Behind the Market Swoon: The Herdlike Behavior of Computerized Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-market-swoon-the-herdlike-behavior-of-computerized-trading-11545785641 <comment><USER2> Former fund manager here.

Yes, there is herdlike behaviour. But why?

Here's a little story about my investment career.

I once hired a guy for a fund I was partner in. He was a proper old school equity investor. He'd fly around the world to different countries and visit businesses. He'd think about each country's prospects, each industry, and each company. He'd meet withe the CEOs and look them in the eye, and ask them whether his company was gonna make money. I shit you not. He's come back to the office and share his thoughts on why one country was good, why this industry, why this business. It was a different story each time.

Another guy I worked more closely with on a fixed income desk. We'd think about different countries, their bonds, their IR rates, swaptions, etc. There's be some global stories inevitably, but a lot of local ones too and we'd chat about what to do in our trading book.

Then there was quantitative FX trading, another one of my projects. We'd look at things that affect currencies, patterns in the prices, anything you might imagine arrives as a live feed. And we built the infrastructure to trade the regularities that we found. Quite a lot of research and execution infrastructure. But at the end of the day, the computers are doing what? Looking at a variety of information and judging what will happen. Just like my two colleagues.

Fast forward to the last few years. Pretty much every conversation I have with anyone in the investment business talks about one thing: QE and zero rates. There's only one thing that matters for everything now. When interest rates are really low, what happens? Everything is worth buying. Buy houses, buy stocks. Buy them in the developed countries, buy them in EM. Sell options.

What used to be a conversation containing rates as an ingredient has become a conversation only containing rates.

People, and computers which learn what worked for people in the recent past, have gone from a rich market conversation about many things to one about just QE.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future. I can't think of a lot of bubbles that were deflated in a controlled manner. And I also expect more differentiation in equity debates. Company does this, industry does that.

<comment><USER3> > Yes, there is herdlike behaviour. But why?

> People, and computers which learn what worked for people in the recent past, > have gone from a rich market conversation about many things to one about > just QE.

So are you saying that in the past _N_ years since QE and 0 rates, the parameters that define which assets/resources to buy/trade have gone from wide-ranging (e.g., "We'd think about different countries, their bonds, their IR rates, swaptions, etc"), to singular (e.g., "...has become a conversation only containing rates.") ?

How does this tie back into the "herd-like behavior" comment? Are you saying that every algo trader is only focusing on rates because that (more so than anything else), is determining where to allocate capital?

<comment><USER2> I doubt that all algos are looking at the stream of interest rates. It's hard to know since these things are mostly private.

But they can herd into factors specific to their markets that are nonetheless still the same thing, due to rates causing behaviour everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the article points out, passive funds, which have become a dominant force in the stock market, own the same stocks as everyone else in the same proportion.

When passive funds _as a group_ have net outflows, all their holdings must be reduced in roughly the same proportion. But passive funds _as a group_ cannot reduce their holdings by selling stocks to each other! It's impossible to take water out of a boat by scooping water from one spot and pouring it back into the same boat in some other spot!

Therefore, to reduce holdings, passive funds (or their broker-dealers) necessarily must find _other_ \-- i.e., _non-passive_ \-- buyers willing to take those stocks at some market-clearing price. Alas, everyone else, in the aggregate, also owns the same stocks in the same proportion.

Potentially, this can produce temporary imbalances between _passive_ net sellers and _non-passive_ net buyers that get corrected via declines in price. Passive net sellers, being price agnostic, do not care; they're on automatic.

<comment><USER5> A lot of the attention on the stock market is focused on the short term (i.e. panic sells or a flight to safety in reaction to quick emotional events), but I wonder what happens when this dynamic plays out in the long term.

Right now, the pool of people putting money into the market has been steadily increasing as Millenials enter the workforce. Boomers are retiring, but not really in large numbers yet, so the overall number of folks saving for retirement has been continually increasing since Boomers started entering their prime earning years in the early 1980s.

However, the peak of the Boomer years will soon start entering retirement soon (~2020) while the early Boomers are starting to die off. And the generation after Millenials - who will start comprising the workforce in 2020 - is much smaller than the Millenial generation. There are fundamental issues with demographics that can't be papered over by financial engineering: a smaller working-age population supporting a larger dependent population (absent massive technological advancement in care) = lower standard of living for everyone.

Demographically, this would play out as a generation-long bear market, but markets tend to correct as soon as everyone adjusts their expectations for the future. That implies a sudden and massive crisis at some point with stock market levels correcting to the yields and prices of the 1970s, adjusted for inflation. That would imply an S&P 500 of about 370 (down ~95%) and interest rates in the 10% range.

<comment><USER6> There is an underlying presumption here that US stock market and investors live in the US, or are otherwise correlated with US demographics. Historically this is not true. International investors make up a sizeable part of the investors, and within the US investors the very wealthy are a disproportionate part of the market.

<comment><USER5> The same phenomena is playing out throughout the developed world and even in much of the developing world, though. Europe has even lower birthrates than the U.S, China had a huge baby boom in the 50s and 60s followed by a huge baby bust in the 80s under the One Child Only policy, and Japan has been in this situation since the 90s.

What _would_ reverse this, internationally, is if the high-youth countries of Latin America, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and rural India could be rapidly integrated into the global economy. There are large political, cultural, and educational barriers to this, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Clifford Asness sums up my feelings about this article pretty well: [https://twitter.com/cliffordasness/status/107775763347229900...](https://twitter.com/cliffordasness/status/1077757633472299008?s=21)

<comment><USER8> I also appreciated one of the first replies: "Didn't hear many complaints about robots on way up"

<comment><USER9> Nor does the "blame the robots" thesis explain 2017.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many (if not most) quantitative hedge funds are dollar neutral, which means they have one dollar short for every dollar long. There are typically additional constraints about having equal long/short exposure on each industry and investing style (momentum, value, etc).

So contrary to the article, most of these funds don't take broad bets for or against the market. What they are really doing is correcting the relative valuations of each individual company by shifting bits of capital away from overpriced companies and towards underpriced ones. That doesn't have the effect of raising or lowering broad market indices.

Now there are of course other investors who take broad directional bets on the market but those are probably more likely to be discretionary bets rather than systematic.

<comment><USER11> How does that not result in a net neutral investment return? Forgive my ignorance if this answer is obvious

<comment><USER12> To expand on pmalynin's excellent answer with an example:

Imagine you think Apple is better than any other technology company and you want to bet it will outperform other technology companies. If you simply buy Apple stock, you might lose money even if it outperforms all other tech companies, in the case that the whole market is going down. Because of the above, you need to devise a strategy that will earn you money on the difference between Apple stock and the overall tech sector stocks. Those strategies usually involve combinations of stock and derivatives and you can optimize your returns vs exposure with simple models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Non paywalled, and cleaner version: [https://outline.com/9s3xTZ](https://outline.com/9s3xTZ)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's no surpise that it should be herdlike, since the algorithms are operating with much of the same information.

<comment><USER15> Actually, it works in the opposite direction. Here is why: if betting against the herd was the right thing to do, algos would learn this behavior and all algos would start betting against a big price down move. This is why algos actually reduce volatility, not increase it. And volatility is exacerbated by humans: trade wars, attacks on the fed and general erratic behavior of our president

<comment><USER16> No, betting with the herd is the correct bet, except that one needs to place the bet before everyone else does.

Algorithmic, low latency trading reduces bid-ask spread under normal circumstances, but increases the risk of extreme events.

<comment><USER15> We had plenty of algorithmic trading and years of very low volatility at the same time. If algorithmic trading increased risk of extreme events, it would have shown up during let's say 2012-2017 years of low volatility. No, algorithmic trading actually reduces risk of extreme events such as fat fingers or extreme bets by humans. What drives volatility is macroeconomic environment.

<comment><USER16> You don't remember any of the "flash" crashes? Turbulence has increased, regardless of the general trend.

<comment><USER15> Flash crash of 2010 was extensively investigated and no evidence that algorithmic trading was at fault was found. After that, we had some of the lowest turubulence years on record, while algorithmic trading was going on, so your theory is not supported by evidence.

<comment><USER16> There have been others. Plus there's some enjoyable literature if you're curious. Mark Buchanan has a nice blog and some links. The gist of it is that in the low latency space the ratio of players to possible strategies is too high.

<comment><USER15> if yoi try to tie low latency or algorithmic strategies to volatility, you need to be able to explain multiple years of really low volatility despite all those strategies going on.

<comment><USER16> Low volatility according to what measure? I don't keep up with the literature anymore, since around 2010/2011, but it'd surprise me if we entered some new regime. Googling for "flash crash" turns up many more examples than just the one you mentioned from 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Humans exhibit herdlike behavior when investing, too. It's why the term "contrarian" exists (a person who bets against the herd).

</comment><comment><USER18> Markets are moving much faster but we're still using the same scale on the x axis (time). We've seen a 4,000 point drop so far but if that occurred over a one year period we would have called it a recession. However if the market recovers in the next few months we'll interpret this as the continuation if a 10-year bull market.

<comment><USER19> Recessions are base called based on economic output (GDP), not markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> fatfinger vs fht

</comment><comment><USER21> Is computerized trading more or less herdlike than human trading, or exactly the same?

Popular Delusions And the Madness of Algos !

<comment><USER22> I suspect it's the same, but operates thousands of times faster.

<comment><USER23> This bear market took a week to develop. The crashes of 1929 and 1987 happened in a day. I don't think that point holds.

<comment><USER24> Which particular day in 1929 are you thinking of?

October 24 - 11% drop, followed by some recovery. October 28 - 13% drop October 29 - 12% drop

The lowest point in 1929 was reached on November 13. The bottom of the crash was on July 8, 1932.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's those evil computers! Pay no attention to the central bank behind the curtain.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you continually forgetting? - <AUTHOR> Once every two months or so I need to look up or test in a console window whether javascript's Array.slice() method mutates the original array.
Partly because I only occasionally program these days and partly because I'm not too bright, the same pattern repeats itself with a large amount of similar technical information - cmd line options, emmit expansions, etc.
Are others conscious of the same pain?
What specific regularly-referenced information is stubbornly stuck on the tip of your tongue?
(disclaimer: I'm working on a tool to address this.)
: it does not <comment><USER2> Whether _surname_ means first name or last name.

Whether it's `Console.log` or `console.log`.

Whether `mov r1, r2` overwrites r1 or r2.</comment>


Ask HN: Text editor w/ browser and html inspector built-in, makes sense? - <AUTHOR> http://liveditor.com/text-editor

<comment><USER2> Can't you basically do this in Firefox now (with the developer console and inspector)? What does this product do that you cannot do with current browser developer tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> @schrodingersCat, well, to answer this, may I first ask you, can you use Firefox alone without an external code editor or text editor? LIVEditor integrates the code editor and the web-kit based browser together to make writing webpages easier.</comment></comment>


A Novel Method for Representing Hierarchies in a Relational Database [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/pub.xhuntley.net/Huntley_Tcl2011.pdf <comment><USER2> Is somebody thinking of using this?</comment>


Am I really a developer or just a good Googler? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AmIReallyADeveloperOrJustAGoodGoogler.aspx <comment><USER2> > Remember that there was a time we programmed without copying our work.

Nope. I remember specifically copying from known solutions in large organized reams of marked paper (a "book" we called it). They used to have whole rooms, and personnel, dedicated to storing them. Now, you couldn't just ask for what you wanted, like "clojurescript core.async examples". Oh, no. Research required either knowing how to search through the "books" or remembering previous solutions to similar problems. (And, I'm not that old.)

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly, the old saying goes: RTFM (Read The Fine* Manual). In the 21st century google is the manual. If you're not looking stuff up in google, you're doing it wrong. It's great if you can do some stuff without using google, but memorizing reference material doesn't mean you're a better developer.

<comment><USER4> I argue that it does: the more you have committed to memory of the basic units of your environment, the _expotentially_ more efficient you will be, and simultaneously the greater problems you will be capable of solving.

Think of programming as speaking in a language. He who has more of the language committed to memory will be orders of magnitude greater at communicating in that language than someone who has to look up every odd word. Furthermore, the concepts that can be created will be much more complex and abstract than the person who doesn't have a handle on the basics: people who are clever and quick-witted in a language they are fluent in will often seem dull in a language they don't know well. Having the basics committed to memory is absolutely critical. Its unfortunately that this level of mastery has been devalued with the rise of the "just google it" culture.

<comment><USER5> True, but there are also other brilliant minds in the field that are creating solutions that you can also learn from. Isolating yourself from that doesn't help much either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> "...try programming for a day without Googling. Then two days, maybe a week. See how it feels. Remember that there was a time we programmed without copying our work."_

Once I decided I really wanted to learn to write code I just plain stopped with the copying and even referencing anything beyond docs or a thorough book.

I work to create a functional implementation of whatever it is I'm looking for, no matter how naive, convoluted or narrow my solution ends up being.

Only once that's done do I go about searching out solutions. Sometimes I'm delighted to find that what I've come up with comes very close to established solutions, other times I learn some new, concise way of going about the problem.

In any case, that first sort of experimental phase is incredible for informing everything that comes after. I'd say experiencing 100 less than optimal ways to do something is far more valuable than memorizing a single optimal solution.

Thing is, around the web, this sort of approach seems pretty ripe for ridicule as the Internet standard response is something like this [0].

There's a culture against discovery and creation. You either come out of the womb writing clever, idiomatic code and using or the hottest framework/library or you're an idiot.

0: [http://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/](http://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/)

<comment><USER7> I think that is some value in doing that, for learning. But as a professional, with deadlines and money involved. Wouldn't google be best?

<comment><USER8> right- there is a time to learn and a time to earn. though, accreting a bunch of solutions that you may not appreciate can sometimes screw you in the later term

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Professional programmers get paid to solve problems. It just happens that many problems can be solved through google.

There's nothing to be ashamed of if you need to do a bunch of searches to get your job done. What we all should be wary of though, is to have a job so that all of our problems are solved through googling.

Where we really earn our money is when we create something that wasn't there before, solving original problems.

<comment><USER10> > Professional programmers get paid to solve problems. It just happens that > many problems can be solved through google.

This. Also, the web has largely displaced the bookshelf of resources that used to come with most language implementations (some with first-party documentation on websites, and some with web forums, etc.) So I really don't see any difference between using Google to find information when programming today than RTFMing when programming in the 1980s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a stupid, humblebraggy question. Of course you're a good developer if you Google. Hell, you could argue you're a better developer than most, given that you turn information into action in probably record time, all the while increasing your knowledge base.

I might be different from most, because I went from 0 to professional developer in under 5 years, and I can easily remember what it was like to find answers and not be able to know what to do with them, or how they worked. I still google for answers. A lot. But when I find an answer, even one that's not directly related to my problem, I'm still usually able to apply its principles to my solution.

It's that artisanry that makes us good developers. Hell, why do you think every industry has trade conventions? It was sharing trade solutions before Google.

</comment><comment><USER12> It isn't a crime if you occasionally need to google something. It is a crime if you copy and paste a solution you find without understanding how it works. This leads to cargo cult programming.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming)

<comment><USER13> Is copy/pasting a solution without understanding how it works worse than using a library, framework, or programming environment without knowing how it works?

<comment><USER14> Yes, it is. Using a library is a transition of abstraction layers. It's expected that some understanding might get lost at that point. It's also expected that you understand what the library _promises_ to do when you make that call - i.e. that you read the docs.

Copy/paste lives at the same abstraction layer as code that you actually write yourself - the same level of understanding should apply. (Of course, if you don't understand any of the code you write, you're in the clear ;)

<comment><USER13> In that case, it sounds like it just depends on whether you paste the code directly into an existing file. If you paste the code into its own file, then import it into your project, the distinction seems to vanish.

<comment><USER15> A library isn't just code that happens to be in a separate file. Someone chose an abstraction layer at which to create a library, wrote the library code, tested it and wrote documentation.

If you went and copy-pasted some code on stack overflow into a file, put it on github and released it as a "library", I might not agree that it was one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How dare a developer double check his work to make sure he's going down the right path and has an optimal solution. Instead, he should sit around for a few hours trying to figure out why his B-Tree traversal is suboptimal. Because that's the best use of a client's time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use Stack Overflow (and to a lesser extent, Google) to help me with problems large and small _all the time._ Why break your neck to find a solution without finding out if someone else already did? There's never a point when you can't learn from others.

<comment><USER4> The question is, are you really learning? How much of that copy/pasted solution sticks with you a day or a week from now? The fact is we are missing the benefit of building up expertise that used to go along with spending time researching (through docs) and problem solving. When every problem is a google search away, there is a ceiling to how much expertise one can build up this way.

Edit: the reflex downvoters will be the end of this place.

<comment><USER18> Some solutions aren't worth committing to memory. Do I _really_ need to remember all the flags on scp just to write a quick bash script when someone has already posted the correct incantation on StackOverflow?

<comment><USER4> Do you have to google it every time? The fact that repeated googling is required is a sign that something is off--either you're not growing from your experience or the API has too much friction. I've often felt this way when it comes to linux command switches. Just accepting that having to google everything is OK is the wrong answer here.

<comment><USER19> I always tell people that if it's worth memorizing because you use it a lot, you'll probably memorize it because you use it a lot anyway. If you have to make a point to memorize something, it's a hint to consider if it's worth the time.

<comment><USER4> I don't think people should put in effort to memorize things like command line switches. The issue I'm arguing against is accepting that we must now google everything to get work done. I agree that if its worth memorizing, you should eventually commit it to memory through repetition. The problem is that sometimes this doesn't happen. This is a sign of a problem, likely with the interface you're interacting with. If we accept the expectation is to just google everything, no one will ever stop to ask whether the interface itself is broken. If we accept that one should develop a mastery of their environment over time, then incentives form to improve ease-of-use, elegance, and "memorizability".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Good programmers invent, great programmers steal, crap programmers copy (and paste)"

Good programmers come up with solutions. Poorly half-reinventing what has been done before.

Great programmers learn from others (googling is expeditious method these days). They take from others and make that knowledge their own.

Code monkeys have little understanding of what they copy, can barely get syntax right, and are satisfied that it seems to produce desired result with the one input they tried.

</comment><comment><USER21> Watch programmers who don't Google how they code, it usually ends up complicated, slow and worst of all insecure. If the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. Using string.join instead of paremetherized SQL queries is a typically example of this! Any tutorial on top of Google will show you _the correct_ solution to this but if you are too smart for this and reinvent your own way of creating queries then this will bite you in the ass one day.

Even if you think you know how to do something, spend 5 minutes on google to see if this is the defacto optimal solution for your problem and if there are any gotchas you have to consider. I'm not advocating blindly copy pasting code from random stackoverflow answers but at least look at them and understand what they do, then you can copy them.

<comment><USER22> Kind of. A lot of the time the answer is on Stack Overflow, and good ones get voted up. Sometimes I find myself on Ubuntu forums and the more mainstream nature of the users often provides quite poor hacks to get things working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Imagine life before Google, when people looked stuff up in actual libraries. Am I really an essayist, or just a good library-er?

Am I really a musician, or just a good YouTuber?

The ability to learning how to utilize resources that are available to you so you can do your job better is a huge part of why I'd hire you.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love Scott's response here. He comes at it by saying that feeling this way is not just OK but normal and then expanding on ways that you can overcome this by doing practice problems.

This has been a great boon to my confidence lately as when I'm working the mode I get in is to solve a problem as fast as possible because if I don't I'm wasting my companies money... I don't always get the time to think about the problem (which I recognize is not a great environment but it's easy to fall into). So googling something and taking the first working answer sometimes seems the best thing to do even though deep down I know it isn't.

That is why I do practice problems, they force me to think and give me a chance to ease off of Google. Great advice as from Scott.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a newbie programmer (self-taught), I've asked the same question a lot lately.

I think to some extent it's a matter of habit -- I've learned the most about my ever-improving (but still limited) abilities during the few times I've found myself coding on an airplane flight without WiFi.

When I'm forced to go with only what's in my head, I've been surprised at how far I can get (!). It was actually pretty satisfying to solve a problem and get some code working without a single Stack Overflow query :)

Of course, there are limits, and there are times when I'll hit a roadblock that's truly a limit of my knowledge (usually API/syntax-related). And even then, I've managed to make a few educated guesses and surprise myself with the result.

</comment><comment><USER26> You can change the problem domain for a bit of insight; cooks use recipes, chefs don't. Both make food.

'Short order cook' is a low wage job, 'Executive chef' is a high wage job.

</comment><comment><USER27> well, i just traveled south east asia for a few months, and lets say where i traveled (lots of islands, beaches in myanmar, cambodia, thailand) there was no internet, still i needed to code a very specific webapp for my 5 year old son (an mp3 concatenatior)

i will outline my experience on the next viennajs (our local JS meetup) [http://www.meetup.com/viennajs/events/126159362/?_af_eid=126...](http://www.meetup.com/viennajs/events/126159362/?_af_eid=126159362&_af=event&a=uc1_vm) in a talk called "coding an awesome real world problem solving web-app without internet access after your girlfriend deleted your dev-setup on a device that hates developers while traveling south east asia" \- i will post the slides to HN after the talk. but (SPOILER) the conclusion as it contributes to this discussion:

EMBRACE THE INTERNET

        - right click "view source" is a gift from the gods
        - github is even better
        - read the f_cking source, luke

google is the tool to find source-code, and without other source-code, other websites to look at, your are definitely alone, reinventing one wheel (baldy) after the other.

so google away, but not looking for frameworks and other ready made solutions, but for (example or real world) sourcecode and understanding.

note: the only thing bearable to code without internet access was the chrome dev-tools, with auto-complete and object-inspection you can piece together most HTML5y APIs.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think this is similar to the question "does using turn-by-turn GPS make me a better navigator?" The answer could go either way. If you depend on the GPS to the exclusion of paying any attention to your surroundings, you'll probably be a worse navigator, because it will take you much longer to learn even the common routes in your day-to-day life. If, on the other hand, you use GPS- aided navigation as an opportunity to learn the back roads that take you between two places more efficiently, but that you never would have discovered on your own, and _internalize_ that knowledge, GPS can help you become much more intimately familiar with an area than you otherwise might be.

I see Google/Stack Overflow through the same lens. Lean too heavily on snippets of other peoples' code, and you'll never learn to solve even simple problems on your own. But if you take the time to actually learn _why_ a particularly elegant answer on Stack Overflow works, and generalize that technique, you can grow your skillset much more quickly than by trying to figure out everything yourself from first principles.

</comment><comment><USER29> In this day and age, I feel being 'smart' is much more about your ability to find and apply information than it is about memorization.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure how it differed from opening up any manual to anything. The reason you are opening up the manual is the key point. I think for me its was a progression from 'how' -> 'when' -> 'why' -> 'is there a better way'.

I'll frequently go days without Googling anything, weeks if its just CRUD work. When I started it was very different, I can remember writing entire database layers via copy and paste with no idea what anything did I just knew it worked and thats all I needed.

But I'm at a point now I smell bad code in my own work and want to get rid of it and I only got there because I did google... I did go to blogs... read the responses... reference pages/critiques... read white papers/specs/manuals.

And above all I wasn't intellectually lazy, I put in that little bit of effort to ask why, and then get it verify. Nothing wrong with reading source material, theres only problems if you fail to understand and retain what you are reading.

</comment><comment><USER31> On my own projects I'll sometimes "reinvent the wheel" on purpose. It's a good way to make learning mistakes. For better or worse, I tend to learn from making mistakes.

At work though, my employer isn't really paying me so I can experience personal growth. I'm try to deliver value as efficiently as I can.

I've done this long enough to know that the "easiest" problems can have subtle bugs. Think of the singleton pattern: if you write one "without looking at the answer" you invariably make a small mistake that introduces a race condition. That's why I Google even "easy" problems.

That said, I can't do math in my head very well any more - calculators have robbed me of day to day practice and my 8th grade math skills are flabby now. (My degree is in math so it's especially embarrassing.)

</comment><comment><USER32> The important part is weeding out the good from the bad. If you're good at that, then using google to check for help/info about your current problem can provide you with new approaches, ideas, or maybe even new features in the language(s) you are using that you weren't aware of before.

Personally, I usually map out the approach to the problem and then check if there are any matching helpful resources available online. Even if you don't find something that applies to the current situation, most of the time you will end up with a collection of interesting new ideas and approaches, which could be helpful for another project later on or is just of general interest, such as a new library or language feature.

I feel that it keeps me more up to date compared to just hacking away on the problem without any further research.

</comment><comment><USER33> I used to have a multi-volume set of IBM mainframe DB2 manuals on my office bookshelf. When we got an error code, I looked it up in the appropriate book. Google is just a much faster way to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't know if I would have made it past the first few hurdles without the Internet. I am self-taught, so the first years were doing as much searching (pre-google, I used Usenet a lot I think), as much as checking books out of the library and typing in the code by hand. Doesn't having access to an ever- growing library of code, some functional, some not, ultimately make us all more productive? Having said that, I do agree completely that you need to get a full understanding of what the code does: read and type, don't copy.

</comment><comment><USER35> A lot of the problem with looking for an answer, especially if coupled to a powerful search system, is that you'll usually find one. Even when you're asking the wrong question. A large part of becoming a better developer, it seems to me, is learning to ask the right sorts of questions.

Which is difficult to do if you don't have a reasonably wide general knowledge and an understanding of why things are done a particular way, as compared to some other way, and what the trade-offs in that choice were.

</comment><comment><USER36> Step 0 fire up the debugger/repl and poke.

Step 1 read the docs (again.)

Step 2 look at somebody else's code: the library and its tests, another similar project, or whatever. Use the source luke!

Step 3 put a natural-language-ish query into google/stackoverflow.

When you're properly competent with the language and tools you mostly won't get to step 3. By the time you get there, you're looking for a specific piece of info, not a solution.

<comment><USER37> I always start with 3. I even start with 3 before I have a bug, to see if I can't find a lib for my task, or if someone has a blog post on the thing where I can find some caveats or clever solution.

<comment><USER36> Indeed, this routine depends on you reading up on the problems you're tackling ahead of time, outside of the development/debugging cycle. This is no different to 15 years ago when you'd look in a book rather than a search engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is my family physician really a doctor or just good at understanding medical texts?

Google is simply one of the many tools in the developer-of-today's toolbox.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a developer new to Erlang, this is my life now. Google has been my Joe Armstrong book and the manual pages as howtos and fixes are scarce on the internet relative to, say, Ruby. If I had deadlines, I would be toast. But it feels nice to work a bit harder and think through things more -- now that this is my new reality. It's neat!

</comment><comment><USER40> Imagine how much value/productivity would be lost if stackoverflow was erased from existence.

I saw somewhere that you can get all of wikipedia on a 128GB SD card? Would be cool if you could get the same for all of stackoverflow. Would make a neat gift and might serve some practical purposes if you were working offline.

<comment><USER41> Yup, you can download all of stack exchange (or any subset of it) in a zip file.

[https://archive.org/details/stackexchange](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I recognize the title of this post as a tongue in the cheek, because "Googler" is a nomenclature for the Google employees, which makes the title sounding really bad. Especially if posted by a Microsoft employee. Please correct me if I'm wrong in my paranoia.

</comment><comment><USER43> Given enough time I could always come up with _an answer_ to my programming problems. Quickly finding a peer-reviewed answer on StackOverflow seems like a much better option to me.

It all depends on your goals though, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER44> Developing is pretty hard. And, although you can get great information, Googling doesn't get you very far.

</comment><comment><USER45> Quoting Albert Einstein: "Never memorize something you can look up in a book."

</comment><comment><USER46> You could take this a step further: am I really a developer or just a good API caller?

</comment><comment><USER42> That's very easy to tell during a coding and problem solving interview.

<comment><USER47> I'd rather hire someone who is able to use available resources efficiently than someone who just has a really good memory.

<comment><USER48> The goal of the problem solving interview is more to see the candidates reasoning process and less the ability to recall the problem and reproduce a solution. I like interviews where the problems are more open ended and the interviewer is active in the process and it's more of a discussion towards a solution and THEN coding or at least some pseudocode.

I've had interviews where I'll be asked some canned algo/data structures problem (some version of knearest, or longest substring) and then the interviewer will tune out- these are mostly lame.

<comment><USER42> That's what I meant. I personally hate interview questions revolving around "reverse a string" and alike, but really like open ended questions, which result in many options and discussions, AKA "design questions".

<comment><USER47> Oh well that's just fine... It's the thought process that's important to me!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Since Hacker News has been going through some introspection recently, I just wanted to pontificate on the comments thus far: Almost universally garbage. Just _terrible_.

There is some sort of bizarre urge for people to rush to explain "Why This Guy Is A Dumb Asshole" for virtually every submission to HN. Where someone talking about a letter they were sent, and opportunities for learning experiences, turns into some profound statement that everyone needs to dispel defensively.</comment>


Micro-volunteering - <AUTHOR> https://www.sparked.com/ <comment><USER2> You got me all the way to the sign-up step! ;-) I would only want to sign-up if there were actually a task I would be interested in completing. Why get me to that point, only to have me turn away?

A simple change could have resulted in a different outcome. I went through the wizard, picked my interests, identified that I was in good company and tasks needed to be completed -- but without seeing those tasks, I really didn't want to sign up for yet another website. So, present the tasks to me! At least a summary. Then, I could have made the decision if it was something I wanted to continue with. Instead, I exited the site. Probably a lost opportunity for both of us (and the non-profits who needed assistance).

Is there any harm in presenting a summary of the tasks? Then, when I select one, register or logon to contribute. Maybe I stand alone in this hesitation to register - certainly, A/B testing with the very slight modification I describe would be a worthwhile effort.

One other bit of input - everything looks pretty clean up to the registration page. It feels "busy" to me. Also, the input boxes behave inconsistently (the hint text sometimes dims, sometimes disappears on hover state).

Good job though and I think it's a great idea. Just this past week, I wanted to volunteer my time for the holiday's but didn't really know where to start. I actually thought about calling the local chamber of commerce to see who/where/what could use my help.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly what I came to post. I had the same experience in wanting to see the opportunities available before signing up. You're definitely not alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi all. Great to read your feedback on Sparked. Quick answers to some of the comments:

* I hear you about wanting to see challenges before you commit to signing up. We've got some modifications to the onboarding process in the works that are along these lines. Totally agree with you all.

* Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs. We are now a certified B-corp, btw.

* Re: "micro" - we consider micro to be anything that you can conveniently fit into your day. So that could be 2 hours or 2 minutes. In all cases, it's less time and less commitment than most other forms of volunteering. We tried very very micro tasks initially (image tagging) - these took about 30 seconds each... but people didn't find these kinds of tasks interesting over time. So, we expanded how we thought about micro.

* Re: Dool: sorry that the page refreshed and you lost your answer. Haven't seen or heard of that happening before, but we're looking into it immediately to see if there's an ajax bug. Definitely not an intended behavior.

-ben rigby cto & co-founder sparked.com

</comment><comment><USER5> I just signed up and did an accessibility review for the Cancer Council, South Australia :)

I didn't really care about signing up to see what was available as I was curious and it was very little effort to type in my details, and a pretty quick process.

I can't see how to add my company name which I'd like to do if I'm going to continue to volunteer my time and expertise - especially if Sparked is going to be making money out of it.

One of my primary motivations for doing pro-bono work is as a P.R exercise.

It's cool - there are some very specific types of work that this will be good for and I intend to return and try and do one a week.

My only complaints?

1\. The page randomly refreshed while I was typing my post and I had to retype everything (this time I drafted it OUTside the browser!!)

2\. The "verify email" doesn't have a valid plain text part so I had to open the email in gmail rather than copying and pasting the link from pine into my browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> For IT stuff they are things ranging from: "please give us feedback on how we should redesign our site" to "design a mobile app". The design-a-mobile-app- one I looked at led to feedback that what hey really wanted was a mobile website and a good exchange with the poster. For non-IT it's like, we need a copyrighter on this one project, we need a logo, etc.

I'm curious how effective this will be for most non-profits. I would love to hear serious feedback after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks interesting. I'm curious to see what some of the micro-volunteering jobs are before having to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems like a number of requests are very similar to other existing requests. For example, many organizations are asking 'How do we improve our donation process?'. Rather than have volunteers answer the same question numerous times, it would be helpful to have a resources page that is shown to the nonprofit before they post their question. I am reminded of systems like Digg/reddit that alert you a story has already been submitted or systems like the Stack Exchange family that show duplicates and similar questions.

Instead of having volunteers copy and paste their answer repeatedly, having a page comparing and contrasting the various online platforms (PayPal, Razoo, Convio, etc) could prevent things from getting lost in the shuffle. These FAQ and Resources pages could be edited wiki-style and non-profits could periodically request reviews and additions to the wikis rather than opening up completely new support tickets.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Sparked is created and offered by The Extraordinaries, Inc., which was founded in July of 2008 as a for-profit social enterprise (and a certified B-Corp)_

Any idea how they plan to make money?

<comment><USER9> [http://springwise.com/non- profit_social_cause/extraordinarie...](http://springwise.com/non- profit_social_cause/extraordinaries/)

 _The Extraordinaries is in the process of becoming a B Corp.; its business model will eventually include charging organizations a fee for each task completed, according to a report on NPR._

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went ahead and signed up, although having to sit through a presentation to get that far was somewhat onerous. (The presentation was fun, though, so it wasn't that bad.) I agree with other posters that at least a sampling of tasks available should be visible right at the outset for interested experts.

There's no facility for attaching files. If your output is anything other than short text in forum format, I don't know how you're expected to proceed.

That said, there are two texts for translation from German, and that's the kind of stuff I'm happy to do. Of course, one of them was 2,390 words, which is about a day's work for most translators. I'm not sure how "micro" that is. It would take me about two hours. If I end up with a couple of hours free this week, I'll consider doing it, but it seems a little disproportionate.

But - a very interesting site overall. I'm going to hang out there and help out from time to time.

Somewhat off-topic: I was a little taken aback at how many people talk about SEO on this site. I've always thought that if you produce interesting content, SEO will take care of itself. Are people being unreasonable, or am I being dismissive? (Check all that apply...)

</comment><comment><USER11> I liked the idea, but I went through the 15 web design ones (the closest to programming), and its either stuff like "rate our site" or configure our site with X (joomla, zazzle, wordpress).

Its a great idea, but for programming (and I'm not saying anyone claimed differently), micro-volunteering doesn't seem feasible.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm waiting for a real OpenID login, not the Facebook monstrosity.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great idea, but unfortunately the site doesn't work in Mobile Safari - can't choose an issue, so can't view opportunities.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps this is something they can get a micro-volunteer to help them with.

<comment><USER10> Speaking for myself, I'm happy to volunteer for small non-profits, because they really need it, and ten minutes of my time can really make a difference (I just translated a 100-word paragraph about an award from German to English, for example).

But Sparked themselves are a for-profit venture. I'm not 100% sure that's going to be viable, but I'm not willing to give them my time for free if they're going to turn around and make money off it.

<comment><USER15> Wanted to quote from the Founder's answer above:

"Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs."

Non-profits do not pay to use the platform or for any tasks completed. Large companies pay an annual fee to enable access for their employees and related reporting metrics.

<comment><USER10> The parent comment to my comment was to the effect that they could use the microvolunteering concept for their own development. To a certain extent, I could even see volunteering for them (getting the word out or something), but I personally would draw the line at actual technical work for free for a money-making venture, unless there were public karma attached or the code in question were open-sourced or something.

<comment><USER4> To make sure I got it right: 1) you would volunteer for sparked.com (the business) up until a certain point - when it started to feel like real work.

2) you would volunteer for a _nonprofit_ on sparked.com at any time - regardless as to if it felt like real work.

That right? \- ben</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People - <AUTHOR> https://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2019/new_technology_uses_lasers_to_transmit_audible_mes/ <comment><USER6> If you want a sound in your year, you get a device for that. If you are a business wanting to notify people who trust you, you can give them devices or blast a speaker. This fills the use case of an actor distributing information to people who do not have enough contact or trust with that actor or who do not want the information (because they would willingly use their own device if they did). Most likely use cases: punitive or targeted spam, punishment (security alarm, military grade crowd repellent, thief targeting, etc). Also possible: misinformation, generating confusion and chaos, making people feel schizophrenic. Weapon in the making. Good uses are also possible - <USER2> communication to people who can't hold devices (surgeon during surgery, vr headsets, helmet headphones, etc, but that's too cheap a use case for such an expensive laser, so weaponization is more likely.

<comment><USER7> Those depressing sentiments reflect an unfortunate reality of our time. The world wasn't always bloated with spammy advertising, and I'm hopeful that fad will eventually give way to more human-friendly business models.

Yes, any new technology comes with potential for abuse. But I'm still excited that maybe one day this tech could be miniaturized enough (or deployed responsibly) to give me wireless virtual earbuds without having to stick anything in my ear.

<comment><USER8> A consumer always pays, whether by paying or looking at advertisements.

But the modern world offers nice alternatives now. I can watch movies and episodes without ads (thanks to Netflix), and can listen to all the songs in the world without ads (thanks to Spotify). Because I pay instead of watching ads.

A lot of platforms and products offer the choice between looking at ads or letting you pay.

But of course, everyone wants to have stuff for free without ads, but that's just not how a functional economy works.

<comment><USER9> At one point the TV was without ads too!

My point: a netflix with ads will be more profitable than one without. However they cannot get away with that right now, competition, etc. Maybe never, but there's a reason ads came around, even for people who paid for television.

<comment><USER10> It still is, if you watch only the BBC in the UK.

Of course, people still moan about "being forced to pay for it", even when you tell them how to legally stop paying for it.

<comment><USER11> You can't legally not pay for the bbc and then watch, say, ITV, though.

<comment><USER10> You can if you only watch ITV through thrir online catchup service. When the UK government closed the "iPlayer loophole", the new rules covered literally only BBC iPlayer.

At least, that's what the TV licencing website says, I don't know the name of the actual law so I can't look it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Imagine the scary future of retargeting.

\- Doctor, I hear voices in my head

\- Don't worry, it's just ads

<comment><USER12> I wonder if you could, with the right combination of technologies, induce schizophrenia in a subject. Of course since I am in Europe my wondering will not be turned into a DARPA grant.

<comment><USER13> More fake than induce without the disordered thinking that comes along with it. Normal people can hallucinate under stress to some degree and it can be shockingly subtle and non-disruptive. Like thinking their downstairs neighbor is being noisy but it turns out they were away on vacation.

Interestingly the tone of hallucinations is very culturally shaped - <USER3> ones tend to be more negative.

Artists with schizophrenia tend to produce interesting degrees of abstraction which seems to be "accidental" as opposed to deliberate. Interesting but sad of course.

[https://www.bryancharnley.info/self- portraits-2/charnley_sel...](https://www.bryancharnley.info/self- portraits-2/charnley_self_portrait_series_01/)

If one wants to cause mental illness we already know how - <USER4>

<comment><USER14> The problem is that suspending one's ability to think clearly by preventing them the silence to do so can have as great an effect on mental illness as isolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds met of the book series Daemon by Daniel Suarez [0], only there they use nonlinear acoustics to get this effect (if I remember correctly). Nice books, nice ideas by the way.

Edit: They call it Hypersonic Sound System, not nonlinear acoustics, see [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_\(novel_series\)) [1] [http://daniel-suarez.com/daemontech.html](http://daniel- suarez.com/daemontech.html)

<comment><USER16> Really great, underrated series. The book was also very prescient in predicting rise of a distributed digital currency, especially given that it was published before Satoshi's Bitcoin paper was published.

<comment><USER15> I agree! I have been looking for the same epicness in his later books but it never hit that level again imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't wait till rogue arrays of lasers start beaming advertisements directly into your ear while walking down the street.

<comment><USER18> Why not just play it over a speaker like is often done?

<comment><USER19> Well, now you can directly target people so personalized ads when you're walking down the street. I'm scared it would devolve to pseudo-hallucinations ('did you hear that?').

<comment><USER20> Or subliminal messages/mind control. I imagine psychiatrist visits would be up due to this annoying voice in peoples heads. lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _The ability to send highly targeted audio signals over the air could be > used to communicate across noisy rooms or warn individuals of a dangerous > situation such as an active shooter._

This strikes me as a rather bizarre example to use. What's special about active shooters that would warrant using lasers to beam whispered audio messages directly into someone's ear?

<comment><USER22> It's just one specific use case for this technology that came to mind for the researcher? Mass shootings are a pretty big deal, even if the odds of it happening to anyone is fairly low. Risk mitigation and death prevention seems like a pretty healthy choice for applying this technology, as opposed to saying something like "This could let someone beam targeted ads that only the target can hear!"

"We made this thing, I wonder what we could potentially do with it that would benefit people as much as possible?"

<comment><USER23> When getting money from the grant system, the grant providers are not neutral parties objectively deciding what the best science to do is, since there is no such thing as an objective, neutral party. The grant authors learn to tell the grant writers what they want to hear.

This is part of why we get such a stream of stories about amazing new breakthroughs in solar, battery capacity, terrorism reduction, etc. that never seem to come to fruition. A lot of times they were never for that purpose anyhow, really; it was just a paragraph tacked on to get the grant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The principle seems simple. It's too bad that 1.9 μm laser is neither easy nor cheap to obtain. Otherwise it could be doable for DIYers.

I imagine you can certainly drive people crazy with this thing. For some one who doesn't know this kind of technology's existence, it's pure magic.

<comment><USER25> There is an alternative method to achieve similar results using very high frequency (40khz in the case of the video below) audio as a carrier for audio that is within the human range. It modulates the amplitude of the carrier signal (in the same way that AM radio does). The high frequency audio interacts with surfaces it hits and kind 'self decodes' into human-perceivable audio. It's doable by DIYers with a little electronics knowledge, too!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBdVfUnS- pM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBdVfUnS-pM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Two big caveats with this tech (from the paper):

\- it's really silent. They claim that the signal is audible, but under pretty much ideal conditions.

\- creating arbitrary sound with this approach is hard. Each laser sweep generates a sharp wavefront that is audible, but that only eorks ehen the sweep is at the speed of sound. This limits the frequency at which you can emit those pulses and their shape is fixed, too. The only really changeable property is amplitude.

Not sure if this can be turned into a reasonably high quality source.

<comment><USER27> They mention 2 methods in the article, the sweep method, and plain old modulation. If the 2 methods could be combined it might work better.

The sweep could be sped up by several orders of magnitude, and the modulation could be coordinated with it to create traveling pulse trains toward the listener that would have higher fidelity.

<comment><USER26> The sweep is fixed to the speed of sound or else the whole trick behind it falls apart. The paper describes that in length.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but the point of sweeping seems to be to add energy to a traveling wave front. You can still amplify the wave by sweeping faster and bumping the power at the appropriate time, but you would gain fidelity because you're not limited to single square waves.

<comment><USER26> No, the amplification can _only_ work at the speed of sound, neither faster nor slower. The paper analyzes how the wffect falls apart when you deviate from c.

What you _possibly_ could do is to have multiple laser beams forming a sweeping comb pattern. Depending on dispersiom and other effects, you might be able to do some waveform shaping. But that is very elaborate for a loudspeaker.

<comment><USER27> That's like saying audio over radio waves can only be sent with spark gaps... you simulate this "sweeping comb" with a fast sweeping, and even faster modulating laser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love all the innovation that's created to warn us about active shooters, all to let the active shooters keep their guns.

<comment><USER29> That scenario seems contrived if you ask me. How likely is it that one of these expensive laser devices will just happen to be available at the scene of an active shooter incident? And if so, what advantage would it have compared to general PA announcements?

<comment><USER14> These are not the robots you're looking for. You can go about your business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are lots of conspiracy theorists all over the world who suffers from schizophrenia and other mental disorders, many constantly claim to be the victims of a secret human experiment project by the governments in the past 30 years. They believe the governments have developed a psychological weapon which can directly control one's brain and the neural system though electromagnetic waves, including the ability of sending a "directed voice" straight to someone's head, and they are subjected to such torture everyday,

Apparently, now their science fiction is finally partially realized...

Of course, the possibility of having a practical weapon is low, while the chance of these conspiracy theorists being the actual victims of a human experiment is practically zero. But I personally do believe the R&D of such psychological weapons do exist, and this is how the non-fictional part of the conspiracy fiction originated. Related published researches is what they used as a foundation to justify it, now they just get more materials... And well, this "mental control" meme has been around since a long time ago, since the age of radio.

</comment><comment><USER31> It would be cool if it were possible to make multicast-like transmissions using this tech.

I can imagine a rock show where the whole band goes straight into the mixer, and instead of speakers PA uses this laser tech to transmit the sound to listeners.

If you are a person who for some reason doesn't receive the transmission, it must feel very bizarre: the only acoustic sounds would be band playing the instruments silently, vocalist singing without any amplification, crowd noises.

It would be a paradise for people making / receiving orders at the bar with the live music going on.

Or imagine a night club where people on the dance floor receive music very loudly, but people outside of it receive it at a conversational level.

<comment><USER32> This exists with current technology, they're called "silent parties"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reminds me of the way AR was implemented in the book Change Agent[0] - <USER5> were devices there using lasers to beam additional visuals directly into your eye. And, AFAIR, you had to wear laser-blocking glasses when in the city, because advertisers would abuse this tech to beam ads straight to your eyes. Anyway, if we could build that, and connect it with (improved version of) the tech from this article, we could have AR that doesn't require you to actually _wear_ anything.

\--

[0] - A good biotech sci-fi; I liked it and can recommend it. Speaking of which, if there are other "biopunk" books out there, I'd love to know.

</comment><comment><USER34> There are stories of people having their orthodontic braces act as a radio antenna. Only the person with the braces would hear something.

This writeup is short: [https://www.recordonline.com/article/20091118/Health/9111803...](https://www.recordonline.com/article/20091118/Health/911180324).

There's also a (busted) Mythbusters around picking up radio signals thru fillings.

<comment><USER35> It would be so cool if that's the way how radio technology was discovered.

<comment><USER26> No, that was absolutely not what happened. The discovery of radio waves happened in two parts: first, Maxwell completed the fundamental equations for electrodynamics by postulating that a temporally changing electrical field must be creating a magnetic field around it. Otherwise the behaviour of plate capacitors would be inconsistent. This brought the equations into a form that rather obviously allowed the derivation of a wave equation. Then it took about 20 years IIRC until Hertz managed to prove in his lab that these waves exist and can be both created and detected.

<comment><USER35> Sorry if my bad grammar gave you the impression I thought that is how it was discovered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A sound only I can hear? This could be used to drive someone crazy, commit suicide or some other horrible task - phishing God.

<comment><USER37> Go on, I'm listening.

\-- The Pentagon

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This could not drive anyone insane as it could be easily blocked by covering the ears or wearing earplugs and it's a good thing..

I could easily see this being adopted by cheaters in passing exams:)

</comment><comment><USER39> This would be a nice alternative to headphones/PC speakers for many use cases. What angle to the ear does it need to be? I.e. can the laser be directly in front of the listener?

</comment><comment><USER40> Lasers can also record sounds through window vibrations. Now they can be targeted transmitters too. They could continuously record and transmit sound and tailor the messages to real time conversations. Seems like high potential for abuse.

For example, sharks with giant fricking laser beams that convert shark thoughts to audible sound that gets louder based on target's voice level.

Or government, millitary, and adtech abuse.

I'm not a big regulations person but see value in them in this case.

<comment><USER41> Or aim the laser at another drivers rear window and tell that idiot to slow down!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So, do noise reducing earplugs thwart these things?

and screw the mindset that active shooter is the "cool use case" for something like this. Jesus christ - if these people had imagination, how about the fact that it can be uncomfortable to always have a device sitting in your ear canal - maybe it would make a good headset for a phone conversation sitting at a desk - you dont need a thing on your head/in your ear to be able to converse on a call..

</comment><comment><USER43> I remember reading about the US military testing a similar technology last year [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/03/26/militar...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/03/26/military- weapon-laser-voice/)

</comment><comment><USER44> I remember watching a Ted talk about directional audio "Woody Norris: Hypersonic sound and other inventions" which focus's audio like a laser.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF9G9M0cR0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF9G9M0cR0E) \- very interesting to watch.

</comment><comment><USER45> U.S. intelligence had this tech 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure I read about it on cryptome in the early 2000s.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't understand it entirely. What do they mean when they say they are sweeping the laser at the speed of sound?

<comment><USER26> This is unintuitive: the laser makes air heat up and expand. This is how the acoustic waves are created. But this alome is not enough for audible sound. Higher amplitude is required. They get it by "piling up" a wavefront (in colloquial terms) by moving the laser exactly as fast as the wave is moving away. This heats up more air and the additional expansion adds to the already traveling wavefront.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Was this used on US diplomats in Havana?

<comment><USER48> No, that was probably just crickets: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/acs1zv/the_sound...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/acs1zv/the_sounds_that_haunted_us_diplomats_in_cuba/) Thread includes sound samples.

<comment><USER49> That's an hypotesis just as many others. Investigators and medics who visited the patients say they don't know. Source : yesterday's arstechnica's article: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/canada-halves- diplom...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/canada-halves-diplomatic- staff-in-cuba-after-another-mysterious-brain-injury/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There is a video on youtube that explains how to do it with ultrasonic speakers; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBdVfUnS- pM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBdVfUnS-pM)

</comment><comment><USER51> This would be great for telling that idiot driving five under in the left lane to move over, except for cases where I am that idiot. Then it would feel less great.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wish we could print plasma coils into the air and energize them. Magnetic force on demand, wherever you need it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Seems like this would have positive applications in VR/AR/Movie Theaters/Holodecks...

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder how the sound fidelity is like, how is the bass response on it?

</comment><comment><USER55> Looks like active noise-cancelling headphones are the new Adblock

</comment><comment><USER56> Thanks osa.org for not spamming me with ads and cookie-popup.

</comment><comment><USER57> [whispered] "advertising" [/whispered]

</comment><comment><USER58> ...or eyeball. :S

Oh, sure, it _says_ it's safe...

</comment><comment><USER59> i think this might be used to treat people with schizophrenia or other mental illness issues.

Imagine any negative or false perception can be corrected with a medical device.

"No, Janet. The butt naked dwarf with a pitchfork isn't real. Keep coding."

</comment><comment><USER60> Old school .. whole lot of people say they heard voices in war, and military mission over 20 years ago</comment>


Why is there no source editor that allows graphical annotations? - <AUTHOR> I wonder all the time - why have source code and annotations to be separated? Wouldn't it make sense to integrate notekeeping and source into a single file? For example, why can't I add graphical notes, like snapshots from documentaion, to my C source file?<p>Some situations where this would be valuable: - I am implementing something from a scientific publication. I want to keep reference and implementation in the same place. - Embedded programming. There may be an external circuit that is controlled by my code. Both implement a function and should not be isolated. <comment><USER2> so Jupyter notebook sounds like what you want.</comment>


The hidden "F" in your web page - <AUTHOR> http://blogtrench.blogspot.com/2007/08/hidden-f-in-your-web-pages.html

<comment><USER2> Could also be an cause and effect mixed up - most websites are designed in an F sort of arrangement, with important stuff at the top, and the left side, and some important stuff half way down.

Have they been designed like that because that's how users naturally read stuff, or has it just become the 'norm'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't it also depend on the layout of the web page, though? It almost reads as if scientists have discovered that people read from left to right, starting from the top and then proceeding to following lines in a vertical movement from the top to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a clearly a linkjack site, but I can't find the original source. Can anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, this is apparently a linkjack to an older article from over a year ago.

As far as I can tell, here is the source (Jakob Nielson's site): <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html></comment></comment>


Predictive analytics: what if you could access tomorrow's stocks and shares today? - <AUTHOR> http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/123458736/predictive-analytics-what-if-you-could-access-tomorrows-stocks-and-shares-today

<comment><USER2> Then you would implicitly alter the future by acting on it.</comment>


IBM, HPE Layoffs Reflect Covid-19 Uncertainty - <AUTHOR> https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/28/ibm-hpe-layoffs-reflect-covid-19-uncertainty/ <comment><USER2> Aren't HPE and IBM always laying people off?</comment>


Views of the Sea Floor Near the Entrance to San Francisco Bay - <AUTHOR> http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/2006/2917/ <comment><USER2> If this is interesting to you, you should definitely check out the Bay Model ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_Bay_Model)). Its a scale model of the SF Bay and the Delta in Sausalito that was built by the Army Corps of Engineers. Its admission free!

<comment><USER3> is that real water in there?

<comment><USER4> Yes - Mythbusters used it for the Alcatraz escape episode to see where the likely landing point of the improvised raft was, as it's an accurate model of the tides and flows of the area :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. USGS has a store with this poster: [https://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/catalog/setCurrentItem/(isQu...](https://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/catalog/setCurrentItem/\(isQuery=yes&xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&query=*golden+gate+under*&layout=6_1_61_58&uiarea=2&ctype=areaDetails&next=seeItem&carea=%24ROOT&citem=00000001550000000030\)/.do)

In case that brutal link doesn't work: go to [https://store.usgs.gov/](https://store.usgs.gov/) and search for "Under the Golden Gate Bridge".

The poster is basically 1M^2 so is a decent size.

EDIT: Not 1M^3, but 1M^2. We'll have to wait for the 1M^3 version...

<comment><USER6> [http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/2006/2917/sim2917.pdf](http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/2006/2917/sim2917.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but you have to print it yourself. The point of my post was the _hopefully_ you could get a lovely print for $10 from a government store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _The water depths have a 4x vertical exaggeration while the land areas have > a 2x vertical exaggeration._

Can someone clarify what this means?

<comment><USER8> Water 1m below the sea surface is drawn like 4m deep. Land 1m above the seal level is drawn like it is 2m high.

<comment><USER7> ok thanks for the explanation =)

but why? I guess to improve the "readability" of the map to the human eye?

[edit] Never mind: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_exaggeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_exaggeration)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, there is a rock jutting up just inside the bay from the gate, right out of the tidal channel to what looks like 40-60 feet. That is PERFECT for king salmon fishing I'm betting. Usually I go outside the gate, but right there as the tide comes in? Probably filled with fish.

Only problem is it is right in the sea lanes!

</comment><comment><USER10> Gorgeous. Anyone have any tips on printing this in high quality?

<comment><USER5> Had the same thought. See my comment elsewhere in the thread. Turns out that the USGS sells posters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have found some more information in 2010. [http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/10/14/sand-waves-and-the- gold...](http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/10/14/sand-waves-and-the-golden-gate/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Needs a (2006), but this is super cool.

<comment><USER13> For geology, 10 years is much like a second for human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It says 'meter scale'. I would think accounting for tidal heights with gps and other sensors, silt drift while scanning, they would be getting 'half-meter' minimum. I am not a geophysical studen...just thought they would get better resolution.

<comment><USER15> They're referring to spatial resolution, not vertical resolution.

In other words, they're taking about the size of the pixels.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for that out to me. I should have known better with my familiarity with mapping! Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone knows what 3D visualization software may have been used to generated these views?

<comment><USER15> Given the timing and who's involved, I'd guess it's probably Fledermaus. ArcScene is another possibility, but at that time, it struggled heavily with high quality output. These days, there are a number of other options.(Fledermaus is still quite nice, though!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> well i guess the idea i had for creating wall to retain elevating water out of the bay is never going to work now.

RIP inland bay area real estate when the water levels raise. :(</comment>


Show HN: Officehours (with paid sessions) - <AUTHOR> https://www.officehours.io <comment><AUTHOR> Officehours started as a goodwill sort of project. Anyone could offer/request sessions—with the caveat being that those sessions were free, and limited to 10 minutes.

Since then, we've received requests for longer sessions (we added an option to extend them), and the ability to sell one's time through the service.

We added the latter item, last night. It allows anyone to create a profile, set a rate, and get paid through the platform. (The free option still exists for those who just want to lend a hand.)</comment>


A longish review of python frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://jesusphreak.infogami.com/blog/vrp1 <comment><USER2> Good review, especially of django. However, one tiny gripe: it's actually really easy to use an arbitrary templating system with django. Since HttpResponse objects just take strings, you don't have to use render_to_response(..), you could easily generate your html string from mako and pass that to a hand created HttpResponse (or write your own render_to_response).

I also don't think it would be very difficult to amend the url dispatch either.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure this was posted here earlier. Though, since the blog post is two months old, I can't find the previous post.

Anyhow, I know this guy vaguely; he pops into #pylons now and then. As far as I know, he still hasn't _built_ anything with any of these frameworks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry, but I didnt realize that this has been posted earlier. Anyway, I hope newer folks find this of value. Perhaps I can suggest a 'feature' for news.ycombinator.com in a separate thread.

<comment><USER4> _'... I am sorry, but I didnt realize that this has been posted earlier. ...'_

Shouldn't have to appologise for crappy software. We have no search facilities so things like this are bound to happen. You could try looking for the search page (somewhere) but it's spidering is always behind the posting. The only alternative is for a live search to be added to the page.

Btw I've fallen down in the same way ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=24506></comment></comment></comment>


The Master of Mobile Payments Is Starbucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/11/forget-apple-pay-master-mobile-payments-starbucks/

<comment><USER2> Starbucks does have a enticing reward platform but what they also have is the ability to fill your account using your credit card. So they only have access to as much money as I'm willing to give them and from the exact source that I want. What does it matter to me if I use my cc at Starbucks 5 times or put the same amount of money into my starbucks account to use later.

</comment><comment><USER3> So what? Before Apple entered the market with the iPhone, Nokia was the master of mobile phones.

</comment><comment><USER4> Forget Starbucks... the master of mobile payments is Safaricom's M-PESA.</comment>


The CLOUD Act Doesn't Help Privacy and Human Rights: It Hurts Them - <AUTHOR> https://lawfareblog.com/cloud-act-doesnt-help-privacy-and-human-rights-it-hurts-them <comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I was following the Microsoft case and thinking about what kind of rules would match well with the reality of global infrastructure, and it certainly wasn't this law.

Logically, it doesn't really matter in what country something is stored. An ideal database will send or cache data, or perhaps incomplete/encrypted data, near every user and in multiple processing/backup centers.

So the location of the data should not matter at all for jurisdiction, but instead just the location of the company, users and/or employees who can access it. And the US shouldn't need to ask foreign governments to hand over data which they could compel local business to provide.

<comment><USER2> Unless it cares about its companies long-term prospects abroad.

Look at it this way. China has "every right" to demand its Chinese companies to have backdoors in products (and it has done exactly that). But look what backlash that's creating now against Chinese companies not just from other governments but also from the citizens of those countries.

Also, the US government could have at least maintained the pretense of judicial process (even if it would happen through its own US courts). But it didn't. The law says the executive can ask for data whenever it feels like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel embarrassed that I wasn't aware of this law until now. It's an incredible over-reach by the US to demand data stored in another country just because it is controlled by a US company.

On an entirely economic level, it will hurt US companies that want to sell their services in other countries.

Second, it impinges on sovereignty, similar to forced extradition.

But perhaps most concerning, it gives other countries a reason to demand the same from the US. Now, Russia or the United Arab Emirates could arguably demand your entire facebook profile because you vacationed their for a week. They will just say that the US is doing the same to their people.</comment>


Peter Thiel: The Education of a Libertarian - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. I found it to be quite interesting.

However, I was baffled by the comment at the end:

> For this reason, all of us must wish Patri Friedman the very best in his > extraordinary experiment.

A brief Google for Patri Friedman suggests that the experiment in question involves building a community on the open sea, outside of any recognized national jurisdiction, i.e., "seasteading".

Is that the "experiment" that was referred to?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

Can we leave the political articles for other sites, please?

<comment><USER4> This article isn't really that political. The end result is suggest we colonize the oceans which should be interesting regardless of your politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> where was thiel bitching about the Fed and its liquidity binge when it was goosing his facebook stake into the billions? haha it will be amusing watching this guy circle the drain with all of the rest of the lauded paypal mafia, whose paper-tiger web2 "empires" are individually going nowhere fast</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook Collects Internet Data on Non-Users - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/04/11/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-data-testimony/ <comment><USER2> Is this weird to anyone? Why is Facebook getting all the heat? Google, Apple, everyone does it..

<comment><USER3> I think this was posted not because it's news to anyone, but because up until yesterday, Zuck was denying that it was happening.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow- profiles-h...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles- hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So do literally millions of other companies. Your face (and mine) are stored for weeks/months, maybe even years, on CCTV systems globally without consent, documenting where you've been, what you've done, who you're with etc. Your phone does the same.

We went down the rabbit hole a very long time ago, why is it only now that people are starting to realise what it means?

<comment><USER5> You're dismissing the whole argument based on some hipster notion of noticing a trend early?

<comment><USER6> Pretty common on HN lately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes," Zuckerberg said Wednesday in a hearing about the social network's privacy practices in Washington before the House Energy and Commerce Committee."

It was extremely unfortunate that he wasn't subsequently asked exactly _how_ collecting data on non-FB users related to security. It's baffling how that could go unasked.

Of course this was just another "prepared" response, but can anyone say how the rest of this contrived response goes? How does keeping data on non-FB users relate to security?

<comment><USER8> They want to make sure their profiles are real people, not bots. A profile that refers to shadow users is more credible. The security is for their advertising clients, who want to show ads to real people, not bots.

<comment><USER7> I'm not following. A shadow profile is for a non-FB user. How does that benefit their advertising clients who are buying access to FB users?</comment></comment></comment>


Are Nigerian Scams From Nigeria? - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/are-nigerian-scams-nigeria

<comment><USER2> Its an excellent way to understand the problem. The next step would be to send 'cameras' which were in fact telemetry devices that returned a steady stream of their GPS co-ordinates through a wireless network. Presumably once you new the destination address you could co-ordinate setting up the necessary resources before your 'sale' arrived.

You could in theory map out the network that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are french fries from France?

<comment><USER4> Read article, _then_ comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You mean they 're not? They scammed me? I like my scams to be original.

I wonder why i never see public service announcements about these, though. It's unbelievable that people still fall for them.</comment>


What do you think of CUBRID? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cubrid.org

<comment><USER2> I use CUBRID for two of my company sites. I like its built-in counter functions, necessary to keep track of statistics, and the native support for HA, something other RDBMS do not provide. They have a nice architecture, which you will really like if you want to host multiple sites on one machine, and they are controlled by different network devices. They have a middleware called the broker (you can look at their architecture for more info), which you can create for each db, and each of them will listen to a port of the particular device. Quite useful implementation. Overall, the performance is quite good, especially with tuning. If you have questions on this, CUBRID has quite responsive community. You can always ask them, they are always online at least for me GMT +6. Also, they recently tweeted that they are going to release a new version these days which will be the best release so far with almost full compatibility with MySQL. It's not important for my projects as they are natively developed for CUBRID, but I believe it will be really useful for those who migrate from MySQL. I plan to run the new version on a test machine and see if there is any performance gains. If so, will upgrade, otherwise, I will stay on the current 3.0. Let's see. Anyone else want to share their experience?</comment>


Have technical interviews have become unreasonable - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-have-the-technical-interviews-in-companies-like-Facebook-Uber-Dropbox-Google-and-Twitter-become-so-unreasonable?share=1

<comment><USER2> It think that most companies have completely gone of the deep end in their interviews. I have been a full-time developer for 25+ years now. My first job was writing DOS application on a 286 in assembler. Later I moved on to c/c++, Delphi, Ruby, Rails, NodeJS, etc. I can't pass half the interviews I go to. If I can provide a proven track record of 25+ years of solid development (and sadly most of the people interviewing me have much less experience) work, I should be a viable candidate? But apparently I don't interview well. Here are my frustrations:

1\. I get asked if I know the latest library/gem/package/etc. This is just pot luck, either I have used it, or I have come across it in reading, or I just haven't. Doesn't mean I can't learn it....

2\. Write on the black board some algorithm from my college days - really?? 95% of the code a developer writes uses libraries to do this. Honestly, how many people here have and to implement by hand a search algorithm, sorting algorithm, or know the O notation for some algorithm???

3\. They are WAY to specific. What? you only have 1 year of experience in Rails? Or oh, even though you know assembler, C/C++, Java - we only work in scala here and you don't have any experience in Scala ???

See the problem is, most place don't realize that you cannot know everything and be unto speed on everything. Much less remember all of the stuff from college textbooks.

Everytime I have had to apply for a new job, I have to spend three to four weeks re-reading my old college notes and going on the web and learning the latest buzz word languages/tool/utilities. I don't think there is any other profession that subjects applicants to this kind of crap.</comment>


Why bother learning Clojure? - <AUTHOR>

A lot of people have explained why they use Clojure. I'm giving a presentation on Clojure in a couple of weeks and I'm curious about why people who don't yet know Clojure are drawn to it.
So the question if you are thinking about learning Clojure: why? <comment><USER2> If I had a reason to learn Clojure I'd already have done it.

Why I'm vaguely interested: I enjoy functional programming. Why I haven't: I couldn't do without Scala's type system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, a functional language combined with dynamic typing struck me as an odd combo the first time I encountered it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like Rich talks and his main point for his invention seems to be: to get concurrency right.

Clojure Concurrency [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGVqrGmwOAw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGVqrGmwOAw)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the worst job you've had in tech and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> After graduating in 1990, I was hired by an oil company to work on their internal expert systems group (yes the whole AI thing happened in the early 90s too.. except without all the linear algebra which would have made it useful). After 6 months, they canned the project and for the next 2 years I worked in desktop support. I did all kinds of interesting things like install lotus 123, install graphics boards, load terminate-stay-resident drivers for memory extenders..(if you know what those are, you're close to collecting social security) and... oh yeah, if you couldn't print a document, I was your man. I felt like everything I learned in school was a complete waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Software engineer for a company that had made the work for clients extremely customizable, to the point that for most of the day I'd just be going through "GUI Wizards" to deploy a new instance for a new client.

Almost every tweak was just a tweak in a settings file or with the UI, and almost no new code was written.

Kudos to the devs building this system initially, but horribly boring for the devs that came after them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Being a software development manager in a non-software development company...in healthcare. The pride with which people claim that they are not a "technical" person while handling patient data is mind boggling.</comment>


Show HN: A Reddit+Wiki-like site for finding and sharing audiobooks - <AUTHOR> http://audiobookreviews.com <comment><USER2> Interesting service. I run [https://auditus.cc](https://auditus.cc)

Let's talk?

</comment><comment><USER3> I've become more interested in audiobooks over the last few years and this could definitely be useful. Is the site a custom built platform?</comment>


"Rise and Kill First" Exploring Israel's Assassination Program - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/03/11/israel-mossad-assassination-book/ <comment><USER2> I just finished this book and it was one of the most interesting things I have read in a long. It is a long book (750 pages) but reads like a real life Jason Bourne thriller.

<comment><USER3> The author was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air awhile back - fascinating stuff for sure. [https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/582099085/journalist- details-...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/582099085/journalist-details- israels-secret-history-of-targeted-assassinations)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first "apology" for terrorism I read was Elie Weisel's dawn. Great read, but learning about his personal support for irgun really makes you doubt his eligibility for a peace prize.

<comment><USER6> Honestly the Nobel peace prize is almost a joke at this point.

Unless you honestly think Barack "drone strikes" Obama deserved his.

<comment><USER7> If Obama won the Peace Prize simply for not being Bush, I can't wait to see what Trump's successor gets bestowed upon them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The level of bias reeking from that article is insane and it's not about the topic but the phrasing.

"Bergman relates in detail the many operations undertaken by the nascent state that foiled an Egyptian rocket program, broke the backs of Palestinian commandos operating from Gaza, penetrated Syrian intelligence, and bugged the flat in Germany where young Palestinian activists planned raids into Israel."

By Palestinian Commandos the author (of the article not Bergman) means the Fedayeen likely those who were prompted by Egypt after the Egyptian occupation of Gaza and the dissolution of the "All-Palestinian" government by Nasser because they didn't fit into his plan.

The Fedayeen exclusively target civilians and foreign officials in Israel so while they primarily used guerrilla tactics and performed mainly cross border raids calling them commandos is a bit of a stretch.

Also "young Palestinian activists planned raids into Israel" is laughable if you don't want to call them terrorists that's fine but the only other appropriate word to use here is militants or combatants as they weren't planning to organize a dance off but attacks on civilian targets within Israel.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The world is back to the divine right of kings to decide who shall live and who shall die"

back to ? like any country in the world has ever stopped ?</comment>


World's top geek hotels - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/slideshow/20111116-worlds-top-geek-hotels

<comment><USER2> "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK" :(</comment>