LulzSec Exposed - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Jun/75 <comment><USER2> Only two things are infinite: the universe, and script kiddies, and I'm not sure about the former.

There will always be another garishly-named group willing to sql-inject and xss the low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER3> Sony isn't low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER4> Given that a lot of their sites have been broken into with relatively unsophisticated means, such as SQL injection, I think that many Sony sites are certainly in the "low-hanging fruit" category.

<comment><USER5> Maybe in terms of vulnerability, but certainly not in terms of importance.

<comment><USER6> Low-hanging fruit simply means "reward" for little effort. The low-hanging fruit may very well be the biggest, sweetest of the bunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are they? Or is this just some random guy who wants to get other random guy(s) in deep trouble?

edit: Indeed, following the thread reveals <http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Jun/88> -> <http://pastebin.com/mmvBT7n5> The root entry dated May 13.

<comment><USER8> <http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/77782030020128768>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad they were doing it for the lulz. Some day someone's going to be doing it, not for the lulz, and the price we'll have to pay for this kind of massive developer/it-sec incompetence will be extremely high. Hopefully this has served as a wake-up call to people who weren't already aware how low the fruit has been hanging.

<comment><USER10> You say you are glad they were doing it for fun and wait for someone to do it not for fun? How do you know it's not already been done? A true hacker wouldn't expose their actions and would continue with the exploit.

I think these kids have exposed the true lack of security around the world in general and it has raised some serious attention for other people to take a look at their own defence, which is good in some respects.

What they have also successfully done is lowered peoples trust in massive corporations which in turn is going to hurt the economy globally, which is not good in any respect.

I think they should have hacked it then made the companies aware, not the whole world. It's hard enough getting someone to trust and pay for services from a company when they think they are safe, they really won't when there is no trust there at all.

<comment><USER11> Am I misinterpreting your comment?

You said, the hackers "lowered people's trust in massive corporations [...] which is not good in any respect."

It seems pretty clear to me that Sony is most decidedly not deserving of consumer's trust - and without these public disclosures, we would have never known that.

Certainly - as I learned in the Gawker security breach - it sucks to have your login details broadcasted to the rest of the internets. But, after a few hours restting passwords across the internet, I was good to go. I expect the affected consumers in this case will have a similar experience.

And, that experience is a far better one than having your data stolen by a more malicious group of hackers, who use it for far more damaging means, without your knowledge.

So, I don't believe that this group of hackers are any kind of heroic. But even if their motivation is suspect, I do believe they're performing a type of public service. Teaching us all that it's the height of ludicrous to hand over your sensitive data to Sony, and expect them to keep it reasonably secure from basic script-kiddie tactics.

<comment><USER10> No, they might not be deserving of customers trust but that doesn't mean that throwing egg on their face is helping the situation any. If the hackers were doing it for the good of the community then it's counter productive. They should have informed Sony of the issue. They are kids who do not understand what effect the situation has on the economic climate.

Also, defacing the other music sites does nothing more than raise the profile of their hacking "skills".

As I mentioned, yes they are making people aware that there are security issues that companies need to iron out and Sony are having some serious bad media recently but who is this really helping? It's not helping the market and its not helping consumers?

You and I both know that they should not be storing stuff plain text or with some bad security practice and we understand what it takes to make it right but to the common person they are instantly put off all places where they have to put card details. The overall perception of the web is stepping back 15 years in the eyes of the general consumer, soon people will be afraid to put their details anywhere.

I agree completely with what you are saying but that's from my point of view, I'm thinking general consumer confidence.

<comment><USER12> > No, they might not be deserving of customers trust but that doesn't mean > that throwing egg on their face is helping the situation any.

But not throwing egg on their face was helping less. As long as security bugs are mostly invisible they don't get fixed.

> They should have informed Sony of the issue.

If Sony needed to be told to lock their doors it's only because they didn't care. (At least in 2011. It might have been different in 1997...)

> It's not helping the market and its not helping consumers?

In the end, it helps the market and the consumers. If companies get away with broken security that penalizes, by comparison, other companies who spend more to develop a secure product, or who produce a less ambitious product because they know it's all that can be done securely.

Customers win because they get a more realistic view of what they're buying.

> You and I both know that they should not be storing stuff plain text or with > some bad security practice and we understand what it takes to make it right > but to the common person they are instantly put off all places where they > have to put card details. The overall perception of the web is stepping back > 15 years in the eyes of the general consumer, soon people will be afraid to > put their details anywhere.

As they should be. You can see how well protected everything isn't.

> I agree completely with what you are saying but that's from my point of > view, I'm thinking general consumer confidence.

Confidence through ignorance doesn't seem like a gift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe not.

As reported here some logs are old: <http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Jun/88>

        http://pastebin.com/mmvBT7n5 (May 13th, 2011)
        boards.808chan.org/fail/res/263.html (2010)

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://pastebin.com/yut4P6qN>

Guess this was a joke/defamation attempt after all.

<comment><USER15> And looks like it backfired:

"Someone just sent over $7200 worth of BitCoins. Whoever you are... thank you... Balance: 7853.35 USD #Speechless"

<http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not surprising since they are just a bunch of weekend warriors and kids. Any real smooth operator wouldn't be working out of his house, and especially not on a personal browsing machine. From the opposite perspective of that, the government hasn't seen diddly when it comes to digital terrorism. Just wait until the FBI can't track down the culprits from their broadband bill and drive over to their parents house and make the arrest...

<comment><USER17> Uh, when will that be?

From what I observe, it just keeps getting progressively easier for the FBI to do that. Not harder.

<comment><USER18> I would imagine the professionals are using other peoples cracked wifi networks, then routing through tor or a similar onion routing system, eventually hitting a VPN endpoint on some anonymous-hosting account in russia, etc etc.

The truly paranoid might like to rent a botnet and build their own tor network on top of it or something like that.

In short: the fundamental nature of TCP/IP is such that if you are sufficiently motivated, and dont mind horrible latency, even the FBI/tptacek cant identify you.

<comment><USER19> I'm thrilled to report that it isn't my business _at all_ to track down people on the Internet, and so I am not a good standard for what is and isn't feasible vis a vis IP traceability.

We break apps and build products and that is just about it. (We've also never done business, to my knowledge, with the government.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not surprised. Hacking Sony is one thing. Hack the FBI and you end up in a dark room somewhere. I almost feel bad for these kids, if they are indeed kids.

<comment><USER21> This wasn't the FBI, it was some other hacker who was pissed at him. The screenshots [1] show that quite clearly. That guy likely just turned xyz over to the feds after doxing him (and rooting him, and taking over most of his online accounts)

[1]

<comment><USER22> What's _really_ funny is that going after an official FBI site would have gotten less of a backlash from real hackers. Attacking Infragard is like slapping a bunch of hackers (white-hat and black) in the face, so they're going to be a lot more motivated to expose the perpetrators. It's all pretty silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, I would def not consider myself a security expert but I seriosly have higher standards than this when it comes to security. Most obvious fails on this dude: 1) Windows, 2) Gmail (if i would be a hacker i would not use this for obvious reasons), 3) specifying any personal credentials in my "hacker" acount, 4) same username (...i would not use same user-id). I mean, c'mon...I had higher expectations on this guys really (considering I'm not into those kind of networks - call be hacker noob). Let's hope the other guys was more paranoid than this.

Btw, what will be the jail-sentence in US for this you think? Let's hope he's a minor - looks like a teenager.

</comment><comment><USER24> They seem to be still tweeting new cracks. Wonder how long it'll take them to realize that they're being arrested by the FBI.

(edit: seriously, though, something seems just a bit off here.)

<comment><USER25> The kid that got busted by the FBI was not actually a lulzsec member, he was just hanging around the lulzsec public IRC channels.

Lulzsec response here: <http://pastebin.com/yut4P6qN>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The kid who apparently got caught was using Windows.

<http://184.108.40.206/dox/xyz/3.png>

<comment><USER27> Browsing around that site, there seems to be a lot of information... much of which i'm guessing probably shouldn't be on a public website?

<comment><USER18> That site _is_ a cache of items which shouldnt really be public. Thats what the term 'dox' in the url means: (sensitive) documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was on ED IRC #lulzsec when they accused me of being a spy for the military. I laughed.

</comment><comment><USER29> Last I checked they were alive and well. As for them supposedly being Amateurs, no... no they are not. The attacks they are pulling they could get away with if they kept the secret. But something is motivating them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seeing as how Anon has moved up to hacktivism against third world dictatorships and other government agencies, I wonder if LulzSec is a splinter group.

</comment><comment><USER30> Are you serious? Hackers using windows? :'(

<comment><USER31> Almost: script kiddies using Windows. It helps the script distributors, by making it easier to target the script kiddies with embedded botnet software :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So they got exposed because they were acting like a bunch of children and taking no precautions?

Man, if people who don't know what they're doing are this successful, imagine what it means about people who are. And how any laws we make about computer security are just security theater.

<comment><USER33> When you talk about IT security with people with real secrets (governments), they talk about LulzSec-types being the "lowest risk" category of attackers.

The mid-risk category are the real professionals; they leave no trace, you never hear about them, you never know they were on your system, they just take your data and sell it.

The highest-risk category is true information warfare, targeted attacks by other governments and large entities. As the previous replier said, just look at Stuxnet. You don't have to be a government for this to be a real threat. Imagine if Nintendo had compromised Sony's servers, and somehow loaded corrupt firmware onto the Playstation update system...

These threats are real and constant, and anyone with sensitive data needs to be aware of them. Simply firing up iptables and disabling root SSH isn't sufficient - you need to be aware of the intricacies of your system on a day- to-day basis.

<comment><USER18> To be honest, if your opponent has a couple of million dollars or more to spend on hacking you, and you aren't willing to expend several multiples of that on defence, you should probably give up on the convenience of having your secret data on the internet and just have it encrypted on HDDs surrounded by handpicked armed guards who owe you a blood debt.

Computers and especially networks are just fundamentally insecure for the purposes of high-value information.

This is the same reason why internet voting will never be a good idea.

<comment><USER34> check this out: [http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html)

<comment><USER18> I'll see your 7 minutes of TED and raise you 60 minutes of Google TechTalks!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjmRwfkRXY>

Electronic and Internet Voting (The Threat of Internet Voting in Public Elections)

It goes into all sorts of electoral fraud, the finer points of designing elections from a hacker perspective, the diebold hacks, and that awful rails app that those students (?) wrote in the hopes of using it in some US local elections a while back.

In brief, that system isn't safe because someone can obtain your reciept and therefore your voting rights from you by coercion/incentives. Votes should never be verifiable, because then they can be bought. Vote reciepts would be pretty valuable...

<comment><USER35> They are already verifiable. You provide the seller with an absentee ballot, he or she fills it out, and then you exchange the completed ballot for the beer/cash/delicious pie.

<comment><USER18> True, but a crucial difference is that the cryptvoting allows verification after the fact, while absentee ballots must be verified in the window between the ballots being sent out and polling day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> what am I reading? anyone care to translate that?

<comment><USER37> Sure!

starts off with <Topiary> telling everyone to get off this network, ED IRC (it could be a server in their own network, but if that were the case their network would already be breached)

<pwnsauce> calls for a new operation (similar to how anon has various operations).

Then <Topiary> admits to hiring a botnet to help them.

<joepie91> chimes in, talking about an irc server exploit is basically killing his computer.

<storm> asks for an exploit, <lol> says he has it, but is scared to get it out and give it to him (meaning that, for all his "security knowledge" he still managed to get viruses on his stuff.

About half an hour later, <Topiary> insults a few people they want to crack, and mentions an apache 0 day exploit. The rest is them asserting their masculinity, and a mention of the gawker root.

oh, and then a message saying one of the guys is in FBI custody, but I assume that's not part of what you wanted translated.

<comment><USER38> ED almost certainly refers to <http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Get_On_IRC_Fgt> (usually semi-NSFW)

<comment><USER39> Thanks. This train wreck caught my eye this weekend and I can't, for the life of me, identify with these people. I am ambivalent about lulzsec's actions, but I understand both sides' issues. Not sure what to make of it, and I am trying to ignore it (simply failing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> whoops I guess you really are not anonymous on internet after all

<comment><USER4> It looks like they were just connecting to a private IRC server directly from their own machines. It is possible to remain reasonably anonymous online, but only if you take certain precautions.

<comment><USER41> But only as much as the other side doesn't take some even more extraordinary measure to locate you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> haha I think they pissed of the wrong people hacking FBI affiliates:p

Check this email, it's the USA looking to hack Libya's oil infrastructure: <http://pastebin.com/Jf406RVs>

I didn't know war got that advanced:)

<comment><USER43> One of these companies' names is Treadstone71, straight from the Bourne trilogy.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can we get a Who's Hiring College Grads (Month Year) started - <AUTHOR>

I don't know if HN already has a thread like this somewhere, but every month I see the who's hiring post, and after digging around in there most companies are looking for someone with 5+ or so years of work experience.  I think we need to have a who's hiring college grads/entry level post started every month.  Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> The current monthly job thread should be applicable to anyone that is interested in the positions listed (even if recruiter preferences go to 5+ years of experience candidates)

Don't be dissuaded by what recruiters often put as "minimum requirements" for the position; if you think you can do the job, see if you can connect with someone from the company for an inside referral and apply anyway

Now if you're looking for startups who typically don't follow standard recruiting procedures (i.e. may not immediately screen you out based on experience), www.startuply.com is a useful startup job listing</comment>


Profile of founders of Occupy Democrats, a meme page supporting leftist causes - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/us/politics/occupy-democrats-facebook.html <comment><AUTHOR> Original title was clickbait bingo card. It was:

How Immigrant Twin Brothers Are Beating Trump's Team on Facebook</comment>


"Arrington Has a Point" says offer provider - 10% satisfaction with mobile - jim-greer http://peanutlabs.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/survey-finds-arrington-has-a-point-given-choice-users-overwhelmingly-prefer-direct-payments-and-research-surveys-to-cpa-offers/

<comment><AUTHOR> _We conducted a research survey of 11,678 users over the weekend across our publisher network (~500+ applications) with sample representative of the US online population._

This is blatant selection bias - asking people who opt to take a survey rather than sign up for some offer whether they prefer surveys. I don't think this survey adds anything reliable to the social gaming discussion.

<comment><USER2> The article's second claim is incorrectly stated initially, but corrected further down the page.

"After conducting the survey, we looked at our respondent data on both offers and surveys completed within Peanut Labs. Interestingly, we found that all the users we surveyed complete at least twice as many market research surveys as offers. Users between 20 and 29 complete nearly 4.5 times as many research surveys as offers while users between 40 and 49 of both sexes complete over 7 times as many market research surveys as offers. The specific numbers on that are below."

Yes, these are people that took a research survey, but I think the numbers are striking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This witch hunt is getting ridiculous.

First of all, your headline is misleading. The article says: "Nearly 90% of users we surveyed were either unhappy _or neutral_ when it came to mobile advertising offers." Last I checked, neutral != dissatisfied. (Granted, the actual number if you look at the bar chart is still a whopping 70%)

But if you look at the other charts, it shows that users were somewhat more satisfied with the other, non-mobile based offers. If the entire industry was based on scamming people, customers would report 100% dissatisfaction across the board.

Plus, you can avoid offers entirely and just opt to pay for the virtual currency directly. Perhaps you think such users are foolish, but they're certainly not getting scammed.

None of this adds up to "The entire social gaming business is unethical and evil", as the TechCrunch article would have you believe.

<comment><USER4> _entire industry was based on scamming people, customers would report 100% dissatisfaction across the board_

Quite wrong. Scammed individuals are notoriously bad about reporting the scam, because it makes _them_ look bad for being scammed.

<comment><USER5> the problem is that you can't complain. Who do you talk to? Call the cops for getting scammed out of $10? Call the company? Which one? The game company? The phone company? The ad network?

<comment><USER6> This is where class action suits come in handy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can You Behave Randomly? - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.rhodes.edu/wetzel/random/intro.html

<comment><USER2> short answer yes with a maybe, long answer no with a but.</comment>


Ask HN: What's in your wardrobe/closet? - <AUTHOR>

Im asking this because I want to look presentable when I am going for interviews. I think it might also assist others, who are looking for jobs or starting new jobs.In particular it would be good to share the following.
-Recommended Colors for office wear
-Quantity of trousers,shirts , jeans e.t.c
-Shoe color - office wear
-Brands (Cost is important and Quality)
Feel free to share sites/links/hints and tips that might assist.
Thanks <comment><USER2> It depends very much on where you are interviewing. At one company I was at, it would be nice if you had a shirt on, and something longer than shorts when visitors were expected.

Before I visited another company, my host suggested that I also have dress socks on, rather than my normal wool socks.</comment>


Are we entering another bubble? - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidgildeh.com/blog/2012/04/20/are-we-entering-another-bubble

<comment><USER2> A bubble is made from more than insane valuations - it requires a thorough delusion about the inherent value of the asset-class that's the source of the bubble. In the dotcom bubble, anyone that did anything online was considered infinite revenue potential, even if they had no revenue and no business plan. In the mortgage bubble, no-one had the fantasy to imagine the real-estate market going down on the whole. The ratings agencies' worst-case scenario was zero-growth.

It's obvious in hindsight, but apparently it wasn't in the present.

While there are isolated instances of on-the-face bizarre valuations, such as Instagram or color.com, the prevailing actors in the market are actually making money.

In other words, if this bubble pops, who will loose out? Will it have catastrophic consequences for the economy at large?

<comment><USER3> _"In other words, if this bubble pops, who will loose out? Will it have catastrophic consequences for the economy at large?"_

Bubbles aren't defined solely by the extent of their damage post-pop. They're defined by the delta between bubble valuation and real value. In admittedly simplistic terms: the size of that delta, multiplied by the number of people who buy into it, usually dictates the impact of the burst.

Right now, we're arguably in the early stages of a bubble. Almost everyone admits that startup valuations, not to mention a few recent, high-profile IPOs (Groupon in particular) are inflated. Money is easy.

I'd argue that today's operative question isn't "by how much are valuations inflated," but rather, "how many people are buying into them?" And where will the contagion spread from here?

We have a few troubling indicators. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher are leaping into the angel and VC scene. I have nothing against Ashton Kutcher, but I do question his fundamental grasp of the technology business. And I wonder whether his sloshing easy money around the startup world is inherently constructive or destructive to rational valuations within that world. Furthermore, Ashton's just the tip of the iceberg. CAA, Hollywood's leading Hollywood talent agency, is launching a VC arm focused on tech companies. Precisely what a Hollywood talent agency understands about tech firms is anyone's guess -- but CAA has more money than God, is extremely well connected to investment banks and hedge funds, and could serve as a bridge to the general public's interest in tech equity. (We'll recall that the 1999-era bubble was marked by a similar influx of carpetbagging investors from outside the tech industry).

People often point out that the frothy tech startups of 2012 are fundamentally unlike the frothy tech startups of 1999, in as much as 1999's startups went IPO, and today's startups generally get acquired. This is fair. But in both cases, investment money became (is becoming) very easy and very loose. This leads to a propagation (and propping up) of fundamentally unsound startups. History indicates that, eventually, there can be so many bad apples in the batch that people stop being able to tell the good ones from the bad ones. That's when the trouble begins. We're not there yet, but why wait around and let it happen?

<comment><USER4> I agree with your point but I think using Ashton Kutcher as your example was misplaced. Ashton Kutcher has been investing for a while now and he also started a Biomedical Engineering degree before dropping out^, so I think his fundamental grasp of technology would be decent.

^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Kutcher#Early_life>

<comment><USER3> Ok, that's a fair counterpoint. I didn't mean to pick on Ashton specifically, but rather, to point out that others are following in his footsteps.

Also, on a side note: even though he'll never read this, I feel like I owe him a sincere apology for making a quick and general assumption about him. Seriously. More than happy to stand corrected about him personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone - a very wise, very successful someone - once provided a pretty good definition of a bubble. A bubble is when the fundamentals are right, but the timing is wrong.

For example, let's consider the most recent housing bubble. The housing bubble was predicated - at least in the beginning - on the fact that populations are growing, but land mass (and livable land mass, at that) remains constant. If we work under that assumption, land is at a premimum, and therefore _in the long term_, it can only go up. However, the problem is that too much happened too soon, and it created artificially high prices.

The tech bubble of the 90s was largely similar. It was a case where any retailer could chuck a .com at the end of their name and make millions. The fundamentals, however, were largely correct. I do almost ALL my big-ticket purchases online. Amazon's online retail presence is huge and pervasive.

I believe we MAY now be in an "information bubble." This isn't the .com bubble of yore. Rather it is a battle for your information. Facebook's got a nice chunk of it, as does Google. Instagram had a nice chunk of your photos. Essentially, information is at a premium right now. To what end? I suppose that remains the deciding factor on whether or not we are ACTUALLY in a bubble. If the information can be monetized then perhaps what we are seeing is simply the markets catching up to the tech trends. Eventually it will slow down - but that's entirely different from a "pop."

The alternative to the above is that people start to realize that the information isn't wholly reliable, and can not be converted (easily - for now) into revenue. In that case I'd expect there to be a correction at some point. But I think the fundamentals are sound. Information is the currency of the future - especially as we become more and more connected.

<comment><USER6> I think what you have is a handful of 800 pound gorillas who have successfully figured out how to monetise information hoovering up start ups for talent and information that they can plug into their own platforms & monetise. Everything else is perhaps feeding off that, so my bet would be, this all stops when someone ends up buying twitter, that might well be google, at that point everyone will be busy integrating all their new data into their existing products and attempting to monetise it.

My 2cents anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope so. Bubbles are _fun_

Seriously. Bubbles are where you get paid outlandish sums to program computers for a living. They're where your silly web startup gets bought for $40M for no particular reason. They're where you watch your stock portfolio double in six months, then double again four months later. A Bubble is truly a great time to be alive.

The important point is to recognize a Bubble for what it is and don't make the mistake of thinking you're actually as rich as you seem to be. Cash out frequently into things that are actually worth money, and don't go buying that $1.6M house that you can "afford" with all this "money" rolling in.

It'll stop rolling in soon enough. Then most of it will roll back out. And if you stay smart you will have had an absolutely great time of it.

At least that was my experience in the late 90's, quadrupling the salary, being "one year from retirement", then unquadrupling the salary and having a regular amount of savings and a regular looking stock portfolio. But while it was happening, it sure was good.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does it matter? Markets go up and down, rise and fall. Recently heard breast augmentation was a reliable indicator of market changes. Ultimately you want to make the most of crazy money while following key business fundamentals... Like being a going concern by making a profit.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is a Bubble in Bubble Predictions; Robert Shiller [http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/11/robert-shiller-on- the...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/11/robert-shiller-on-the-bubble- in-bubble-predictions/)

</comment><comment><USER10> A bubble occurs when people who shouldn't invest, invest and ultimately lose money.

Right now it's still just a bunch of rich guys investing, which won't effect the 99% when they lose money.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but the rich guys are LPs in VC funds next to institutional investors who get their money straight from QE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> People have been predicting tech bubbles since this website was called Startup News. Each large large investment/valuation/acquistion is grist to the mill. Eventually they will be correct.

</comment><comment><USER13> Every year since the original dot com bubble, there have been posts asking and speculating we're in a bubble. Yet the clocks keep ticking.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish.

I'd like to see salaries return to the pre-dotbomb days 10+ years ago.</comment>


Elon Musk warns: AI will make life meaningless - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2017/02/17/elon-musk-thinks-artificial-intelligence-will-destroy-the-meaning-of-life/amp/ <comment><USER2> Everytime I hear about what Elon Musk et al have to say about future AI, I think of Asimov's Multivac/AC in The Last Question.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually it could do the opposite, we assume that everyone wants to spend their lives doing boring, repetitive work that is better handled by machines. Who wouldn't rather have the resources to take the rock band on tour, or go mountain climbing or compete in surfing tournaments? Or make art or do pure scientific research?

<comment><USER4> The problem is when AI can make art and do pure scientific research. And play better music than you that people would rather go listen to.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly enough, the bands that I go to see are not the best musicians, they are the ones that entertain me. I'm not sure that AI will be able to do that for quite some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Video games. Problem solved.</comment>


Show HN: Blendful–Crowdfunding for Pesticide Testing on Your Favorite Foods - <AUTHOR> https://blendful.com
Hi everyone. I'm a technical founder who's built a MVP of a crowdfunding product intended to fund spectroanalysis testing on popular foods for contaminants, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
Right now food products are a sort of black box, and consumers don't really know what they're getting. I'm looking to elucidate those details.
Warmly looking for feedback and/or ideas if you find this useful. Also would be interested in partnerships/cofounders (biz dev/marketing help especially).
Thanks so much for reading! <comment><USER2> The word that you want to Google: Valisure.

Enjoy :) It's a lot easier to e.g. fundraise when you can demonstrate prior art and business models.

Might want to collaborate with some yoga places or Whole Foods-style hipster supermarkets. The "detox" crowd loves this sort of thing. (I will admit that the science of many hipster beliefs are not the most reliable but the market is definitely there) If you can successfully market to the Peloton/wannabe- health-conscious-middle-class homemaker crowd, I smell an unicorn in the making.

Another market is for people with allergies/autoimmune problems. It ranges from high tolerance conditions like e.g. mild enczema all the way to scorched- earth-intolerance where a single particle can trigger an allergy attack. This sort of crowd often have to watch what they eat and it can get troublesome if the food is not labeled properly.

If you want to discuss more, email's in profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this comment really made my day; it never fails to impress me how the goodwill of a stranger can seriously brighten up one's mood. Thank you. It's interesting to see Valisure succeed in a parallel manner.

I think I can figure out the product if I can build a small base of users. Have had some email submissions, so we'll see how far I can take it. Of course, building the initial users will be the most challenging.

Thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If this doesn't work I suggest pivoting to nutritional supplements.

There is a lot of uncertainty on the quality of products in that market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'm thinking about including that as well.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Review my weekend project: Meetings, a web-based chat & file share app - <AUTHOR>

Link to test: http://getmeetingsapp.com
Basically it is a web-based chat application, with private and public rooms and real-time file sharing.
It is currently in a half-arsed situation so needs lot of work but wanted to get some feedback from you.
Thanks
PS. I created a public room for feature requests, just in case: http://getmeetingsapp.com/rooms/4e7f64ea17ade37b71000002 <comment><USER2> I love it, has a very nice HipChat feel to it. No push notifications / etc, but the lower barrier to entry (no tedious signup or the like) makes it a great tool. Where's your privacy policy concerning created and deleted meeting rooms?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, really nice! I think there should be a way to remove a file once it is uploaded. Also, some notification if there are new messages.

But overall, looks great!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://getmeetingsapp.com/>

<comment><USER4> Public room clickable link: <http://getmeetingsapp.com/rooms/4e7f64ea17ade37b71000002>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the motivation for building this?

Interface looks pretty clean . . .

</comment><comment><USER6> a screenshot on the homepage would be nice.</comment>


Indiegogo Greek Bailout campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/greek-bailout-fund.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea...

I think it's great that someone is doing this, but with all due respect - 1.6bn € via crowdfunding???

Canonical tried to get 32m back in 2013 for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. Despite a promising start (> 1m in 5hrs), they failed to get more than 12.8m[1].

1.6bn / 12.8m = 125 Who is going to fund that?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> At first I thought it was some kind of joke, but I really doubt that they actually think that they'd be able to make it, unless the ECB gets an Indiegogo account =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Posted several times already, e.g., [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799959)</comment>


Jobs on the importance of saying "no" - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve-jobs-get-rid-of-the-crappy-stuff/

<comment><USER2> Seems it's a career-long motto of his. Here's my little story from when he told that to a room of record labels in 2003: [http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_defa...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/08/say_no_by_default.html)

==

In June of 2003, Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people.

My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do ___(x)___?", "Do you plan to add ___(y)___?".

Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes _could_ have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly.

Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features."

<comment><USER3> Funny that you mention iTunes, it's presumably completely off Steve's radar now. Just try right clicking on a song, see how clunky it is.

<comment><USER4> I guess you could say making iTunes less clunky was presumably one of the 1000 ideas he said no to so he could focus on the iPhone/iPad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost all company leaders are aware of the importance of design, simplicity, and usability. The problem isn't lack of information. They know about Apple products. They want to be Apple. But most of them never end up with a product or service that is like what they say.

I really do think good product design is all about the courage to follow through on obvious good ideas (like the article said). It's the thing business execs need to get through their skulls. The hard part isn't thinking of good ideas or innovating, it's discipline and courage. They all say they want simplicity and good design, but inevitably cave to deadlines, politics, and short-term financial decisions.

It's unbearably frustrating to watch in my company.

<comment><USER6> _They all say they want simplicity and good design, but inevitably cave to deadlines, politics, and short-term financial decisions._

This means their incentives aren't aligned with what's best for the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this quote by the sculptor Rodin: "I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."

</comment><comment><USER8> "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. _I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done._ "

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember reading a similar article about Linus Torvalds (saying no to the inclusion of much code in the Linux kernel codebase). The gist of the article was that he spends much more time rejecting new code than he spends actually coding. I can't seem to find the article now though...

</comment><comment><USER10> Me on the importance of not guiding your business thinking with buzz phrases. Apple's business is much more complicated than this saying 'no' bit (they and Dell built incredible supply chains).

As a counterpoint, there are tons of businesses who've said "yes" lots and have had great success: SalesForce, Oracle, IBM, GE, Microsoft, Google, Nike (yes, even if they though what Jobs said was smart).

I appreciate the article's highlighting of a particular management orientation, but this particular orientation is far from unique or broadly suitable. Know your product, know your market, know your team, know your capabilities and think deeply about how to compose all of those things into an ongoing, growing business concern. Then in 20 years, you'll be giving an interview about how you did it by focusing on the important of telling jokes or something.

</comment><comment> dorian-graph Reading this reminded me of some words from Henry David Thoreau:

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone."

</comment><comment><USER11> That's just one business model. Crap sells as well, with a lower margin but a higher volume.

<comment><USER12> We know it most commonly as the music business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title should read "Jobs on the importance of saying 'no'" - the apostrophe is incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER14> People seem to think St. Steve never makes mistakes... see Rockr phone, and Ping. Why didn't he say no? Or wait, it sucks.

<comment><USER15> Or the 'no radio' thing in ipods. One of my colleagues is convinced that a radio got into an ipod only because Jobs got really sick at the time and some sane, brave engineer just slipped it in while no-one was looking...

<comment><USER15> Actually, come to think of it, there's a distinct irony in Apple products. They hate cables, so everything is as wireless as possible... yet they don't do wireless things very well. They selected a bad telecom to launch their phone; by the time they were able to get a good vendor, they screwed the antenna; the ipods never had radio - the one 'wireless' that's been around for a century; the Airports really suck as access points... :)

<comment><USER16> the rf stuff is pretty complex from what I understand. I think the iphone has around 7 antennas in it (wifi, edge, 3g, gsm, etc). I somehow doubt 'just adding' another antenna is a trivial matter, an expert would probably be able to tell you better what it takes to balance quality/interference with so many radios in close proximity. From what I know about how they work, I'm guessing they've tried out all kinds of stuff including putting in a radio, and probably decided to cut it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is the $n-th iteration of that same article I've read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Jobs is right.

Lately too much relatively "crappy stuff" has been coming out of Google, and it's part of the reason Apple's brand just surpassed Google's, where it had been number one for the last 4 years.

Seth Godin warned Google about this 5 years ago, right when its brand was reaching the number one spot.

He said, "If you blow it too many times in a row, they won't care about Google anymore, and you'll be back to that slot" [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294#)).

Hopefully Page will reinvigorate things now that he's back at the helm.

</comment><comment><USER19> Jobs only puts one slide of words on the screen, and we always know what it is, "One more thing".

</comment><comment><USER20> Except to record companies.

</comment><comment><USER21> If this "essentialism" were to be consistent, I would assume there would be only one iPhone rather than what, five?

It's a model with merit, but it's not a holy thing that it sometimes is made out to be. It's still, rather obvious perhaps, subordinate to making profits.

<comment><USER22> Apple currently markets iPhone 4 and iPhone 3G. Compared to their competitors, some which have hundreds of available cell phone models, Apple's product lineup is extremely lean.

It's a way of doing business that's proven to be exceptionally successful. Not only in terms of profit but also creating products that ignite passion in consumers.

<comment><USER23> Another key aspect is that even major software updates tend to work reasonably well on previous generations of their devices. For instance, an iPhone 3GS can run the latest version of iOS, and Apple's one-year OS development cycle isn't obstructed by a carrier's two-year contract cycle.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud computing becomes a tradable commodity - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/02/computing_becomes_tradable_commodity

<comment><USER2> This is an idea I've been interested in for a while. The real benefits will occur when the equivalent of derivatives become common.

The clearest example is mapping a RAID server (multiple disk drives, with some technique for splitting up the data to achieve high reliability) into a contract backed by multiple cloud computing providers. A 3rd party company could sell high reliability contracts by buying up cheap low reliability contracts and applying a RAID technique.

Cloud providers and hardware companies could also look at the price curve of different types of performance/reliability contractts in long term options contracts (eg. 1 hour of 1Ghz processor delivered 18 months from today) to plan for future demand.

It's a bit dated now, but I once took a stab at writing this up when I was trying to pick a startup idea. Amazon S3 came out shortly after this was written and changed the assumptions considerably: <http://bit.ly/dWIpqC>

<comment><USER2> One other point should be made, though: creating an on demand market for network bandwidth was Enron's last spectacular flame out. They were trying to bring their expertise for trading electricity (which had caused serious problems in California) to the new big thing of the time: the internet.</comment></comment>


Are stand-ups (meetings) getting mainstream?  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577193460472598378.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

<comment><USER2> The first couple of times I was in a group that implemented daily standups, I was encouraged.. Seemed like it might increase operational awareness in a lightweight way. I was wrong. I think they're stupid.

The day-boundary is arbitrary. It encourages someone who gets stuck on something at 2pm to spend the rest of the day banging on it and bring it up tomorrow. Or, in better functioning teams, we deal with it at 2pm and the standups become irrelevant. That was what I found.. is that as a team lead I knew what everyone was doing before we met in the morning. Another popular tendency is to pull in PM, or maybe my boss.. but then I get to waste 6 people's time trying to communicate what's happening to them on a still- arbitrary schedule.

<comment><USER3> Arbitrary schedule and bad habits about wasting time on stupid problems aside, I'd agree that a standup for a well functioning, co-located dev team is largely going to be redundant.

The most value I've found in standups are when you have a cross functional team that can communicate status on different things to everyone all at once. BAs, QAs, devs, IM/PM, and product owners aren't all going to stay up to date with each other naturally on most teams.

Of course, if teams are working in very long iterations with out-of-cycle QA then each functional aspect of the team staying up to date with each other on a daily basis yields less value. Such a setup tends to bring about other problems in many scenarios though.

In the end it's all about context. To say a daily standup is a stupid practice without context (implying in any context) is a bit too broad of a statement IMHO.

<comment><USER2> Thing is:

1\. In general, I'd like to receive information asynchronously. Meetings should be for solving problems. They're a team-mutex, and mutexes should be avoided.

2\. Standups are generally by definition, not for solving problems.

<comment><USER3> Standups are good for both surfacing as well as identifying problems (e.g. things that don't appear to be problems).

Standups aside, sure, ssync information is good. However, it's not nearly as rich as face to face communication.

I'm not sure why you say meetings should be for solving problems. The majority of my meetings are about sharing information and planning. I solve problems at my desk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why interrupt what people are doing to organise a "meeting" that consists entirely of content that is much better read directly from a collaborative project management/issue tracking tool?

A meeting may only be 10 minutes long but the loss of productivity is likely going to be significantly higher. Employees will need to page out[1][2] what they've been working on -- a very expensive process.

Managers should be ensuring that employees have quick and easy access to information of relevance on demand, rather than on an arbitrary time scale. Issue tracking software (web based for simplicity) allows teams to view and contribute to the big picture at a time that works best for each employee. These systems require full time staff to actively maintain them. Typical duties could include sorting and filtering information (via way of updating fields on an issue), creating links between issues to aid planning and discoverability, correcting mistakes, ensuring consistency and monitoring usage to implement improvements (particularly simplifying and automating the system).

This isn't a disguised plea for ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems because it focuses on the users (employees) getting their work done -- not rigid and inflexible processes for the sake of standards compliance. Most quality management approaches I've come across fail because they are burdensome to getting real work done. They're not user friendly. They're typically rigid and deterministic in design where the actual work is flexible and probabilistic. Users are left wondering how their use of the system actually helps the project -- there is no clear link. Tedious manual work is required where an automated approach could be implemented. The systems become too complex for anyone to comprehend. Coming back to the paging[1][2] analogy, users run out of working memory before they get a chance to input or retrieve data to/from the system -- it's all wasted on deciding[3] which button from 50 needs to be pressed.

Human interaction factors and cognitive science are crucial to this discussion. It is disappointing to read that many companies are blindly accepting stand-up meetings as common practice without consideration to the well established science behind organisational communication/teamwork.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97953> [2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory> [3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue>

</comment><comment><USER5> After a few weeks of daily meetings, even brief ones, the quality of information being communicated really decreases.

I've had better results where: A) frequency of team meetings increases as deadlines get closer, going from once per week to 2x per day if needed. B) every day managers spend 5-10 minutes of 1-on-1 time with each team member actually inspecting their work.

</comment><comment> X-Istence The startup I currently work for uses stand-up scrum's in the morning to discuss what one has crushed the day before (completed items) and what one is going to crush today. This is also the time to explain to the various different teams (Android/Java API, C++ api, server/backend) what you changed, what things they need you to be aware of and what requires more meetings and or having a time where a switch-over is required do to changing something that touches all teams or some of the teams. For example, letting the other teams know that DNS entries now server ULA IPv6 addresses as well as IPv4 addresses and they should probably do testing to verify everything still functions.

It works for us, although sometimes the meetings can be a drag when the day before you spent a lot of time in meetings and you don't have a lot of input. It is one way of kinda putting you on the spot if you aren't producing anything which keeps people accountable.

</comment><comment><USER6> The idea of stand-ups seems to stem from agile and development houses, but we network/unix admins have daily stand-up meetings with developers/operations too. We chat about what we did last 24, and what we want to do next 24, and if there are any issues we need help with. Helps to iron out any road blocks. I was really hesitant as first, and I think the group as a whole looked down on the idea, but it had really turned things around, and we are working much better as a team. Occasionally we go off on tangents, but it's nice to know what people are working on, and keeps people from slacking off when you're waiting for something.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do any larger companies (Google, Apple, etc) implement stand-ups? I'm curious to know if this is being adopted by companies with larger staff numbers.

<comment><USER8> Most teams that I know of at Amazon do. The 2 teams I have been on aren't so strict about the whole "you MUST stand up" part though.

<comment><USER9> While I was working at a completely unrelated company that started off as a book store and turned into a global online retailer and PaaS provider there was a period of several months when my team was doing standups every day of around a dozen people (devs, test, mgmt) which tended to last anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I worked for a company that forced me to go to "stand-ups", I probably wouldn't contribute much to the meeting. As it is, I hate these sorts of meetings.

This just makes it worse.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a "brute force" way to get people to communicate on a team.</comment>


Novel Anti-Inflammatory High-CBD Cannabis Modulate ACE2 Expression in Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0315/v1 <comment><USER2> I love some of the comments underneath. One example:

" Just a couple puffs. Downregulate it and then another couple. Get those receptors down. Seems like a good idea to me. Take a 'nother couple puffs, and see what it do to your Aces. Read 'em and weep."

</comment><comment><USER3> "Working under the Health Canada research license, we have developed over 800 new Cannabis sativa lines and extracts and hypothesized that high-CBD C. sativa extracts may be used to modulate ACE2 expression in COVID-19 target tissues. Screening C. sativa extracts using artificial human 3D models of oral, airway, and intestinal tissues, we identified 13 high CBD C. sativa extracts that modulate ACE2 gene expression and ACE2 protein levels."

Sounds like it hasn't been tested except in a computer model.

<comment><USER4> I don't know enough about this to say for sure, but ACE2 receptors are at the molecular scale, and them saying "3D models of oral, airway, and intestinal tissues" seems to suggest if this is a computer simulation, then the simulation scale is large. I don't think they can capture molecular dynamics as well as large scale effects at the same time.

edit: yeah. if you read the paper, they got some human models (real clumps of cells) from some biotech company and ran tests on it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Curriculum ideas for teaching programming to middle school kids - <AUTHOR> Hey HN! I have plans to teach a 10-week, one-hour-a-week course to a group of kids in the 10-16 age range. These kids come from a poorer urban background and likely have no exposure to programming at all. I have some ideas for course content (discussed below), but I've never done anything like this before, so I have no idea if they're good ideas or not. I'd love to hear the thoughts of you all on what would work well, and I'd especially love to hear the stories of what worked well people who have done similar things before.
None of my plans are set in stone yet, but my general plan is to make the course as interactive and fun as possible. There was a thread recently[0] discussing Robotopia, which I like the premise behind. I'm not sure if it's quite polished enough yet to be used. I'm heavily considering using either the offline or online version of Scratch[1] but don't know quite what direction I'd go with it. I also saw there are minecraft related programming lessons[2] which sounds really neat, but I haven't looked at this in depth yet.
Anyway, I could list more tools out there, but most importantly, hearing what has and hasn't worked well when working with kids would be great!
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043519
[1]: https://scratch.mit.edu/
[2]: https://code.org/minecraft <comment><USER2> Teach them Python by building a game in PyGame?

<comment><USER3> Yeah Python is great for beginners I think. List of introductory books: [https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks](https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks)

Some written specifically for children. Don't know much about them, but they're worth looking into.

[https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/python- proj...](https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/python-projects- kids)

[https://www.nostarch.com/pythonforkids](https://www.nostarch.com/pythonforkids)

[https://www.manning.com/books/hello- world](https://www.manning.com/books/hello-world)

[https://www.nostarch.com/teachkids](https://www.nostarch.com/teachkids)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Oberon to LuaJIT bytecode compiler and IDE with source level debugger - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I just released an Oberon IDE with a validating Oberon-07 to LuaJIT bytecode compiler and source level debugger. Here are two screenshots: [http://software.rochus- keller.info/screenshot_oberon_system_...](http://software.rochus- keller.info/screenshot_oberon_system_in_debugger.png) and [http://software.rochus- keller.info/screenshot_oberon_ide_0.5...](http://software.rochus- keller.info/screenshot_oberon_ide_0.5.1.png). You can download a complete Windows binary from here: [http://software.rochus- keller.info/OberonIDE_win32.zip](http://software.rochus- keller.info/OberonIDE_win32.zip).

As you might know from my previous posts I'm interested in re-using LuaJIT (see [http://luajit.org/](http://luajit.org/) ) as a runtime environment for strictly/statically typed languages (and later as a HDL simulation engine). As proof-of-concept I have written a validating Oberon-07 compiler that directly generates LuaJIT bytecode (before that I had already written a transpiler that generates Lua source code). Oberon has proved to be very suitable for this project because it is not a complex language but still powerful enough to demonstrate the feasibility.

As a test case for the compiler I have created a version of the Oberon System (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_\(operating_system\)) ) which runs stand-alone on the LuaJIT VM using a Qt based backend instead of the original Oberon System inner modules. Note that this is a prototype and still work in progress. I developed the IDE for this purpose, but it should also be suitable for other projects (but don't expect all features of a full fledged IDE like MS VisualStudio). The IDE and compiler are implemented in C++ using Qt.

See [https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon](https://github.com/rochus- keller/Oberon), [https://github.com/rochus- keller/LjTools](https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools) and [https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem](https://github.com/rochus- keller/OberonSystem) for more information.</comment>


[Hiring] Ruby on Rails Developer - <AUTHOR>

At SciMed Solutions, located in downtown Durham, NC, we are passionate about building software in the medical, scientific, and academic communities. Our work has enabled our clients to make a difference in vaccine discovery, cancer treatment, energy- efficient building construction, and social change. We are looking for someone equally passionate as well as self-motivated, disciplined, driven, a decision-maker, and a team player. We want employees who are not solely driven by personal success, but are invested in the team's success.<p>About the Position
 Although this position is for a Ruby on Rails developer, Ruby experience is not required. If you have a 4 year degree, are a talented coder, can work quickly, and work across multiple technologies and projects, we'll train you on Ruby. Experience or understanding of Agile development, experience in coding technologies such as PHP, Python, Perl, .NET, JSP, XML, JavaScript, or AJAX are a plus. The best applicants will bring valuable skills beyond computer science and software engineering.   We strive to find the best fit for every employee and value personal growth. If you are interested in working in an environment of accuracy, teamwork, openness, respect, and would like to limit your work week to 40 hours, apply today. Read more details at http://www.scimedsolutions.com/employment-opportunities. Send your resume and cover letter to email@example.com. <comment><USER2> Off site considered?</comment>


Facebook: Give us your credit card and pals' addresses as GIFTS - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/16/facebook_gifts_relaunch/ <comment><AUTHOR> Roll out was a huge event in NYC, very cool that Microsoft, Google and FB have all chosen the city to do their big rollouts now. Still a bit worried about FB shifting focus from communication to Ecom, pushing product instead of communication.</comment>


The Most Abandoned Books on GoodReads (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/GoodReads <comment><USER2> Speaking as a working author, Goodreads is a dumpster fire. One author of my acquaintance has been the victim of someone who has created at least six fake accounts in her name (taking her name and profile pics), in an attempt to trash her reputation; I've got off relatively lightly, but I've had one-star reviews posted of books of mine ... which aren't actually written yet, so these are basically fakes.

Goodreads reaction to complaints by (verified) authors about this sort of abuse is to deny all responsibility. So there's zero curation going on there.

(As to the list of abandoned reads, it's not surprising that the top five by ranking are all major bestsellers: and the shrunken, posterior proportions are for books with a difficult literary style to grapple with -- in other words, they're not easy reading. Between "hard to read" and "massive bestsellers, but require a reading age >12" we basically cover the obvious bases. I'd have liked to see some analysis of abandonment rate normalized for reading complexity, but that's hard to characterize ...)

<comment><USER3> Goodreads was far more useful before it became a part of Amazon, though maybe it was declining before that -- I guess before it got too popular. Much like imdb. Where once I found both useful, nowadays I don't ever bother except maybe after reading something where I am diametrically opposed to the universe and reviews. :)

I never quite figured out what changed -- whether it was gaming and abuse, Amazon buying and caring only about more sales, or simply no longer disproportionately early adopting geeks (inc me!). All I know is neither goodreads or imdb are the slightest use in deciding if I might enjoy something, where once they had been, and in its earliest days (when you downloaded db and client) imdb was almost frighteningly, telepathically good.

<comment><USER4> For GR or any other online review site, my experience is that they are useful if you read the negative reviews. A one-star (or two-star or three-star) review which complains about things which I, on the other hand, like, is reliable.

The actual star rating is not reliable, on GR or anywhere else on the internet in my experience.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if the incentives are there for goodread, but be aware that online sellers, at for instance amazon, have gamed this method as well.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that GoodReads is one of the most gamed review sites on the Internet.

Amazon has a concept of Influencer Reviewers, but they should almost immediately recognize this as bs. I've never met anyone who actually cares about a general product critic. Amazon isn't niche, so even if there is, say, some guy who reviews protein powders on Amazon, and you're really into protein powders... The odds of you finding this person are low, and since Amazon isn't designed in anyway for you to interact with this person, and find more content about protein powders, nutrition, fitness, etc -- it makes no sense for you to follow this person on Amazon.

Certainly, there are some influencer reviewers with genuine followers. But this should be an exception to the rule.

GoodReads on the other hand is a place that lends itself to an influencer. So it's much more difficult to tell who's posting real reviews and who's posting bullshit that's being liked by bots and then added to the first review most people see, and then just getting liked a lot because it's first -- not because it's any good.

Further, GoodReads is actually like the 8th biggest social network in the world and one of the most heavily trafficked websites online. These influencers can actually get a lot of eyeballs, but GoodReads provides almost no way for influencers to make money -- like YouTube, Pinterest, or even Instagram do (most Instagram influencers post ads almost exclusively now).

So GoodReads influencers have to get more creative and extortive to make any money.

Further, this problem is compounded because people don't finish books they don't like. Everyone watches plenty of TV and movies they don't like throughout the year, so they rate these on IMDB or wherever. They like reviews that are bad. This happens much less frequently on GoodReads. If you're an influencer, you learn very quickly that any negative review is unlikely to make the front page. And if you're trying to grow your following, that's all you really care about. So you need to post a ton of 5 star reviews. Well, books take a long time to read. I highly doubt these influencers have time to rate and write a review and make a video about their review for a novel every or two or three a day. Yet, they do. So the majority of these have to be fake just based on obvious time constraints.

<comment><USER7> > Amazon isn't designed in anyway for you to interact with this person

Amazon used to have more social features a decade ago: you could follow reviewers and talk with them, and there were message boards for the book-, music- or film-lover community as a whole. However, that functionality was gradually hidden on the site or outright removed. Apparently Amazon felt supporting it was too expensive and it didn't appreciably increase sales, and for books it was made redundant after Amazon's purchase of Goodreads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hah, Gravity's Rainbow _definitely_ belongs on that list.

I tried to read it. Really, really tried. For my head it's utterly unreadable. Had to give up after ~30 pages.

The writing flow and style of that book can be best described as "long-winded, over-extended, bloated and bloviating, rejected entry to Bulwer-Lytton contest".

<comment><USER9> I love all kinds of weird humor but I could never get into _POSTMODERN ZANINESS!_ a la Pynchon or David Foster Wallace. It's too all-over-the-place for me, and it honestly strikes me as mean-spirited.

I also like writing that is clean, pure, poetic and emotionally authentic. I feel like some of those authors (I'm looking at you, Wallace) are outsiders sniping at mainstream culture with hipster snobbishness. I used to sorta be that way, but I can't relate to that anymore.

<comment><USER10> Pynchon and DFW were convinced that that zaniness was the right direction for new fiction, led by John Barth (Giles Goat-Boy) and Donald Barthelme (Sixty Stories.) The stuff is ... not a lot of fun.

I think folks like Martin Amis did it a lot more entertainingly, though the self-aware sophistication is (sigh) a lot to bear.

Where DFW embodies the virtues you admire is his non-fiction -- Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I think are fascinating expositions into just how far down you have to dig to get at the emotionally authentic.

As for his fiction, I don't think he lived long enough to get all his sophomoric ideas out and get to material that actually mattered to him.

<comment><USER11> Couldn't agree more, Consider the Lobster is beautifully written and completely captivating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Um sorry but I really liked Dhalgren and Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest. I may actually use this list to find some new books to read.

<comment><USER13> Could you possibly explain the _point_ of Infinite Jest? I got through about.. 40% or so. The incessant tennis wore me out.

<comment><USER14> I have read it. There is no "point" in it, as with any other novel. It is a huge style exercise by a gifted writer, as far as I can see. I gather lots of chapters are autobiographical or nearly so.

The book is obviously too long and it becomes boring at places but there are certainly extraordinary passages (in style and in feeling). But as with Wagner's operas, delight comes at a price.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. The "point" is enjoying it. If you enjoy it, it hardly matters what it's about or trying to say, and vice versa. I enjoyed it, so that's why I kept reading and rated it 5 stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I also consider a model adjusting for covariates (author/average- rating/year), to see what books are most surprisingly often-abandoned given their pedigrees & rating etc."

Infinite Jest? Surprising? Have you actually tried _reading_ that bloated example of The MFA Guy's Novel?

I also find myself wondering if American Gods would be #3 on the first version of this list if it had been compiled before the TV show version of that book.

<comment><USER16> I read and liked Infinite Jest, yes. But you are missing the point, and you are making the error which is why I spent several paragraphs discussing what it means to 'control for' something by adding it as a covariate in a model. No one is surprised that IJ is often abandoned, either in absolute or proportional; but it is more surprising that the model is surprised by IJ's abandonment rates even after taking into account that it's by DFW and its current star-ratings and when it was published.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure Infinite Jest has a certain type of people to like it though, it isn't "missing a point", it's personal preference.

<comment><USER18> I think gwern is saying that the parent post is missing the point of the "surprising" metric, not missing the point of Infinite Jest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I laughed when I saw this list -- I've abandoned both American Gods and Catch-22 at some point. Technically I also abandoned The Glass Bead Game, but I don't think that counts since I was like 14 or something. (Someone had given it to my mother. I'm pretty sure she started and then abandoned it though.)

</comment><comment><USER20> Glad I'm not the only one with Catch-22. A great book but could have been 1/3 the length; after a while it's all the same thing over and over and I only finished it because I had nothing else to read and just wanted to see if it had any ending (not happy about it either). I get that the repetition may have been done on purpose as literary artifice to reflect war or whatever, just found it too long and stretching the gimmicks.

<comment><USER21> I nearly abandoned it, but somehow slodged on, and on finishing it, it suddenly became my favourite book (much to my surprise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Borges once wrote something about his father's library. As a boy, his father told him that he was allowed to read anything he wanted from his vast library, on one condition: that if he found himself reading something he wasn't interested in, he should immediately put it back rather than try to finish it.

This is a liberating perspective that I try, and fail, to maintain. If I abandon a book it's no failing on my part, it's a sensible reallocation of my time based on improved information. Continuing to read something you don't want to read, just because you started it, is a terrible dunk cost fallacy.

<comment><USER3> I generally try and stick to that perspective. I have no reluctance to just stop when I've lost hope it's worth continuing, or I'm not enjoying something. There's been a few I came back to years later and have been very glad I did. Or with more recent works where trilogies are more common, stop when it's clear the second isn't a patch on a promising first. My exception more than validated that I should never feel I "must" finish, that makes just stopping quite easy now.

The only exception I can think of turned out to be an exercise in extreme foolishness (and a little ignorance), that turned into bloody minded penance to finish _the set_ come what may. Love Arthur C Clarke, loved Rendezvous with Rama, it really deserved a great continuation. Read Rama 2 and it was slow, plodding and amateurish whilst being a mostly terrible follow-on that ignored most of what was in the original. OK, even Arthur's allowed a dud, it _has_ to get better.

Garden of Rama was far, far worse, plot so weak you cringe, bullshit characterisation and even the science was awful. Probably the worst book I have ever read, bar none. Wife assures me the only times I have had a habit of muttering or yelling at books were Rama 3 and 4, probably to "fucking get on with it", maybe to make sense. No detectable trace of Clarke in 3 whatsoever.

Fool that I am, I tried again with Rama Revealed. 400 pages of badly imagined, plotless, garbage science rambling, that's taxonomy and biology of alien spiders and essentially nothing else, followed by "oh shit, almost out of pages, better figure out a point to this drivel", so immediate pace and plot change to 50 odd of pages of a weak, cliched, poorly imagined wrap up of the "why" of all 4. Entirely predictable cliche as ending. Second worst book ever. So carrying on for 2.5 books was pointless self-torture.

Eventually found out, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere (it's tucked away on Lee's Wikipedia page, or was), that Clarke revealed he contributed only some ideas, Lee did all the atrocious writing on 2-4. Clarke on the cover is an outright con. Reread Rendezvous to cleanse my soul.

Live and learn, and oh boy did I learn. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The only book I've abandoned was Naked Lunch. I've enjoyed some slog books like Infinite Jest which the article mentioned, I enjoy shocking fiction and films, but something about that book cut to the quick of my imagination and just freaking grossed me out. I couldn't power through it.

I still think about finishing it one day. The thought of it won't leave me alone and it's been years now. To many other books to read though, and time is scarce!

<comment><USER24> I've read The Naked Lunch. The first 10-20 pages are an interesting window into a different world, and the writing style really grabbed me. Then it gets incredibly repetitive and boring. Don't feel bad about not finishing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are a lot of nonfiction books where I expect the data would show me as having abandoned it, but really I think the books are just too long. Popularizations of scientific research fit this category very well -- halfway into most of them I'm pretty convinced I've gotten everything out of them already.

<comment><USER26> That's the way I felt when I read The Blind Watchmaker. I was thinking, _alright, alright, I get it already..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Funny thing, reading books. There are many that I read at one time and enjoyed. Today, I look at them again and wonder how I got through them. Would I _still_ read _all_ of Godel, Escher, Bach? Ehhh... The clock keeps ticking.

That was before internet. It completely changed my reading habits. There was a (surprisingly) huge backlog of non-fiction things I wanted to know more about. Books about history, for example, were always a snooze; that changed when I was able to pick the creator, exact era, topic and dosage. Reading about places? Nah. Watching videos about them? Yes. How long will mortals enjoy such powers?

A few living authors still have the power to pull me in just by publishing. But one or two books I bought years ago are still waiting - pre-abandoned?

</comment><comment><USER28> I find myself reading a lot of fantasy, and I use GR to track the reading that I do. I have to be honest, I find it really useful, especially if you are undecided as to whether you want to purchase a particular book or not.

The negative reviews (1 or 2 star reviews) will often highlight the parts of the book that the reviewer did not like, and that is often something that determines whether or not I purchase the book or not.

</comment><comment><USER29> I had actually abandoned the Glass Bead game, but enjoyed Demian and others. I read half and didn't see it going anywhere interesting.

<comment><USER30> I was so excited to read Glass Bead Game. I waited till the end, having read most of Hesse's other major works before tackling his magnum opus. I was so disappointed in it, and I too put it down. Part of me wonders if something was lost in translation with that work.

<comment><USER31> No, it's bad in German too. Millions of German high school students read the other Hesse books but nobody finishes Glassperlenspiel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wouldn't the least abandoned books be more useful?

<comment><USER4> If a book is almost never abandoned, that might only indicate that it is short, or really easy, neither of which are hard to tell from a few seconds inspection. This tells you something you might not otherwise know from a few seconds' inspection.

<comment><USER33> I imagine the least abandoned would be something that comes late in a series (or at least from an author with many similar books), where basically everyone who picks it up already knows that they will like it (those who don't were filtered out by the earlier books).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very cool application of math. Wish there were more than just the top 5. Maybe a link to a page with more listings?

<comment><USER16> Here you go: [https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2020-01-05-goodreads- book...](https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2020-01-05-goodreads-bookshelf- abandoned-posteriorproportions.csv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is unsurprising, the target audiences for Harry Potter and grim social realism probably don't overlap so much

<comment><USER36> I don't know about that, considering the success of Harry Potter the target audience seems to be almost everyone.

<comment><USER37> Eh - I'm not sure the type of intellectual who I'd guess is the target audience for 'Gravity's Rainbow' or 'The Three Body Problem' are not the types to be highly enthusiastic about Harry Potter.

Just like someone who is into some of the best/most intellectually challenging Anime probably wouldn't be all that impressed by The Simpsons.

<comment><USER36> Someone who appreciates the subtle, carefully crafted humor of the early Simpsons wouldn't be interested in Anime. I can engage in silly media elitism too.

My point is, you don't make something as successful as Harry Potter or the Simpsons without making some smart decisions and appealing to at least a few very intelligent people.

<comment><USER38> No, you can pretty much make successful things without that. The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies, for example. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series sold 160 million copies over 11 books: James Patterson's Maximum Ride books sold 30 million over 8. Neither of the latter have had anywhere near the media blitz Rowling has had. The goosebumps series in told sold a staggering 400 million copies over its length.

Its frustrating because in general these big doorstopper books are usually really bad at kid lit. Harry Potter honestly can't hold a candle to books like Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey, or Barbary by Vonda MacIntyre. John Christopher in particular wrote these tiny books that are just master classes in economy; The White Mountains and The Lotos Caves stuck with me for decades. William Sleator managed to do actual intelligent SF for kids, with even some horror to it...something like Interstellar Pig is really surprising even as an adult. Joan Aiken really is a wonderful author too.

Its just stuff like potter gets relentlessly pushed and snowballs a lot. There's a lot more of the hive mind instinct that we think, at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Somewhat orthogonal, I've never been so disappointed by a follow up work than I have with Marlon James; from Brief History of Seven Killings to Black Leopard Red Wolf (the most abandoned book on the "to" list). Seems I'm not alone in this feeling!

<comment><USER39> About a week ago I put down "Black Leopard Red Wolf" after a few hundred pages and absolutely little desire to continue slogging through it. So when I saw the book on this list and blog post mentioned often throughout - ha. I had to chuckle.

As many others have said before, I'm sure there's an argument for it being an objectively great book, but for me it just did absolutely nothing.

I learned a long time ago that there was no shame in stopping when you realize you get no enjoyment from reading a book. I have no problem writing off that sunk cost.

<comment><USER30> Have you read BHo7K? If so, what did you think? If not -- read it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think page/word count would have been an interesting covariate to investigate.

</comment><comment><USER41> Heartbroken to see "I Am A Cat" on there. Granted, it's probably too fanciful for many (and a lot gets lost in translation) but Soseki is one author I'd like to see get more attention in the West.

</comment><comment><USER42> The website itself is also interesting, with informative content and minimalist aesthetics. The link previews on hover are particularly interesting, similar to the Wikipedia one. What's the tech stack behind?

<comment><USER43> The popups are really cool - I don't think I'd realised before that it's for more than just Wikipedia. The Amazon previews are great.

I know nothing about design/typography, but I find it easier to read sites that are more spaced out, use sans-serif fonts, and have colours. I think the site looks beautiful (especially the drop caps!) but I wouldn't call it minimalist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Not surprised Space Opera was on the list. Hated it, and only finished it because I was hoping that eventually the style would settle down and the book would improve. It didn't.

<comment><USER45> IMHO Space Opera got way better as it went on.

The first 1/4th or even 1/3rd is just not good.

Once it gets to the actual aliens though, some amazing ideas. First time in awhile I've felt that the aliens were really alien, some great ideas in there.

FWIW I listened to the audio book version, the reading of it was rather nice and added to the humor.

<comment><USER44> Yeah that was why I stuck with it - there were some good ideas buried in there.

I'm quite happy to endure thin characters, wooden dialogue and clunky prose (hi Asimov and PKD) if the ideas are good. But the tone of this one was trying too hard. Just wanted it to settle down and tell a decent story.

<comment><USER45> The book is trying really hard to be the next Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy.

Trying a bit too hard at times.

I honestly think another few manuscript revisions, and a pass or two from a brutal editor, and it might have ended up there.

But as it is.. parts of the book just aren't good. Which is sad because some parts are great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> That website design is quite irritating. Reminds me of 1990s web pages, only in monochrome.

<comment><USER47> > That website design is quite irritating

How so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is a great lesson in "knowing your data" vs. "creating a model". The validity of the generated model is tainted by the GIGO principle. Said another way, modeling bad data will get you bad models.

I see this shockingly often in my professional life. A data scientist will spend days, weeks, or months building a "perfect" model which replicates unclean, biased, or bad data. And when they are done, it gets thrown away because it cannot solve any real world problem.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you evaluate an equity opportunity? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a tech cofounder for multiple web and mobile app projects. B2B and B2C. What is the criteria that top developers use to decide whether they join a startup? <comment><USER2> Hi, I developed a model for equity sharing called a Grunt Fund. It makes sure everyone gets a share that is proportionate to what they contribute. The book is on amazon.com, it's called Slicing Pie (mike moyer)

<comment><AUTHOR> that'll probably be helpful once I have potential cofounders in place. I need help identifying and soliciting candidates first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Same as they would for any other company.</comment>


Google Voice Invites going out now - <AUTHOR>

Although still invite only, after submitting a request on Google Voice's website, people are now being sent invites; I requested one two days ago and got an official invite today. Go get yours! <comment><USER2> Well, I requested to be notified / receive and invitation, some time ago. When the launch seemed to be beginning, I checked the site and made another request. Still no invite. So... once again, Google seems to be taking a haphazard approach to fulfillment. (Or they just don't like me.)

This, despite pointing out a few recent flaws to them in other areas; one eliciting a direct response of "thanks" and an immediate correction (it was high visibility).

Voice has a feature set that will be useful to me. I'll get in eventually. But I wish Google would pay a bit more attention to prioritizing customer requests vis à vis chronology and also reciprocity.

Then again, maybe I should be comforted that they don't show more interest in me. ;-) And here I am, about to "give" them my phone line.

Anyway, Googlers, can't you get more invites to those who've shown the most / earliest interest?</comment>


Live Texturing of Augmented Reality Characters from Colored Drawings - <AUTHOR> http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/live-texturing-of-augmented-reality-characters/ <comment><USER2> In case you want to try a slightly less fancy version of this Crayola has one available called "Color Alive." No procedural filling or live scribbling, but it's the same idea, and kids will probably have fun with it.

[http://www.crayola.com/splash/promos/ColorAliveDragon](http://www.crayola.com/splash/promos/ColorAliveDragon)

<comment><USER3> Also see Creativas - [http://www.theCreativas.com](http://www.theCreativas.com) / [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv51Fxr68ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv51Fxr68ic) . (Disclosure: I worked on this)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which realisation changed your view of the world, but seems trivial now? - <AUTHOR> As soon as you understood something, it does not seem complex anymore. But before you understood it, it was a mystery. So what is it that you now think is obvious but where others (in particular, your former self) struggle with? <comment><AUTHOR> For me it was the finding that mathematics is quite arbitrary. There is no deeper meaning in using functions, sets or logic, it just seems to work. These still are just models of the world for us.

</comment><comment><USER2> I use to think the law was followed to a T in courts.

I experienced cases where I saw words bent to reach an objective despite what the law said.</comment>