Two years later, I still miss the headphone port - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/25/i-still-miss-the-headphone-port/ <comment><USER2> Complete agreement from me here. I refuse to buy a phone without a headphone jack. It's such a simple thing, but it represents such a middle finger to consumers that it's enough for me to say no.

My iPhone 6s is fine. An older pixel will be fine too as soon as I figure out how to ditch iMessage.

This actually feels a lot like how Facebook seems to intentionally cripple their mobile site to try and get me to install their app so they can have more of my info. It's inconveniencing me very deliberately to try and hold my convenience hostage.

<comment><USER3> I'm sticking with the 6S myself due to lack of headphone jack. I estimate I'll keep the 6S another 4-5 years as there's longevity in these devices I feel. Not sure what I'd do at that point because I think the iPhone in general is great.

<comment><USER2> Friendly reminder to go get your battery replaced before the end of the year!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ditching the headphone port is a great example of the form over function mindset that I find so grating about much of the tech industry. I don't care about flashy or gimmicky changes, I just want things to work and work well.

FWIW, I use the port on my phone regularly and love never having to give it a second thought. Removing the port was the biggest reason I did not replace my old Nexus with a new Pixel. I'm just one person and am guessing the port is doomed sooner rather than later, but at least for now I can put my money where my mouth is.

<comment><USER5> >put my money where my mouth is

I wonder if it is enough to NOT buy a device for a certain reason... How does the neglected company know why you didn't buy their device? Especially if you actually want that device and there is only one reason why you decide against it.

Maybe it is necessary to give ones opinion a voice and give feedback to those neglected companies. (Or a petition?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out just how absolutely terrible the Bluetooth experience that AirPods provide in comparison to being able to simply plug in headphones.

When I put on my AirPods, I have no clue how long it's actually going to take until I can listen to my phone through them. Even when going into the output selection, and tapping the AirPods (it they even show up), I never know how long it's going to take. Many times, after 40-60 seconds of waiting for the damn things to finally connect, I put them back in their case, wait a few seconds, and then put them back in, hoping that resets whatever silly and incompetent Bluetooth implementation that prevents pairing.

They are really really terrible when it comes to connecting, just awful awful things. So infuriating. Yet, what else am I going to do in the Apple ecosystem? Apple provides no other option. Steve Jobs would not have put up with quality this poor. The executive team should be ashamed of shipping stuff like this.

<comment><USER7> We have opposite experiences, to the point where I actually wonder if you have a defective set of AirPods. The process for me, on every single one of my Apple devices, is:

1\. Put AirPods in ears.

2\. Hit play.

There's no step #3. I do honestly wonder how our experiences differ so greatly. For me, it's at the point where AirPods are _more_ seamless than my IEMs, because instead of having to fiddle about untangling the damn cable, I just pop them in my ears and go.

As far as I know everyone I know with AirPods has the same experience as me. Perhaps you should take yours back to an Apple store.

<comment><USER8> Try pairing your AirPods with your laptop as well. Now when you put the headphones in to listen to Podcasts _on your phone_ you hear the chime and think you're good to go, so you turn on your podcast and hear nothing.

Wait, you can hear it, it's just really quiet. So you turn up the volume. Ohhhh it's coming out of my iPhone speakers. Now take headphones out to confirm, then put them back in. The AirPods found your laptop somewhere thirty yards away and had connected to that! Don't mind that the lid is closed and its asleep, and your iPhone is activated, in your hand, and playing audio.

Now on your phone:

0\. Pause Podcast

1\. Home button (close Podcasts)

2\. Home button (first press didn't work)

3\. Home button (get to first app page)

4\. Settings App

5\. Home button (because your finger slipped downward 1 pixel when you pressed the Settings App and iOS thought you wanted to search your phone instead)

6\. Settings App

7\. Bluetooth

8\. Tap "AirPods"

9\. Wait about 10 seconds

10\. Double tap Home button

11\. Find Podcasts app

12\. Rewind 30 seconds

13\. Hit Play

This happens to me _all the fucking time._

<comment><USER9> When moving from my laptop to my phone, I just open the settings tray, 3D touch the media control, tap the AirPlay icon and select my AirPods. Sure, that's still a few taps but your flow is about as roundabout as you can get.

<comment><USER8> Duly noted and that will certainly help _me_ in the future, but I have to point out that plugging in 3.5mm headphones never required knowledge of a super-secret shortcut. You just simply had to plug them in. And even _that_ takes less time than the 3d-touch-media-tray method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No shit. It's bizarre that I can't use my headphones and charge at the same time. It's bizarre that I have to carry around an adapter (or two sets of headphones) when I work because my MacBook and iPhone have different headphone jacks. I'm generally happy with Apple's products, but this choice leaves me baffled.

<comment><USER11> I'm disappointed we got the touchbar instead of an integrated wireless charging component in the MacBook Pro. If it's technically feasible, it'd be so convenient to charge my phone by putting it on top of my laptop.

<comment><USER12> just get a usb charging mat and plug it into your laptop. then take a look at how big it is. then add that size to your laptop. then ask yourself if this 15% bigger laptop is something all the other people want, or would they rather have more battery/cpu/ram for that 15% of space. They probably won't. But they don't want the wireless charger in that space either. They want the smaller laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two years later, and I honestly forgot they removed it. The lack of a headphone port hasn't impacted my daily life at all.

<comment><USER14> Yep, I was a bit confused earlier today why my wife was looking for wired headphones—-that is, until I got on an airplane and realized I can't use my AirPods with the inflight entertainment system.

At this point, I'd rather go without entertainment than carry around anything more than AirPods (or equalavent). I know it probably sounds pretty smug, but I use my AirPods ~5-10x more on average than I did wired headphones.

<comment><USER15> > At this point, I'd rather go without entertainment than carry around > anything more than AirPods...

This, and parents' comment, is pretty much the archetype of misunderstanding the point being made by tfa and other 'I want the headphone port back' argument.

We all understand some people are happy without a headphone jack.

That's fine.

You guys can use a headphone jacked phone with low quality Bluetooth audio just fine, but we can't use a non headphone jacked phone at all -- hence the feeling of brutally enforced unfairness.

<comment><USER16> > with low quality Bluetooth audio

I'm not an audiophile but I don't think the cheap DACs in most phones are in any way superior to the quality that Bluetooth delivers these days.

<comment><USER15> Not an audiophile either, and only a vague understanding of sbc, aptx, etc ... however the quality issue for me is more around the overall bt audio experience than just the sound reproduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I never see an argument from consumers who agree with the removal more comprehensive than "well _I_ don't need it so it shouldn't exist".

There is no value to consumer in the _option_ for 3.5mm jack not existing on their phone. The phones are not thinner, they are not cheaper, and they do not have better battery life. A phone with 3.5mm will do Bluetooth just as well.

So on what grounds is this decision defended? Whatever the portion of audience that benefits from it, what is the motivation from those who don't need the jack to so gleefully deny it to those who do need the jack?

I can list any number of reasons for why 3.5 jack makes my family's life easier - but why do I have to? Given it doesn't cost you anything, why not give it to me?

\---

Reason why I like the _option_ for 3.5 headphones and headset even though I don't always use it

Cheap quality headsets. I do hours of concalls and lots of travel. I have cheap wired headsets everywhere - at home, in office, in car, in backpack. They all sound better, on average, than any Bluetooth because they sound great always. Sooner or later any participant with Bluetooth will go digital or wonky and delay us all while hey reconnect or just remove the darn thing. They are just never 100% reliable to those who have to listen to you, even if you believe their convenience is worth it (and if they don't have a boom they pick up much too much extraneous noise - again which may not bother you but is certainly annoying to others) I can borrow anybody's wired headset and it'll just work instantly. I can change headsets easily and switch them between phones and tablets and other devices. I can purchase one cheaply and quickly if I loose or forgot mine. I can lend it to others with equal ease.

And oh yes the idea of dongles or inability to charge while talking is just ridiculous - apple never understood business users, with headphones on bottom next to charger that they kept moving even while they supported it - so you couldn't easily use it with a basic dock. The iOS not showing mute on same screen as keypad further shows basic misunderstanding of professional use case... But i digress

<comment><USER18> >They all sound better, on average, than any Bluetooth

No, they don't.

They may sound better than cheap Bluetooth headsets.

But I guarantee they don't sound better than my Nuraphones, or the Sennheiser Momentum 2 Wireless/HD-1s I was using beforehand.

Note that I own both Shure 535s and 846s, as well. The Nuraphone sounds better than either of them.

I use my Nuraphones for business con-calls every day. They sound great on my end and I've been told they sound great on the other end(s) of those calls, as well. Same with the Sennheisers.

<comment><USER17> I'm not convinced (they may in ideal condition, but it does not appear that the Sennheisers or Nuraphones have a boom - they're just headphones with a microphone, so I'd be skeptical of their performance in a noisy environment or if you're typing on a keyboard or any other distracting audio input; as I said I love my wireless Sennheisers and Plantronics for listening, but there are times I still want 3.5mm option) , but for the sake of the argument, my question remains - how would _your_ experience be worse, if your phone also had a 3.5mm jack?

(and lest we go down the argument of "what, do you still need a parallel port" etc - this is a standard that existed, depending on how you count, anywhere between 50 years and a century, which still performs the function cheaply, reliably and conveniently; whereas that lightning to 3.5mm to charging dongle will, if all goes well, be in the dustbins of history in 5-10 years or less - and we'll see how well the Bluetooth headsets work with audio devices 10 years from now)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I definitely care more than the average person, but all things considered I prefer my wired IEMs over over-ear wireless headphones, or today's chunky earbuds that need to be charged too often for my liking (and/or their charging cases, to be exact). Same reason I didn't get into smart watches, the pros were outweighed by the cons. But like wireless gaming-grade mice, I think we'll get there with audio.

I'm the meantime I'll be keeping an eye out for the 3.5" jack in the future, I guess. I do think that it's very convenient to not fiddle with wires, but I like the choice I have now: Preferred shape/sound, vs all the friction associated with wires (sorry ;).

The way I see it, if wireless is here to stay, my situation should only last until someone comes up with a wireless product that I like more than today's lineup. It's just that I prefer my wired setup for the time being!

<comment><USER7> As a possible solution, you can buy a pair of IEMs with MMCX connectors and a bluetooth MMCX cable. This is the route I went with my Shure SE315s that I use while I'm on my motorcycle, and it works pretty flawlessly for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I made the transition to Bluetooth long before the headphone jack became an endangered species (in fact, back when SonyEricsson was still a thing), and have fared well, with one exception: iOS music/synth apps have varying latency issues with Bluetooth, which means I will need an USB audio adapter sometime in the future.

But for general entertainment purposes, I'm fine. Not being an audiophile, I can still say that using the right Bluetooth DAC makes a world of difference, and that you may need to go a bit upmarket for good sounding headphones, but the price differential falls more on the side of the hardware than the DAC.

(Higher-specked headphones are often dual wireless/wired models, too)

</comment><comment><USER21> So true. The fact that they still don't have a solution that allows for concurrent charging and wired headphone use is crazy. I've tried wireless headphones and have found all of them lacking. The two big issues are they are never charged when I need them to be and they don't pair/sync without a lot of fiddling.

<comment><USER22> Isn't that possible with iPhone 8 and never? AFAIK you can use wireless charging and still use the Lightning port for your headphones.

<comment><USER23> As a side note, one thing that I hate about wireless charging is I can't use the phone while charging.

<comment><USER22> Good point. Would probably irritate me as well (currently using iPhone 7).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Two years later I'm so happy they killed the headphone jack and forced me to switch to Bluetooth headphones. I would have stuck to the wired earbuds I was using and missed out on how much less annoying and freer these wireless headphones are. It was a fairly big step up in my quality of daily life as an open office employee and train commuter.

</comment><comment><USER25> As someone using his smartphone as a portable music player every day, I really regret having a smartphone without a headphone jack. Although I agree that using Bluetooth headphones is more comfortable than using wired ones, the loss of sound quality simply is not worth it. Especially the constant static noise in the background while the Bluetooth headphones are active is something I just can not get used to. Unfortunately, it seems that every pair has that issue [1].

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/8ethpj/are_all_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/8ethpj/are_all_bluetooth_headphones_noisy/)

<comment><USER18> >the loss of sound quality

My Nuraphones sound great, as did my Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 2/HD-1 Wireless Bluetooth headphones before them. No static whatsoever.

Just because you're too cheap to pony up for decent Bluetooth headphones doesn't mean the rest of us are.

<comment><USER26> So the fact that a pair of $20 headphones that have wires sound better than a pair of wireless headphones at the same price point is somehow the person you are responding to's fault and makes him cheap for not buying something that he wouldn't need to buy if a feature that did exist still existed. Yeah I think the problem is that you don't realize everyone doesn't have the money you obviously do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just bought a new iPad Pro and realized it doesn't have a headphone port. And it doesn't have thunderbolt either so I am now in a situation where I need three different adapters to listen to music on my iPhone, MacBook and iPad. It's just silly. I have AirPods too, and switching between devices is as seamless as could be expected but still sucks compared to just plugging in headphones.

I might return it and stick with my first gen iPad.

</comment><comment><USER28> Really confused about Apple's recent design choices.

You cannot charge Apple's flagship smartphone with Apple's flagship laptop without an adapter that does not come bundled with either of the two!

<comment><USER29> Huh? You can charge an iPhone over USB and their latest laptop includes USB?

<comment><USER30> Macbook Pros have USB-C and the latest iPhones have the Thunderbolt charging port. Critically however, the non phone end of the included charging cable is not USB-C, so you need an adapter or different cable to charge it.

<comment><USER29> Ah, I'd forgotten that they only included USB C, and it's not backwards compatible. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wanted to get myself the next Pixel, after a couple of really good years with my faithful OnePlus 3 - only to be annoyed that the Pixel 3 didn't have the headphone jack either. Thats after they made all those ads about the iPhone not having it.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Oh, wait: now I want to listen to music while I fall asleep, but also charge > my phone so it's not dead in the morning. That's a different, more expensive > splitter dongle (many of which, I've found, are poorly made garbage).

Or a wireless charging pad plus regular adapter.

(I'm a fine one to talk; I have an OG Pixel, and I use my headphone jack entirely for the headset functionality when doing a conference call while remote. A sub-$10 wired headset gets the job done... for now)

<comment><USER2> Yeah but that wireless charger should be an added convenience, not an anti- user move to get you to buy more crap.

It feels like a recent thing to me, but companies (especially tech companies) have gone from:

"We will make the best product we can, and you will pay us for it."

(Or perhaps some graph where marginal profit is the highest)

To

"We will make the worst product we can get away with making because you don't have a choice."

The focus seems to have gone from what customers want to what customers will tolerate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I just ziptied an adapter to every pair of headphones I use (when I'm not using AirPods) and moved on with my life.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm at wedding in 2017. The dance floor has opened up and the party begins. Then the "DJ" in charge of music disconnects her phone to take a call - boo, party over. But aha! I take my S8 from my pocket, plug the standard auxiliary cable from the sound system into the headphone jack and push play on a club banger mix. The party resumes. I am a hero. Now it's 2018 and I have a Pixel 3 with no headphone port. I will never be a spontaneous DJ hero ever again....and this makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER35> We all miss the headphone jack. I begrudgingly upgraded to the iPhone 8 Which I'll try to keep for the next 3-5 years. I waited so long to upgrade from the five because of the headphone jack.

</comment><comment><USER36> What annoys me with the headphone jack isn't so much that you need an adapter. I have one pair of headphones and I wouldn't have a problem gluing an adapter to it.

Instead, what really annoys me is the lack of a secondary port in a convenient location. If they replaced the headphone jack with some other accessory connector, I doubt anyone would complain.

</comment><comment><USER37> Cmon, having a phone with a headphone jack is like having a computer with a CD drive...

OK sure it can be annoying that 0.1% of times when you want to read a CD to your computer, but then you can get a USB CD drive. Same with the headphone jack, it's an old piece of shit port that nobody really needs, but if you need it, get a dongle.

</comment><comment><USER38> Headphone jack, escape key, Magsafe adapter.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not convenient but I did have plug that charge and listen to music. I need that for car driving for gps for hour long driving. It cones with two version. One is two lightening and one is one lightening and one 3.5mm. The two lightening you need to use a 3.5mm adaoter.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why are people still fighting the headphone issue? Whatever Apple says they made a decision to get rid of it not for the sake of the user but to sell more gadgets to the user. As long as they make a marginal profit with the new headphones vs the old headphone port ones they will not go back. Given that most people aren't protesting by not buying the new phones then Apples has no reason to go back on their decision. Yup, in a few years, the port will be as rare as vacuum tubes in electronics.

Nope, the port is not coming back. It's best to accept that and move on.

<comment><USER41> Touch ID is coming back. 2018 iPhones are being discounted. The upcoming iPad Mini Pro is rumored to include a headphone jack.

<comment><USER42> > Touch ID is coming back

Touch ID never left… still around on the 2018 iPad (non-Pro) and the MacBook Pro/MacBook Air, but then the 2018 iPad is the budget version of the iPad line, and Face ID wouldn't work on MacBooks because people don't hold the front camera up to their faces the same way that people hold iPhones or iPads.

<comment><USER41> It's rumored to be returning to iPhones via in-display sensor, as that technology matures.

<comment><USER42> I doubt the technology matters to Apple anymore. They've found a better solution and have already made their stance clear that Face ID is the future for iOS devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Two years later: not looking back. It's not that bad, just get a set of bluetooth headphones and stop complaining.

</comment><comment><USER44> I still miss slide out keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER45> the cost of being on the edge of technology is the inconvenience you will encounter.

this "article" (if you can call it that, feels fitting to a blog) doesnt really touch on anything meaningful. The author echos the same tirades that we've seen since the announcement of the iPhone X.

<comment><USER21> How can it be the "edge of technology" two years later? Not being able to charge and use wired headphones concurrently is still a major issue for me.

<comment><USER46> If the issue is major then I suggest specialized dongles, wireless headphones, or a wireless charging station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> There is no reason to miss the headphone port unless cost is the main factor.

</comment><comment><USER48> I miss people having a modicum of self-control and a mild tolerance for personal sacrifice.

Just buy a shitphone with a headphone jack. They exist! I have one. You'll live. Apple will get the message. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER49> It amazes me that now eight years later that everyone seems to agree that not supporting Flash was a good idea - like the article did- but for years after the iPhone and iPad were introduce, people were complaining that Apple's wall garden was hurting consumers that wanted Flash.

[https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/jobs-flash-will-murder- the...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/jobs-flash-will-murder-the-ipad- really-now-lets-be-realistic/)

People were also complaining about Apple ditching the floppy and the CD ROM Drive.

<comment><USER50> Not really the same. People were complaining about Flash for years before Apple's decision, there were good alternatives, and the complaints were about Apple not supporting Flash when it could have. I hated Flash but also thought it was unacceptable for Apple to unnecessarily ban it.

Floppies I'm not sure what you're talking about... Optical drives are still supported externally, and one of the big issues with that was really the same issue as with wired headphones: lack of ports. It's not just removing a type of port, it's reducing the number of ports--although removing a centrally important type of port is problematic enough also.

Removal of wired headphone ports was a solution imposed in order to create the appearance of a problem. Bluetooth headphones don't provide as good of possible audio quality, and are more power hungry. With wired ports, if you wanted Bluetooth anyway for whatever reason (and there are many), you could have them.

Whenever a topic like this comes up, it reminds me of the Onion satire (maybe it was not the Onion) about the laptop with just one big button instead of a keyboard.

A better analogy than CDs or Flash in this regard might be tablets: for a time people talked about the end of the keyboard, etc. and how everyone would use tablets. Many of us thought this was absurd for heavy work, and our concerns proved true. Tablets still are useful in all sorts of ways in the same way Bluetooth will be but getting rid of a physical port for audio seems premature.

<comment><USER49> _Apple not supporting Flash when it could have._

Adobe claimed in 2007 that they could support Flash on the original iPhone. When Adobe finally did bring full Flash to mobile on Android, the minimum spec was 1Gb of RAM and a 1Ghz CPU. The original iPhone ran at 400Mhz and had 128Mb of RAM. It wasn't until the iPhone 5 in 2011 that Apple shipped a phone that met those specs.

Adobe was repeatedly late shipping Flash to mobile. One of the biggest selling points of the Motorala Xoom - the first Android tablet to get any buzz - <AUTHOR> that it would run "the full web" by supporting Flash. But it didn't until after it was being sold. The same happened with Palm phones.

As far as floppies, there was a massive outcry when thr first iMac didn't have a floppy in 1997.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Don't care one bit about this. Whatsoever.

<comment><USER52> Then don't comment. Just because you don't give a shit about sound quality doesn't mean others don't either. Enjoy your bluetooth Beats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It feels in tone like the "I'll miss VCR" stuff that went around in 2016 all over again. A little over dramatic given the difference.

[https://www.wired.com/2016/07/vcr-officially-dead-well- never...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/vcr-officially-dead-well-never- forget/)

<comment><USER2> There were good, ubiquitous replacements for VCRs when DVD players came out.

This would be like if Sony stopped selling VCRs in 1998 when they just _happened_ to own the patent on blu ray, and a major movie studio.

Actually it's exactly what Sony tried to do with minidisc, except it worked.

<comment><USER54> Not really. I use Bluetooth headphones - they are branded but not a major brand (in fact a company known for something else).

Bluetooth is pretty ubiquitous and has been for a decade.

The charging case means I have to recharge them every ten days or so (so I don't worry about it), the sound quality is good enough and I don't get tangled any more.

The only disadvantage is switching between multiple devices can be a bit fiddly at times - which is where AirPods do come into their own.</comment></comment></comment>


Why America is moving left - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-moving-left/419112/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> In the sense of support for gay marriage and trying to fix problems with inequality, it's moving left. But in terms of censorship and moral guardian attitudes, I'd say America is clearly going right. A lot of the thoughts about freedom of speech and 'offending' people are basically the views of the old school religious right, except with identity politics replacing the Bible or other religious aspect.

On another note, it's interesting how at the same time, a lot of Europe seems to be getting more right wing politically. Okay, not in the sense of certain social attitudes (support for equality hasn't changed), but definitely in the sense of euroscepticism, thoughts on immigration, etc.

<comment><USER3> > But in terms of censorship and moral guardian attitudes, I'd say America is > clearly going right.

Not really. Seriously, not at all. It's just that whenever a group is attacked by another group for something they've said or done, they tend to accuse the other of censorship. It's a frequently misused term.

The most striking recent example I can think of is when a fairly large number of people boycotted Chic-fil-A because the company's ownership was using its money to lobby for far-right social causes. People on the right accused the left of censorship, purely because they don't understand the meaning of the word but they understand that it's a nasty accusation.

If you look at actual instances of censorship, it's really going down. It is a little amazing what you can print and what you can say, compared to a few decades ago. Small towns occasionally do book bans, and the FCC occasionally scolds someone for something they say on-air, but if you look at the content of what's published and put on the air, things are trending closer and closer to anything goes.

<comment><USER2> Then how about the examples where people have been banned from sites like Twitter because they offended people, and one of the offended individuals had 'friends' at the company? Or when people nearly got blacklisted from industries because a couple of people hated their political views? Or perhaps a certain portion of the media's attempt to sweep under the rug any bad behaviour by groups they consider 'disadvantaged'. Or a willingness for certain social media sites to ban people and delete content for mentioning those negative issues.

A lot of this isn't boycotting. It's trying to kick someone off a large portion of the internet because they said something you don't like by pulling strings or falsely reporting their work as 'illegal'. It's trying to remove 'wrongthink' because your political narrative crumbles the minute it's put under any scrutiny.

There's definitely an interest in censorship there. Double so on college campuses and some other such areas.

<comment><USER3> > people have been banned from sites like Twitter because they offended people

If that falls under your definition of censorship, we've got a pretty fundamental disagreement.

<comment><USER4> Why? A generation ago, a lot of people on the left felt that there was a conspiracy in what was then called the 'mainstream media' to frame political discussion by not covering certain issues, like East Timor.

If Twitter is now part of the mainstream, how is banning unpopular opinions on the platform not censorship? Perhaps this is ultimately self-correcting and these unpopular opinions will find other outlets for expression, but I don't understand how you can not consider this a form of censorship? Is it only censorship when its perpetrated by the government?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, pretty much this. Remember, censorship isn't only when the government bans something. Yes, that's an example of censorship, but individuals and other private parties can censor stuff as well, and when literally all the places you can gain an audience are private property... then anything they don't like is de facto censored.

Which to be fair, is a problem with the internet and much of the modern day world. So much that people depend on is privately owned that freedom in the 'from government' sense is basically meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Things are _changing_ , which makes it seem like we're going left. It appears that way because by its nature conservatism resists change. But I don't think there's any genuine move to the left. It's rhetoric from both sides.

I see little to no evidence that this country has moved left over the past 30 years other than GWB's expansion of Medicare and Reagan's Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

<comment><USER6> Socially it has. Economically it really hasn't though I think that may change unless the decline of the American interior reverses on its own.

<comment><USER7> Socially it has _in certain places_.

Don't assume the battle is won because you've captured a couple of cities and papers. The fact remains that the majority, at least in America, seem to be somewhat socially conservative.

EDIT: It'd be nice if we were more liberal. The biggest obstacle to that is the haughtiness and premature victory behavior that is endemic to the progressives right now.

Houston lost an important proposition for equality recently _because_ all the progressives assumed the battle was won...and then they lost when the biblethumpers got their congregations to the polls.

<comment><USER8> Getting to be a bit of a tangent, but living in Houston, I think that one was partly progressives being somewhat unprepared for how the campaign turned out. Progressives were ready for a gay-rights fight, and confident they could win it (probably rightly so). But they weren't ready for a trans-rights fight, in part because very little of the educational groundwork for that one has been laid (not that many people have a real idea what trans rights _are_ , and haven't gotten used to how to think about them). Since LGBT nondiscrimination in general was included in the bill, conservatives decided to (probably wisely) ignore the gay-rights part entirely, and make it a single-issue campaign focused around the slogan "no men in women's bathrooms". (The ordinance didn't actually say anything about bathrooms, but they argued it was a slippery slope.)

What also didn't help is that this vote was attached to an off-year municipal election, in which the median voter age was 70.

<comment><USER5> >make it a single-issue campaign focused around the slogan "no men in women's bathrooms".

I don't have all the background knowledge on this and I'm admittedly not an expert on LGBT, but that's actually pretty brilliant. I have no particular feelings on LGBT stuff, but I certainly wouldn't want anyone that still has male genitalia in the same bathroom as anyone's wife or daughters.

Not because I think those exact people would be harmful or aggressive, and this is more than likely going to be met with accusations of me being a bad man- but I don't know who else out there is going to pretend they're trans to creep/spy/abuse women.

If they've gone far enough to do the operation and use the other facilities then I see no problem. That shows more commitment to the issue than I'd ever be able to muster.

There's also a lot of Hispanics in Houston (I'm Anglo but my wife is a native- born Mexican; mother in law is Mexican in Mexico and has a 2nd home in The Woodlands; my cousin's family are Chicanos and own a non-profit publishing company in Houston; and my wife's aunt is a semi-famous LGBT Chicana author/professor, enough for a Wikipedia page, at the University of California). In my experience (probably extensive compared to the average HNer as I've lived in Zapopan, Jalisco; speak Spanish and married to a Mexican)- Latin Americans born there tend to be socially conservative and economically liberal, while Chicanos are just average Americans with some hispanic cultural background when you get down to it. Similar to how some folks run around saying they're Italian-American, they're just American but it makes people feel special (the real Italians, just like the Latin Americans disagree those Americans have anything in common with them).

<comment><USER9> Wow you wouldn't want anyone with a penis inside a women's bathroom regardless of what their gender is? Why is that?

<comment><USER10> Why don't you go ask your local university's diversity office and see what they say about it?

"The left" as a whole can't have one part banging on about how all men are rapists if not confined by filled-out consent paperwork, but on the other hand they all have the right to go into women's bathrooms if they say certain magic words, which, by the way, it is transphobic to ask any questions about so don't make any silly claims about how this can't be fraudulently used because any attempt to prevent fraud is _ipso facto_ transphobia. "The left" as a whole is going to have to pick one or the other; there is no way to convince the public of both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish the whole left-right paradigm would fade away. Personally I feel it's a bit of an artificial dichotomy.

I'm all for governance by good sense with an eye toward improving society in general.

<comment><USER4> The political left-right paradigm is an abstraction around the deeper tension between shame and fear. As long as someone wants you to be afraid of something, right-wing politics will exist. As long as someone wants you to feel ashamed of something, left-wing politics will exist.

Complete rejection of both fear and shame and anyone who wants you to feel them is the only way to escape the left-wing/right-wing dichotomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> America isn't really moving left. The loudest people in the room aren't the majority.

<comment><USER13> But that's the problem. The majority does not necessarily determine how the country will lean, only the loudest, the most vociferous, the most passionate, the most eh..., "patriotic".

The Nazis were not the majority, but they had a plan, and were loud and uncompromising about it.

McCarthy and Co were not the majority, but see how they managed to shaped the laws of the land. The majority didn't care enough to resist.

Presently, the right wing of the Republican party are not the majority in the party, but see how they are helping to define who gets elected to represent their party. By being the loudest, they've marginalized the "moderates" within their party.

In the waning days of an empire, which kicks in long before the empire loses complete grip on its sphere of influence, the empire tends to veer right. And that's because those who consider themselves the most "patriotic", who believe they know how to "make the empire great again", tend to be the loudest.

And they tend to be in the right wing of the political spectrum.

<comment><USER14> >The Nazis were not the majority, but they had a plan, and were loud and uncompromising about it.

Yes, but the Nazis didn't have to contend with the American system, which would have kept them out of power unless they were able to get 50% + 1 electoral votes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think we're moving left. According to the latest Gallup poll, veering right seems more like it.

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/188969/red-states-outnumber- blue-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/188969/red-states-outnumber-blue-first- time-gallup-tracking.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=lead&g_campaign=tiles)

<comment><USER3> To measure the validity of the article's claim you'd want to look at how many people are moving one way or the other, not how many states are moving one way or the other.

<comment><USER13> So how do you determine in what direction states are moving, isn't it with people?

Is not as if states are independent of people.

<comment><USER3> > So how do you determine in what direction states are moving

Who cares?

> Is not as if states are independent of people.

But people are independent of states. Or to bring the conversation to a less retarded level: plenty of states are very, very sparsely populated and they tend strongly to one party. Measuring their redness or blueness is not interesting because their population is a rounding error. The number of red states vs. blue states does not tell you the direction of the country, it's a predictor of very little except governorship and the U.S. Senate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Heh. Wishful thinking. The Democrats lost both houses of Congress and (more) state houses because they pushed the government further to the left than the people were willing to go. If Ted Cruz is elected we'll have the most conservative president since Reagan.

<comment><USER15> Clearly, you didn't read the article and are answering to the title.

<comment><USER14> Or I did read it, and I think it's wrong. This kind of triple bank shot wishful thinking on the part of leftists is kind of amusing, where every defeat is _actually_ a victory, because something something Republican something.

The reality is the country is quite a bit more conservative than Peter Beinart wishes it was. This:

>But it is louder than it is strong. Instead of turning right, the country as a whole is still moving to the left.

is simply wrong. Barack Obama did _not_ change the American political trajectory. The only thing he did that will last beyond January is the ACA. And even that won't last in its present form.

This is the sort of article people of all political persuasions like to read as they're getting a good ass kicking. "I'm not losing. Look, his knuckles are getting a bit bruised."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a good article and definitely supports its claims on social movement to the left. I think this is generally true. More and more people are taking the attitude that people should be allowed to do with themselves what they want.

What it doesn't do a good job is movement to the left on financial issues. Equality etc., beyond some reference to socialism. The idea of upward mobility is so strongly ingrained as part of US's dogma, even pushing it a little to the left is always going to be hard.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is left and right? These are completely meaningless concepts, especially in an American context where the political nomenclature makes no sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER18> From an non-american, outsider prospective; America looks very messy. I wonder do american think of the same, or is it the case loudest people trying to make claims?

<comment><USER19> Can you expand very messy out to a couple of sentences or paragraphs?

Speaking as an American, lots of things that a person does day to day aren't messy at all, but there are other things that are incredibly frustrating to have to deal with. So it really depends on what you mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think America is already in the left, and now is moving a bit to the right, although still in the left of the centre.

</comment><comment><USER21> Every 4 years older people (and their ideologies) die off, and they're replaced by the younger generation that organically leans left. The current version of the GOP is going to continue facing an uphill battle unless they lighten their stance on social issues and move close to the middle.

<comment><USER22> The question there is whether the incoming new voters are enough to counter the predilection of existing voters to shift towards the center and right as they age.

Idealism burns out as it contends with the friction of reality and becomes jaded. Priorities also shift, as save the world becomes save my job becomes save my family.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kuzushiji-MNIST - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rois-codh/kmnist/ <comment><USER2> Link to corresponding paper about Deep Learning for Classical Japanese Literature:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.01718](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.01718)</comment>


3 things I learned during 4+ years at Uber - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/learned-4-years-uber <comment><USER2> Surge pricing was a brilliant way to ensure the marketplace could deliver when demand for drivers was high and/or supply was low, but it's also an example of why a "free" market can really screw over individuals at the worst time, when they really need a ride the most, for whatever reason.

It's a tough problem to crack and you can sort of see any solution Uber offers to customers as a form of market regulation.</comment>


P5.Riso.js: a p5.js library for generating files suitable for Risograph printing - <AUTHOR> https://antiboredom.github.io/p5.riso/ <comment><USER2> Additional context on Risograph machines for the curious:

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/risograph- machines](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/risograph-machines)

They're essentially a hybrid between a copy machine and silk screening and have become much beloved by artists. If you go to any art book, illustration, or independent comics festival, books printed on Risographs abound.

<comment><USER3> Wow, thanks for sharing this! It's so cool to see these things are still around and enjoying new uses. I remember them fondly from my youth. At my church, we had one in addition to the normal photocopier and I was fascinated with how it worked in comparison.

At the time, it was significantly cheaper to print on the Risograph, but only if you were printing more than say, 100, because of the fixed cost of the stencil it had to create.

The quality of the output was different, not necessarily worse, but not as black and with a more official feel than a photocopy. They had a distinctive smell and came out slightly wet for a few seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> p5 is such a great library</comment>


Tell HN: Midway review of Stanford online ML, AI, DB classes - <AUTHOR>

I am taking all these three classes currently being offered by Stanford, and we are right around midway through them. Just a few thoughts I wanted to share and invite discussion from other HNers taking the classes.
Database Class, taught by Prof. Jennifer Widom: This class covers a lot of the Database background theory and practical that anyone working with knowledge/information storage systems will find useful. Quite frankly, being well versed with both SQL and NoSQL databases, my initial interest in this class was non-existent; I only signed up for it with the intention of later dropping out. Midway through, I think in terms of learning delivered, this class handily beats the other two. The way the class is being run leaves absolutely no cause for complaints.
1. The material has (obviously) been very painstakingly prepared by Prof. Widom. When teaching about XML databases, she spent the entire class time working in an actual text editor with XML file open, demonstrating the concepts. Similarly, for the SQL class, she spent the entire time in an actual SQL query GUI. This is VERY effective. Instead of just scribbling on a sheet of paper, this conveys a lot more information, in far less time. It is also a lot more rigorous - which is the next point. Lectures are broken into 10-30 minute "topics" following natural breaks in the material.
2. The entire material, including the exercises are VERY rigorously prepared. There are rare errors in speaking (and there can be no errors when demo-ing with real query engines, for example). When there are those rare errors, Prof. Widom has taken the time to review the recordings and added corrective annotations which do not detract. It is easy to underestimate the value of this point - in a live class one can always stop and question the prof about something that confuses you, but in a recording you can't. Rigour is essential to an effective video lecture.
3. The exercises have been developed with a lot of thought. They are moderately tough, rarely easy. Also, they come with actual query/db workbenches for you to try out your answers before submitting. This has enabled about as much learning as the lecture itself. If the questions were typical bookish variety or busywork, they would have not taught anything. The fact that trial and error is allowed also aids significantly in learning.
4. The professor also takes the time out to do fireside "chats" every week. This adds a rather nice touch of interactivity.
Pros: Good technical/platform, very well prepared material, perfect presentation, challenging exercises. Cons: no feedback on quiz questions after due date. Considering how challenging some of them are, a review session going over the "ideal" solutions after the due date would be very helpful.
All in all, a VERY successful implementation. Kudos as well as thanks to Prof. Widom and team!
Machine Learning class: Taught by Prof. Andrew Ng. Prof. Ng is famous for (amongst other things) his popular tutorials on various things in machine learning. He is clearly a good educator, and the course follows, technologically, the same structure as DB class. That said, the course seems to target a (very low) common denominator, and at least in my opinion wastes a lot of time in basics. An entire set of videos were spent teaching Octave. About halfway through only very basics of machine learning have been covered - even there, an inordinate amount of time is spent on terminology and very little on actually taking about real world applications and problems related to that (this was the promise when the course started). The review questions aid in review of the material present, but rarely challenges one to learn beyond what has been said in the lectures. The programming exercises are a very nice feature and the test-and-submission-rig that has been built are quite good. That said, once again, a typical programming exercise involves not more than 1-2 lines of code in each part with 5-8 parts to an exercise. This yet again, just seems like learning to code in Octave.
Overall, I'd say that its a very good introductory class, but spends too much time on very basic stuff. The technical infrastructure is good, content is well prepared but is just not challenging enough. It does not transfer enough knowledge per unit time consumed. If its content level were improved, it would be a great class.
Pros: Good tech, well prepared material. Cons: low knowledge transfer rate, low level content.
Artificial Intelligence: Taught by Profs. Thrum and Norvig. Both of them are giants in the field of AI, and Prof. Norvig literally wrote the Bible on it :-)
That said, the technical infrastructure around the class is detracting. Review question embedded inside the videos themselves, while cool in theory, are very distracting when actually trying to understand something. Also, breaking up lecture segments into 1-3 minutes chunks disrupts all focus. While the material is reasonably advanced (and thus makes for a terrific potential to learn things), there is a distinct lack of rigour in the way its presented. Having errors in algorithms scribbled on screen (while natural) is very disruptive when actually trying to understand. Around due dates, the website invariably dies, last time remaining unavailable for over a day.
Pros: good set of topics, good material Cons: Bad technology/platform - very disruptive to actual learning. Lack of rigour and preparation in presentation.
These are ofcourse my personal views and I do not wish to detract from the humongous efforts on the part of all the faculty, the knowledgelabs team and all other people who have worked very hard to bring these classes to hundreds of thousands of people.
How do the other HNers feel about the classes you are taking? <comment><USER2> I disagree about the ML Class...I'm getting a lot more out of the approach given my limited time budget than when I was trying to follow along the 2008-era lectures which were very proof-heavy. (Those are still out there if you feel the need for something deeper.)

Why? Because the emphasis seems to be on mastering the material and the intuition behind what Ng is teaching.

Plus, I can't say enough about the way in which they've managed to improve the virtual learning experience:

* Video lectures broken into discrete 5 to 14 minute units with interactive review questions built in, with annotated slides using Khan-like software. * Slides reflecting the annotated slides. * Adaptive review questions with some answer randomization and time delays to prevent random guessing, along with the encouragement to retake these again as review (with your highest score counted). * Programming exercises that are manageable (and which scale to the 60K or so odd participants in the class). * Consistent use and explanation of terminology * Great discussion forums.

The net effect is that you are strongly encouraged to go at a pace that ensures mastery of the topics and fundamentals. Yes, the first couple of weeks were designed to refresh people on Linear Algebra, how to use Octave, and learning the programming exercise submission process. I have been incredibly impressed at the amount of design work that has gone into this class experience, and the depth of understanding that I've come away with compared to trying to barrel through the original recorded CS229 lectures focused almost exclusively on proofs. I'm glad I went through those lectures, but this is so much more of a superior approach to learning the fundamentals of machine learning that I wish every class I took was created with as much care. There's a model here for a way to scale learning of complex topics.

If you want more challenge, I would suggest working through the original CS229 materials. It focuses much more on the proofs, and there are some practical examples there as well related to debugging ML applications. I believe that as this course progresses, he'll introduce more info. As he said after the second or third week of lectures, a lot of what "real world" ML people are doing in industry is centered around what the first 3-4 weeks covered--linear regression and logistic regression, and I see a lot of applications of what I've learned to date in my daily work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would disagree for ML class too. The course is designed keeping in mind to clear the basic of Machine Learning and maths behind the intuition. It helps you understand why some algorithm actually works and how you can work those with a high level language like Octave. QnA forums are really a good place to discuss. I personally feel I am gaining understanding and more interest in this field

<comment><USER4> I find ML of great quality too, maybe the best of all 3 courses. Maybe I'm biased because I already have good knowledge on the topics in DB, although DB is high quality too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That pretty much matches my impressions.

* The DB class is a solid introduction to the field.

* The ML class is good as far as it goes, but it lacks the depth to be more than an overview.

* The AI class has good content, but the attempts at gamification get in the way.</comment>


Speedtracker – Open Source Performance Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://speedtracker.org/ <comment><USER2> It's not "performance monitoring". It's "website performance monitoring". It's useless if one needs to monitor state of a network and servers and services.</comment>


Job board – Jobdit - <AUTHOR> https://jobdit.com/ <comment><USER2> what's your angle? this doesn't seem like anything new?</comment>


Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/googles-top-ten-products-more-or-less/ <comment><USER2> Close to 5 million bots using up your server's resources....wonder how much $$$ that translates into

<comment><AUTHOR> What would be more interesting is if Goog can monetize those bots via adwords or as a bot-mitigating service.</comment></comment>


I Haven't Quit Twitter - Twitter Quit Me - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2012/09/i-didnt-quit-twitter-twitter-quit-me/ <comment><USER2> You pretty much lost all credibility when you quoted this:

>Harvard – one of the most prestigious universities – awarded an MBA to George W Bush. A man many of us wouldn't trust to sit the right way round on a toilet.

As a reason not to trust Harvard. The world gets it. Those republicans _surrreee_ are dummies.

/puke

The rest of your article is a bit naive. Computational linguistics is not considered a solved problem yet. Yes, twitter might have 26,000 or some odd tweets from you, but that doesn't mean that they "know" anything about you. It's dumb text.

In fact, now that you've tweeted at the sun newspaper, how is twitter to know that you aren't interested in that newspaper? You're interacting with it, of course you would want to see ads from it, right?

This [meaning targeted advertising] works for facebook (although arguably well since the meme is that facebook ads don't perform) because of the "like" system. I target ads at people who have "liked" things, not at people who have talked about them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hullo,

Author here. I don't think Republicans are dumb - but I'm not convinced I'd want to invest in a company run by Bush [http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/13/presid...](http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/13/president.2000/jackson.bush/)

On to your main point. Sentiment analysis is still imprecise - but seeing as the majority of my (news) links go to The Guardian or Independent, and none go to tabloids - it's not a stretch to say I'm unlikey to visit a News International title.

I've never (knowingly) Tweeted or otherwise interacted with The Sun.

That's one example out of many. At one point, I was sent targetted tweets about attending a conference in the USA - I live in the UK.

If they were blindly targeted, it wouldn't feel so offensive.

<comment><USER3> Can I clarify this once again:

You feel offensive, because Twitters' data analysis isn't sophisticated enough to understand your personal interests well enough?

I want to give you my heart felt apologies. I am one of these people responsible, who try their very best to sabotage these profiling systems and putting effort into creating distortion and unrelated data. I hope you can wait a little longer for that day, your when all the ads shown to you are echo-chambering your believe set and reaffirming any (political) biases you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting double-edged sword. On the one hand, I don't want to see adverts for dog food (not owning a dog), on the other hand, I don't (necessarily) want a company to know that I have a cat.

If a company is going to do advertising - they should do it well.

I'm not sure if you're British, but rejecting The Sun doesn't mean I reject their political viewpoint - it means I reject their sexist, homophobic, lying, and (allegedly) criminal actions.

<comment><USER4> >If a company is going to do advertising - they should do it well.

You seem convinced that this ad being targeted to you was some massive failure of Twitter's ad product. I am not sure that is the case.

Premium Twitter advertisers (of which the Sun is surely one) have a variety of targeting options that could explain why you saw this ad.

The Sun may have simply targeted all accounts in the UK. Or, they may have targeted accounts that follow other UK publication accounts (it looks like you follow a few Guardian accounts for example).

It is clear that you didn't want to be targeted by The Sun, but that doesn't mean that The Sun didn't want to target you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure exactly what people are expecting out of Twitter at this point?

Developers were the ONLY victims here. They have a right to be angry. Twitter used them to build their platform and then bought out the bigger companies and said: "We'll take it from here folks". But what did the developers think was going to happen? Twitter's college days are long gone. Twitter needs to make money and take back control of their platform to provide a unified user experience.

The truth is that 99% of the Twitter user base uses it as if nothing has changed. That's because it hasn't. Most people can deal with the occasional ad in their face. No one seems to mind that Google searches contain more ads today than ever before. Yet there are complaints that Twitter shows the occasional ad in your stream. So what.

Twitter is still developing and working on useful features (Twitter Cards). Their website is still in the process removing hashbangs, which is making it faster.

So I ask again, what are people expecting out of Twitter at this point?

<comment><USER6> Wait, if screwing over developers doesn't affect 99% of users, what is the point of doing it in the first place. To capture 1% more revenue?

I suspect in reality they expect their change to ultimately affect more than 1% of the user base.

At this point I don't think people expect anything from Twitter. They may not have fully burnt the developer bridge but they are close.

The way forward they chose, building another walled garden, was not the only way forward. It is the least creative and screws over the people that made them successful in the first place.

<comment><USER7> The ratio of affected users and the profit received from reclaiming the whole platform aren't 1:1. That is to say I'm willing to bet twitter has gained more potential for revenue than 1% more revenue; while affecting 1% of their users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> wait. the Author's name is Terence Eden, and who is the author of the quote appeared in the text?

"Harvard – one of the most prestigious universities – awarded an MBA to George W Bush. A man many of us wouldn't trust to sit the right way round on a toilet.

– Terence Eden"

Wow, I haven't never seen someone who is so narcissistic about his own quote before. Don't quote yourself. If you would like to, you may repeat yourself; but don't quote.

Quoting is for referencing somebody else that support the point you are making, possibly from a more credible source than yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> >> _Twitter needs to make money. For some ridiculous decision, they've decided that selling eyeballs to advertisers is the way forward._

>> _Twitter decided that they needed to make money. There's no shame in that. What is shameful is how boring they have been._

At first glance, this attitude strikes me as being naive - however I acknowledge I do not have all the facts.

I do not use Twitter, nor have a I followed their evolution particularly closely. However, I remember reading about them pursuing several different monetization strategies. Can someone comment on why they were abandoned? Were they insufficient or unsustainable?

<comment><USER5> They do have other ways to make money. Brands can be shown as "recommended followers" to users for a price. Brands can also upgrade their accounts to show a banner of somesort (<https://twitter.com/nylabone>) and support "sticky tweets". Access to their API in large quantities is a source of revenue (I think). Promoted tweets in a user's stream is another source of revenue.

There may be others, but these are the only ones I'm aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The headline is misleading because the author hasn't really quit twitter.

<comment><USER11> The title says "I Haven't Quit Twitter", what's misleading about that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Agreed...</comment>


Apple cuts revenue forecast on weak China sales - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-forecast/apple-cuts-revenue-forecast-on-weak-china-sales-idUSKCN1OW1O6 <comment><USER2> Active discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18810469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18810469)

</comment><comment><USER3> The Chinese governement has since long tried to "shift vibes about Apple" through the "China Central Television".

In 2013 it was named together with the "820 Party", i don't know what happened now though. But i'm not sure that "blaming it on the trade war" tells the entire tale.

PS. They did the same thing with Google, after "Operation Aurora" happened. That was the moment that Google left China.</comment>


Latency matters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/latency-matters.html <comment><USER3> Latency is the reason I just can not use some editors, most notably Atom. You get used to it after a while, but it's not fun.

I remember when I used IntelliJ's product line for a good while and then opened up Vim. I was dumbfounded that I somehow had not noticed that IntelliJ was slow. It's fast enough - not Atom - but Vim was amazing next to it.

<comment><USER4> IntelliJ often shows latency, but it's not "slow", it's doing a stupendous amount of work behind the scenes and building an incredibly rich model of your code and your application.

If you're not getting more out of IntelliJ than vim, then sure, vim will make you happier. But also then you're not getting from IntelliJ what it's trying to provide.

<comment><USER5> I haven't used IntelliJ for the last 5 years or so, so I do not know how it is today. My remark here is not about IntelliJ, but a generally about GUIs.

A GUI can be responsive and fast even when doing a lot of work behind the scenes. I'm perfectly fine with it taking it's time figuring out what argument I can use, or something else. But do not drop percieved responsiveness - <USER2> want to be able to type and/or click menus at all times.

<comment><USER6> I recommend reading this: [https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with- pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alan Kay once said something like "There should no more be a delay between pressing a key and something happening on a computer than on a piano."

<comment><USER8> Beautiful back-on-the-envelope exposition on the latency of playing the piano: [http://northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php/37769-Acousti...](http://northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php/37769-Acoustic- piano- latency?s=da097aee6ac23ded20434b03d6f1d748&p=333833&viewfull=1#post333833)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but think that since he's measuring his own perception at the ms level - for a new program he's written himself - that it would be easy for unconscious bias to creep in. To really know the truth about whether latency matters in this case, a better experiment is probably needed.

Not that I think he should bother doing this, I'm just being the fun police. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really know how to eliminate my own biases here, but a quick test shows that the new prompt feels very much like the old one if I add a little latency manually:

      PROMPT="\$(prettyprompt \$?)"
      PROMPT="\$(sleep 0.04; prettyprompt \$?)"

With the second one, I can always see a frame or two where the cursor is already on the next line where the prompt will go, before the prompt actually shows up.

<comment><USER10> Presumably the test would be whether he can, in a blind experiment, reliably discriminate between them.

<comment><USER11> Yeah -- seems like it'd be a bit tricky to set up, but would be super interesting to see the results.

edit: Tried something out: [https://github.com/AlecBenzer/terminal- latency](https://github.com/AlecBenzer/terminal-latency) Had 92% accuracy differentiating 10ms from 100ms out of 28 tries

<comment><USER9> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 300 baud --> 1200 baud. Now there was a noticeable difference.

And yet, many years later, I had an impossible time explaining to a the more pointy-haired end of a large development division, why IBM Rational products might not work so well when accessed from halfway around the world. (They are/were very "chatty" between client and server, and the cumulative latency of all those round-trips simply killed you.)

Latency's still a sticking point, and a lot of people don't understand/believe it until they see it for themselves.

P.S. It may sound like I'm talking about something else -- apples and oranges. But no. What I mean is, in _many_ domains, people don't get latency until they experience it.

I suppose that decades ago, that typewriter was just fine. Until you got fast enough. Then, as the stuck key mashes and/or other physical limits started to cap and impact your performance, you realized what people meant about "better" mechanisms.

I wonder whether in some cases, people like musicians have a better natural perspective on it. Domains where it's more readily apparent and dealt with.

Sorry, my mind's a bit all over the place, today...

<comment><USER13> Ugh; one site I visited had the requirement that all developers work from clear-case dynamic views. The server (yes, singular server) was in a different building.

The developers had turned build-parallelism up to 99 simultaneous jobs to try to keep the CPU busy while waiting for the network, but a build was still only using about 10% of a single CPU. An incremental build would take over a minute for dependency checking, and a full rebuild would take hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From "Russians Engineer a Brilliant Slot Machine Cheat—And Casinos Have No Fix" [0]:

> _Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a > custom app on the operative's phone; those markers cause the handset to > vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin > button._

> _" The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, > which is why they do that," says Allison, who is also the founder of the > annual World Game Protection Conference._

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant- sl...](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine- cheat-casinos-no-fix/)

<comment><USER15> Sometimes I wonder if it would be called cheating if you could do the math to figure out the PRNG parameters in your head, then calculate the next known timestamp. It seems similar in premise to Ethereum contracts, where an "exploit" is technically just following the contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The reason they sell monitors at 144FPS and now 256FPs is because people can see and react that fast.

Sure those are generally for video games. But pretending <Xms is the end-all- be-all of human perception is arrogant.

<comment><USER17> I'm working on an AR headset and we made some experiments with the human eye. I barely can notice the difference for motion above 120 fps. But my associate is a retired fighter pilot and he can react to motion at ~280 fps.

<comment><USER18> There's got to be something else going on there.

280 frames/sec is about 3.5 ms/frame. Signals don't even leave the retina that fast, let alone propagate to brain areas linked to perception and action.

Perhaps the higher frame rate makes the motion smoother, which allows the pilot to estimate and extrapolate an objects' motion more accurately, or something like that.

<comment><USER5> The visual system do not work in frames (well, on a fundamental level I supose it does, with the indivitual photons and nerve impulses being the smallest unit, but that is not a limit in practice). The information the retina captures is streamed continuesly to the brain, so higher FPS provides a higher temporal resolution for the visual experience.

I don't think a fighter pilot inheriently react faster because of the resolution, but he is trained to detect motion in his peripheral vision. Perhaps he notice the smooth motion more than people who rarely train that part of their visual system. It would be interested to see how a trained and experience hunter would compare, as they often use peripheral vision as well.

<comment><USER18> My point was that 3.5ms frames _are_ close to that limit.

The nervous system is pretty slow. Each action potential takes about a millisecond, and is followed a refractory period of another 1-2 milliseconds or so. This limits the speed of transmission in the nervous system generally.

The visual system, specifically, is even slower. There's a fairly complicated electrochemical cascade that turns photons into electrical impulses in rods and cones, and it's not fast. Drum (1982) describes several attempts at measuring the latencies of cones. The exact value depends on several factors like adaption levels and the visual stimuli, but they're all in the tens of milliseconds.

<comment><USER5> I have no doubt there is a latency, but I was trying to say that the stream of information is not discrete. The stream is continues, so higher framerate means that more information will flow to the brain because the temporal resolution is higher.

Are you saying that the rods and cones only "sample" every so often?

<comment><USER18> No, in that there is not a master clock, shutter, or anything like that that separates the visual input into discrete frames.

Yes, in that phototransduction is a sluggish chemical process. The impulse- response functions of photoreceptors are pretty well-known (e.g, Figure 1 here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1189952/?page=5](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1189952/?page=5)). The tiny square wave at the bottom is the visual stimulation; the other traces are the responses of individual photoreceptors.

Figure 4 of the paper (p. 689) shows the response to a pair of flashes. In the bottom-most trace, you can see that the photoreceptor "misses" the second visual stimulus because the responses evoked by the first and second stimuli overlap in time and interfere.

I'd say that the visual system does get a continuous stream of inputs, but its output is low-pass filtered (and clipped, rectified, etc) so that faster inputs are not always reflected in its output.

<comment><USER5> That is interesting. When the stimuli is long enough, you get full resolution, but since the receptors are not syncronized I would expect the eye to react to framerates faster than the response time of the receptors, at the cost of resolution.

It is indeed an interesting topic, thanks for the pointers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Latency is one of the reasons why I still use xterm and bitmap fonts. The other being font crispness on standard ~100dpi displays.

<comment><USER20> The crisp shape of the text often makes me nostalgic for systems pre cleartype on windows and pre-gnome 3 on linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree. A while ago, I was so fed up with how long my prompt took to render, I went through my zshrc and cleaned up a bunch of stuff to make it faster:

[https://github.com/stapelberg/configfiles/compare/5ccd3cbd38...](https://github.com/stapelberg/configfiles/compare/5ccd3cbd38b67e5ec91671b6fe07d5dded0e96fa...9ee8b13de00c2c84463681fc91f3fd64ae2e4342)

The general techniques used in order of preference are eliminating/skipping work, lazily doing work later, replacing external commands with zsh builtins.

<comment><AUTHOR> Viewing your diff made me wonder if there is a market for custom-compiled shells, where things like the custom prompt or termtitle are baked in at compilation time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do some applications practically get to latencies smaller than 16.6mSec? That can only be possible if the character typed is being rendered directly into the GPU buffer _which currently is being drawn_ right? Or does the screen used for testing this run at a higher refresh rate than 60Hz? Or does 'latency' not mean time between hardware keypress and character appearing on screen?

<comment><USER23> 16.6ms is the _maximum_ lag between the monitor receiving the framebuffer and drawing it - the average would therefore be half of that, and the minimum would be essentially zero.

 _But_ , that's ignoring all the other little delays in the system. For instance, monitors have a delay of a few milliseconds.

In short, this is a massive oversimplification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Python startup latency is horrible, and unfixable. It got much worse in python3 because it loads much more modules (think of all the unicode crap).

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I did a little test on my system where I wrote a program in C, Python, Perl, and Bash that just prints hello to the console then timed how long it took to fork/exec from bash. C takes ~0.5ms, Perl is ~1.5ms, Bash is ~2.5 ms, and Python 3 is ~35ms.

Kind of sad because there are lots of places where a python script would be a nice way to solve a problem, but I cant use it because it adds an annoying delay.

<comment><USER5> In what use case, is a 35ms startup time an issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> In TFA.

<comment><USER5> I am well aware of the article, but it's nothing but "it feels magical".

Perhaps, since I haven't had any workflow lately which blocks 30-50ms on my input, I'm not the right person to comment on this. That said, the article uses python for a script that will be run multiple times from scratch every time. Perhaps an interpretated language with a known slow start was the wrong tool right from the start?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well yeah, that's the point. Plenty of people argue that Python is good enough for any job (except maybe kernel modules, but hey, people even wrote kernel modules in Java, with the obvious consequences). Plenty of people also argue that a runtime of 50ms is not worth optimizing anymore. And I disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This guy must have not noticed after adding a thousand papercuts to each terminal prompt. Premature optimization is one thing, but sometimes it is a good idea to compare against a baseline.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not like I'm the only one adding papercuts to the stack. ;)

From the top of my head, each keypress goes at least through the keyboard driver, X11, possibly the window manager, the terminal, the line discipline, the terminal again, font rendering, compositing, and then display. It only takes one of these steps to mess up for latency to go up.

<comment><USER26> The latency was in constructing the 'prompt' string (via his custom program). The actual input latency in the stack is both 'constant' and rather difficult for an end user to directly affect. Thankfully the millions of human-hours put in to the hardware and software stack have made that quite efficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The actual input latency in the stack is both 'constant' and rather > difficult for an end user to directly affect.

The article starts with a link to [https://danluu.com/term- latency/](https://danluu.com/term-latency/), which disproves both assertions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a semi-related followup, since my blog made the frontpage for the first time, I looked at whether the HN crowd is visible on the monitoring charts: [https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/latency-matters- aftermath....](https://blog.bethselamin.de/posts/latency-matters- aftermath.html)

<comment><USER27> And a semi-related question: is there some particular reason you've replaced a sensible, directly-proportional, and _useful_ vertical scrollbar with an (IMO) insensible, _literally orthogonal_ , top-placed _horizontal_ scrollbar ... which cannot actually be used to control location within the document?

I've noted the demise of the vertical scrollbar before. This is the first chance I've had to ask someone who's apparently implemented a horizontal one directly.

I'm quite curious as to the rationale.

Previously: [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq) [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those who are fans of Powerline but fed up with the latency of Python, you can use powerline-server OR you can take a similar cue and use:

[https://github.com/rdnetto/powerline- hs](https://github.com/rdnetto/powerline-hs)

<comment><USER14> I like powerline but it really is slow as molasses -- even _after_ I disabled a bunch of the (useless) default stuff. powerline-daemon was supposed to help but, if it did, it wasn't really noticeable.

<comment><USER28> Powerline-hs is pretty quick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Along similar lines, I noticed some latency to Apple Terminal's prompt and made this to fix it.

[https://github.com/twhb/terminal-prompt- perf](https://github.com/twhb/terminal-prompt-perf)

</comment><comment><USER6> See here how to actually check for latency: [https://pavelfatin.com/typing- with-pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/) :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Check mosh! It's an amazing tool for that lag

<comment><AUTHOR> mosh is definitely on my list of "stuff that I need to check out", but the things that I showed in the article was all on localhost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> With an arduino and an LED, it's simple to test the limits of one's perception. Copy one of the hello world LED blinking programs (basically a square wave to a GPIO pin) and modify the frequency of the blink. I see a rapidly blinking light around 15ms period, and a solid light around 10ms period. To me that implies that my human sample rate is about 12ms, although there could be other factors at play, such as capacitance in the circuit.

Edit: s/frequency/period/

<comment><USER32> That test does not really measure the ability to notice latency. The simplest latency test I can imagine would be a system where you press a button and LED lights up (or a sound is played). Do that in pairs where randomly either the first or second trial has some latency added in. Then ask the subject which one seemed to respond faster. Rinse and repeat about gazillion times with different amounts of added latency.

The problem with such setup is that it relies on conscious notice of latency. It is very likely that the boundary where latency begins to impair performance is far lower than where you actually notice it.

A more sophisticated test would be to measure e.g. typing speed vs latency. You'd probably need some customized hardware to get low baseline latency so that you can then add latency in a controlled way. Even then I imagine that quite many trials would be needed to make any conclusions.

<comment><USER33> Another way would be moving the mouse and seeing the cursor lag behind. Old wireless mices could have some real bad lag. It feels somehow like holding a garden hose and trying to hit different spots on the lawn with the water.

There was people that just didn't notice anything but everyone playing Quake halfway good had bad problems with those. Some went so far as to only use wired mices with ball, not even optical sensor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a good point, but remember that if you're in the habit of using computers too much, you shouldn't want lower latency. Higher latency is less addictive if you're trying to cut back.

<comment><AUTHOR> > in the habit of using computers too much

If you have any advice how to use computers less in my job as a developer and Devops engineer, I'll gladly take it.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I'm thinking more about social networks and games. I've never heard of anyone addicted to the command line.

<comment><USER35> Might as well face it, you're addicted to bash

EDIT: My Unicode musical notes at the start and end of the line didn't make it. :(</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Huawei to move research centre from U.S. to Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/huawei-research-centre-1.5382725 <comment><AUTHOR> I guess 850 jobs moving out of Silicon Valley isn't that big a deal, relatively speaking.</comment>


Show HN: UI Sources – Curated interaction design patterns - <AUTHOR> https://uisources.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN! I'm a UI/UX designer and I often find myself installing new apps to check out the design and how they do certain product flows. I then take a bunch of screenshots for future reference. Over time I found screenshots limiting because:

* With static screens, it's hard to visualize full product flows

* The best apps use animations and microinteractions in interesting ways that screenshots just can't capture

* They would get lost in my camera roll and were hard to find when I needed them

To solve this, I've curated over 200+ interactions and have another 100+ apps lined up that I'll be adding over the next couple weeks. You can browse by pattern (Onboarding, Inviting friends, Ask permissions etc.) or by App. I've added basic search functionality if you're looking for something specific that isn't tagged.

Looking for feedback on:

* If you're a developer, designer, PM, entrepreneur: Does this help your research process?

* What can I add to the site / change about it to make it better for your use case?

Thanks!</comment>


Google launches credit card in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/08/google_launches_credit_card_in_uk/

<comment><USER2> This is genius: they give you a credit card so you can buy more AdWords from them!

I've been getting these AdWords vouchers that had 'this is not a credit card' printed on them. In a few years it will actually be a credit card! Just activate it via your account and you are good to go.</comment>


Kinesis keyboards would be even more awesome with Cherry blue switches  - <AUTHOR>

Kinesis contoured keyboards are great, but the brown switches just aren't as nice to type on as the blues.  I happened to have a spare Kinesis so I figured I'd just replace the switches myself !
Kinesis kindly obliged in selling me the replacement logic boards, but for the life of me I can't find ANYONE who wants to sell me the blue switches (part # MX1AE1DW).
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get about 80 Cherry blue switches ? <comment><USER2> Have you tried digikey? They don't seem to have the exact part number you are seeking. But they do have MX1A-E1NW which is a similar part but without the internal diode. Not sure what impact this will have with the Kinesis keyboard however.

[http://search.digikey.com/us/en/cat/switches/pushbutton/1114...](http://search.digikey.com/us/en/cat/switches/pushbutton/1114209?k=MX1A)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they don't stock the specific switch needed and won't be getting it in.

<comment><USER2> Interestingly enough, the part number is not listed in the MX series datasheet. What is the PCB layout like, would you be able to splice in SMD diodes where they are needed :)

[1] [http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Cherry%20PDFs/MX%...](http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Cherry%20PDFs/MX%20Series.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r I thought this would be a perfect chance to try <http://octopart.com/> but no luck there. Sorry.</comment>


"I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings depending on the stressed word - <AUTHOR> Just thought that was interesting. <comment><USER2> Yup, another favorite of mine from linguistics is:

        "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were [adjective]"

What is "they" referring to, and the adjective describing? Well, it depends - "ripe" would describe bananas, "hungry" would describe monkeys. The syntax alone is ambiguous!

<comment><USER3> " _They_ gave the monkeys the bananas because they were [adjective]"

now it can describe a third noun...

<comment><USER4> "They gave the monkeys the bananas in bunches because they were [adjective]"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jerry Weinberg uses this technique in "Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design" as a technique for exploring vague requirements. When you get a short verbal requirement thrown at you, repeat it back with different words stressed, and ask whether that's the right meaning or what information might be missing. It's a great technique for flushing out extra information and avoiding misunderstandings.

<comment><USER6> While we're on the topic of wordsmithing, "verbal" means using words. You probably mean "oral".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The phrase "Time flies like an arrow" is another example. "Time flies" could be a type of insect with an affinity for a particular arrow (or each for its own arrow), or you might be being instructed to measure a fly's speed in the manner that one measures that of an arrow (or to time only those flies that resemble an arrow), or it could have the conventional metaphorical meaning.

cf. "Fruit flies like a banana."

</comment><comment><USER8> Garden path sentences along with other linguistic puzzles are awesome (and this little puzzle is the reason why Noam Chomsky and other linguists can all be cultural critics):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence>

<comment><USER9> Discussions of garden path sentences deserve a reference to Emo Philips: <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emo_Philips>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ touches upon this. Somewhere in chapter 4, they implement a nondeterministic interpreter with CPS and then use it to (among other things) find all possible parses of sentences such as these.

</comment><comment><USER11> This makes me think it might be easier to get humans to speak a language that computers can understand rather than trying to get computers to understand our current languages :)

<comment><USER12> It might be. I'm reminded of a story I read about Palm designing their early PDFs. At that point, they had only experienced marginal success interpreting written text. There were a lot of ambiguities, and the actual style varied a lot from person to person, so it tended to fail outside of carefully controlled tests.

Eventually, someone hit on the idea of forcing the users into a custom set of symbols that was close enough to normal to be usable, but was different enough that it forced everyone into a common style that was easier to parse.

Of course, the tricky part is to come up with a method that is expressive enough to be useful without ending up with one of those "natural" programming languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice discussion, but doesn't explore nearly enough. As Don Gause and I showed in [http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.h...](http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.html), you can stress more than one word in a sentence. In fact, you can stress two, three, or any number up to the number of words in the sentence.

This sounds really weird, but if you say these sentences out loud, you can make a different meaning from each variation. Try it:

I didn't say she stole my money. That is, I was one of the few who didn't.

I didn't say she stole my money. I wrote a letter about how she found my money.

See if you can get all the way up to all 7 words stressed. There are lots of cases (which you can computer using the binomial theorem).

</comment><comment><USER14> You get different implied meanings by stressing different words in the famous (Buffalo)+ sentences, too.

<comment><USER15> THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.

<comment><USER16> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)

;-)

<comment><USER17> The word "buffalo" has officially lost its meaning after reading that article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of my favorite examples of ambiguity when it comes to punctuation is the following

"When hunting lions, hide in the bushes." vs. "When hunting, lions hide in the bushes."

</comment><comment><USER19> More than seven, since you can stress more than one word.

</comment><comment><USER20> when doing nlp is there a standardized system or practice for encoding this data (which word(s) where emphasized)?

what is the logical framework for this? at first I thought you could only have one emphasized word per statement, but though its a bit more nuanced but you can also have two at a time (ie "my" and "money")

<comment><USER21> Yeah, this stuff is done with what basically amounts to an annotated typed logic: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)>

<comment><USER20> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe I'm missing something. Does this not apply to just about every sentence in every language?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is applicable to most sentences. For example: "Make Something People Want"

</comment><comment><USER24> Creative creatives create creative creations, with language!

<comment><USER25> Unlike the "buffalo" one, this sentence is at least parseable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Additionally, in Czech almost any permutation of words in a sentence is allowed. You can then get even more variances of meanings.

</comment><comment><USER27> This subject is featured in a Seinfeld episode: "These PRETZELS are making me thirsty!" "These pretzels are making ME thirsty!"

</comment><comment><USER28> Just had to spell this out to a colleague, so thought I may as well post it. It should be "didn't say", rather than "never said", but the gist is the same ;)

 _I_ didn't say she stole my money - someone else said it

I _didn't_ say she stole my money - I didn't say it

I didn't _say_ she stole my money - I only implied it

I didn't say _she_ stole my money - I said someone did, not necessarily her

I didn't say she _stole_ my money - I considered it borrowed, even though she didn't ask

I didn't say she stole _my_ money - only that she stole money

I didn't say she stole my _money_ \- she stole stuff which cost me money to replace

<comment><USER21> YARGH. Okay so this is one of the primary areas of research that one of my professors from university studies ( <http://www.ling.ohio- state.edu/~croberts/> ).

None of the explanations that people have written here are entirely correct or reflect what's actually going on.

The phenomenon that's being discussed here is something called Contrastive Stress. It is a part of an interesting area of research on Linguistic Focus (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)>) that sits at the juncture of Semantics (meaning in abstract), Pragmatics (meaning in context), and Autosemgental Phonology (mental representation of sounds and their production of non-phoneme related stuff).

So, contrastive stress ties directly into the notion that sentences are stated in response to either explicit or implicit questions. In fact the location of the emphatic stress is directly related to what question the speaker is trying to answer.

So, you can actually do this with nearly any sentence, simply by placing the stress on a different word.

Badger's account is mostly correct, but it's tied in a little closer with grammar than his examples actually intimate. I'd say that there's a much wider range of possible candidates for _say_ :

Did you say she stole your money? I didn't _say_ she stole my money, i _know/saw/heard/thought/wrote/hinted/testified/dreamed_ it!

"It" in this context is the entire grammatical structure "she stole my money". The reason why this is important is because of the notion of what can be stressed and what the stress is actually applied/scoped to.

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

You can do this with other sentences as well:

George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States.

"Is jeb bush the 43rd president of the united states?"

No, _George_ Bush is the 43rd President of the United States.

"Is George Washington the 43rd President of the United States?"

No, George _Bush_ is the 43rd President of the United States.

"George Bush isn't the 43rd President of the United States, right?"

No, George W. Bush _is_ the 43rd President of the United States.

"Was there more than one 43rd president of the united states?"

No, George W. Bush is _the_ 43rd President of the United States.

"Was George W. Bush the 44th President of the United States?"

No, George W. Bush is the _43rd_ President of the United States.

"Was George W. Bush the 43rd Vice President of the United States?"

No, George W. Bush is the 43rd _President_ of the United States.

(okay, so "of" is a function word that we can't contrast against anything else)

"Was George W. Bush the 43rd President of the United Arab Emerates?"

No George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the _United States_.

etc.

So this really is a general phenomenon that you not only see every day, but really use on a constant basis. Every sentence has grammatical stress, it's how we know what other people are focusing on when they speak.

<comment><USER29> I can see how your explanation is more complete, but is there anything wrong in badger7's post?

<comment><USER21> No, i'm not saying that Badger's post is incorrect (it correctly defines the phenomenon). Some of the other posts on this thread are all over the place, and don't describe the phenomenon or what underlies it.

So sorry if i gave the impression that Badger7 is wrong, he's not, he just doesn't explain what's going on, or what the full scope of the phenomenon is :)

<comment><USER30> The similarity between this response and the sample ones made me laugh.

"Is there anything wrong in badger7's post?" "No, I'm not saying _Badger's_ post is incorrect"

The double-negative makes alternative emphases difficult, but I'm tempted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slack's $2.8B Dollar Secret Sauce - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@awilkinson/slack-s-2-8-billion-dollar-secret-sauce-5c5ec7117908

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of amazing that Meta Lab, the UX design juggernauts behind Slack, don't mention on their website where the hell they're located, which, if applying for a job there, would be nice to know. And if remote is acceptable, it should be conveyed, maybe, not assumed. Answer - Victoria BC

<comment><USER2> Yay, I'm in Victoria :)</comment></comment>


Microsoft Surface Pro 128GB Already Out of Stock in Stores and Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/02/09/microsoft-surface-pro-showing-out-of-stock-just-hours-after-retail-launch/

<comment><AUTHOR> After some phone calls it seems the stock was very limited - at least in my area:

[http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/02/09/surface-pro- releas...](http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/02/09/surface-pro-release-day- stock-apparently-limited-at-best-buy-and-staples-stores/)

</comment><comment><USER2> The positive sounding press from 'selling out' is almost certainly at work here. Dollars to donuts, this is just stock manipulation.</comment>