Is Bitcoin vulnerable to a "bank run"? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/peter/is-bitcoin-vulnerable-to-a-bank-run-8g6 <comment><USER2> TL;DR. A lack of demand at the peak price causes the price to drop, potential buyers stay out hoping for a better "bargain"

This is basic economics

</comment><comment><USER3> No, there is no bank involved. People can try to sell, but you need buyers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, you are right</comment>


I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jan/24/wilderness-solo-splendid-isolation-stopped-time-sitting-in-a-forest-24-hours <comment><USER2> In a similar spirit, I was reading a few months back how we are ruining today's children's imagination by keeping them busy every waking moment. The problem (psychologists discussed) was that kids need to be bored, and once they get bored they start day dreaming ([https://www.parent.com/5-surprising- benefits-of-letting-your...](https://www.parent.com/5-surprising-benefits-of- letting-your-children-get-bored/))

I started my journey to minimalism a year ago, that gave me time to get "bored", be and feel less busy, meditate more, focus more, and I could find new aspects of myself; boredom helped.

The article writes at some point: '..and thereby slowing your mind.." I found this very liberating at yoga classes, where the savasana in the end of the sessions is combined with guided meditation or with just complete silence. Let the river if the mind Carey away the thoughts and the void/silence that will exist will be the best tool for the brain.

<comment><USER3> Too much boredom can breed depression.

<comment><USER4> I would suspect most people are nowhere close to that amount of boredom in an age when down time is always filled by looking at a screen.

<comment><USER5> The screen may arguably be more likely to cause depression

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Part of me wonders how much of the author's sense of sublime isolation came from getting away from his small children for a whole day :)

If you live across the pond in the US and have a free weekend, it's pretty easy to do this sort of thing here, too.

Many national forests and lands administered by the BLM allow 'dispersed camping' in the wilderness. You're encouraged to use existing sites along forest roads, but the rules are usually pretty loose. Search engines don't do a great job of indexing the USFS or BLM websites, so you might have to poke around a bit to find a 'camping information' page for the area that you're interested in. But you can find some basic information here:

[https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping](https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping)

Sadly, it's not all roses and sunshine. The author got told that he technically needed a permit to be in the part of the wilderness that he stumbled into, and you'll probably get some of that if you spend much time in BLM lands. People throw up false 'private property' signs and gates all the time, and those sorts of people tend to have the 'Cliven Bundy' sort of attitude that they have more of a right to public lands than others. There's no arguing about land usage with someone who points a gun towards you.

We also see the sort of aristocratic land grabs that he mentioned here; there are a lot of BLM lands which are now surrounded by private property, and those property owners are not required to provide access to the public lands which they surround. It essentially cedes "multi-use" public lands to the people/companies who own the properties around them.

It's too bad we don't have a right-to-roam in the US. It seems like the sort of thing that would fit in with the ostensible national ethos of freedom and independence.

<comment> pi-rat > It's too bad we don't have a right-to-roam in the US. It seems like the sort > of thing that would fit in with the ostensible national ethos of freedom and > independence.

That's something I've never understood about the US. You came late to the "land grab" (compared with Europe), and different kinds of freedom are deeply embedded in the culture. Ought to be perfect conditions for a proper "right to roam" policy.

Here, we've the right to roam, you can camp almost anywhere on private and public land as long as you clean up after yourself and camp at least 150m from houses or cabins.

You're allowed to pass by a house/cabin on you way, blocking passage is illegal.

We've unrestricted access to the shoreline, even next to houses and cabins. You can forage berries, etc, etc.

<comment><USER6> Right? It's baffling.

But I think that it might have something to do with the near-religious reverance with which Americans view absolute property rights. If you frame it as a contest of "freedom and liberty" vs "get off my property or I'll shoot", then it makes a bit more sense. There's a certain segment of the population who are just itching for an excuse to shoot a 'bad guy', which is one of those things that makes exploring this nation so... interesting.

Still, I like to think that there's a reason why 'property' got replaced with 'the pursuit of happiness' when Locke's basic rights were enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great read. It reminded me of that time some 15 years ago when I did a 12 day Vipassana silent retreat.

I completely lost track of the days. I remember one day waking up assuming it was the last day. I started packing up until someone told me there were still 2 days left. We both started counting the days and we had this really strong mind fog. Somehow the mind had slowed down so much that even very basic addition was a difficult thing to do.

To be honest, it wasn't a particularly enlightening experience like other stuff I've done. I vividly remember the strange feeling of joy and wonder of coming back to the real world. As if we were entering into an awesome simulation.

<comment><USER8> I'm reminded of this section of a teaching from a Dzogchen master. (Dzogchen is the highest practice in Tibetan Buddhism, and perhaps considered a bit heterodox by other schools):

 _According to the general vehicles_ [other schools of Buddhism] _, to dwell undistractedly in nowness is to be undistracted. But from the Dzogchen perspective, that is called being distracted. Dwelling on nowness means you are already distracted. Why? Because you are dwelling on something, repeatedly. The awareness is directed towards something which is not rigpa_ [roughly: nondual awareness itself] _. When there is a split between the rigpa and something other, you are already distracted._

 _There is some risk of misunderstanding this matter, if you only get half of this message, the nonmeditation part, and you miss the first part, which is to remain undistracted. It would be easy then to simply not meditate! But that wouldn't make any sense. People who are already not meditating are constantly being carried away by the three poisons of attachment, aversion or dullness. That is not meditating at all, so if one is told "don't meditate" in that situation, that makes no sense at all._

 _On the other hand, if we pay attention only to the first part, 'be undistracted,' it might seem like we have to remain mindful of whatever takes place: "Now I'm walking. Now I'm putting my foot down. Oh, there's a pink flower. The air is touching my skin. I'm breathing in. Here is a thought coming. There is the thought going. Now I am angry. Now I have some desire. Now it is leaving again." In the normal sense of the word one is certainly undistracted, but there is no sense of freedom. You are not liberated at all. It's like you're a shepherd totally involved in watching your sheep or goats: "Now they are going up the hill over there... now they are coming back down... oh, they shouldn't wander too far... now they are going up another hill... now it's five o'clock, I should gather them all together and go home." That type of practice is called "maintaining the meditation." You are herding the meditation, keeping constant watch. Dzogchen practice is not like that. Instead, meditate without being distracted at all, and without "keeping" a meditation._

 _If we aren't able to maintain a free and easy attitude, we will never have good meditations. During these few days up here at Nagi Gompa, give up any anxieties, hopes, fears or worries. Just leave them all behind. There is nothing you need to do. There is no office you need to go to, no long-distance phone calls to make, no faxes to reply to. Let go of the whole thing. Let go, let go and let go, until there is nothing more to let go of. Let go until that point._

<comment><USER7> Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

Is this from a book?

<comment><USER8> Very welcome. Yes, it's from Carefree Dignity by Tsoknyi Rinpoche: [https://www.amazon.com/Carefree-Dignity-Tsoknyi-Rinpoche- ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Carefree-Dignity-Tsoknyi-Rinpoche- ebook/dp/B00H6UOIIW)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every year I disconnect and do a five day food, people and tech fast. I wrote a little guide on my process [0] If you want to try it yourself.

I find this to be a critical yearly reset. Simple but difficult.

[0] [https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/general/five-day- fast...](https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com/blog/general/five-day-fasting- guide-freedom-from-food-people-and-technology)

</comment><comment><USER10> > _As weirdly counterintuitive as it feels to acknowledge, human beings are > not naturally predisposed to think of life in terms of seconds and hours, of > how they might be optimised._

Other merits of this article aside, it always perplexes me that the works of man are somehow regarded as outside or in opposition to "nature", as if an atomic clock with seconds display is somehow less natural than a beaver's dam.

Both are entirely natural processes, produced by and within natural systems.

<comment><USER11> I assume because nearly all the works of man are aiming to _control and suppress_ nature. Instead of the natural untidy beauty of an ancient forest, or wild meadow, with random animal and human tracks through it, we pave, concrete and "neaten". Everything tends to a boring concreted monoculture, with straight lines and walls or fences everywhere, such that even parks are a poor second to the natural world -- though if I ever find myself in a city they are a blessed relief even knowing they are the ersatz second best.

It is almost unheard of to work _with_ nature, to produce sustainable, sympathetic houses and cities that are a part of the natural world. The nearest we get is an occasional designer rendering of a sustainable city of the future... A future just about everyone fights hard to ensure never arrives, and we get the sad, brutal ugliness of the city.

We could have both. Without much difficulty.

<comment><USER10> Is a beaver dam an effort to control and suppress nature, or is it part of nature itself?

So are the works of man.

<comment><USER11> Only with a completely new definition of the word.

Oxford: nature [mass noun] The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.

Where in nature, outside human creations, can I find an airliner, or even a fence? A beaver dam involves no human activity so is of nature. By stretching the definition only a little, one might consider a log cabin and other buildings that use natural materials to be of nature, or at least sympathetic -- wood, stone, earth based, but certainly not steel.

Once you distance yourself via fossil fuel, tools, rules of physics or chemistry and highly complex industrial manufacturing processes the claim becomes absurd. A 3d printer, airliner, drug production or an atomic clock cannot be part of nature -- they exist only through the confluence of man and fossil fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Roberts asked him whether there was a bridge we could cross further on. He > shook his head and courteously informed us, in a Devonshire accent as soft > and mulchy as the ground beneath our feet, that we were on land privately > owned by one of his neighbours, and that the more densely forested territory > across the river was private, too, and that we technically required a permit > to walk this trail

Wouldn't this be covered by the right to roam [1] [2]? What he intended to do once he found a good spot might count as camping, which isn't covered, but just walking there seems like it would be covered.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/right-of-way-open-access-land/use-your- ri...](https://www.gov.uk/right-of-way-open-access-land/use-your-right-to- roam)

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

<comment><USER13> Dartmoor national park has its own bylaws regarding camping. It's fine for up to 48hours. I'm guessing other bylaws for private property- and of course the MOD land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting article. I thought this was a really good metaphor:

> ... my own childhood, the lost civilisation on which my adult self now > stood.

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems to me the author paid someone to... not sit with him in the forest but generally hang around nearby? To my Eastern European eyes, this looks super weird.

If you want to spend a day alone in the forest, why not just go? Do you need the "Way of Nature UK" organization to support you in doing that?

</comment><comment><USER16> Boredom for me is to be in a place where nothing can be changed, everything has its place. We allow a lot of customization both at work and home and I find that extremely satisfying to keep my mind "free". I mean you could be bored because you don't have any possibilites and be bored because you're tired of being creative where the first is bad and the second good.

Time moves past me and I don't have control so I tend to have a lot of discussion or random thoughts about stuff that I see, which annoy the living soul out of some other people. I think that if we let control over time go a bit more we would also gain a bit more control over the relationship with time. Your milage might vary.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article reminded me of an intriguing experiment my Music teacher proposed to me and my classmates. He made us listen to some classical music and then he asked us to express what mental images popped in our mind. I realized that we (14yo students) were lacking creativity. Our teacher said that when he proposed the same experiment to children they were much more creative (which is obvious to me now). By the way, this was a really nice read while listening to Kid A.

</comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like a nice experience. But:

> My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time

I can't seem to find any mention whatsoever about whether this changed... hmm...

</comment><comment><USER19> If you liked this experience then try the cave experience: you retriet into a 100% dark room (with a toilet attached) with only water and some fruits (a few per each day) for 3-5 days. No devices no toys nothing that can keep you busy. Just you your inner self the dark and the air you breave.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not bringing food, staying within a circle of 10 m diameter for 24 hours... I think I can see the point but it seems like he could have reset his clock while not taking it that "extreme". I enjoy nature, but prefer to walk in it, and take it in, explore.

<comment><USER21> I think the author's point is that the "extreme" is required, at least for him, in order to truly indulge in the escape. A walk/exploration would be too much of a connection to normal life.

But to each his or her own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I LOLed at "I sat there at the edge of my little circle on the riverbank and binge-watched the river." Such a lovely juxtaposition.

</comment><comment><USER23> Spending 24h in the woods, AKA "what used to be normal life".

</comment><comment><USER24> 25,000 neurons with 20,000,000 connections.

How much does human brain contain?

<comment><USER25> ~1-10 billion neurons.</comment></comment>


Supreme Court Sides with Consumers–Affirms Your Right to Repair Stuff - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/06/01/repair-rights-impression-lexmark/ <comment><USER2> This case was covered on HN recently, in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14446261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14446261)

I think this editorial is making this case out to be more than it is.

There are many ways that a company can work to restrict a person's ability to modify a product that they have purchased. Patent infringement is one way, and that argument's effectiveness has been reduced.

But there are other ways that a person's ability can be restricted, such as licensing and proprietary parts. This case says nothing about that.

So please, author, don't make like I was going to be sued if I tried to replace my iPhone's battery.

<comment><USER3> I was going to mention something similar. Someone, somewhere, is looking at all the ways you can headline the same information to generate clicks[1].

I've seen a number of people make this particular leap though, that people will cite this as a precedent for either reversing or defending lawsuits against post sale use.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1283/](https://xkcd.com/1283/)

<comment><USER4> I've also seen someone use this same SCOTUS decision to say that video game streaming rights got protected. That's like 4 levels of wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the ruling if anyone is interested (the opinion starts on page 6): [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf)

I think this article is taking what the ruling says and bringing it a bit far. Essentially this suit was about Lexmark suing a "remanufacturer", Impression Products, Inc., that takes used ink cartridges and refills them, instead of the consumer returning them to Lexmark, for parent infringement (I think in this specific case, the remanufacturer was refilling toner cartridges). Impression Products won this case, and the suit says that patent rights end once the cartridge is sold to a consumer.

I can see that this could be a landmark case in the future when one of those Right-To-Repair laws (like the one in Nebraska(?)) if the specific reason manufacturers don't want to let consumers repair their own products is due to patent issues, but more broadly I don't think it covers the entirety of the "right to repair". That case might use this as a precedent, but it will still need to be decided in a court.

<comment><USER6> This case rules on patents because the case before them was about patents. But for me, when I read the decision I got sense that the court felt the pendulum had swung too far away from consumers, and that things need to be balanced out with a stronger view of the first sale doctrine.

Given this change in thinking, I am optimistic future cases dealing with non- patent issues will yield similar results.

<comment><USER5> Maybe, but this suit rules only on patents and you can't infer beyond that. Take, for example, this line in the case (on page 10, under pp II A):

> The single-use/no-resale restrictions in Lexmark's contracts with customers > may have been clear and enforceable under contract law...

IANAL, but this makes me think that the case would only be applied to patent issues, because it doesn't rule about anything concerning contracts. That kind of suit will have to come later.

<comment><USER6> Sure I don't dispute that it only rules on patent issues. But, I think it is often possible to get a sense of how the court will rule on future decisions by reading their past rulings to get a sense of their thinking. And while there is a lot to be said for each justice's individual personality, on this issue they were unanimous.

My reading of the decision was that the court wasn't just clarifying the bounds of patent law, with no real interest in the consumer perspective. I felt a court that was concerned about the way consumer rights are heading.

If companies start spamming the public with grabby adhesion contracts for everyday purchases, I think the court is going to be very concerned.

Of course, this is just my intuition and reading. We won't know for sure until the next consumer rights case, but I am optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ruling in this case simply says you can't sue someone for patent infringement if they are re-selling, refurbishing or re-manufacturing your product without their permission. Further, it says that you can't sue someone for US patent infringement if they import your goods originally sold overseas. That's because patent rights are "exhausted" with the first sale, like copyright.

This ruling does not:

\- prevent a seller from forcing you to sign a contract saying you won't re- manufacture or refill their product, and sue you if you violate that contract

\- require a seller to do anything else to help you repair your product

\- prevent Lexmark from suing cartridge refillers for patent infringement if the materials that they are using for the refill (inks, toners) violate a Lexmark patent

Why did Lexmark use patent in the first place? Well, the problem with using shrink-wrap agreements is that then you have to sue your customers - yuck. Lexmark's customers are the ones violating the agreement, the resellers don't have any kind of contract with Lexmark so they aren't in breach. Also, you'd have to sue thousands upon thousands of customers to chill the market - reminds me of the Napster days when record labels were trying to sue individual downloaders. Suing on patent law was a creative way to go after the resellers - but it didn't work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Man, if only they'd made the cartridge play a little tune when the chip is disabled. Then they could do the full DMCA game. Seems like the key to modern security is to have something copyrighted behind a terrible lock

<comment><USER9> TrackIR uses a shitty poem as part of its initialization routine so it will fall under copyright so the makers can control who writes software for it.

<comment><USER10> Do you have a source for that? (no pun intended)

<comment><USER9> You can find one of their DCMA notices here: [https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/63305#](https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/63305#)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does "stuff" mean? And what's a "right" in this situation? Does "stuff" include things like a Tesla Model S, and a "right" means that Tesla cannot remotely brick your car due to modifications? Does the "right" to repair only protect from prosecution or does it imply being given access to documentation and spare parts?

<comment><USER12> Usually a "right" defines a grant of legal ability to act, that is illegal for a third-party to attempt to constrain.

Examine the right to free speech:

• it is a denial of your rights if a third party _interfere_ with your exercise of your free speech (by e.g. forcefully "silencing" you in the public square—maybe using noise-cancelling speakers or something.)

• It is _not_ a denial of your rights if you made an agreement with the third party that they would _aid_ you in your exercise of your free speech, and then they choose to stop honoring this agreement. (I.e. forums are allowed to ban people.) This is, in-and-of-itself, a consequence of the right to freedom of association.

I would expect the same to apply to the "right to repair": Tesla is allowed to revoke its _complicity_ in helping you drive its cars—by "bricking" them—but you then have a right to _circumvent_ that bricking, and they would be infringing on your rights by trying to prevent you from doing so.

They don't have to make it _easy_ ; logically, with a highly-complex software system like a smart-car (that hasn't gone through an ecosystem-wide standardization like PCs have), the vendor's complicity is required to make doing _anything at all_ with the car easy, and they're not required to give you that complicity. (Consider: even if the law required them to, they could always just go out of business in response, like Lavabit did.)

But once you start "hacking your car", anything they do _in response_ to that to inhibit you would be a violation of your right to repair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article has this:

> Impression v Lexmark Isn't About Printer Ink, It's About Property Rights

to which one can agree. The object of discussion isn't limited to these two companies and this one product.

Then later article says:

> Also, how much weight do we assign those forms that no one ever reads?

and one would assume this could be given an even bigger weight. People accuse Bitcoin in wasting electricity but an obvious question with laws and law practices at least in US which commands a lot of resources is raised relatively rarely.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can't lexmark just change it to a rental agreement? Use these cartriges until they run out, and then return them. If you fail to do so, lexmark doesn't care -- the point is that they would avoid exhausting their patent rights.

<comment><USER7> I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you can't have something that looks like a sale and call it a rental. If Lexmark wants to rent printer cartridges, they'd have to spell out a term for the rental (can't be indefinite), collect rents, make reasonable attempts to reclaim their property from deadbeats, etc.

They'd also have to carry all those cartridges on their books as inventory, and therefore conduct audits, depreciate the value, etc.

The law does not generally look kindly on "hacking" \- if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can't call it a swan just because that would be more convenient for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is probably not the good news it seems. Apple and John Deer, as examples, are moving toward leasing/renting phones rather than outright purchasing. So if you don't own it, you don't have such a right to repair.

</comment><comment><USER16> Previous HN discussion from 2 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14446261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14446261)

</comment><comment><USER17> I expect we will only have a license to operate printers/ink cartridges at some point in the future, rather then owning them.

<comment><USER18> Well, this Supreme Court opinion says the exact opposite, so your expectation probably wrong for points in the short- and medium-term future.

<comment><USER19> The industry has two choices: stop trying to impose post-sale restrictions, or start openly leasing products for a limited time instead of selling them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > They found a way to refill Lexmark's single-use printer cartridges by > disabling the chip disabling chip.

What a time to be alive.

</comment><comment><USER21> repair vs modifications vs reconstruction is actually a very open question, despite what this article claims

</comment><comment><USER22> Good. DRM freaks should get lost.

</comment><comment><USER23> Which Judge voted against it?

<comment><USER24> Seems like a "partial" disagreement from Ginsburg, leading to a 7-1-1 split.

> Six other justices concurred with Roberts in full, and Justice Ruth Bader > Ginsberg concurred in part, saying she agreed Lexmark patent rights ended > when the cartridges were sold in the US. For foreign sales, she said > Lexmark's patent right was not exhausted. Here, "patent rights" refers to > restrictions Lexmark placed on the cartridges. The newest justice, Neil > Gorsuch, didn't take part because arguments were heard last year, before he > was confirmed and seated.

[0] [https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/250050-supreme- court...](https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/250050-supreme-court-slaps- lexmark-cant-lock-cartridges-stop-refillers)</comment></comment>


If my team has low skill, should I reduce the difficulty-level of my code? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-reduce-the-difficulty-level-of-my-code/ <comment><USER2> Link bait with zero(0) original content.

Referring to: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if- my-...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has- low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code)</comment>


Commuters Don't Stop Driving to Work Unless You Take Away Free Parking - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/02/commuting-driving-work-free-parking-transit-subsidy-benefits-parity-congress/462963/ <comment><USER2> The light rail between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami (really between West Palm beach to Miami) runs alongside I-95 (the Tri-Rail, named so because of the tri-county area) and that's it for light rail in South Florida. So unless your work is near a Tri-Rail station, or you're willing to transfer to a bus, working just about anywhere doesn't make it work while for most people.

Now, it just so happens that there's a Tri-Rail station _right next_ to the building I work in, and I happen to live less than a mile from a Tri-Rail station. When when I ran the numbers a few years ago, it was still cheaper to drive than to ride the train (mainly because I work from home two days a week). It's not a time factor either---I drive during non-rush hour (a perk of being a programmer) and either way, it takes about the same time to drive as to take the train (I have taken the trip once or twice).

Now that gas prices have plummeted, even if I had to drive into the office five days a week, it would still be cheaper.

That said, there are people in the office that take the train, but they live further from the office than I do and for them, it is cost effective, even if they arrive late to the office about 10% of the time (mostly due to suicides and people stopping on the rails).

<comment><USER3> I'd guess that in most places, unless there's road tolls, driving is going to be cheaper than public transit if you already have a car. The nice thing about cities is you can make not having a car a viable option.

<comment><USER4> It's something like $7k a year to run a car. It's something like $2k a year just to leave the car in the garage. So $5k/12=$417 per month. Where in the US does it cost over $400 for a monthly bus/rail pass?

<comment><USER5> For information for my 70 mile commute to London my season ticket (not a pass ) is over $500 a Month plus another 70$ for bus/taxis to get to the station

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given that this mostly indicates that cars are just a better product than public transit for the individual, one might hope that this would be interpreted as a challenge : can we make public transport as good as having a car ?

I wonder if public transport would still be cheaper than having lots of cars if it were demanded to provide the same service : pick up anyone anywhere, including goods, and bring them to their destination, without having to change vehicles halfway.

The thing for me is, even with absurd levels of traffic, my car takes me to work in ~50 minutes, 20 minutes if there's no traffic. The only public transport option would do 1.5h, and would always do 1.5h (with regular delays to 2h I might add). Furthermore, I wouldn't be able to take much more than a laptop bag on public transport, whereas with my car I can do groceries on the way home.

And the only thing the government is talking about is making public transport more expensive.

<comment><USER7> The thing is, cars are heavily subsidised, more than people realise.

For one, there are heavy negative externalities associated with cars. Governments choose to ignore those - and hence are in essence subsidising car users for free. If drivers actually had to pay the full cost of cars in terms of environment and health impact, they would be up in arms.

And of course there is infrastructure - car owners don't even cover a fraction of the actual cost of this - it all comes from general taxation.

So yes, we as a society have chosen to heavily subsidise car use, possibly for cultural or emotional reasons.

But ultimately, the piper will have to be paid. That's why I think we should all do our part to, as you say, encourage public transport use - and more walking/cycling.

My dream is that car usage might actually one day be charged at its true cost, instead of asking society to foot it's bill - but I think that's a long way off.

<comment> saiya-jin yes and no - roads are such a critical piece of infrastructure, no state can 100% function without them. Government uses them, military too, and vast amount of business is done via them.

we all pay for it, and we all indirectly use it (how do you get groceries to your shop for example?), and most of us directly too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> US public transport is often _deliberately_ bad: [https://www.longislandpress.com/2013/11/30/robert-moses- the-...](https://www.longislandpress.com/2013/11/30/robert-moses-the-last- master-builder/)

"Moses's parkways are also defined by ultra-low seemingly impenetrable bridges, designed, says Koppelman, to keep buses of poor city people out. Koppelman even once measured the overpasses on the Wantagh Parkway himself to verify that they were in fact deliberately built too low."

<comment><USER9> How can measuring something verify that it was _deliberately_ built too low? As opposed to built too low out of ignorance, incompetence, by accident, or for some good reason that you aren't aware of but unrelated to the politics you think it is?

<comment><USER10> In the case of Robert Moses, he pointed out his disdain for blacks and Puerto Ricans in public on a regular basis.

Robert Caro wrote an epic biography of the man with intense details of how he ticked.

<comment><USER9> You can measure something and determine that it's probably too low. And you can look at someone's public statements and determine that it's probably deliberate. But you can't determine someone's intentions with a tape measure.

<comment><USER10> I'd suggest reading the Caro book.

The author literally spent decades studying the man and traced the arc of his life from his teenage years to political boss. It's pretty clear that the man was a racist, and personally drove publics works projects to keep races he disliked away from public parks, beaches and other things.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understand my point because whether or not the man was clearly racist isn't relevant to it. The original quote was

> measured the overpasses on the Wantagh Parkway himself to verify that they > were in fact deliberately built too low

I'm questioning _how the measurement of the bridge allows it to be determined if the bridge is deliberately, or accidentally too low_ , in the absence of other information. You're suggesting that there is copious other evidence that the bridge was deliberately too low, but that kind of proves my point. The measurement didn't show that it was deliberate - other evidence did instead.

But this is becoming a bit of a ridiculous conversation for such a trivial point. I was just pointing out that it was sloppy writing.

<comment><USER11> You have a statement of claim from the guy who built the bridge.

You then go and measure the bridge to verify the statements made by the person who built the bridge.

Read the book :D

<comment><USER9> But what you're saying agrees with me :)

The measuring doesn't verify the 'deliberate' claim, does it? It's only verifies the too low part. So

> measured the overpasses on the Wantagh Parkway himself to verify that they > were in fact deliberately built too low

is nonsense. He measured the overpass to verify that it was too low. And he used statements from the person to verify the deliberate part. The measurement by itself doesn't prove the intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another thing I heard is that if you put jobs near transit, you get far more riders than if you put housing near transit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is anyone else surprised by the 1-2%? Eg: 62.3 to 63.8%. Looks like $250/mo doesn't go very far. But then below, it mentions Newark where the results are staggering: those taking transit increased from 4% to 57%. I must be missing something; can someone summarize?

</comment><comment><USER13> not enough to put me off... never had free parking.

try no parking (really no parking, not just what people think of as "no" parking) and a congestion charge... and actually i would still drive if not for traffic. trains are rubbish.

<comment><USER14> Some heavy rail (train, subway, overground) systems are great. It depends quite a bit on the surrounding cityscape and culture though. Same goes for light rail (tram) and bus rapid transit systems although the requirements are more lax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> viva la automated cars.</comment>


Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won't be another Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07/slashdot-founder-rob-malda-on-why-there-wont-be-another-hacker-news/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> "I don't think it's going to work that way any more. I think that the power has decentralized. Successful people on Twitter basically can fulfill a lot of that same role. You can follow Tim O'Reilly and Robert Scoble and Tim Lee and you can get a pretty good summary of what's happening around the universe."

But then, I have to know to follow those people. And I get a load of crap from them about their lives and networks that I don't want. Somehow having to 'click through' 30 links on HN is too much work, but constantly keeping up with the latest hot people on twitter _isn 't_ too much work? Makes no sense. Aggregators have served a purpose, and will continue to, for a long time.

<comment><USER3> I dislike being limited to only 140 characters when trying to convey my thoughts and ideas, so I've never really been a fan of Twitter or tweeting... (as this comment illustrates)

<comment><USER4> That's my problem with HN as an information source as well. Just an 80-character headline isn't much space to convey information, unless it's extremely simple information. A headline _plus_ a short blurb, like on Metafilter or Slashdot, at least gives a slightly more coherent explanation of what this article is about and why the submitter thought it was interesting, and mitigates the tendency towards only promoting stuff that can catch people's eye in 80 characters.

On HN you can sometimes get that by clicking through to the comments first, but it's kind of a frustrating way to browse links. Some subreddits on reddit have moved back to the Slashdot style by only allowing "text" submissions rather than "link" submissions; unlike HN's text submissions those can also contain clickable links, so the effect is to require people to write a little along with the link, instead of just submitting a link.

<comment><USER5> It's worse than that. Since you can't editorialize titles and some authors like to give their articles poetic, meaningless names like "A butterfly in the sky," when the actual article talks about a security exploit in Bitcoin, coded in Go and released by Wikileaks.

I often find myself ignoring interesting articles on HN only to go read them later on reddit with a much more descriptive, editorialized headline.

<comment><USER6> I prefer the headlines here over Reddit's. What worries me is the quality of the comments. The community and their insightful comments are what keeps me coming back.

Lately I've seen an increase in memes and trollish comments from new IDs. I worry that if HN doesn't move to limited account signup period or invite only, it will end up another Slashdot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are days when I wish that Hacker News was divorced from Y Combinator.

I don't care about karma, "hellbans" seem like a mean waste of a person's time, and the thought of HN as a rolling job interview for "the cool kids table" actively discourages me from participating.

Sure, the "interview" aspect helps them find people who are skillful self- promoters/developers, but honestly, as a user, wouldn't you prefer to keep the self-promotion to a minimum?

When I see my 18th front page "HN: Flavor of the Day - Me Too" or "Lorem Snowden" post, I start to long for the days of pre-Twitter F/OSS "Planets".

Planets where dev, ux, design, and business people came together to talk about what makes technology, projects, and people tick. I learned more about how to treat people and run a project from early to mid-2000 era [http://planet.gnome.org/](http://planet.gnome.org/) than anywhere else.

There will be another HN, but it'll most likely have a very limited scope and come from a place of genuine enthusiasm.

<comment><USER8> Wow I just took the time to look up hellban [0] because I always just assumed it's synonymous with permaban. For those too lazy to click the link, it's a ban where you're not informed that you're banned and the content you post is displayed only for you and no one else. That's actually a pretty shitty moderation tactic mainly because it doesn't teach the poster why they made a mistake and it does just waste their time when they could be getting back to being a better user.

Additionally, in the <year time that I've been reading and minimally contributing to HN, I've definitely been disappointed with a trend towards politicization that a lot of people have noted. I'm much happier seeing everyone's static site generators on github than everyone's opinion on Snowden or some other political issue that's related enough to tech to get posted. It strikes me as mission creep for HN to start getting so political. My favorite thing to see on the frontpage is a github repo, not a medium/svbtle article where someone spends two paragraphs telling an anecdote and then one paragraph jumping to a massive generalized conclusion based on that one experience and/or "Lorem Snowden" as you put it. /rant

[0]: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hellban)

<comment><USER9> Hellbans aren't meant to teach people what mistake they made. Downvotes and comments are supposed to do that.

That's why it's a shame that downvoting is so disapproved of among a group of HN users, and it's a shame that people "drive-by downvote".

Hell banning is meant to save time of everyone in the community, and it does a pretty good job of that. There's much less meta commentary about whether banning a user is or isn't fair; and there's less to and fro about what should be a bannable offence. The algorithms do all that stuff.

I agree about the political stuff.

<comment><USER10> I dislike the idea of hellbans just because it is invisible to the non-banned community, and they are unaware of how they are being "shaped." I think I've seen it happen on a "maker" blog where the comment wasn't really negative, but just not positive enough. In that case the moderator was trying to maintain a "very positive" environment. Pernicious.

<comment><USER11> You can turn on show dead and see the hellbanned comments. Most of the time it's justified. The only occasions I've ever made the effort to contact someone and tell them they're hellbanned was after the girls in tech fiasco 6 months back, I thought the comment that banned him was just a bit stupid & misunderstood. And the rest of his comments really good.

So there are some of us keeping and eye on the 'shaping' and you can too if you want.

There's actually some amazing comments by a crazy guy who's written an OS dedicated to god, it's pretty insane and yet incredibly impressive at the same time.

<comment><USER10> That's very good that "show dead" shows hellbanned, and all I could ask for. And it's not like I was worried about HN specifically, more the ability of smaller, more focused sites to self-AstroTurf by omission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read Slashdot for many years. Slashdot introduced me to the open source movement and shaped my conception of civil liberties greatly. I remember what the place was like on 9/11: when CNN's servers couldn't keep up, I kept going to Slashdot (and then IRC, something I didn't know much about). Slashdot was a great source of news about geek culture. I liked that it was that it was curated by editors, because as a teenager I had no idea where to find out about the sorts of things they talked about.

However, what led me to leave Slashdot wasn't any sort of Eternal September like effect. Yes, there were many troll comments there, but there's also lots of options to adjust moderation types to suit one's particular interests. Rather, what I found was that the editors themselves seemed to stop caring. Article summaries would be blatantly incorrect or have distorting editorializing in them. If the whole point of the Slashdot style of reporting was to present a small number of quality stories each day, how could I trust the site when what the editors presented was inaccurate?

When I came to HN I was surprised to discover that articles simply have a title and URL. Sometimes there's editorializing in the titles, but in general its pretty good. But I can understand what Malda is saying when he expresses his frustration in wading through the front pages of HN. I don't know if the solution is to implement topics of some sort or not, but the user volume on this site is picking up enough that I think some sort of organization beyond a single ranking algorithm is required. It might also lead some interesting stories that never make it onto the front page to reach an audience. This problem of course isn't unique to HN... whether its Slashdot or Twitter or Facebook, getting the signal to noise ratio to an appropriate level is a really hard problem.

That being said, in my short time here I have learned a tremendous amount -- albeit much of which lies in my bookmarks!

<comment><USER13> Your reference to Slashdot on 9/11 gave me a bout of nostalgia for all the time I spent on that site as a teenager, and led me to checkout archive.org's Slashdot capture from that date. For some reason it doesn't exist, the closest I can get is 9/14.

"Net taps without warrants"[1] was on the front page (already). Very interesting to look back and see the commentary and the way this was received 12 years ago(!) in light of all the NSA/Snowden stuff that's been going on lately.

Some highlights:

"Do we really have any reason to believe that the government is trying to create a giant evil spy machine to watch their own people as opposed to the terrorists? I tend to be more or less trusting of the government, but that's just me."

"This bill is quite limited in its scope, allowing only 48 hours to tap without approval and only for immediate threats to "National Security." Many civil liberties are restricted during threats to "National Security." Ever heard of martial law and curfews?"

"Anything that is truely our __rights __in a constitutional sense will be protected by the supreme court.

The congress will push, the courts will push back, and life wil lgo on as it has in the US.

I get the feeling a significant cross section of slashdot just likes to run around hystericly like the sky is falling."

"What's so hard about getting a warrant? [..] Or maybe you keep federal courthouses staffed with at least one judge with a security clearance 24x7, if its so important. "

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20010914224344/http://slashdot.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010914224344/http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/14/211241.shtml)

<comment><USER14> Original 9/11 thread:

[http://slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/1314258/world-trade- tower...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/1314258/world-trade-towers-and- pentagon-attacked)

The subject of one of the very top comments reminds me of why I've never cared for the Slashdot community: "We had it coming..."

<comment><USER15> What's worse is those people who characterise an entire community by one poster's comment, which isn't particularly mirrored in the rest of the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Funny that he says he wants a Hacker News digest with the top 10 stories each day... my Hacker News Daily is precisely that.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, googling for "top 10 stories from hacker news" returns [http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/) as the first result.

Maybe he will see this thread and sign up :)

<comment><USER18> Is there some way to get this in a daily email?

<comment><USER19> It would be trivial to set it up as an RSS-to-email campaign in Mailchimp, but I wouldn't want to without the permission of the site owner.

<comment><USER16> Go for it. Let me know when it's set up and I'll add a link to the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One idea for jumpstarting a new HN-type site is to spider HNSearch, gathering the first 100,000 stories ever submitted to HN, along with comments. Then set up your site so that your frontpage is a doppelganger of HN's frontpage circa 2007. I.e. today your frontpage should look how the HN frontpage looked on August 7th, 2007.

That way there's (a) the appearance of activity, (b) a constant stream of interesting content on the frontpage, and (c) interesting discussion in the comments. Before long, new real users would start to participate, e.g. by replying to doppleganger comments. At that point, it's inevitable that the new site would start to get traction as long as those new users keep coming back, which they should because the frontpage is interesting.

This could only work if someone had the balls to actually deploy the currently-released Arc 3.1 version of Hacker News, though, rather than rolling their own version in Rails. There's nothing inherently wrong with trying to clone HN's featureset, but it's interesting to note that not a single one of the HN knockoffs successfully cloned HN's entire featureset. Most of them were a halfway implementation.

Anyway. Just a fun idea.

EDIT: I just stumbled across a dump of HN from April 24, 2008: [http://rapidshare.com/files/3129266675/ycombinator- news-2008...](http://rapidshare.com/files/3129266675/ycombinator- news-2008-04-24.zip)

It contains a snapshot of the first 172,575 items (submissions/comments) and a snapshot of the profiles of the first 6,519 users.

Have fun! Maybe someone can use the data to put together a cool visualization or something.

EDIT2: Just to be clear, this idea is firmly tongue-in-cheek.

EDIT3: Statistics time! According to that snapshot, when HN was 558 days old there were 38,693 submissions and 133,882 comments. The snapshot claims there were only 6,519 users. That would be an average of 20 comments per user and 5.9 submissions per user.

<comment><USER21> 1\. None of the HN knockoffs can really clone Hacker News because, for one thing, it's missing everything in the original HN's code. pg mentions that there's a missing "secret sauce" that ties it all together. That, and you really need to have some sort of heavy involvement in the community before you try to start it, so you'll need someone of pg-level importance to start it. Specializations could be started by very knowledgable HN users _in their field_ but very general implementations would need an all around "ideologue." EDIT: I don't know if you're already aware of this, I'm just explaining because the way you wrote it appears as though you may think the Arc code is packaged with a full implementation of HN.

2\. I don't think this would be allowed via the HN Search API...that's a lot of content.

3\. This _is_ a cool idea, but how would you get people to participate and add content to what is essentially a ghost, rather than just come back here, where there's news? I also don't think it solves the problem HN is currently facing. It merely puts a bandaid on it until we get back up to 2013 level volume.

<comment><USER22> The secret sauce is that HN is the news aggregator of a successful start up combinator. The secret sauce is popularity.

<comment><USER23> The secret sauce is green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _> "Twitter basically can fulfill a lot of that same role. You can follow Tim O'Reilly and Robert Scoble and Tim Lee and you can get a pretty good summary of what's happening around the universe."_

I tried to start using Twitter that way maybe 5 years ago and found that there was just too much noise - jokes, tales of breakfast and banter that I just don't care to see.

I actually feel like it's the right kind of model though. Aggregating content streams from people of similar interests. It's the filtering that's lacking for me.

Every time I think about following someone on a social site I want for the ability to follow only a specific category of their content and possibly re- share it in the same focused fashion.

G+, Flipboard and likely a host of others have done things toward this direction, but I have yet to see anything gel for me.

Ideally, I see all of this categorization and recommendation happening automatically. If a service could recommend news or articles to me and categorize those I specify with the same accuracy I perceive from Netflix with movies, or even the new Gmail inbox I'd be pretty happy.

<comment><USER25> I really don't see Twitter providing any value to my life. The structure and concept doesn't fit my way of discovering and consuming news at all. In my mind, Twitter is essentially useless. I don't care about people, I don't wish to be follow anyone, I care about single idea, news and insights.

I would not like a filter in terms of what Google or Netflix imposes on me either. If I only got the news that some filter thought I would like I would miss out on ever discovering anything new. Filters only serves to keep you in your own little bubble, never letting anything controversial enter your life.

I like Hacker News, Slashdot and to some extend Reddit. Most of the stuff on each site is of little interest, but now I know it exists. There's a bunch of stuff that I've been introduced to, which initially did't appeal to me, but later on proved useful. Filters and recommendation engines needs to die, they are harmful because they limit our exposure to new ideas. Twitter should go the same way, you follow the people you agree with or the people you want to hate, never the people who make you stop and rethink your own opinions.

<comment><USER24> I think you've misconstrued my point as I'm generally in agreement with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _I don't think it's going to work that way any more. I think that the power has decentralized. Successful people on Twitter basically can fulfill a lot of that same role. You can follow Tim O'Reilly and Robert Scoble and Tim Lee and you can get a pretty good summary of what's happening around the universe._

Odd argument, considering that the content on Hacker News is more about products than the people making the products. And I can say with confidence that I've never seen Scoble linked to _anywhere_ on HN.

<comment><USER27> Agreed. HN is what it is, it's not an all-encompassing tech news aggregator like Slashdot was. HN is fairly focused with a few outside stories that creep in here and there.

I know everyone likes to run the 'back in my day' line every now and then so I might as well. Slashdot is crap now. _Back in my day_ things were fairly relevant and, while there was a slight lag, if the story was interesting it made it to Slashdot quickly. Now stories might not show up for not just hours, but days! By then it's been discussed elsewhere to death so you only read the Slashdot comments for snark and not insight. The technology section of Google News is better than Slashdot (sans comments).

Also, the design of Slashdot is so 2003 it hurts. They let the look and feel get too long in the tooth and people abandoned it for better sites.

<comment><USER28> Slashdot died the day it got political and worse when such became entrenched. By political I mean election oriented material to the point that crossover polluted seemingly unrelated stories.

Hence why during a discussion here about politics I stated I would prefer a "hide" flag next to the "flag" link that I could use to remove stories from my view under the notion that maybe someone wants to get into that stuff here.

<comment><USER29> I think what killed Slashdot was the devolution of commenting to karma-racing with predictable "funny" responses. So-called obligatory "That's no moon..." jokes and so on.

The absence of that was certainly what I found so refreshing when I first discovered Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > If I could just find someone who made a Hacker News digest, with the 10 best > items from Hacker News, that would be a really good Slashdot.

There is hckrnews [0]. You can filter by top 10, top 20, top 50%, homepage and all. I usually start by going through the top 10 and progress outwards if I'm looking for additional posts.

[0] [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

<comment><USER31> Or there's [https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100](https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100) although it's a poor substitue for hckrnews it's better than the home page if you can't access hckrnews because "The category of Hacking has been blocked by your System Administrator".

<comment><USER31> Why the downvotes? I didn't know about that url till someone else posted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find it interesting that the "tech-related topics" that Malda is "most obsessed with right now" are Bitcoin, Manning, and Snowden/NSA - the ones that the proclaimers of a decline of quality of HN complain about the most.

</comment><comment><USER33> Has anyone tried a site like this except with additional exclusivity? Can't vote unless logged in, can't log in unless invited? Or can't vote unless 'approved', or something similar?

Would it work better? It seems like the problem is that you get too many political submissions and polemic comments which get the votes but aren't "hacker news" in the sense of what that used to mean.

I've been here apparently 4.2 years (no idea how), and the only thing I really notice that's different is the marked uptick in political discussions as well as the more confrontational nature of commenters. Is that bad? I dunno.

<comment><USER26> It has been tried. Exclusivity could arguably make things _worse_ , since it leads to elitism and doesn't necessarily ensure the quality of content is better.

<comment><USER34> I suppose that depends on what you're looking for. For example, for quite a few years my friends and I had an invite-only forum where we hung out, posted interesting links, etc. All told, about 30 of us at the peak. It was great, while it lasted.

A group of like-minded individuals could, and have many times, do something similar. Besides the problems you listed, you also have the one we eventually ran into: stuff gets stale after awhile. You have very few new members coming in, and various rifts appear in your community where people butted heads.

I'd also like to add that while as a community we do tend to be on the elitist side, we also tend to have a strong "info should be free" side, which may conflict with closed societies like this.

I think to really succeed here, we need to keep it public, but also keep the people who have already proven to be distasteful out. That was easier back in the day when people only had one email address if they were extremely lucky. Far harder today without requiring some sort of personally identifiable information, not to mention some way of validating it.

<comment><USER35> > while it lasted.

What happened to it? Why did it die?

I've had a similar forum many years ago but haven't been able to replicate the experience since.

<comment><USER34> I believe the biggest reason for it dying was that a schism appeared in our community. A few people had a public argument, sides were taken, words were spoken, feelings were hurt, etc. We had some people leave, and despite some attempts here or there, we had no new members to fill the gaps.

Another possibility is this place was created back before sites like Facebook, twitter, etc. Once social media came to prominence, some of us started communicating via other methods and we didn't check the forum as much as we used to. When your userbase is that small, it doesn't take much of a disruption to kill it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think his logic toward Twitter is very flawed. Sure, you can get the bulk of your interesting news there from specific feeds, but where's the discussion? People use Reddit, HN, Slashdot, Fark, etc., because they could have conversations about each item.

People want to discuss how a story makes them feel and how it affects them. People need access to random people, that's why this doesn't work as well on social sites like Facebook. Finally, it needs to be at least psuedo-anonymous so people can explore their thoughts without real-life repercussions.

<comment><USER36> There is discussion in twitter but not if you follow Scoble you need to follow people who interact and roughly follow and are followed by similar numbers of people. Its a very social medium if done right...

<comment><USER27> Not to say Twitter isn't a fine medium but I personally don't think a real discussion can be had 140 characters at a time. It's a severe limit that just doesn't work (wrt discussions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I enjoyed reading Cmdr Taco's thoughts on the future of "news" (interpret that broadly) and it made do some reflecting on what I think the future will be.

The biggest thing that jumped out at me was that signal vs. noise is the most important criteria for a service to be used, but what a lot of analyses miss is that you have to interpret something before you can decide if it is a signal or not, and that interpretation is by definition individual. I think this is what happens a lot of the time when people complain about a site becoming "too big", idealizing the past when the "riff-raff" hadn't gotten in. But I think this is mistaken for the same reason that generational rants about the fecklessness of the youth are mistaken, ie Occam's razor says that we are probably not all Nietzschean superman vs newcomer's being idiots, but instead we are probably more or less equal. What is happening instead is that as a larger group comes to a site, a larger number of interests and opinions come as well. And what I interpret as noise, what those people interpret as signal.

By this I mean that if a large number of art enthusiasts joined HN and started posting a bunch of articles on art history, I would probably not be interested as my interests lie mostly in the tech arena. Let's further posit that these art enthusiasts are pretty competent in their field and so 90% of what they post is "worthwhile" in some vague broad sense. This influx might actually increase the _overall_ signal to noise content on HN, while for me it would appear as though HN is getting swamped with crap. This is why people talk about trying to keep things exclusive or invite-only, we are trying to keep the broader perspectives involved aligned with our own, so as to not get swamped by noise from perspectives with no overlap to our own.

And this I think is the root of a bunch of the complaints about politics being posted to HN. While I may shrug off art history posts, politics is another word for how we organize ourselves to live together and as such as is much more personal and much more important. And so people's personal reactions to politics they disagree with, and by extension political stories they disagree with, is much more aggressive. So even a small amount of political discourse that you disagree with can seem intolerable.

So what is the solution? Well if I had that, I would be rich, but I do have a few ideas. The first is that reddit is trying to solve the signal interpretation issue with subreddits, wherein people can manually opt in to streams of article that they believe will be signals to them, while blocking out all streams that they will personally interpret as noise. But this still relies on manual intervention as well as discovery, along with user moderation to maintain the signal. And why do we still do things manually when we have computers!? :)

So one area that I think is really overlooked is that right now every site interprets "down/up votes" and flagging as me speaking about what I think is useful for the community. But this is just my interpretation and so aren't I really expressing my own preferences here? Why aren't sites taking my history of voting/flagging and running some machine learning on the the contents of the stories associated with that history to try to tease out patterns in what I appear to approve and disapprove of?

For myself personally I wouldn't care if I ever read another article on coffescript or libertarian politics. But if I downvote those things here on HN I am making a judgement on what I think is best for the rest of the community, and who am I to make that choice? Why can't the HN front-page see that I'm logged, look at my voting history, and just remove those stories from my view of the front page? Ta da, automatic subreddits. I think a lot of work could be done in interpreting my actions in voting/downvoting on a much more personal level, rather that looking at them in a democratic fashion.

Of course, the big unanswered question with the above is how do we avoid the echo-chamber effect, and what about that rare story on coffeescript I might actually want to see? But for now, I think the above would be a good first step, with some sort of bail-out possible if I want to "broaden" my perspective. And anyway, aren't we all trying to create an echo-chamber anyway by coming to HN (aka hacker focused stories)? So what could it hurt to make things a bit more personalized for myself?

<comment><USER38> The personalization, although helpfull to filter out noise, can have some unwanted side-effects, as described on the _Beware online "filter bubbles"_[1]

Note that there are already tools that provide some personalization for Hacker News[2]

[1] [http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html)

[2] [https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News- Filter](https://github.com/fractastical/Hacker-News-Filter)

<comment><USER39> Actually the personalization is a great idea. But you'd have to not just apply filters but develop a complex recommendation system based on what you upvoted/read in the past. I.e. no more global front page for everybody but an individual one for each person.

But doing this requires quite some work (Machine learning etc.)

<comment><USER40> or simply have something like sub-reddits.

<comment><USER41> some sub-reddits are by nature very focused and high noise/signal ratio (/r/netsec is a good example of this), while something like /r/funny will have multiple posts that won't appeal to everyone. Definitely something that can be done better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> _> The policy parts, I don't feel like I have a say in that. I don't have a voice there. I know what I want to see happen. But I don't feel like I have a say or a voice so I choose to be interested in the technology and think about where that's going to take us next._

It just burns to hear Rob Malda say this. I wince at the thought. I've heard the words before, in the back of my head: solutionism, powerlessness, voter apathy. I have no good ideas to solve this or even reverse it: no way forward, no 'edge'.

I'm starting to think these news sites live and die like phoenixes. Emotional baggage accumulates, pushing "issues" to the surface, clouding understanding. "Thought-provoking" is the kind of post I like to read, but only when it provokes curiosity, not frustration.

I wonder what would happen to the HN userbase if the entire site goes dark for a whole month. I'd come back. I hope the "issues" disappear and we can all start conversing with clear minds once again.

</comment><comment><USER43> People want too much from this site: startup news, code, politics, self help, tech gossip. This was fine with fewer users because all this could coexist on the front page, but now a lot of quality content just flies under the radar in lieu of linkbait stories. Unfortunately this is the way the internet works.

</comment><comment><USER44> A lot of Malda's thesis seems subjective; a more interesting statement was just a brief mention at the top of the article:

 _> Then, after taking a year off, [Malda] joined WaPo Labs, a technology incubator owned by the Washington Post Company, the parent company of the Washington Post. (WaPo Labs is not among the companies being purchased by Jeff Bezos.)_

I wonder why that is? I don't want to derail the discussion, but I had assumed (incorrectly) that Bezos was acquiring the full Washington Post collective. It strikes me as odd that he would neglect one of the elements that made WaPo, in my mind, somewhat unique.

I'll try to stay away from speculation, but I can't help but wonder if some of Bezos's other labs might be integrated into WaPo's technology portfolio? Is that possible, when the purchase was unaffiliated with Amazon?

<comment><USER4> He didn't buy the actual company, only some of the newspapers: the _Post_ itself, and a number of local papers. The Washington Post Co. itself will remain independent, but will have to change its name, and will retain Kaplan, WaPo Labs, _Slate_ , about 10 local TV stations, SocialCode, and some other things.

<comment><USER45> But what is the point of WaPo Labs without the WaPo? Are they going to rebrand to some sort of general-purpose tech startup or incubator?

Or are they going to keep doing innovation for WaPo, only now on a contractual basis? (Creating recurring revenue for the public company.)

<comment><USER4> I dug a bit and found that some kind of cross-licensing deal is included: WaPo Labs gets a 5-year content license, in return for 10% of any profits. However it sounds like they're planning to move towards doing more general tech-for- media stuff rather than WaPo-tied stuff.

Source: 2nd-to-last question from [http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/08/don- graham-on-the-sale-of-t...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/08/don-graham-on- the-sale-of-the-washington-post-jeff-bezos-and-the-pace-of-newsroom- innovation/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slightly misleading, only a paragraph or two were really about Hacker News in particular. More about why there won't be another "x", of which Hacker News is one iteration.

I'm glad Malda spoke to the issue of volume. A lot of users on Hacker News (with varying levels of prominence, seniority and notability) have noted the issues arising with volume.

The NSA scandal was the most recent example of this. Political discourse on Hacker News is almost cancerous it's so bad. there is widespread misinformation and a quick glance at the "New" page shows that the guidelines are frequently not even regarded for submissions.

I think Malda is on point with his view of Hacker News being at critical mass right now.

</comment><comment><USER46> Strangely enough, "new version of blahblahblah" is much more interesting to me than anything "tech culture" ever will be.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think Malda is circling in the wrong waters. He's following and rubbing shoulders with the folks with money and influence, but the interesting stuff is all being done by a bunch of other people who are spending their time actually doing stuff. Frankly, I don't think Robert Scoble has even the slightest fragment of a fucking clue as to what the tech landscape is going to look like in 2023 or who is going to be a big part of it. Just because they have money, a legacy, and a reputation doesn't mean they are relevant. I think that might apply to Malda as well as anyone else.

<comment><USER48> Anyone who frequented slashdot can see this. What a preposterous idea that there won't be another Slashdot/digg/HN. Its like saying there won't be another printing press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Personally I like the fact that HN has a lot of verity. I can read it like a newspaper just like I used to do with /. and get exposed to a lot of things I wouldn't know to look for. I can search if I want to focus on something specific. So I don't agree with the premise that there _should_ be another HN.

Two things that I hated about /. was the summery, which usually confusingly buried the link and was generally not helpful. And the fact that you can't vote and comment in the same article, which means that you trend away from having expert comments that are highly rated.

 _If you are an expert you can write an informative comment, but then you can 't help vote up other expert comments, if you only vote your expert opinion goes unheard. HN doesn't have this problem._

I think the reason HN works is mostly simply the name, and not breaking it as above. It captures the idea of "Why" in the golden circle sense.[0] You could easily do this with news sites focused on other general (but engaging) categories, and I think that is already true, we are just more interested in the hacker type of news so may not notice.

[0]: [http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> _One thing I learned is don't spend your entire life playing predictive defense against attacks that will never happen. Real people are very clever. If they choose to attack you they'll attack you in ways you can't predict._

I wish our government would heed this advice...

I also liked how Rob said that his CMS was an evolved system and not designed. This has been my experience as well, because I can't think of _everything_ and am better suited to incremental design.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder about the idea that Twitter will fill the role of something like Slashdot/HN/&c. At my Peak Twitter, I followed a couple hundred people, but the stream is so full of noise that the work of picking out the signal began to drown out any possible benefit. Retweets, for instance, I see as 99.99% noise. The ads are annoying, but ads are annoying everywhere.

<comment><USER51> [http://hubski.com](http://hubski.com) is in many ways a mashup between HN and Twitter. I created it from the HN source code. Building feeds built from following people and tags keeps noise down. People are pretty careful about what they share (retweets). I know Rob has an inactive account, so he is vaguely aware of it. He agreed to let me bend his ear about it (I lived nearby him), but left for the WaPo almost immediately after.

<comment><USER52> One thing about tags which I think is worth a try is to make them up/down- votable. It's one thing to say: "this is interesting" and it's another to say "this is on topic". Current sites based on tags doesn't allow for much user input in the latter area.

I dream of a day when I can customize youtube to not display anything video game related (when searching for highlights from sport events and stuff). Everything tagged as "sport events" and in fact being video game footage would be downvoted to death and users posting this wrongly tagged stuff flagged as spammers so there would be incenvite for them to tag things properly.

<comment><USER51> Our approach is that the author can choose up to two tags, and the community (excluding newbies) can add a third. The most suggested community tag is the current tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> _If I could just find someone who made a Hacker News digest, with the 10 best items from Hacker News, that would be a really good Slashdot._

Someone needs to tell Rob, I created a digest just over three years ago - [http://hackernewsletter.com](http://hackernewsletter.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> It kinda sounds like he's suggesting a massive, public, social media platform where the 'good stuff' naturally bubbles up to the top. 'Good stuff', in this case, being what you're interested in and nothing else.

And while that would indeed be awesome, it's also pretty obviously a pipe dream. Maybe some breakthrough with AI would help with that, but until then I don't think we have the technology to do that.

So, for now humans are in control, and as we all know, the public is filled with marketers, trolls, and other forms of bagbiters that tend to ruin such things when they get big enough. Hakuna matata, I guess.

<comment><USER54> You're a marketer too, you're marketing your opinion.

<comment><USER34> >You're a marketer too, you're marketing your opinion.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I'm not marketing anything because I'm not selling anything for money or goods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> In the same article he wonders how there can be eternal growth (the graph up and to the right quote) while limiting the discussion topics to a very small number, but doesn't see the inherent conflict in the demands.

This is a failure to identify audience. A desire for identical "fundamentalist clones". Maybe you just don't get those in a tech audience.

He made it very clear he's not interested in a coffeescript release. Obviously some subculture is... And thats not necessarily a problem.

<comment><USER56> This probably didn't come through well in the transcript, but his point was that other people (e.g. Slashdot's corporate overlords) wanted the graph to go up and to the right, while Malda wanted to focus on catering to a focused tech audience. He's pointing out the conflict, not ignoring it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> "If I could just find someone who made a Hacker News digest, with the 10 best items from Hacker News, that would be a really good Slashdot."

I think the Launch Ticker is probably the closest thing to that. They cover much of the same ground as HN. Of course, you don't get the comments, but that could be a positive to some people.

[http://launch.co/](http://launch.co/)

</comment><comment><USER58> _> If I could just find someone who made a Hacker News digest, with the 10 best items from Hacker News, that would be a really good Slashdot._

Ahem: [http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

Only problem is the lag in receiving it, if you care a great deal about participating in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER59> The TL;DR answer seems to be: because there isn't a good way to get the wisdom of the crowds without the crowds (yet).

</comment><comment><USER60> Really great interview. Its good to know thoughts of Slashdot founder. I think hacker news is perfect the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER61> For me, the glory days of Slashdot were when I consumed the daily text based email digest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any successor will, by necessity, be named something else, so... Yeah, I agree, there can never be another "Hacker News."

</comment><comment><USER62> He seems convinced that /. was the last great success in tech news and there will never be another to replace it.

IMHO it failed for 2 reasons, too many political articles & social news is better than news aggregators. In the end most articles were about Microsoft & SCO being evil. Plus the rise of social news (twitter, reddit) have killed the need for news aggregators like slashdot & digg...slashdot was awesome, it unfortunately didn't evolve.

[edit] Forgot to add the /. comment system. It has too many features. Even today it's hard/annoying to use.

<comment><USER63> _He seems convinced that /. was the last great success in tech news and there will never be another to replace it._

What makes you think so? Why would someone convinced of such things say the following:

"Hacker News is awesome. It is probably my number one RSS feed right now." -Rob Malda

(Taken from TFA.)

<comment><USER62> Read the entire article. In it he praises hackernews then says it needs to filter to top 10 items, as slashdot did. He says twitter is fundamentally broken. He says reddit is too big.

<comment><USER64> HN just needs a buffer/digest, so you only see posts that spend some time on the front page.

[http://eplenum.com/news?days=.1](http://eplenum.com/news?days=.1) posts that have been on the front page in the last 2.5 hours

[http://eplenum.com/news?days=1](http://eplenum.com/news?days=1) posts that have been on the front page in the last day

....

[http://eplenum.com/news?q=slashdot&sort=lastUpdate,desc](http://eplenum.com/news?q=slashdot&sort=lastUpdate,desc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I talked to Rob at a LinuxWorld several years ago. I got there kind of late and he was answering questions to a medium sized group of socially awkward computer nerds. No one wanted to get on the mic and ask a question for a Slashdot T-Shirt, so, being the extrovert that I am, stepped up to the plate.

I had recently read an interview with Rob online where someone asked him about Digg and Reddit and the popularity of user chosen content. His answers seemed like the question really got under his skin, so I figured I'd fuck with him in public.

I got on the mic and asked him what he thought about the trend of user submitted content. He immediately snapped at me that someone had already asked a similar question and called me a noob. He rambled on about quality vs quantity and all that, my eyes glazed over and I waited to get my free T-Shirt. I still have it! That experience more or less cemented my opinion of 'ol Robbie. Just thought I'd mention this story..

<comment><USER66> See, but even in your own words, you seem like more of an ass than he does.

You didn't even listen to his answer after he said someone else asked the same question. Hell, your entire goal was to just annoy him. I think he probably figured as much and decided he didn't want to play your game.</comment></comment>


Hello people, it's Chrome opening up your camera for "good"... or bad - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/298925039519166465 Chrome Developers (@ChromiumDev) tweeted at 10:44 PM on Tue, Feb 05, 2013:<p>Chrome's permission bar will not re-prompt, once accepted, for Camera & Mic (getUserMedia, Web Speech API) if page is served on HTTPS<p>(https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/298925039519166465) <comment><AUTHOR> This is a secure problem, have your camera open just because once you enter a website is absurd, jut because you open your house's door when is necessary doesn't mean you should leave it open. This idea that SSL is all what it takes for a server to be reliable is nonsense.</comment>


Show HN: CustomStringParser ( Python) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotpot/CustomStringParser please comment, contribute if you have any good ideas. This is my semi-first public project, open source <comment><AUTHOR> this is my first open source project, please comment, contribute and etc.. :)</comment>


Google 404 screen appears on facebook.co.uk/ root - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Yup, it's a fake. The nameservers aren't Google's (dns __.b.register.com instead of ns __.google.com).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is probably from somebody domain camping the url, and for some reason powering it with Google App Engine. Nevertheless, the irony is striking.</comment>


Google Maps new elevation feature - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mashable/status/917291819171377152 <comment><AUTHOR> Google Maps adds elevation feature for pedestrians, earlier it was only available for cyclists.</comment>


Monsanto seeks retraction for report linking herbicide to cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-monsanto-herbicide-idUSKBN0MK2GF20150324

<comment><USER2> "Miller said the company provided scientific data to the IARC showing the safety of glyphosate, but that the agency largely ignored it."

Scientific data is a term that means nothing by itself. You could double blind test that drinking a 200ml Roundup solution has no mutagenic effects on blood cells-from a one time measurement of blood drawn exactly 30 seconds after drinking the solution. There you have 'scientific data' that proves nothing.

I think government should not wait too long to go into discovery what had been known of this by Monsanto researchers and subsequently been suppressed.

</comment><comment><USER3> The last paragraph:

 _" There are a number of independent, published manuscripts that clearly indicate that glyphosate ... can promote cancer and tumor growth," said Dave Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. "It should be banned."_

<comment><USER4> I wonder what studies he's talking about. The ones I'm aware of that show these effects are seralini study, or judy carman's pig study. And anybody with even a basic knowledge of science should be able to tell that they are lousy papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this article provides a good rebuttal to the IARC

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/03/20/march- mad...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/03/20/march-madness-from- the-united-nations/)

tl;dr: the IARC report bases its conclusion on the potential hazard rather than the actual risk. Regulatory agencies like Germany's BfR which review a lot more data have concluded that there is no "carcinogenic or mutagenic properties"

</comment><comment><USER5> This is typical posturing from Monsanto - what else can they do, when confronted with the potential that they've been poisoning the earth with cancer-causing mass-profit-generationg chemicals, which form the basis of their stock value? It should come as no surprise that they are calling for this report to be retracted, as they _must_ attempt to defend the value of their organization at all costs, regardless, or face the wrath of their masters - the shareholders - when the stock takes a hit.

There are, as mentioned, multiple reports and findings that put Monsanto in hot water on this issue. They deserve to have this dirty laundry aired, considering the massive investment they have made in covering up the problems with their products. This is not a company that will go lightly into the chambers of justice - it will fight all the way for its own position to be held in the public eye, because that is one of the things it does, as a company, to build the value it has achieved so far. Monsanto is not just a biological-product producer; they're also masters at manipulating public opinion, owning politicians, and defining their PR on their own terms. Just like they manipulate the genetics of organisms for their own gain, they manipulate the general publics point of view in the same light. It will take true science to defeat them, and this is a case where it looks like its happening. Finally.

<comment> xkcd-sucks They've certainly got lots of other herbicides in their pipeline... And, their glyphosate patents expired a while ago. Banning Roundup is good for them, because now they can sell a whole new herbicide/herbicide protection system.

If Monsanto was subjected to any meaningful penalties it might not be a win for them, but we all know the likelihood of that happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it interesting when there's research that doesn't happen to be funded (indirectly or otherwise) by industry, it often ends up exposing potential dangers that all the other studies somehow missed completely.

Then again, there's much less incentive to use industry-friendly, stunted methodologies when one doesn't have industry footing the bill directly or by proxy.

And, on that note:

"... Most US research on glyphosate, Benbrook added, has focused on the chemical in isolation. But in the real world, glyphosate is mixed with other chemicals, called surfactants and adjuvants, that enhance their weed-slaying power. Importantly, some of the research used in the WHO assessment came from outside the US and looked at real-world herbicide formulations. ... "

source:

[http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/03/monsanto- her...](http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/03/monsanto-herbicide- cause-cancer)</comment>


A lone wolf's miles traveled in northern Minnesota - <AUTHOR> https://brilliantmaps.com/wolf-map/ <comment><USER2> 96.5 MB GIF ahead warning.

(I'm both impressed and scared of how I used up 1% of my generous mobile data plan in about 5 seconds by clicking 1 link.)

<comment><USER3> Is 10GB a generous mobile data plan these days? I guess it really depends on where you are. In Taiwan I used to have unlimited one years ago already. Now in England they just start to come out with unlimited plans that are not totally ridiculously overpriced, so I guess things are getting better.

But yeah, while my first thought was "95MB is not _that_ much", it is also 4x the size of the hard drive of my first computer, so yeah, suddenly can relate that it is not totally expected either. (and these views definitely date me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Minnesota is BIG! Earlier this year an Arctic fox was tracked walking 3500 km (~2000 miles) in 76 days from Spitsbergen (Norway) to Ellesmere island (Canada) over the Arctic ice[1]. I thought that was a long way.

1\. [https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/arctic-fox- travels-3-500-km-...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/arctic-fox- travels-3-500-km-from-norway-to-canada-in-only-76-days-1.4490363).

<comment><USER5> Amazing as per the data, once the fox walked 150 kilo meters in a single day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's another map from the same project that shows multiple different wolves and how they stay within their territories: [https://i.redd.it/6ddoli58r1v21.gif](https://i.redd.it/6ddoli58r1v21.gif)

</comment><comment><USER7> Original: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/bol3rj/oc_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/bol3rj/oc_11_months_of_a_lone_wolfs_travels_in_northern/)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting that the movements sometimes look like a random walk, but also there's definitely movements that look purposeful. I wonder what's the underlying reason for the change in the two apparent movement states (mostly random, purposeful). Of course it could always just be a random walk, but it doesn't look very likely.

<comment><USER9> This one was interesting:

Q (thechrizzo): Close to the end there is this straight line from bottom to top… What was that? The wolf walking a straight line for miles? Kinda strange

A: The wolf was running down a power line that is a compacted snowmobiled trail during the winter. This trail allowed the wolf to travel in a straight line for a a good distance!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It probably ran that long distance initially to get away from whatever tagged it....

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a great example of high performance, low resource and minimal dependencies. I wish someone will develop an operating system called Lone Wolf.

<comment><USER12> Is not lonely, is an explorer, pioneer and cartographer :-).

The three parallel lines next Pitt around oct 22 are really striking. Could those lines be an artifact of GPS, or is the wolf deliberately trying to explore the new area with the minimum effort (perimeter first and then filling the area systematically)?

Update: okay, is using the firebreaks on wild areas and roads to travel. Firebreaks and roads are built in parallel lines

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know what else to say but that is just awesome.</comment>


Startup Name? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I have developed a mobile application ala twitter but with a social networking twist and I just cant seem to come up with any catchy name for it. So I will like to give the honors (if i may call it that) to members of YC News to give it a name. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated! thanks <comment><USER4> Think about what you want the application to do, brainstorm, free associate and go from there. You've got a mobile application + social networking twist.. off the top of my head I think... sociable.. socimobile, mob social, text social, social text.. socialcom.. socialmeet.. meetsocial.. but I think some of those are taken..

There's also a tradition of adding.. ista.. and ist on to words.. mobista.. mobilist.. mobilista.. (just looked online, I see squatters have already got two of those). Also.. mobilizer.. socializer.. but don't do the flickr thing if you don't have to..

Making plays on words other people have suggested.. I'd look at shoutspace, textspace.. shouttext.. textyell.. hollaspace.. mobiile.. txtmobl..textpush.. socialpush.. sociplace.. freesocial.. soctxt.. txtpush.. textero.. socialpath (play on sociopath?) no idea if any of those are taken or used yet.

Do NOT name it anything having to do with Twitter.. or put an i in front of it.. that is totally done already.

One of my ongoing projects is called Workpost. It's a place to post and find work and, soon, will be a place to list and review workers. We have other stuff planned for future versions of the site + application but it all originates from the name and the brand.

It's cool if you can think of a nonsense word and then turn that into a brand but with all the web 2.0 names out there, I think it's more useful now if you can start with a name that already means something.

Well, hope that was helpful.

<comment><USER5> Well said - good ideas. I like mobsocial best :)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's actually not bad... looks like someone owns the .com already though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I registered textzero.com as a domain for an idea I had years ago.

I've never used it and TBH am unlikely to ever get around to doing anything on it. I'd rather it got used than sat there.

If you'd like it, you can have it at cost. Just buy me a beer one day if you make millions ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> "mobile application ala twitter but with a social networking twist" How about "mwist" for "Mobile with a tWIST"?

It's very Web 2.0. Might need to rename when Web 3.0 beta comes out to make it compatible.

<comment><USER8> Also good.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will like to state here that the name doesn't have to be "web 2.0"ish

<comment><USER9> Here's some non-web2.0 names: General Text Messages, International Text Messages, or TextSoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chirpt.com

I own this but am not using it.

</comment><comment><USER11> shouterspace ?

I have, but am not using, the .com domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> is the domain for sale? contact me at aitoehigie {at} gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> txtmssngr

(just kidding, that's actually a horrible name)

<comment><USER13> like "nvwls.cm" (No Vowels dot Com) or "lkmnvwls.com" Look Ma No Vowels dot Com ... mmm LMNV, sounds like a doublefla...

<comment><USER8> lkmnvwls.com is going to cause chaos when one person tries to tell their friend to go there over the phone/in-person...I don't think most people will think to say "Hey, just type "look ma no vowels", remove all the vowels, append ".com", and hit enter..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> mobilsocial.com/net - available mobilepostr.com/net - <USER3> mobisoci.com/net - <USER3>

</comment><comment><USER15> socialcell, socell (almost sounds like social), (mobilesocial), moso, mobiso

</comment><comment><USER16> mogga.com (taken, but probably buyable)

mogtown.com (available)

</comment><comment><USER17> is it good or bad to have a web2.0-ish name?

<comment><USER18> They are exceptionally boring and uncreative to me at this point. I guess occasionally, one will come around that makes sense but most of the time they are garbage.

Take a descriptive word, drop a vowel - how novel. Try coming up with a unique brand without following the same formula as everyone else - Google, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace all managed to without going the Flickr route.

<comment><USER19> Googol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> MobRally.com

</comment><comment><USER13> thumbst.com Thumb social texter

<comment><USER20> It's logical, and it rolls off the tongue.

<comment><USER8> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> my two ideas: iTweet and Twobile amazingly are already taken ... and I'm done

<comment><USER8> If he's competing with Twitter, iTweet might cause legal problems (IANAL) and definitely will cause branding problems...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Troops.

<comment><USER13> TroopRally

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> mosoc</comment>


Updated and more detailed Transparency Report - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/updated-and-more-detailed-transparency.html <comment><USER2> I was expecting to see DMCA takedown requests included in this too. Still, pretty interesting to see these numbers in relation to other nations.</comment>