulp: [https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp](https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp)

<comment><USER2> Fez looks a lot more promising than Gulp to me:

1- Fez is more pragmatic. It has a strong ideology, but it also tempers that with escape hatches for when your needs don't fit that ideology.

2- Fez's pipelining is really simple and elegant. Gulp's pipelining is verbose and it's easy to forget to return the stream, which leads to race conditions.

3- Fez has dirty-checking so it won't run tasks on files that are up-to-date.

4- Task functions look much simpler to write (and thus, less error-prone).

I haven't tried Fez yet (and I have tried Gulp [1]), but I like what I see.

[1] My review of Gulp (wait for the comments to load): [http://www.letscodejavascript.com/v3/comments/lab/1#comment-...](http://www.letscodejavascript.com/v3/comments/lab/1#comment-1197581116)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am in the process of creating a build tool too (for a different language: Java) I noticed that you have some magic variables (%f), like make ($<, etc..). I am trying to avoid that, but I cannot come up with a clean way without 'magic' variables (e.g. When using wildcards, one would need to know the set of files that have changed. Mine is something similar to

      classes/**/*.class -> src/**/*.java:
          javac [WHAT TO USE IF NOT A 'Maigc var'?]

Also:

1\. Will fez support different dir for target and recipes? (like above example I gave) ?

2\. What about targets that do not have a file dependency (e.g. .PHONY in make)? How does fez deal with it?

What I am trying to avoid is a big learning curve (or have a user need to read a book) :-)

Thank you and success in your project!

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how to use it. Can I just write this:

        *.less → %f.css
        *.css → %f.min.css
        *.min.css → dist.min.css

in a file and then run the command "fez"? And if not, then why not? If that was how you used fez then I would strongly consider using it.

If you are looking for a build tool, I strongly recommend you first consider a bash script.

Or if you are still looking for a build tool, like you collect them or something, I made my own too (lol): [https://github.com/ithkuil/bild](https://github.com/ithkuil/bild)

Mine uses yaml files like this:

        - coffee:
            files: src/*.coffee
            out: lib
        - uglify:
            files: public/js/*.js
            out: public/js/min.js

<comment><USER7> This is exactly how harp works. If you don't want to deal with configuration harp implicitly does what you just suggested. You can run it directly as a web server or compile your project to HTML/CSS/JS. It might be what you are looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This could turn out to be incredibly powerful tooling for Javascript compilation.

I'm not a fan of Require-type systems because they introduce additional runtime behavior. With the proper dependency graph tools available at compile time, we could remove the need for AMD completely. This will reduce client overhead and boilerplate. (Granted, AMD boilerplate will be converted into a dependency graph spec. But it would be there regardless, and I am of the opinion that this is a superior form.)

Exciting times ahead...

</comment><comment><USER9> Similar to Bud: [http://github.com/azer/bud](http://github.com/azer/bud) ([https://medium.com/p/6a4c74b4bd90](https://medium.com/p/6a4c74b4bd90))

See how Bud approaches building and watching changes; [https://gist.github.com/azer/7819664](https://gist.github.com/azer/7819664)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool! I have two questions: does this support watching files to regenerate them?

Second, one of the main features from my similar project (npm install webapp- builder) is appending a socket.io connection to generated HTML to force a browser refresh when files have finished building. I view webapp-builder as too monolithic, so I'm curious how difficult it would be to implement a similar feature in Fez?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Since it only does the work that needs to be done, you can safely 'watch node fez.js' and if there have been no file changes, nothing will be done! This won't work on Windows, of course, but then I'm not sure if anything else in Fez works on Windows anyway. I'll have to get that going here soon.

2) You can do pretty much whatever sort of transformation you want in an operation. In fact, if you want I can take a look at your code and implement that socket.io appending feature with Fez myself just to show how it can be done.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the info. It's not super hi-pri for me right now, but I've starred the project and I'll drop by the IRC channel once I decide it's time to do more work on webapp-builder. Seems like the auto-refreshing bit might make a nice Fez builder (or step, or whatever the lexicon is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone compare and contrast this with Make?

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool! Does it track dependencies of build steps that have "require"? E.g. if I have a javascript bundle being built using browserify - will it track the files that browserify is loading? Also: Did you consider reusing the Grunt ecosystem? E.g. enable loading grunt plugins and treat this as a potential alternate runner?

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks interesting. A note to the author: that post is very difficult to read on mobile. Setting a width on your container will go a long way to improve readability (e.g. .wrapper { max-width: 90%; margin: 0 auto; }).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this compare to something like Brunch? [http://brunch.io/](http://brunch.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen Brunch before, but it still seems to suffer from the same major flaw as Grunt, which is no sense of file-file relationships:

"Brunch recompiles and concats all your stuff automatically on any change, headlessly. No more need in compicated Makefiles and watchers."

Perhaps I'm wrong, but Brunch just seems like a variant on Grunt with a lot more out of the box for building front-end web applications.

Still, it _does_ look cool. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> BTW, fezes is faeces in portuguese ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! I should probably change it to Fezzes then.

<comment><USER16> Also, there's a popular video game also named "Fez" which uses the same fez hat in it. It probably won't lead to confusion since the game isn't a file based build tool, though it'll be something you might have to indirectly compete with in search results. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Uber triumphant  - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2012/12/03/uber-triumphant/

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that the pattern here (for Uber, AirBnB and others) is:

1\. Create a service that people love, flouting or violating local regulations.

2\. Rely on user outrage to get the regulations changed.

3\. Profit.

It's frustrating that there's a regulatory model that makes it necessary to do this in order to innovate, but I'm glad to see it working out for Uber.

<comment> shawn-butler Isn't that how representative democracies work? It's better than the alternative in some cultures which involves a lot of underhanded bribery to get people to look the other way.

I honestly get a little tired of Uber, Airbnb, et al, who found startups pursuing models that turn their customers into unknowing accomplices in order to execute and gain traction. And then abuse the rest of the startup community just to gain press attention. It is profoundly unfair to take advantage of ethical lapses and should not be rewarded.

Why isn't it the case that part of the proof for VCs for businesses of dubious legality is the advocacy of regulatory reform early in product development rather than paying for hot air punditry in media that makes everyone look bad after the fact? Is it because any advocacy they pay for would only help competition giving away lead time?

I don't disagree that heavy-handed overregulation is a bad thing, but we are going to face more of it not less if recent history is any indication. Seems like some better strategies are needed.

<comment><USER3> >Isn't that how representative democracies work?

No, the way it's supposed to work, as we're taught in civics, is to adhere to the laws as they currently exist, and if we want them changed, to get deeply involved in city council meetings until we can beg the council members, who have no understanding of the unseen costs and missed opportunities of the current system, and are typically in league with a local guild, to grant us special permits to do our innovative activity.

On the way, we're supposed to develop our own political faction, and eventually get powerful enough to figure we can use the city regulatory apparatus to hold back our own enemies.

Because we wouldn't want to risk people having a subpar experience from one of these upstarts, in contrast to the consistently ideal service we get from city-blessed operators. Or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm all for democracy, but the government shouldn't even have the right to regulate markets in such a way that innovation (and competition) can be stifled by the established players.

Some regulations are necessary. They ensure that we don't usually get feces in our food, etc. But this is a clear case of legislation directly interfering with competition.

<comment><USER5> There's a noticeable incidence of rape by taxi drivers here in Oz. If the driver is foreign this usually leads to a media frenzy about government driver regs.

I'm wondering what the regulatory fallout will be when Uber suffers their first (unfortunately apparently inevitable) rape incident.

<comment><USER6> Is the incidence of rape by taxi drivers higher than that of the population at large? And are the rapes happening in taxicabs, to customers?

It sounds like you've cited something that's technically true without any context, so it's unclear as to whether there is a trend, or if it's just hysteria.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't matter if it's just hysteria as long as the media frenzy does happen. Voter and societal outrage rarely follows logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As far as AirBnB goes, it seems that they didn't predict all the outrage. Their just using it for their PR.</comment>


Ask HN: How about a limit on the number of links you can post per day ? - <AUTHOR>

5 Links per day that are of interest ok. 10 still fine. 15, pushing it. but 30 or more is clearly contrary to the guidelines. So how about some sane upper limit ?<p>And/Or charge you X karma points for each link you post ? That would cut down tremendously on the spam as well. <comment><USER2> Already in the guidelines

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

is "Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated by your submissions."

I think reader ennui resulting in a more rapid response of ignoring submissions (or downvoting comments) is the best control on this, rather than any automated solution. In other words, I think current community standards of behavior are working well enough on this issue. Automated deduction of karma may not do much to stop spammers, but readers actively flagging spam posts helps, because a sufficient number of flags autokills a post.

<comment><USER3> readers actively flagging spam posts helps

I agree with this. Maybe some karma encouragement for being on new page might help (Maybe badges like stackoverflow ;)). And also, If there's a flag link on new page itself (not discussion page for each submission) would make things easy in my opinion.

Too much submission hurt the quality as I mentioned in an early ASK HN (which was deleted). So I think it's ok to take some steps, at least for a short period of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> > And also, If there's a flag link on new page itself (not discussion page for > each submission) would make things easy in my opinion.

Yes, that would help a lot. Especially because HN can be quite slow which makes flagging stuff a lot more time consuming than it has to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems a lot of over-posting comes from the famous "karma: 1, created: 30 seconds ago" accounts, so it may make sense to impose limits based on time as a user. (Karma may not work as well, as I could imagine a spammer creating 100 accounts and using them all to upvote one another's submissions.)

<comment><USER3> How about a karma threshold for posting?</comment></comment>


Blockstack, a startup, lets you control your own personal data - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603352/one-startups-vision-to-reinvent-the-web-for-better-privacy/?utm_campaign=internal&utm_medium=homepage&utm_source=top-stories_1&set=603356 <comment><USER2> I love these ideas, but can they overcome widespread apathy about privacy concerns?</comment>


US Covid-19 Death Toll Nears 100k - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/reader-center/coronavirus-new-york-times-front-page.html#commentsContainer <comment><USER2> A little more than 4% of the world's population and almost 1/3 of the deaths. It didn't have to be that way.

<comment><USER3> And yet fewer deaths than Europe. Just Italy, Spain, France, and the UK already have 125,000 reported fatalities. This is not a singularly American phenomenon, as implied by these numbers. South America may soon reach these numbers as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very top-heavy on just a few states. New York in particular has the lion's share.

[https://healthmetrics.heart.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/03/C...](https://healthmetrics.heart.org/wp- content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-19-Updates_5-22-2020.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also NYT: Original study forecast 2.2 million deaths.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus- imperial-college-johnson.html)

<comment><USER5> I don't understand what you're saying - did that study not exist?

<comment><USER4> I'm saying the death count is much lower than originally expected.

<comment><USER6> Good thing everybody who's going to get this has already gotten it, and all death has stopped, right. /s

I mean seriously it's been like 2.5 months.

We have 2 million confirmed cases nation-wide and that is WITH social distancing. We've never social distanced for the common flu, and the average death is like 40k/year.

If you extrapolate that for every 3 million cases reported/tested positive you get 100k deaths, then when we get to 30 million cases that's 1 million deaths. 60 million cases and it's 2 million deaths.

The second wave of the spanish flu was WAY deadlier and terrible than the first wave. I don't doubt the same will happen this time around.

That's like saying in June, eh we've only had 1 hurricane, the hurricane season for 2020 was great, we only had 1 hurricane...with 3-4 months left in hurricane season.

We've literally got like 2-3 years left in coronavirus 'season' (until there's better treatments/vaccines/plans in place).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two New Zealand psychologists study how childhood shapes later life - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/two-psychologists-followed-1000-new-zealanders-decades-here-s-what-they-found-about-how <comment><AUTHOR> From the article: "Caspi, generally not a forward man, looked over at Moffitt's poster and was dazzled by her science. 'You have the most beautiful data set.'"</comment>


How to Sell Secondary Stock - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2014/01/how-to-sell-secondary-stock.html

<comment><USER2> One thing to watch out for that a colleague actually ran into: a clause in the right-of-first-refusal that lets the company challenge the valuation that the third-party is paying by sending it to third-party, with you paying the bill for that third-party to go through the company's books to decide what the fair valuation is.</comment>


Tom Preston-Werner (this page has been deleted) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Preston-Werner

<comment><USER2> The deletion of this Wikipedia article isn't a verdict on the notability of Tom Preston-Werner.

It's a verdict on _the quality of the Wikipedia article_. In this case, the deletion says, "the article that was here did not explain why Tom Preston- Werner was an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article". Wikipedia articles about living people that don't even say why the subject is notable are subject to automatic deletion, for reasons I explained to 'tzs downthread.

This is a problem with a straightforward solution. Create a new draft of a Tom Preston-Werner article, with a clear (but dry, factual, and assiduously cited) explanation in 2 sentences or less in the first graf of the article for why Tom Preston-Werner is notable. Use the "new article wizard" to do this.

A slightly more aggressive way to respond to this deletion would be to take the deletion itself to Wikipedia Deletion Review (DRV); the DRV page has _extensive_ details about how to do that.

Be aware before you do this that many of Tom Preston-Werner's best-known accomplishments are already the subjects of Wikipedia articles, and that the editors of Wikipedia might reasonably reject a new article about him if it adds no notable facts to Wikipedia's preexisting coverage of his work.

The downside to writing a new draft is that the draft might be wasted effort if it merely recapitulates Wikipedia's coverage of Gravatar and Github.

The downside to taking the deletion to DRV is that you might end up litigating the decision to delete the article, which, if the original article was really bad (unsourced, no claim to notability) is probably a losing argument.

</comment><comment> johnx123-up FWIW, Tom Preston-Werner is Cofounder & CEO at GitHub

Edit: His LinkedIn profile <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tom-preston- werner/4/122/382>

</comment><comment><USER3> reason for deletion?

<comment><USER4> The cult of "deletionism" insists that hard drive space is so precious at wikipedia it can't possibly be used for entries that Joe-Little-Kid-Wikipedia- Bigshot hasn't heard of.

Always funny (and sad) when they get it this wrong. Jason Scott speaks of it better than anyone else:

<http://archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia>

<comment><USER5> I think that's misleading. The folks who go around deleting articles are not the ones who have to worry about things like server capacity. They do it because they think it keeps the standard of quality higher.

The article's not in Google's cache anymore, but as far as I can tell from the snippet, it apparently consisted only of the sentence: "Tom Preston-Werner is the creator of Gravatar and co-founder/CEO of GitHub." That's more information than I knew from reading the headline of this post, but it's a far cry from an encyclopedia article. I don't see what's lost by deleting it until someone's willing to put in the effort to write something substantial.

<comment><USER6> > I don't see what's lost by deleting it until someone's willing to put in the > effort to write something substantial

He's mentioned as creator of Gravatar and co-creator of Github in their respective Wikipedia articles. When someone is mentioned as a prominent figure in connection with something that is Wikipedia-worthy, it is quite natural for someone reading that article to wonder "what else has this guy done?" and want to click his name to find out. Now people who ask that question have to resort to the search box.

Deleting articles like this also, I suspect, reduces the chances that someone will put in the effort to make a more substantial article. Someone thinking of doing so will see that there once was an article and it was deleted, which will discourage them as they might worry that their work too will be deleted. Better, I think, to leave it there as a seed from which a more substantial article might grow.

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia articles aren't intended to express a graph the way a "who's who" database does. Every article in the encyclopedia is expected to do a good job summarizing it subject and providing a guide to reputable sources on that subject.

The problem with stub articles _about people_ that serve only to map a person to every Wikipedia subject they've touched is WP:BLP.

To sum that up: every article about a living person has to meet a higher standard of "not being wrong about that person", because when Wikipedia lists something wrong about (say) Tom Preston-Werner, it's plastering that wrongness at the top of every Google SERP, and this tends to piss people off. For obvious reasons, BLP articles are also a magnet for the most insidious kind of vandalism WP deals with: negative claims about real people that are difficult or impossible to refute "automatically", which is how virtually all vandalism on WP is handled. WP BLP articles thus incur a liability for the project.

Often, that liability is more than offset by the value of the article itself. But here, it seems like much of the value of a T.P-W article is simply in making it slightly easier to search for T.P-W in WP. But WP already does a pretty good job of doing that. Marginal value, maximum liability.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


RMS comes under attack again - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/1/2/

<comment><USER2> You've submitted the third page of the article.

The first page: <http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27980/1090/1/0/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that.. Although, by posting the 3rd page it shows I actually read it before submitting. :p</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some challenges that need solved for Social Justice? - <AUTHOR> I'm mentoring a team of student-developers and need to come up with a few projects for them to work on. It would be great if they had some things to work on that could solve challenges in underserved communities. A few ideas I had mulling around, was wondering if HN could think of more ideas.<p>- Food Justice: A place for people with extra produce to offer their produce to their neighbors.<p>- Criminal Justice: A way for people in New Orleans with incarcerated loved ones in Louisiana State Penitentiary to pool their resources to find rides to the distant prison.<p>- A place to receive notifications about and engage with city & state legislation around a chosen topic. e.g. "Let me know when the next LGBT bill is up for vote in my city or state". Provide a platform for people to engage with their government (like Countable, but for state & local government)<p>Any feedback on these ideas? Or more challenges that technology might be able to help address in underserved communities? <comment><USER2> Your idea about food brought to mind the food deserts that are common in many cities, where the only places people can get to to buy food are convenience stores that have little to no fresh produce.

How might people be able to pool their resources so that they could bring more produce into the neighborhood? Or even so that one person who is able to visit a further supermarket could bring back produce for a few neighbors who can't, and be assured of being reimbursed?

That's actually a small part of a larger issue around transportation, too. There are many cities in the US where people who don't have cars (can't afford them in the first place; broke down and can't afford repairs; etc.) are utterly cut off from opportunity. Some walk several miles each way to get to and from school or work. Those who are physically disabled or simply not in excellent physical condition are entirely cut off from opportunity.

What about software that helps people ride share not in the sense of "anyone can be a cab driver and work for Uber/Lyft", but in the sense of carpooling; maybe with the carpoolers covering the driver's fuel costs or otherwise contributing a small amount of money (far less than the cost of a cab or Uber) so that everyone wins?</comment>


Introducing container-diff, a tool for quickly comparing container images - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/11/container-diff-for-comparing-container-images.html <comment><USER2> Thank you!</comment>


Can anyone recommend a good collection agency? - <AUTHOR> One of our clients owes us ~$9400 in back advertising invoices and refuses to pay us. They are a small company (< 10 people) which recently had a change of leadership. The new CEO did not return my calls for 3 months and the finally told me over the phone he was not going to pay, since it was the old CEO who made the deal with us.
I have an agreement (written by our lawyers) signed by their old CEO which spells out the agreement quite clearly. I've Fed-Ex'd a copy of the agreement and the outstanding invoices to the company and have heard nothing.
I don't have the time to keep pursuing this issue and I would like to pay a collection agency a percentage of any money that they can recover. We are also a small company (< 5 people) and recovering a portion of the $9400 would be significant to us.
Has anyone used a collection agency in the past? Any experiences to share? Can anyone recommend one? <comment><USER2> Debt collectors are a reasonable approach, but take one more step before you do that.

1) find a lawyer who you can hire for an hour or two for $200-$400. You're paying for his letterhead, not his skills.

2) Get him to write a letter saying "you have 14 days to pay 2/3 of the amount. If we receive that, the debt is discharged in full. IF we don't receive that by 14 days from today, we're going to court, and we're asking for the full amount of the debt, lawyer fees, and damages. Please pay now."

I've collected LOTS of debts in my time, 95% successfully.

This technique works.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your suggestion is a good one. However, I'm not prepared to spend the time and legal fees to take them to court and I don't make empty threats.

<comment><USER3> _I don't make empty threats._

Why on Earth not? Make empty threats!

What are you afraid of, that these guys will learn that you're capable of bluffing and then push you around? _That appears to have happened already._

Though I actually agree that you shouldn't bluff a lawsuit. You should give fair warning and then _file_ the lawsuit. What are you waiting for, someone to cheat you out of _twenty_ thousand bucks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Collection agents aren't how you want to resolve this. Instead you have an opportunity to solidify a relationship and create opportunity by showing you're serious about what you do, and you are worth being paid. Threatening people is hardly ever the right way to accomplish any of your goals

One of the best bosses I know in a rather small manufacturing company, after not being paid for 9 months _, called up the CEO of the indebted company and said, "Hey Steve. I need directions from the airport to your office and then from your office to the nearest golf course, because Monday I'm going to fly out there personally, pick up this check, and then go play some golf. Feel free to join me if you want." Not only did he get his money, but the other company realized they were dealing with someone that was going to pursue every issue, no matter how small, and they started ordering far more product.

I'm not saying the exact same approach will work for you (though it could!) -- I'm saying get creative and get serious, and prove it.

_ His team was already set up to effectively pursue late payments. Less than 1% of their invoices make it past the 90 day mark.

<comment><USER2> > Instead you have an opportunity to solidify a relationship

Who wants a solid relationship with a sleezebag who tries to get out of debts by claiming "yeah, it may be the same corporate entity, but I'm the new CEO, so I'm not paying?".

You want nothing to do with a person like that.

<comment><USER4> Are you serious? I want a solid relationship with everyone, no matter what they've done in the past. I'm also going to protect that relationship in a legally binding way, and not just take someone's word.

But I work with some great people that are total jackasses. But they know I'm not going to take their crap, so they don't try and dish it to me. Or sometimes they do, to test the water, and I say 'nope'.

I mean, I hate to be so basic as alpha dog level analysis, but that's how you get through to some people. And I don't mean blustering and cursing up a storm. I mean growing up and dealing with stuff head-on.

_EVERYTHING_ is an opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Progressive Financial" was excellent at getting money out of me when the City of Philadelphia decided to put a lien on my house.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reference.

I just got off the phone with them. They seemed very professional and they said they typically charge 25-30% of the collected amount, but they usually don't do one-off collections. They typically work with companies that have at least 10-15 non-paying customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You'd be better off actually bringing suit against them to force them into bankruptcy - they will also need to pay you for damages if your paperwork is solid. Collection agencies are highly inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER7> IMHO, COLLECTION AGENCIES DON'T WORK

At a previous company, we hired United Mercantile and they never collected a cent from either of the two accounts we sent them.

They made things up like saying the one guy's corporation was surrendered when it wasn't and on the other one, I later reconciled with customer and he said he NEVER received a single call or letter from them.

Both were relatively small amounts (about $5k and $10k) and it would appear that they never lifted a finger to get their 30% or whatever it was.

I like the lawyer approach -- the more names on their letterhead, the better! :) No company likes the threat of legal action.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you have to pay anything to the collection agency?

<comment><USER7> No, not up front--part of their pitch was "we don't get paid unless you do".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about name and shame? Does everyone know that this company doesn't pay? Do all of their employees know? Does their bank know? Do their customers and other vendors know? The threat of going public might help you, if you know anything about their business.

Just think about what a collection agency does, they have no special powers, they just start calling people and don't stop. It doesn't take too long to have your (outsourced?) admin go through calling everyone that works there each day.

<comment><USER9> And it can also get _you_ sued for interference of trade.

Name & shame works only when the named party would hurt themselves more by suing you than not.

This guy has a breach of contract case (assuming his ad agreements were written properly): he needs a lawyer. Odds are he will be paid as soon as they get a letter from his attorney. None of this 2/3's stuff either: demand the full amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know why the CEO of that company is being that obstinate about paying you money you clearly have rights to (the agreement). Given the fact that he now knows he owes you money, assuming he didn't before (although the old CEO should have filled him in right?), and he still doesn't want to pay makes me think he is going to have trouble coming up with the money, even if he wants to pay you. The economy is... well, you know.

I don't know the details of whats going on here, but from what information I do have, I suggest you work out some other form of payment (with lawyers of course...keep in mind this is to make it easier for them to pay you the $9400 they owe you, you aren't making a "new" deal per say). Instead of forking over $9400 in cash, maybe you could work it out so that company can pay in you $9400 in services, or something along those lines.

If that doesn't work, then by all means sue the guy. You have every right in the world to do so. Don't worry about if it looks "dickish" or not, you need to get that money back in one way or another.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to hear advice on hiring a collection agency as well. My lawyer renegotiated terms several times with a guy who defaulted on a business loan I made him. Each time he agreed to a repayment schedule, but never paid anything. My lawyer went to court. The other guy never went, and after a few visits we got a judgement against him. Still there was nothing forcing him to pay. The lawyer went back to court and after more $ I all i was able to do was put a lien against any 'real' property in California he may someday purchase. The next step was to force him to court and audit his accounts 'under oath', but I lost my faith in the whole process.

</comment><comment><USER12> Collections agencies are persistent, I'll tell you that much. I've been in the same apartment for 4 years, and for 4 years I've been getting weekly calls for a person who lived here two tenants ago.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am looking for one too. I have a judgment for over $12K from 2 different tenants. I sent one of them to a collection agency about a year ago. Nothing...

</comment><comment><USER14> The percentage of $9400 you might be able to recover in small claims court probably exceeds the amount you'd get from anyone who would buy your debt.

<comment><USER2> Most small claims courts cap suite sizes at $2-3k.

Thus, I disagree with this statement.

<comment><USER14> Way to just make shit up there, guy.

<http://bit.ly/V9Zg8>

The mean limit for all the 50 states is $5964 (more than he'd get from a collections agency). The median is $5000 (also more than he'd get). In particular, in some major tech business jurisdictions:

NY: $5000

WA: $5000

CA: $7500

IL: $10,000

GA: $15,000

(MA is $2k. That sucks, lots of tech companies in MA. On the other hand, PA is $8k.)

Note also that typical fees for collections agencies appear to exceed 50%, and that's a contingency fee.

<comment><USER15> _Way to just make shit up there, guy._

From the Hacker News guidelines:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"In Comments

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. 'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'"

I always like that it says, "can be shortened to" as a gentle reminder that disagreeing with statements of facts doesn't serve as an excuse to throw in personal insult.

<comment><USER14> Apparently you never pull things out of your ass in message board debates. I've done it enough not to be insulted when I get called on it. If I offended you by calling out someone else, tokenadult, I sincerely apologize.

<comment><USER2> > Apparently you never pull things out of your ass in message board debates. > I've done it enough not to be insulted when I get called on it.

So you both lie and call names.

Delightful.

<comment><USER16> > So you both lie and call names.

It looks like he documented that the small claim suit limits are typically considerably higher than the claimed $2-3k. Is he wrong? If not, what lie did he tell?

<comment><USER15> I think in the parent to which the insulting reply was made, there was a statement that was actually TRUE (not made up) in the parent post's author's jurisdiction. It is, of course, helpful to add other facts that pertain to other jurisdictions, but there is no necessity to add any personal dig in such a reply. Yeah, I think I would enjoy having a beer with and making mocking comments in person with most people who post on HN, but while we haven't all had the privilege of meeting one another, we may as well follow the civility guidelines here. (Upvoted comment downthread expressing apology.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> too bad the Sopranos are not available anymore ;-)

</comment><comment><USER18> I know this guy Tiny Mike from Chinatown For a small few he could "pay them a visit" and get you back your money with interest.

He charges about one third of what he gets Whadduya think?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm shocked that a small business would think of using a collection agent to get money out of another small business.

First, collection agents are threatening and scary. Their presence will affect both the debtor company and its staff.

Second, by selling your debt to a collection agency, you usually give them the right to sell it to other - perhaps more menacing - organisations.

Third, collection agencies primarily work by first sending scary letters, then visiting the debtor in person, then confiscating things of value. None of these are efficient: the debtor loses far more than they owe, and you don't get all your money back.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure why this is shocking to you; these are all the debtor's problem, not the creditor's. The creditor just wants some return on the debt, and a long-term deterrant to other deadbeats.

I don't know you, but you might be surprised how big an issue this is; back in the '90s, I was a key employee at a regional ISPs, and the deadbeat problem was significant.

The standard answer to this problem seems to be having a lawyer draft a letter (hundreds of dollars) threatening a civil suit, and then actually taking the deadbeat to court. If you think a stern letter will get someone to cough up, this is a fine route to take. If you think it'll require an actual court case, forget it. Business civil suits can take years just to get into a courtroom; if your opponent hires their own lawyer, your odds of winning aren't awesome compared to the investment you'll have to make with your counsel; in the end, if your debtor simply goes out of business, you end up with nothing even if you win.

<comment><USER19> Deterrent? Why would collecting one debt discourage other debtors? (whoops, I've taken a wrong turn into Alliteration Central).

What I'm getting at is that using a debt collection agency is an exceptionally nasty way to recover money. There are other avenues to explore, one of which was suggested by boredguy8 and another by tjic.

<comment><USER14> The delinquency letter you send out to deadbeat clients that says you work with XXX debt collection agency to recover fees is likely to get a better response rate than the one that says you'll "pursue all options".

Note also: a good corporate collections agency might know tricks you wouldn't think of to spur repayment. For instance, you can ding people's D&B reports with collections issues (who knew?), which can cause problems for some companies with their other B2B transactions.

Some unrelated case-in-point: I'll pay parking tickets in jurisdictions where they're handled by collections. I won't bother paying parking tickets elsewhere, even when they have hard-and-fast "3 tickets and then we boot you" rules. The collections agency is just a bigger headache than getting a boot off.

<comment><USER19> I am not disputing the efficacy of debt collection agencies at recovering money, in the same way as I would not dispute the destructive power of a bomb.

<comment><USER14> You just disputed the idea that a relationship with a collections agency would deter future debt collectors. I responded to that. I'm not arguing about any other problems you might have with them.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, I thought that was what you were arguing when you said:

"The delinquency letter you send out to deadbeat clients that says you work with XXX debt collection agency to recover fees is likely to get a better response rate than the one that says you'll "pursue all options"."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Luck, Randomness and Success - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/luck-randomness-and-success.htm

<comment><USER2> Great piece! I know this is not the article is meant to say, but envy is inevitable. But using that envy as a drive may not be a bad thing.</comment>


8K to Next-Gen TV: Previewing the National Association of Broadcasters Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/8k-next-gen-tv-previewing-national-association-broadcasters-show-1198898 <comment> village-idiot 8K TVs are a silly thing. Forget about the lack of 8K content at the moment, there are actually very few contexts in which an 8K TV works[0].

There are two formulas for a monitor that conflict here: one controls the optimal distance that allows your eyes to resolve all the detail, and one that controls how close to the TV you'd be comfortable sitting.

For 8K displays there's basically no overlap between these formulas. With a 65" TV you would have to be closer than 4.3' to the screen to tell any difference between a 4K and 8K TV. The ideal distance to detect all those extra pixels is a neck hurting 2'.

Given the trend towards bigger TVs, I seriously doubt there are many homes where an 8K would even be detectable by a human, let alone ideal. I personally suspect that most users aren't close enough to their TVs to resolve all the detail from a 4K tv, let alone an 8K.

0 - Computer monitors are the exception here. While most users don't sit close enough to their monitors to resolve every detail in a 8K screen, they do sit close enough to tell the difference between a 4K and higher resolutions. My uneducated guess is that a 5-6K monitor is probably close to the upper practical limit for computer monitors.</comment>


Any hip hop fans on HN? Here's my first app - <AUTHOR> http://paintapp.co/ The app is called Paint the Town. You create playlists with friends and listen to new music.<p>It's only a side project so I can learn how to code, but I'd love your feedback. <comment><USER2> Pretty nice looking, although it took me a minute to grok the controls. I was searching for a volume control on the bottom when the first song was playing, and then I noticed the tiny youtube window.

Why youtube if most of the videos are just audio tracks with a background? How is the song list generated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! So YouTube continues to be the best source of music on the web, but you give up a lot of control when using it. I can't hide the YouTube player or make it small, for example.

I just built the music player - you're right about the volume control. I need to add the ability to seek too.</comment></comment>


Dictionary of Navy Slang [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://goatlocker.org/resources/nav/navyslang.pdf

<comment><USER2> Former submariner here. I'm glad they included my favorite Navy definition, which I think can be important for startups, too.

"50/50/90: Used to describe the phenomenon whereby a question that statistically has a 50/50 chance of being answered correctly is actually answered incorrectly 90% of the time. Used primarily in reference to nuclear operators, who tend to over-think ("nuke") a problem."

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the first things to hit me when I began working for the Navy was the frustrating amount of acronyms and slang they used. And I'm talking about the engineering headquarters (a very white-collar place), not some base or ship.

At first it frustrates the heck out of you, because you have to look up definitions all the time. Then, before you even realize, you're talking just like everybody else and nobody outside of your organization can understand you.

And I came to the Navy with seagoing experience and education... I can't imagine how confusing the language must be to someone coming from, say, a regular engineering school.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Beer ticket" is hilarious. I will be in the same situation up on arriving to my motherhood: I've been abroad for 3 years already and devaluation of the local ruble is about 10%/year. Good beer could cost more than 100 000 in local currency.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did not know the Navy also had such slang - here's some from the Marine Corps: [http://4mermarine.com/USMC/dictionary.html](http://4mermarine.com/USMC/dictionary.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> As a submariner, this is very accurate.</comment>


IRS "Accepting Gifts" - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/11/news/economy/national_debt/

<comment><USER2> This could be an interesting experiment: abolish taxes and have people donate whatever they think the government's services are worth to them.

It'll be a naturally graduated system, as the wealthier will be naturally inclined to donate more, and the poor, less.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-private_partnership></comment></comment>