Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/spain-fines-facebook-deleted-accounts,35425.html <comment><USER2> Facebook tried to pull a similar gimmick in India called "Free Basics". It was dealt with criticism and the regulatory authority in India was smart enough to reject the proposal. Reliance, one of the sheepskin corporation in India wanted to embrace Free Basics with Facebook but could not. Now Reliance is trying a similar act with "Jio" cellphones.

Its a good thing that many countries are realizing that US based monopolies are not good for their economy. Take China for example, their companies are well off like AliPay, WeChat, Tencent. Its because they are protected from monopolies who have the firepower to kill them. Keeping the monopolies in check will spur the growth & innovation in developing countries.

<comment> aaron-lebo It makes me weirdly happy as an American to see it happen. What happens when instead of massive, boring, soulless, mediocre corporations like Facebook serving 2 billion sharecroppers, we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? That has the potential for innovation we can't begin to understand. Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country. Who likes Big Macs that much?

It's why we should criticize the actions of any power (whether the Us, China, the EU, Russia) to control citizens and eliminate smaller cultures. Maybe melodramatic but it's exciting. The growth of Chinese networks is interesting, wonder how they would develop under a democratic government? Further innovation or do they only exist because of that environment as you suggest?

<comment><USER3> >Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country.

Sources for McDonlads replacing all other restaurants. Maybe you haven't traveled as much but for me I always check out local McDonalds, hardly actually eating there. One of the reason they have been successful is adopting local tastes. Costa Rica has Gallo Pinto in addition to fries as options. Serbia has this crazy Crispy meat thing.

With McDonalds I know what the product is and I pay for it. With Facebook it's a little less clear what they are doing. One certainty with FB, we are the product.

With FB they are a little nefarious, especially the Free Basics thing. Google is doing similar things with Google Fiber and the defunct ballon idea.

<comment><USER4> I concur with your McD thinking. I think you've got FB and Google wrong. I'm not saying they're saints, but in their self interest, they serve their customers. So they've their customers' interests in mind

If people cared about privacy that much, they should use some other network. People weigh the trade-offs of benefits vs costs and still choose to use FB and Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those are the kind of regulations that should help create a consensus around the utility of the european union.

Giant corporation, spending tons of marketing money to make everyone think they're trying to help the world, while behaving like scammers with regards to personal data, and like white collar criminals with regard to tax should be prosecuted to death.

<comment><USER6> > The EU considers the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman and irreversible > punishment which fails to act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour.

[http://www.eidhr.eu/highlights/death- penalty](http://www.eidhr.eu/highlights/death-penalty)

edit: Hmm, now I'm not sure whether you meant a companies metaphorical death? ..I'll leave it here anyhow. :)

<comment><USER7> Revocation of corporate charter is the equivalent of the death penalty for a corporation.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't happen often (at all?) and even if it did, what stops the company's leadership from starting a new, identical company with a identical board, employee list, etc. the next second?

<comment><USER7> Jail?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I don't know how "losing your corporate charter" works. Who goes to jail?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't have anything against regulations and fines to keep monopolistic companies in check, but that being said, as an European, I can't help but feel a little appalled that there's so much focus on this and so little on actually creating European Googles and Facebooks.

<comment><USER10> The EU and many of its members have plenty of programs encouraging entrepreneurship. Stuff like [http://startupeuropeclub.eu/](http://startupeuropeclub.eu/)

Whether they're actually _able_ to lead to the creation of European Googles and Facebooks is a different question.

<comment><USER11> Those programs are mostly cargo culting and fail to address the essential aspects of an entrepreneurial environment. It's a way to seem like they're doing something rather than making the hard changes that would piss off some powerful special interests and rentiers.

<comment><USER12> One thing I hear about the startup environment in Europe is that investors are more conservative and risk-averse compared to those in the US. Would you elaborate on the "essential aspects of an entrepreneurial environment", and the hard changes that would need to be made to improve the situation?

Also curious to hear more about these powerful special interests and "rentiers" \- any specific examples in mind?

<comment><USER13> Try becoming a freelancer opening a company in Spain. Orders of magnitude harder than in the US, so for many recent grads is not a viable option at all.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Different EU countries have different contexts. In Sweden it is very easy.

<comment><USER14> I think the point is not how easy is to start a company, but how easy is to get funds that you can spend without fear of failing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not the first time Spain has taken on a tech giant, but it didn't go so great with Google: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study- shows-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-spains- google-tax-has-been-a-disaster-for-publishers/)

"A study commissioned by Spanish publishers has found that a new intellectual property law passed in Spain last year, which charges news aggregators like Google for showing snippets and linking to news stories, has done substantial damage to the Spanish news industry."

<comment><USER16> Spaniard here.

Google tax was just a ploy from our crony capitalist government to divert money towards publishers aligned with them (i.e. most major news outlets). Actually, the publishers are the ones who promoted it (lobbying for it long before it was even a law proposal) and the government just followed its masters (the two large media groups who own mostly everything).

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

> In response, Google announced that they would be shutting down the Spanish > version of their Google News service.

>

> The AEDE reacted by lobbying the Spanish government to force Google to keep > it running.

It would be funny if it wasn't so worrying.

__

Fortunately this just looks like public workers from AEPD (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Spanish Agency of Data Protection) doing their jobs.

AEPD is one of the few public organizations I'm glad we have.

<comment><USER17> How is your government capitalist? You are drowned in bureaucracy, taxes and debt not capitalism.

I am not taking this story as an example. Most of southern Europe countries are far from being capitalist.

<comment><USER18> He said "crony capitalist", which is quite a different thing to capitalist.

<comment><USER15> I personally prefer the word "corporatist" for this phenomenon to avoid this ambiguity. Crony-captalist has an anti-capitalist tinge, which I don't favor, but is one reason why I think is has been adopted broadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One valid point I've seen someone say about this in a tweet (I'm paraphrasing it):

By the time you read this comment, Facebook (presumably) already made enough profit to pay this fine.

</comment><comment><USER20> A 1.2M euro (non) fine? I hope it's a "first offense" discount.

<comment><USER21> Actually it's a steep fine, it's just for 3 users /instances. Now I have to wonder why didn't they uncover more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Life is better without Facebook.

I'm considering ordering a few hundred stickers with this phrase on them.

<comment><USER23> I've just shut mine down again and it's been off my phone for months. Things are much better without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well 1.2 million euros fine is nothing to Facebook. That won't stop them from anything

<comment><USER25> That's just a warning shot. Next time they get caught for the same thing it won't end so well, so it's just like saying: "stop what you are doing or there will be consequences, here's some little fine so you take us seriously".

<comment><USER24> ok, makes sense. I didn't realize it was for 3 users only. I still wonder how impressed they really are...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this is a good step.

EU countries should start fining and taxing these US tech companies heavily to force them out of business in the EU and leave room for local EU competitors. The EU should try to be more like China.

<comment><USER27> I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Almost by definition, whatever replacements would be created would be inferior to the banned originals.

If you start using fines and taxes as instruments of protectionism, you've also become a country no longer ruled by laws, but by the arbitrary whims of whoever is in power.

I already spend too much time online defending (for example) the EU's antitrust policy against accusations of nationalism. If that sort of thing really did happen, it would be the start of a trade war. And nobody is interested in a trade war, except those whose thinking is impaired by some rather anachronistic xenophobia.

Specifically for Facebook: about 40% of my friends are outside the EU. I wouldn't create an account on any social network that they are not on.

<comment><USER26> Inferior initially but they may become superior in the long run at least in some specific aspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't it up to the EU to enforce its laws, rather than member countries?

<comment><USER29> No, the EU sets the laws, member countries implement and enforce them. If they don't, you can appeal further up the EU. See here [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/overview- la...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/overview-law-making- process/applying-eu-law_en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> good way for countries to make some extra cash sueing these giants... but what does the user actually get from it? Nothing ever changes...

</comment><comment><USER31> I can't help but read this headline in light of the Equifax ("Equihax") story also on the front page today. "Tracking without consent" seems an odd reason for a _government_ to crack down on a business. Perhaps Google and Facebook, in Europe, aren't allowed to "track without consent" – but other companies can and do. Not just Amazon, as a direct comparison, but apparently credit bureaus and the government themselves are allowed to track me without my consent.

I generally agree that "tracking without consent" is invasive, but if a government is going to use it as a way to extort tech companies for fines I would appreciate a little more consistency in who is being called out.

<comment><USER32> Details are obviously different in each country but around here in Germany credit bureaus can't track you without consent. It's pretty hard to avoid giving that if you want to interact with banks and other companies but it definitely is possible if you are careful about what you do. Of course if you decide not to grant that consent many companies will not do business with you. Not sure what your point about Amazon is, of course the same rule applies to them as to anyone else.

The government itself has very strict rules about what data can be collected and accessed. Unfortunately those rules are sometimes violated (especially in the intelligence space).

At work we have some private data we need to perform our tasks of tens of millions of people. However, that data is regularly pruned and purged on a defined schedule so that we never have more than we strictly need. That's in stark contrast to what e.g. Facebook does which apparently holds onto every bit of data they have ever collected about anyone in case it might be profitable to use at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > 1.2 million euro fine

This is merely a cost of doing business. If Spain was serious, a EUR 1.2 billion fine would have more effect.

</comment><comment><USER34> Facebook could just ask its users "Do you agree to be tracked, even without your consent?" and they 'd still say yes. If it mattered, people would have switched to one of the open source alternatives. This fine serves more as governmental virtue signaling than anything else.

<comment><USER25> It's illegal in EU to get a broad consent (aka "we will track you anytime, collect any data we like and do with it as we please"). EULA must state _exactly_ what data is collected and how it will be used, also it must be retractable. You can joke as much as you like about "cookie law", but other privacy laws in EU quite formidable (probably the best in current world anyway). And they will be even stricter soon, as GDPR hits in.

<comment><USER34> and soon europeans will seek VPNs to access a banned facebook? I mean i fail to see how the cookie law has affected the broader internet in a positive way.

<comment><USER35> Cookie law is pretty much a joke, as the parent comment stated. But there are some serious and useful regulations in the EU that aren't a joke.

And if FB is banned from Europe (which I highly doubt), the average user won't be able to put a VPN so they'll simply switch to a clone most probably. imho FB is only popular because of the vast userbase and content, not because it is a great platform. We've seen clones appear, get pretty popular and die because they can't sustain a large userbase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is Google Next?

</comment><comment><USER37> Multi-national advertising platform is tracking people without consent... shocking.

</comment><comment><USER38> Make no mistake: this is a form of taxation. Our (i'm spanish) minister of economy has been very imaginative in the last 4 years to find new sources of revenue.

<comment><USER27> Please don't spread these conspiracy theories.

As just one of many arguments against: Such decisions are subject to judicial reviews (i. e. Facebook can sue). Spanish judges are just as independent from the executive as they are in most countries, once they are appointed. What motivation would these judges have to undermine the rule of law (something they studied and have worked in their whole life), when they can't be pressured, nor are they recipients of any part of such fines?

It gets even harder to think of a possible motivation when you realise that any court rulings could be appealed in European courts, completely out of the sphere of influence of the Spanish government.

<comment><USER38> You probably know that Facebook is not going to the judges. They would pay the peanuts just to forget the issue.

The EU countries are playing this game since the crisis started in 2008. Spanish politicians just want their share. All of the Ireland-Google issue was exactly the same but bigger: even if they abide the law, politicians tweak a new one just to milk big companies. They just take the money from where it is.

I don't know about conspiracies you talk. This is all happening in day light and applauded by the people.</comment></comment></comment>


Alternative jQuery Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://jqapi.com/

<comment><USER2> I see the effort behind this project but I have to admit that I find it a bit useless. I've never had any problems finding anything related to jquery's documentation. I simply google and the top3 results is practically always the official documentation, a great stackoverflow answer, or a blog explaining in detail what I'm looking for.

But, maybe it's just the way _I_ work; I can understand that other developers might prefer to have a great resource that they can look up instead of randomly searching google.

<comment><USER2> However, something I've struggled a little more related to jquery is finding and using the plugin. The official plugin website is really not optimal and it's hard to find the "best" plugin when you're looking for something.

I guess an unofficial jquery plugin website where you could easily:

      1- Find a couple of plugin that do what you want

      2- Let you try the demo as fast as possible

      3- Let you glance over the code, see comments and rating of others developers.

      4- Have an easy and clear: Crash 30 sec installation

      5- Give an access to the documentation.

This is the order I usually execute when searching for a jquery plugin.. it's just that each of those steps are sometime unnecessary hard. I.e. multiple versions on the jquery, hard to find the real website of the plugin, have to look github issues to see other comments, demo page not working or deprecated, hard to see the "Installation and quick example", etc.

<comment><USER3> I think what is needed is a (crowd-sourced) list of 'similar plugin' links, using metric such as ratings or number of downloads for ranking.

This works on the Chrome Extensions website, you quickly skip over the unmaintained plugins and the ones with no reviews. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en&category=ext](https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en&category=ext)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please don't give me a collapsed tree of things that I need to dig through while trying to mentally unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places.

Give me a list. Of everything.

Or, if you absolutely feel you have to categorize things, give me a single "Uncollapse this mess" button so that I can look for the thing I'm looking for.

<comment><USER2> "unravel what logic might have been going through your head when you put things in various places." -> This is the official documentation; those categories are not the author's choice but the ones chosen by the jquery team.

That would make no sense to have a list of 1000 random items not being categorized; just use the search.

When you say "To use the search, I need to know what I'm looking for". Well, usually, when you search the documentation, it's because you know what you're searching for.. right?

But then, I get that you might not know the "best keywords" to search what you're looking for. And, for that, it's so better to have smart category rather than a list of 1000 items.

I mean, you're searching a way to post things using Ajax. You can search for ajax, you can search for post.. but you can quickly look at the categories and see _Ajax_ ; and then, instead of browsing through 1000 items, you only have to read a dozen.

<comment><USER5> A problem exists when you dont know what you want, then you dont know the keywords or the category. And the questions you might ask about the problem migth seem completley irrelevant to what you are trying to do.

I have been in such positions when learning JSF, seemingly simple things like getting out a request parameter where not obvious, and when googling "request parameter JSF" and all kinds of tricks I still did not get a satisfying answer, only after reading more about JSF I realized it is just the wrong thing to do any way.

If you're in such a position, you dont know what to search for but you think you have a problem, then it is time to pick up a book and study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool. Could do with some tweaking and polishing still though.

Should be valid html. Back button is broken. There should be a home button top left. The colours need tweaking for contrast, and I'm guessing other accessability tweaks.

url search does not work. For example the url: <http://jqapi.com/ajax> returns 404. Really it should do a search for ajax and take me to that page or list search results.

<comment><USER7> "Should be valid html."

Am I alone in thinking this is a rather dated viewpoint?

<comment><USER8> It's easy to see what's wrong with invalid HTML.

What's wrong with valid HTML?

<comment><USER7> Interesting. My whole take was completely the opposite.

Browsers tend to have very little problem rendering invalid markup, and the savings costs associated with invalid markup (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated. So I would pose you this question:

What's wrong with invalid HTML, besides lack of some enigmatic adherence to idealism?

<comment><USER9>
      > and the savings costs associated with invalid markup
      > (bandwidth, time, etc.) are very easily enumerated.

Please, enumerate. I guess you are not aware that a lot of things you consider invalid are actually allowed in HTML: unquoted attributes, tags omission, etc. This was allowed even in HTML4, HTML5 gives us even more options there.

Say, how would invalid markup help <http://kod.as/lab/valid/> be even smaller? Sure, that is pretty meaningless document, but take a look at a source and you will see some stuff that can be applied to normal sites. It's valid: [http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2...](http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F) [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkod.as%2Flab%2Fvalid%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

You could remove DOCTYPE (which is very short compared to HTML4 or XHTML versions), but then you'd throw your browsers to quirks mode, and that is a pain. The whole purpose of DOCTYPE in HTML5 is to force standards-compliant rendering mode, that's it.

And it only looks that browsers have little problems parsing invalid markup. Making sense of tag soup parsing (and making it consistent) was one of the major tasks for HTML5 people.

<comment><USER7> I suppose I'm referring more to 4.01, since 5, as far as I know, doesn't constitute the majority of websites. Things like nonstandard attribute tags and wrapping inline elements around block elements. These are what I thought of when I thought of "dated".

<comment><USER9> Majority of websites can be converted to 5 just by replacing doctype. Nonstandard attributed don't help you to save bytes though. Also, from what I've seen sites which were built without even thought about validity and standards tend to be of much lover quality and hence are more bloated: lots of unnecessary div's, classes, wrappers, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that the correct ordering of documentation differs by how your brain functions.

I am very visual and my favorite JQuery documentation is <http://visualjquery.com/>

For the same reason I was best able to learn about using jQuery by using the sites here: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning- javascript...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/11/learning-javascript- visually.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks quite promising, but horribly broken in the iPad Safari:

* Neither the ToC nor the content pane scroll. * Clicking a method link in the ToC pops up the keyboard which quickly gets annoying.

<comment><USER12> Also the Demo's don't seem to work either in Safari 5.05.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very nice. Any similar resources for Python documentation, etc...?

<comment><USER14> Not much similar, but still useful: <http://pyth0n.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ugh. It is unusable in my iPad, which I very often use for browsing documentation when working on my laptop. The keyboard pops up every time a menu is selected because they menu events automatically selects the search box.

I tried to leave feedback, but e User Voice overlay is also horridly broken on the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER16> You're just supposed to use this page: <http://api.jquery.com/browser/> It formerly used to be accessible at api.jquery.com but then they changed some things around to confuse developers...

<comment><USER17> That's not updated. Try searching for the toArray method[1] (new in 1.4).

[1]: <http://api.jquery.com/toArray/>

<comment><USER18> works for me.

<comment><USER19> How did you find it? I can't. It looks like <http://api.jquery.com/browser/> only works up to version 1.3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also worth taking a look at: <http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/>

It lets you quickly view how a particular jQuery function/method works.

</comment><comment><USER18> api.jquery.com

This is the nicest documentation of any language I've ever used. The page loads, the cursor defaults to the search box, you type in what you are looking for and the browser hides searches that do not match and then you can use the arrow keys to go up and down then list to the one you want.

As for the problem trying to find "is" just type "is(" if you are looking for the method itself.

</comment><comment><USER21> One addition to the shortcuts:

I instinctively tried to press RIGHT instead of ENTER to open category, and LEFT to close category.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of the <http://erldocs.com> for Erlang documentation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice, I just hope it stays up to date and the creators can turn their energy towards long term maintenance unlike <http://visualjquery.com/>.

Visual jQuery used to be my go to resource for years, until it became woefully out of date.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been using this last spring, initially as an offline reference when flying, etc. Since then, it's become my primary reference when working with jQuery. It's perfect for what I need: instantly looking up usage details for specific methods.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would be nice if the sidebar was resizeable.

</comment><comment><USER26> Have been using railsapi/sdoc for many months now. It's fantastic and I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://api.jquery.com/> done

<comment><USER28> Absolutely. In the opening paragraph the author states how difficult it is to find documentation for the .is() function.

<http://api.jquery.com/is>

done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Offline version sold me.

</comment><comment><USER30> If only there was something like this for jquery-mobile.. :)

<comment><USER31> Agreed, anything would be a step up from what they have now. Although I would imagine it's someone on their list of things to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Irony: Does not work with JavaScript disabled.

<comment><USER33> I would expect it to be more ironic if it did work with JavaScript disabled.

It's kind of hard to be a functional JQuery developer with JavaScript turned off all the time. It's like being a blind tour guide or a celibate porn star.</comment></comment>


Amazon Analytics Service - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazon.com/sdk/analytics.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if these big brands (Amazon, Google) can be stretched infinitely with more and more offerings without confusing users.

Amazon is a retailer and cloud computing provider and a video streaming service and a TV producer and a device manufacturer and a grocery store and a bank for small business loans and a hundred other things... At what point does the umbrella brand start to confuse people?

Bezos must have a brain the size of Texas to keep all these moving parts in mind.

<comment><USER3> It's not anything new, conglomerates have existed for a long time before the internet age.

For example consider Sony: Sony Computer Entertainment (gaming), Sony Mobile (phones), Sony Pictures (movies), Sony Music (music), Sony Life (insurance), Sony Bank (banking), Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Visual (imaging), Sony Medical (medtech)

<comment><USER4> Then there's Samsung, I think they're the largest conglomerate in the world.

My mom would affiliate Samsung with TVs. I'd probably put them with computer monitors and phones.

They also build skyscrapers and power plants (Samsung C&T Corporation), and ships (Samsung Heavy Industries). They also sell Life Insurance in South Korea.

<comment><USER5> In Hong Kong, Asia's richest billionaire, Mr Li Ka-Shing of Cheung Kong Holdings, owns nearly everything. Anything you do or touch in a day makes Mr Li even richer. His wealth is opaque so he is probably right up there with Bill Gates and Carlos Slim for the #1 spot.

<comment><USER6> Bloomberg puts him at $28.8B. Not necessarily opaque.

<comment><USER7> And he recently admitted that only half of his wealth are in stocks. Which actually puts him near the top spot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was my first time going to the Amazon SDK site and I am _blown away_ by the difference in site design between it and Amazon's AWS site.

The SDK site is cleanly designed, has less clutter, and so on. The services link to other services and I feel like I'm being sold a value proposition - sign up and reap rewards.

The AWS site is amazon.com turned into place a storefront for cloud services. And that storefront is cluttered and seems eager to have me buy things without selling me on the value.

</comment><comment><USER9> Analytics: What everyone is doing now to get first class data on which new apps are exploding to acquire at a knock down price before anyone else catches on. Facebook with Parse ([http://swaggadocio.com/post/60416244109/why- facebook-really-...](http://swaggadocio.com/post/60416244109/why-facebook- really-bought-parse-yc-s11)), and now Amazon.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it really is some extremely valuable data. I've always imagined what a goldmine the data Alexa/Compete gather is on up-and-coming websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone see any terms and conditions that apply to Amazon's use of the data returned? The "Program Materials License Agreement" doesn't seem to cover the service as such but the software you a licensing to include in your app to talk to it.

Most of the existing services (Mixpanel, Flurry etc.) give them the right to use aggregate data for their purposes which has put me off using them so I initially sort of rolled my own but never got round to doing the analysis side. I would love to use this if the TOS are OK.

<comment><USER11> They do (unsurprisingly but annoyingly) have the right to use, access, retain and disclose your data "... and to collect, use, and share aggregated information about Amazon Insights."

I emailed Amazon and they said this:

"The Amazon Insights Schedule in the Distribution and Services Agreement addresses what you are looking for, and can be found here:

[https://developer.amazon.com/help/da.html"](https://developer.amazon.com/help/da.html")

Amazon Insights Schedule

The terms of this Schedule apply if you use any of the Program Materials we make available to perform A/B testing and collect and analyze data from your Content (such materials, collectively, the "Amazon Insights API").

1) Amazon Insights. "Amazon Insights" is a collection of services that we make available for you to enable you to perform A/B testing and collect and analyze data from your Apps. You may only use Amazon Insights through the documented interfaces and other features we make available, and you will comply with any velocity, capacity, or other limits we establish for the use of Amazon Insights.

2) Your Data. You are solely responsible for all information and data collected or stored from your Apps using Amazon Insights ("Your Data"). We may use, access, retain, and disclose Your Data in order to provide the Amazon Insights service to you, to enforce the terms of the Agreement, to comply with any request of a governmental or regulatory body (including subpoenas or court orders), and to collect, use, and share aggregated information about Amazon Insights. You give us all permissions we need to exercise these rights.

3) Privacy and Compliance with Laws. Without limiting your obligations under Section 4 of the Agreement, you must (a) ensure Your Data does not include any name, password, other login information, or personally identifiable information or personal data of any end user, (b) provide any necessary notice to, and obtain any necessary consent from, end users for the collection, use, transfer, and storage of Your Data (including by us under this Agreement), and (c) collect, use, transfer, and store Your Data in accordance with any privacy notice you provide and all applicable Laws.

4) Survival. Sections 1 through 3 of this Schedule will survive any termination of the Agreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started looking into it for iOS and making a test app to see what it looked like.

Then I read in the integration instructions: You will also need to add the SystemConfiguration and CoreTelephony frameworks, and libz.dylib library...

From: [https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/analytics/documentation/ios...](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/analytics/documentation/ios- setup.html)

Why would they need the CoreTelephony framework? No other analytics providers I've used (Flurry, Localytics) require this framework.

More information about the CoreTelephony framework: [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Networ...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Reference/CoreTelephonyFrameworkReference/_index.html)

<comment><USER13> I'd guess it's to report Carriers, I've seen analytics products do that in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I'm sure many of us didn't see this coming, it makes perfect sense for someone like Amazon -- with their massive server farms and data structures -- to do something like this.

I wonder if they'll push for more developers to move to Android and their Kindle system somehow.

<comment><USER15> [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/new-amazon-appstore- incenti...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/new-amazon-appstore-incentive- program-encourages-developers-to-build-for-amazon-will-give-consumers-cash- back-on-apps/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This had my hopes up for a web analytics competitor to Google. Has anyone found a free service (or relatively cheap) that outperforms Google's offering for web?

<comment><USER16> [https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow](https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow) <disclaimer: co-founder>

<comment><USER17> I second SnowPlow; the difference between them and other offerings (like Piwik) is that they don't attempt to be a Google Analytics knockoff, but have a distinct philosophy about how analytics should function.

And there is a library for Arduino!

<comment><USER18> SnowPlow is the best.

SnowPlow + Looker is a really powerful and flexible combination. [Disclaimer: I work at Looker.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure this has been said a million times elsewhere, but boy do I feel like Amazon would benefit from better designers like Google has.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just tried it out on iOS, and happy with it so far. I'd done extensive research on tools, and one thing that bothered me was lack of updates. For instance, it was tough finding a package that was updated for 64 bit (iphone 5s). Open source is great of course, but not all the tools I needed were available. Will continue with this and see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just checked it out. It's missing funnel tracking, which is a glaring hole for any analytics service.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm confused where this can be used. Reading the website it looks like your app needs to be in the amazon marketplate? Or can their analytics engine be used on apps distributed through google play?

<comment> k-mcgrady The analytics also work on iOS so I presume you can use the Android one on Google Play. It wouldn't make sense to restrict it to Amazon if they also offer an iOS version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What someone really needs to launch is an ad network which can target by desktop os, like MacOS, Windows etc. People would use it to sell desktop apps! Sadly I have never found one.

<comment><USER23> this can already be done.

[https://support.google.com/adwords/editor/answer/1211190?hl=...](https://support.google.com/adwords/editor/answer/1211190?hl=en)

Note also that most A/B testing networks can be used as defacto Ad Serving/Dynamic content serving because you can target operating systems as well.

<comment><USER22> Um are you sure we can target MACS specifically and not simply "desktops"? How can we do it exactly?

<comment><USER23> I'm glad you asked, this was a nuance of the enhanced tracking rollout I hadn't explored yet and thought they had finally changed. :( (I haven't bought ads since the enhanced tracking rollout) I had read about the mobile side but didn't realize they hadn't expanded the desktop side. My bad.

To atone for my error, I did some poking around and found a good summary hack of the display ads network (AdSense) that gives you some options.

[http://www.makeitbloom.com/blog/advanced-mobile-targeting- in...](http://www.makeitbloom.com/blog/advanced-mobile-targeting-in-display- campaigns/)

You can also use the retargeting feature in GA to help convert people once they find you. [http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/07/30/adwords- remarketi...](http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/07/30/adwords-remarketing- google-analytics/#sr=g&m=o&cp=or&ct=-tmc&st=\(opu%20qspwjefe\)&ts=1384117145)

You can use "device" as a proxy for OS though quite substandard.

A slightly more elegant way to do this is to do a device specific landing page. [http://searchengineland.com/new-valuetrack-features-for- enha...](http://searchengineland.com/new-valuetrack-features-for-enhanced- campaigns-improve-device-specific-tracking-and-increase-conversions-152106)

Given Apple's poking at Android, my sense is that Google doesn't have a real interest in helping Mac People find each other. Sorry for leading anyone astray.

It's also really got me wondering why they persist. I'm assuming it's because they'd make more money this way. You pay for "BS" windows clicks, given Apple's 7% OS market share (non mobile). The same way they closed the tablet arbitrage (you now have to pay desktop PPC prices for tablet.I bet if Mac users gained share over windows desktops that would change, like they had to in mobile.

One way to thwart them would seem to be to focus on paying per conversion, and using retargeting. But I'll let others with deeper mac marketing experience than me, add value here.

Hope this helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i wonder is it normal practice on mobile to include private key (from the Analytics SDK docs for Android):

InsightsCredentials credentials = AmazonInsights.newCredentials(YOUR_APP_KEY, YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY);

Looks strange. I'd expect that either each app installation to have its own permanent key (most probably some derivative of your key generated at install/download) or, by analogy with the well known system, something like the app/device coming to you for temporary ticket and using it to initialize SDK.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hey guys, can someone tell me what exactly is an SDK, or rather how do you design one?

Case in point:

Does the Amazon SDK include their source code?

So, let's say if Amazon offers me an SDK that I can install on my servers to capture analytics on my site. So does that mean, that the SDK they provide me with actually contains their whole source code of their analytics platform?

The way I understand SDK's are a local piece of software that runs on your machine to provide you with an API that you can use. Can someone please straighten this poor soul?

Thanks :)

<comment><USER26> I haven't looked at their SDK yet but it would either come in the form of a compiled library, or uncompiled source code, that (like you said) would give you access to their API within your own project. You do not get the entire source code for their analytics platform, just the part that would let you use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's too bad Amazon doesn't have any analytics for publishers of books on Kindle. The only information you get is the # of copies sold and how much people paid for them on a monthly basis. (You can get daily sales, but those are only available for "month-to-date" so you have to go in every single day to record those value).

It would be nice to know how people found the book, demographics of who's reading them, etc.

<comment><USER28> Have you looked at AppAnnie? They launched an e-book tracking service recently...

[https://www.appannie.com/dashboard/?demo=1&vertical=books](https://www.appannie.com/dashboard/?demo=1&vertical=books)

<comment><USER29> I have a product on Amazon currently. What sellers really want IMO is conversion tracking on Amazon's platform. Even the ability to add your own Google Analytics tracking code would be amazing. This way you can know how many visitors your pages are getting, where they are coming from, and if you buy paid traffic, how that is converting and whether it is worth it. Without this, you're shooting in the dark with marketing spend.

App Annie is great, and I've used it for general analysis, but I think what most sellers want is deeper analytics so that they can track marketing spend with conversions. This is something no third party can do. It'd need to come from Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another one to make my /etc/hosts along with: www.google-analytics.com google- analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com statcounter.com www.statcounter.com

Let me know if I missed anything important. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know how this compares with other offerings?

</comment><comment><USER23> Are they using anything different from cookies? If so, the results won't be any different from what you get in Google Analytics.

<comment><USER23> really, I was voted down for this?

<comment><USER32> For not reading the article before commenting.

<comment><USER23> Please elaborate. nothing on the article mentions cookies or the technology used to collect this information. Or I am expected to have read the entire set of documentation?

<comment><USER33> Google Analytics is for websites viewed in browsers. This is distinctly for apps. The tracking is by means of an SDK compiled into your mobile app. They serve entirely different audiences.

<comment><USER34> Google Analytics is also for mobile apps and has been for a few years. [https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...](https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/)

I came to the comments looking for a comparison. No such luck.

<comment><USER33> Well my bad there! Didn't know they had even launched that future. That being said, the Amazon offering seems to be exclusively designed for mobile, instead of an add on to a web property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How is it better than Google Analytics?

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought this is something that competes with Google Analytics. Apparently it's for mobile apps and games only.

<comment><USER36> Feels like an artificial beta restriction to me. Also, it's branded "Amazon Analytics Service", not "Mobile Analytics".

I suspect it's only a matter of time before they branch out and take on GA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> how does this compare to mixpanel or kissmetrics?

<comment><USER38> This service is free at any usage level according to their faq.

<comment><USER39> What are the chances of this being primarily spyware? I am seriously concerned. Is there a Chinese wall mentioned anywhere.

<comment><USER39> I'm surprised I got downvoted so heavily and that nobody else is concerned about this. Facebook was known for using fb platform data in its app development. Amazon could easily too. I'd rather trust a specialized analytics company rather than a company that's been known to aggressively move into adjacent industries.

Why would it be free? No AWS service started out totally free as this is.

<comment><USER17> I think this is mostly targeting people already using Amazon apps and services. I doubt we will see widespread adoption - there are so many analytics apps already, and practically all of them enable mobile tracking. Enterprises like to use the same analytics platform across everything so they don't need to maintain staff and contracts with multiple vendors.

With that said, a reason Google Analytics is free is because it let's Google track users once they leave Google and enter web-sites. Or at least Google could, by using co-relating users to search clicks. They aren't involved in the space out of the pure kindness of their hearts, and Google Analytics doubtlessly loses lots of money every quarter for Google.

"I'd rather trust a specialized analytics company" \- don't. If you can, own your own data on your own server. Otherwise you will need to rent your data from your vendor constantly, or pay for a data migration process later, or pay for a data warehouse and a means to explore it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I saw a presentation by a company that seems to have a similar focus at recent meetup in new york: [http://www.indicative.com](http://www.indicative.com)

Their website claims (cutting out the marketing) ... to empower all web and mobile businesses to make smarter, data-driven decisions. ... tools that help startups and small businesses learn from their data and improve their performance.

<comment><USER41> That's your idea of "cutting out the marketing"?</comment></comment>


Azul: A Reactive DOM Based UI Framework for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maps4print/azul <comment><USER2> It's too early to show anything, it'll be much more interesting once the 0.1 version releases, which will be in roughly 1 or 2 months. Hence the big warning in the readme.</comment>


\in - <AUTHOR> https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/6172/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a post by Fields Medallist Timothy Gowers on why Britain should vote to remain in the EU during the upcoming referendum on membership. It contains what I view as a very compelling argument, which I have never seen before, based on the Prisoners' Dilemma.</comment>


RTZ: Circuit Debug - <AUTHOR> http://www.eeweb.com/rtz/circuit-debug

<comment><AUTHOR> When engineers debug circuits, especially sensitive analog ones, they can sometime lose their minds tracking down a problem.

In fact, when I worked on debugging a circuit that was suppose to measure currents of less than 1pA (10^-12), the setup was so sensitive that the circuit would change it's output if someone walked within 5 feet of the setup.

Everyone take two steps back!</comment>


My Identity Crisis: Why can't I be more than one thing on the web? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.windsoc.co/2011/06/07/my-identity-crisis-why-cant-i-be-more-than-one-thing-on-the-web/

<comment><USER2> I think I've found a healthy balance. I don't use twitter for generally personal stuff (except for the occasional twitter commiserating with other parents) and I don't use Facebook for any technical stuff.

My blog is mostly technical and the only place I'm even linked to the company I work for is LinkedIn.

I don't _HIDE_ that fact that the two "personas" are connected but I try to keep a separation in place. My family and most of my friends don't care about the technical stuff and most of the people in the various OSS communities could give two shits about my kids pooping in the potty.

Shit, I've even got two about.me profiles.

<comment><USER3> This solves the problem only up to a point: How to group and filter among the hundreds of FB friends, some are family, some are colleagues, some are close friends, etc. FB has a mechanism to do lists, post filtering, etc, but I find it to be clunky so don't use it. The result is like you have _all_ you acquaintances in one room, shout what you want to say, and people who are not interested will tune it out. Not ideal. But I can't think of a better alternative.

<comment><USER4> I think the answer in a post-FB/Twitter decentralized/distributed social network world is to have transient, easily spun-up and spun-down social networks that you could think of as places.

So, for work friends, I'd make (or join) a social network called WorkBuddies, and I'd have a different one for each context. But you'd take your identity with you, and you'd own your own canonical social graph independent of the people in each network.

<comment><USER5> I have also got the same problem within FB: Most of my friends don't care about tech/startups so I'm hesitant e.g. about commenting on Techcrunch.

Your approach sounds interesting, and it corresponds well with how you take on different personalities in different settings in real life.

Do you know of that is what Diaspora is trying to do?

<comment><USER4> I think they're doing something functionally similar, which is basically contact list management into groups. They call it "Aspects" iirc.

I think the problem with that is that it creates weirdly asynchronous or non- cohesive groups. I.e. if I have a list called work friends, it's not necessarily the same as your list called work friends, and the stuff I share to my list doesn't go to the same set of people.

In the "Places" paradigm, the groups would be more canonical and autonomous and transparent to the people in the group.

<comment><USER6> But my work friends aren't your work friends. Our friend circles might overlap but they aren't the exact same. So why should you be posting to my work friends group? Don't get me wrong - I think you have an interesting concept here, I'm just trying to understand it better. (I wrote Friendika, which is kind of like Diaspora but a bit more capable - I could probably make something like this happen.).

<comment><USER4> Well, if we don't work together, we wouldn't share a work friends group.

It's true that a places metaphor is a bit less granular, but I think it makes it easier to understand how things are being shared than a bunch of one to many connections that overlap to varying degrees.

Also, there's no reason you couldn't have both, since the places metaphor is really in practice just a subset of everyone having individual group lists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I relate to this very strongly, and it's the #1 thing stopping me from publicizing my work more. I see a lot of comments saying things like "I don't see the problem; I use X for work and Y for personal life." That isn't the problem.

The problem is having lots of different, separate audiences, each across several different sites. I'm a composer wanting to grow an audience for my music, a professional software developer wanting to develop my day-job career, a 3D engine developer wanting to write up my realtime rendering research and correspond with other graphics programmers, an indie game developer wanting to cultivate a following for my game, a paraglider wanting to communicate constantly with other paragliders about weather and flying opportunities, and finally a regular guy wanting to keep up with friends and family about more ordinary things.

Each of those subjects has a separate audience that hardly overlaps with the others. The worst part is that most of those things could use a Twitter account for daily updates and engagement, a blog for more detailed write-ups, and a YouTube channel for video or music. The music probably wants a SoundCloud account. Some of those things want separate email accounts. Some want dedicated web sites.

Having a properly rounded web presence seems like a nightmare of account management. I imagine keeping a spreadsheet with a huge matrix of login info. It's possible to do it - it just seems daunting and hard to manage effectively.

</comment><comment><USER8> So what's the problem? Bits are in short supply so we can't have multiple websites or social network accounts? I've got two Twitter accounts, one for technical tweets for my peers who are Rails developers, another for personal tweets that mostly just amuse me, and if I got into knitting tea cosies I'd probably start a separate Twitter account for that. Same with Facebook: an account for my old high school friends and their political rants; and another for my professional network, where I feel political attitudes or religious viewpoints are as out-of-place as any other workplace.

The biggest problem with running multiple accounts is a UI issue. Many services (such as Facebook) assume you will have only identity and make it difficult to switch between accounts because they save some state (setting a cookie). But one can use separate browsers or install a browser extension that makes it easy to switch sessions. And many third-party apps (such as Hootsuite) recognize users are likely to have multiple accounts. Heck, the latest version of the Twitter native client allows multiple accounts and even Google is making it easier to set up and switch among multiple accounts.

We just need more developers recognizing that we have multifaceted personalities and accommodating multiple personas for our presence online. No harm in that.

<comment><USER7> I struggle constantly with this problem. As I see it, the main practical problem is that services have a 1-to-1 mapping from identity to account. This is compounded by the fact that the services often depend on one another - e.g. when I need a unique email address to sign up for some service, then for every account I need on that service, I also have to go create yet another gmail account.

I wish I could have just one identity, that is me-facing, but many accounts, that are audience-facing. I wish I could log into YouTube as Andy Wood, and manage all my accounts (3D graphics demos, domino toppling, paragliding, etc).

In fact, WordPress.com works just like this, and I love it. Google, YouTube, and Twitter, by contrast, seem borderline resistant to this type of usage - meaning they all force me to keep creating new email accounts in addition to the multiple service accounts, even when I really don't want another email account.

<comment><USER9> One relatively easy solution for your email accounts problem: buy a domain, set up Google Apps, create a user and make that email address catch-all.

Now you can have as many email addresses as you want without needing to create them one by one. And if you work it a little more you can even answer as any of them and apply filters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have similar problems, but they are worse. Add to the mix suffered by the author working and having friends in a couple of countries/languages and you get my scenario.

I tried with one twitter account per language and doing groups in facebook, but it was too time consuming. Now I mix both languages with care and some won't like it, but I can't go further.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am currently working on shaping my identity on the web and I feel exactly the same way. I think I'm going to use Facebook for personal use (family & friends) and twitter/blog for technical. If I happen to make a friend on the technical side, I can request them as a friend on Facebook and open them up to the rest of my life.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can use Facebook lists to only post things to a set of people you want to. Or Facebook groups if you don't even want to be friends with them but want a group communication channel.

<http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=768>

</comment><comment><USER12> Being bi-lingual adds even another dimension.

</comment><comment><USER13> I joined the internet in a time when everyone had a "handle" or nickname.

I built up quite a reputation under this nick, but perhaps not enough in the right direction.

Now I find myself going back to the drawing board and building a reputation in my own name.

This also inevitably leads to the dual identity as I struggle to leave the alias behind...

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel the exact same way. For a long time now, I've set up facebook friends in groups, and I use twitter but only with best friends, never coworkers, roommates, former friends, etc... Twitter is my outlet.

I was working on a site like twitter but with much more anonymous features and hierarchal posting interactions, and security features, largely motivated by both the iranian election and arab spring, but I got sidetracked and bored of the project pretty quickly, ultimately realizing that there's not really an elegant all-encompassing solution to the situation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems like this is an area ripe for a startup. All of these comments commiserating and not one can point to an application or service that helps solve this problem?

</comment><comment><USER16> Wait, is he really trying to suggest that in real life, he talks to everyone the same way? That as a CEO he talks to clients the same way he talks to his drinking buddies? (Assuming he has them.)

Why would the internet be any different? If you want to mass communicate, you're going to have to sort your people into categories and communicate with them according to that.

Because that's what it comes down to. Mass communication.

<comment><USER17> No, he's saying the opposite. He's pointing out that most online communications channels haven't solved the problem of filtering your output to specific audiences as you deem appropriate. For any single service, you're generally either communicating one-to-one or one-to-everybody, with no options inbetween.

This is a problem that is more easily managed in "real life" by the obvious limitations of presence.

<comment><USER16> And easily managed on the web by having multiple twitter accounts or email lists.

I really don't see the issue, and I think that's why nobody has done anything about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> One big issue for me is that I only have one name. I think it's asking too much of people trying to connect with me to have to choose between four Twitter accounts or 2-3 Facebook profiles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh, it's not that tricky....

I only have one Facebook profile but I certainly know others with more than one. I do, on the other hand, have two Flickr photostreams for very different categories of work.

OK, the websites only cache one login via their cocokies, but that's a solvable problem. I use Firefox for one profile and Chrome for the other, works well enough for me...

<comment><USER19> Or multiple incognito windows...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm looking forward to decentralised microblogging, since then we can publish multiple feeds (RSS would seem ideal) from the same identity (domain), e.g. $ dig andy.tel naptr|grep rss - there'd also be a record to delegate a "hub" for my followers to subscribe to.

</comment><comment><USER21> You worry about annoying your followers by talking about the wrong topic. Sounds like preaching to the choir.

Flip the coin.

You can be more interesting by providing information or point of view that isn't expected. Embrace your broadness and don't siphon yourself off into well defined silos.

<comment><USER17> It's not unreasonable to want our communications media to facilitate siloed interaction.

I look at it this way: If somebody I know avoids talking to me about that things that bore me -- say, pro football or New York Times bestsellers -- I wouldn't see that as a lack of boldness or a species of dishonesty; I would see that as a form of consideration for my time.

<comment><USER22> As a user I've unfollowed twitter accounts that were developers but as there was sport literally flood my timeline with comments. It's a question of volume thought. I don't care about the occasionnal comments on things that doesn't interess me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use twitter for work/startup stuff and facebook for friends/non-work</comment>


Good programmers copy; great programmers appropriate - <AUTHOR> https://alidlo.com/appropriating <comment><USER2> That was an interesting read I agree and find that code names that rely on a word that means a specific thing in a given field is really helpful as well. For example with Neural Networks we extend the analogy that originated from a graph/network into an image of the brain and add a new term and properties, so when we add the term neuron we can give it the property that behaves like it does from the field it originated from such as being able to fire. This creates a wonderful mental model that not only explains the purpose of the algorithm to "learn" much like brains do, but also serves as a way for people to remember, much like a pneumonic device, all the different pieces that go along with the algorithm.

I also find trying to draw analogies from different fields can lead to new discoveries for yourself and others. In the case of the neural network maybe the person who invented it said, what would it look like if we were to model the human brain in a computer? Obviously the intent there would be for your model to function as a human brain. You could always do it the other way around and start with an existing model and say what properties could I add or remove to this system to make it perform a different and interesting function? If I add this new property does it make it a different enough function that I have to change the underlying analogy? I think if you ask the right questions and seek their answers then this is one way in which you can evolve ideas. Also this way of stating different disparate ideas and evolving them is a good teaching method. For example I was once explained that a binary search tree with all items inserted in order was just a fancily decorated linked list, and though kind of silly it gave me an aha moment and connected the two more deeply in my mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea definitely, a name sets boundaries of intention; and if you appropriate it from other domains helps to boostrap understanding.

>If I add this new property does it make it a different enough function that I have to change the underlying analogy?

actually ran into this situation the other day, but for the name of a project I'm working on. the intention of my idea changed, so I felt like I had to change the name, too.

a name, in that way, has a two-fold effect, it helps shape understanding but it also guides what we feel we can/can't do with something

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> > It's said that there are only two hard things in computer science: cache > invalidation and naming things.

I've always heard the joke as "there are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors."

EDIT: I didn't read all the way to the end of the article before posting this, so of course it has the original joke at the bottom haha.

"There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors." \- Leon Bambrick

<comment><AUTHOR> I include a quote at the end of most articles, and I actually included that one at the end of this one, too.

here's the tweet where it came from: [https://twitter.com/secretGeek/status/7269997868?ref_src=tws...](https://twitter.com/secretGeek/status/7269997868?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E7269997868&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmartinfowler.com%2Fbliki%2FTwoHardThings.html)

<comment><USER2> Yeah sorry I jumped the gun and posted before I read it all. Haha, I guess that's one way for me to look naive and foolish :)

<comment><AUTHOR> not at all, just an off-by one error (;</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you look for houses to rent for several months in Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,<p>We are a startup from the Philippines and are staying in SV for 3 months for an immersion. For our lodgings we are left to our own devices. I've been looking at Trulia, Airbnb and Zillow for houses to rent but I don't have any idea if the prices are fair or are the location strategic or convenient. We are planning to rent a car. Our immersion host is at Sunnyvale (Plug N Play). Any help would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Just to warn you about car rentals in US, I was recently surprised that a rental that was supposed to cost $130 (according to a booking at priceline.com) actually costed about $450. Insurance is super-expensive and renting navigation turned out to be almost as costly as renting the car itself.

<comment><USER3> If you book on forehand, there are some sweet deals to be made. I can rent a subcompact for € 784.00 for an entire month, including all insurances, waivers, unlimited miles, etc. For navigation: better to buy it secondhand on craigslist, or use your phone.

For renting apartments CL isn't very good IMHO. Most of it is >1yr lease, and/or they want credit reports. The sublets section has a little more to offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check on Craigslist too here: [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sub/](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sub/)</comment>


Doit: bringing the power of build-tools to execute any kind of task - <AUTHOR> http://pydoit.org/ <comment><USER2> Dolt!?

( [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Do_It.txt](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Do_It.txt) )

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure the author is aware of this story, but he cites the possible confusion with "Dolt" as the reason for naming his project "doit" in lowercase:

[http://pydoit.org/faq.html#why-is-doit-written-in-all- lowerc...](http://pydoit.org/faq.html#why-is-doit-written-in-all-lowercase- instead-of-camelcase)

<comment><USER2> History finds a way to repeat itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for a build-tool like system to "compile" my thesis: run data analysis scripts, output figures, do some munging on latex source and bibtex references, and finally run the latex compile.

After trying a few and fighting with waf when I needed more flexibility, I found doit to really be a godsend. It really seems to be the best mix of simplicity, flexibility, available features and extendability. Thought some of you might also find it useful. Plus, no arcane make syntax to learn or remember.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have used PyDoit for various automation tasks and found it pretty useful. The author is very responsive as well and fixes problems in a timely manner. It's a good alternatice to Makefiles and libraries like fabric. Parametrization is an issue of course, but tasks can be easily customized using generators, which adds a lot of flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the benefits compared to _make_ in a unix environment?

<comment><USER5> Python syntax, a real debugger, and the elimination of text macros to generate targets. This seems like a legitimate replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been using snakemake, which is a similar tool, but really nice, and specifically designed for scientific workflows. [https://bitbucket.org/johanneskoester/snakemake/wiki](https://bitbucket.org/johanneskoester/snakemake/wiki).

</comment><comment><USER7> I made this to achieve more or less the same thing: [https://github.com/crdoconnor/projectkey](https://github.com/crdoconnor/projectkey)

I focused more on "saving keystrokes", though. Hence the autocomplete and the use of a one letter execute command.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've looked at a couple of data build tools and many will do basic jobs very well, and some of them will use even a nice dsl. Where I see many tools struggle is with task parameterization, which I found to be a frequent requirement for these kind of systems.</comment>


Simple Regex Filter with React.js and Immutable-Js - <AUTHOR> http://jmfurlott.com/tutorial-simple-regex-filter-with-react-js-and-immutable-js/

<comment><USER2> Please don't do what's written in this article. It's an anti-pattern to set state from props[1]. Consider what happens when a new set of data is passed to this component from above, this component won't get the new set of data and now it's out of sync with the rest of the application.

Another problem with what's written is that there's unnecessary state. In general it's best to figure out the _minimal_ set of state needed to render the UI; everything else should be _computed_ on the fly, directly in the render call (or refactored out into methods).

In this article, data and filteredData as state is unnecessary! The minimal state needed to describe the UI is the text to filter the data and the data itself which is from props. filteredData should be computed, not stored in state.

The text in the input box should always represent the state of the filter text, and the box itself can be used to update this state. This can be achieved with LinkedStateMixin[2].

1\. [https://facebook.github.io/react/tips/props-in- getInitialSta...](https://facebook.github.io/react/tips/props-in- getInitialState-as-anti-pattern.html) 2\. [https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/two-way-binding- helper...](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/two-way-binding-helpers.html)</comment>


Tesla Has All the Hallmarks of a Cult Stock - <AUTHOR> http://suremoneyinvestor.com/2016/06/heres-why-tesla-is-a-giant-ponzi-scheme/ <comment><USER2> This is from June 2016

<comment><USER3> As someone who owns a few (literally a few) TSLA, I wonder how the financials would hold up to this kind of analysis now.

Then again, the snarkiness of the article and it's clear political bias makes me wonder how a more level-headed analyst would feel.</comment></comment>


Solving small algorithms and problems in a functional way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ashwinbhaskar/functional-way <comment><AUTHOR> I have started a repo to implement programs like sorting algorithms, trees, divide and conquer etc in a functional way. These are all familiar problems that we have encountered in academia and are asked in interviews since ages.

I have started implementing these algorithms using languages like Scala and Clojure, though most of the implementations are in Scala. I have tried to keep the functions pure, data structures immutable (except in the case of heap sort) and used recursion. My next step is to make these implementations as efficient as possible - close to the performance of implementations in OOPS style and use more functional concepts in the implementation.

I see that people are liking the project. But very few are stepping up to contribute to it. If are interested and think that this is a good project to work on, feel free to contribute:)</comment>


Ask YC: How do you handle locking in your app? - <AUTHOR>

A simple scenario:
At 1:00, Jane pulls a record into her browser: Lakeside High School, 123 Main St., 555-1111.
At 1:05, Fred pulls the same record into his browser.
At 1:06, Fred changes the address to 123 Oak St.
At 1:08, Mary changes the phone number to 555-2222.
Questions:
How to you handle the database locking?
- Pessimistic, lock the row at 1:00 and don't let Fred have it?
- Optimistic, let everyone take anything they want, but don't let Mary update?
- Column level locking?
- Special processing in you app?
How do you maintain state?
- Using sessions?
- Keeping a "before image" of the row?  In the client?  On the server?  As a separate data base record?
I realize there is not one correct answer.  Just curious how other YC'ers handle situations like this. <comment><USER2> I usually use optimistic row level locking for typical structured data in a 3NF data model. If there is so much contention for a particular record that pessimistic or column level locking is necessary there might be a problem with the design of the data model or workflow. There are of course rare situations where pessimistic locking is justified. The canonical one is multi hop flight reservations.

Handling semi structured data (documents of some sort) is way trickier and depends a great deal on the particular data format and patterns of use. Merging is desirable but very hard to achieve in many cases.

One other thing that is worth thinking about is how the locking strategy scales. The most popular idea these days is to seperate read and write operations so all writes go to one DBMS server and the reads are distributed to replicas. That's ugly to integrate after the fact, so if you expect your app to grow fast you should probably design it like that from the start.

</comment><comment><USER3> someone can correct me but most of the time optimistic locking is ideal (since for most apps, the same data typically has a low chance of being updated by different people). Anyways we use that in addition to transactions

pessimistic locking in general is really tricky

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0603...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0603_ilechko/0603_ilechko.html)

I forgot to add that if you're using a good framework, it typically already has a built-in mechanism for optimistic locking

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's your answer:

[http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/I_Think_I_0x27_ll_Call_...](http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/I_Think_I_0x27_ll_Call_Them__0x26_quot_0x3b_Transactions_0x26_quot_0x3b_.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently I compare the changed values, and if mary and fred have the same permissions, I let mary see the changes that fred made that she did not, and say 'would you just like to change this row (phone)'. I'm working with a small data set, and also I keep history, but I change the value of a hidden form element (mine is a web app) when <input name="phone" onChange="THIS()"> THIS is invoked, for example. and if mary never changed address, but the value in address is different than the value that she passes in, it gives an error condition and lets Mary figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER6> In this particular case, you could store a version in the record. When Mary submits her edit, your backend will note that Mary submitted an edit to revision "5" but the current revision is "6", and ask Mary to confirm her changes. You'd just use a database transaction to atomically increment the version number when a new revision is created. I think this is analogous to what Wikipedia does.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know databases aren't fashionable around here, but this is _exactly_ what they are for. Seriously.

<comment><USER8> How does a database solve this? They provide a way to apply a lock, but it comes down to the programmer to choose the type of locking to use.

<comment><USER7> I guess I read a few things into the question. My experience is that a "record" is more often than not a series of rows in different tables, and the tricky question in these scenarios is making sure that updates either work or don't work in their entirety. This is what I was meant by the "this is what databases are for" line.

It is practically impossible to maintain a useful, enforceable lock on a record in a web application, given the lack of a persistent connection between the client (browser) and the back end. So you are usually left with two choices:

1\. Last one in wins: given that the two users presumably have good reasons for modifying the record in question, let them figure it out if there is a conflict. As long as updates are atomic, consistent, blah, blah this works best.

2\. Versioning: Every record has a version number associated with it and the database rejects updates with a version != to what is in there.

The real trick is to set yourself up so that you have a single-writer for any given piece of data in the common case and defer whatever locking is necessary optimistically to the database.

<comment><AUTHOR> "lack of a persistent connection"

IMO, this is the heart of the problem because it renders pessimistic (what we've used in the enterprise for years) virtually useless.

Fortunately, there are techniques to get around them. Several interesting lines of thought are presented in this thread. Thanks to all who posted them. You gave me quite a bit to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I try to establish

1) when Mary got the record,

2) whether she got the same record as Jane and Fred, and finally

3) whether Mary = Jane or not!8-))

[Hint: the example was not properly stated.]

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Mary = Jane. Sorry. I guess I should have used pessimistic locking on brain synapse 7E8B32.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why would you keep a before image on the client? Isn't this dangerous?

<comment><USER11> The client sends the before/after values, and you only update the ones that have changed. If people are changing different fields there's no conflict.

Yes, the client could fake it, but such faking would not open up new capabilities that the client didn't already have.

<comment><USER12> Using Javascript, the client could as well only send the fields that have changed.

<comment><USER11> That's true. However, depending on the needs of the application, you might want to take things a step farther and engage the client in a dialogue about values changed by others. For that purpose it helps to tell the server what the values were when the client loaded the form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tend to like history-like approaches.</comment>


YC application video requirement is stupid - <AUTHOR>

What do you think about the video requirement for all startup incubators, accelerators..etc?I believe (and others)that its stupid and a waste of time to submit videos for your projects.Why can't they just select the best ideas and then take care of the other part?I worked for a couple of months for some european startups and they all said the same thing.Besides, the video can screw you up if your not from US or you're not a good speaker. <comment><USER2> Because in 60 seconds you can provide 60 reasons why you might be totally _un- investable_.

Remember that your video is in addition to your application. Your application is where it all happens, and your video is giving you a chance to shine. But that's not to say just because you aren't a native English speaker that you won't get funded.

And if you think that you aren't a good speaker, then you might have missed the point on the video, you aren't suposed to speak like it's a talk, it should be a really informal introduction of what it is you are working on. You cannot stress the informality enough.

Just relax and talk into the camera like your chatting with your best friend. Being relaxed and being able to explain your idea shows that you understand your product really well, because people who have to work really hard come off as being unnatural and appear to have slower recall times as if they don't know what they are talking about. Robotics in talks is just bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no need to be afraid of the video. I don't think YC cares at all about how good of a speaker you are, they probably have a million applications and they just want to have a first look at the team.

For example, if you live in the same area but you don't even manage to gather and shoot a one minute matter-of-fact video that explicitly asks to avoid wasting time on it, then it'll be hard to believe that that team will be able to survive the pressure of a startup in its first couple of years.

Also, I think that in a startup environment you have to be ready sometimes to just quickly do things, and the video is a way to show that you don't need to invest three days scripting it and shooting it, but just half an hour making sure your words are audible and such.

What other startups say doesn't really matter. Startups don't have to try to guess how successful 1000 teams may be. YC has to.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the video is a good way to get the personality of the applicant prior to an interview, maybe even an indication of co founder chemistry.

Of course it can be gamed pretty easily so it isn't that much of an indicator. I wouldn't imagine PG has ever denied at least an interview on the basis of a bad video but he will have to clarify that.

I'm sure he mentioned that the video is only watched after the rest of the application has been read.

</comment><comment><USER5> Places like YC are looking for great founders instead of just good ideas. Like PG says, most startups change their idea significantly while there, which is why they even accept no-idea applications now.

The video is a great place to show off your founders, your idea, and your passion for what you're doing. Having perfect English doesn't matter as much as communicating your idea and why you're a team they'd want to back.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just think of it as practice for your interview. You have to be master of your pitch, and if you can't informally describe what you do to a camera, how do you expect to impress big time investors and/or a large crowd when it comes to pitch your startup?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think video is just another opportunity to tell why you have to be _funded_. Let's look at this as another tool to win.</comment>


Plant-based eggs are starting to compete with the real thing - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1689009/plant-based-eggs-are-starting-to-compete-with-the-real-thing/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's mung bean protein "curd". Is that basically tofu, except mung not soy?

The photo looks convincing. Can anyone report on how they taste?</comment>


Idea: mouseFreeze, A solution for Browser FPS Games - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/javascript/idea-mousefreeze-a-solution-for-browser-fps-games.html

<comment><USER2> I believe you are talking about mouse lock (<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=72754>), something Sirisian and me (but mostly Sirisian) have been trying to push into the browsers (right now chrome and hoping the other browsers catch on).

There are many problems regarding this idea, specially security for the user, this is why it's hard to convince the people of the benefits for RTS and FPS games.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for doing this. It would be great if this stuff takes off!

For completeness here is the Firefox bug tracking this: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633602>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This should probably be a browser API, with a standardized "do you want this page to steal your cursor" and "press escape to release cursor" interface.

</comment><comment><USER5> This could be a browser permission based feature, like location is at the moment. The app asks the browser to prompt the user to give permission for this domain to "Control your mouse pointer". The cursor should always be released when you alt-tab away or press the ESC key (maybe the would need to be a time limit within which the mouse couldn't be captured again).

<comment><USER6> _> maybe the would need to be a time limit within which the mouse couldn't be captured again_

Why not re-capture only when the user clicks on the game again? In fact, I don't think the permission bar is needed at all, it would be implicitly given by clicking.

Of course, ESC should always work. Which would actually work fine for most games, since ESC presents a menu where the pointer isn't supposed to be frozen anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So you go to a malicious website and it's able to move your mouse around or lock it in place. That would not be a good situation to be in, especially for the segment of the population that doesn't understand keyboard shortcuts (which would, presumably, allow escape from this). Even if it's not used maliciously, it seems very plausible that it would be used to make advertisements harder to avoid (on websites like Hulu that run ads during a video, preventing most users from being able to go elsewhere during them could be a tempting idea).

I get why something with this effect is necessary if we are to have FPS games running in the browser, I just don't think that it's a good idea to allow websites to do so without explicit user permission. Admittedly, there are few things I hate as much as programs moving my mouse around, so I'm a bit biased.

<comment><USER8> The article's suggestion does not say the mouse would be moved or locked by the web program. The program would be able to hide the cursor (which it can already do) and receive 'virtual' mouse coordinates.

My main concern is number overflow for long-running applications, but I seriously doubt this will be a problem for anyone.

I don't see any security problems with the proposed solution (though I don't claim to be a security expert!).

<comment><USER7> I may be hugely misreading the article, but when it says "The mouse will be anchored to that position and the mousemove events are going to set a virtual position" and "Everytime the user moves the mouse ... the cursor is moved to the center of the screen" I find it difficult to interpret that in any way that doesn't effectively mean that a website is able to move or lock the cursor. I admit that I use cursor and mouse interchangeably, when they're actually not the exact same thing, however.

<comment><USER8> Okay, I missed "The mouse will be anchored to that position" part. I really disagree with this part of the proposal. Thanks for pointing it out.

However, the comment about the cursor moving to the centre of the screen is an _implementation detail_. At least on Windows, you need to centre the mouse cursor for something like this because the OS won't (easily) give you actual virtual coordinates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds like there's two main use-cases here:

\- Infinite dragging of a particular element; for example, scrolling in Google Maps or the sort of 'click and drag' UI of a typical billiards or mini-golf game.

\- Relative movement events in general, as used for 'mouse-look' in FPS games.

For the first use-case, it should be pretty easy to deal with. Add a property to the 'mousedown' event called 'relativeMode' (or whatever), initially set to false. If the event-handler sets 'relativeMode' to true, then instead of sending the usual string of 'mousemove' events to elements the cursor moves over, the browser should capture ("freeze") the mouse, hide the cursor, and deliver 'mousedelta' events to the original element (whose x and y properties contain the movement delta from the location of the original mousedown event). When the user lets go of the mouse button, the browser releases the capture and shows the cursor. There's no security issue, because the user is in control of the capture at all times, and can just release the mouse button whenever they want.

The second use-case is a bit more troublesome, but as the Chrome bug linked elsewhere in this thread mentions, "web-pages in full-screen mode effectively own the cursor anyway". Perhaps a similar 'relativeMode' property could be added to the 'fullscreen' event.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think a much simpler idea would to have a onmousedelta event which fires whenever the mouse moves and that tab has focus (including outside window boundary) and includes a .deltaX and .deltaY event property.

That way, the user has full control over their mouse and you can also develop fps games.

<comment><USER11> It's unlikely that the operating system's standard mouse events will continue to report mouse movement when the cursor runs into the edge of the screen. Plus it would be very distracting to have a mouse cursor running around outside the active window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone seriously considering the web browser as a platform for future 3d gaming is, of course, in a state of sin.

(stolen from Jon Von Neumann's famous random number quote)</comment>


Shift the focus from the super-poor to the super-rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0402-3.epdf?shared_access_token=7OPeT83SpqkdK7TJh8Yra9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NgXOyro3PW5-YFOp4drdu9crvYlL8Kf1-UbdyVKRxNBAuaBNpX6G8ddPkQda-O8IHjl0V95DxApFTR_pOg3hux2NQH6YnjvA6Y2scuZx0ZAnouQyAj5-OV-vjrs6HVGzU%3D <comment><USER2> Why is the title extrapolating from 4 interviews to 42M people? First off, I can't spot the 42M figure anywhere - I only see 36M - and the article doesn't seem to be extrapolating like that. It's just saying there's potential gains to be made from researching and targeting the super-rich, in a multitude of ways.

Edit: the title has now been changed

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think proper research can be done based on answers from only 4 interviewees. I think I know some people who belong to this group (although it's hard to tell seeing as I don't point blank ask them), and while they do fly quite often, they basically never fly private, which would instantly cut the amount of emissions mentioned in the article.

In addition, carbon taxes, and environmental taxes will specifically target this group as their main source of carbon emission, is transportation.

</comment><comment><USER4> And there are still people who believe we only need some kind of CO2-friendly car and powerplant and we are fine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Elon is building starships, to shoot them off into space. Maybe that's a solution.

That said, changing the minds and behavior of 42 million people doesn't actually seem that complicated. Marketing depts are constantly targeting this segment. We know what their weaknesses are. Just requires a bit of world wide coordination and planning.

<comment><USER6> Just calculate the impact of one launch in tons CO2. It's not a great picture, and half of it is in stratosphere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And a good number of those 42M are right here on this site, perennially outraged about climate change.

<comment><USER4> Ok, and how does this insight help to solve the problem? Or did you already decide not to solve it?

<comment><USER7> I'm not "solving problems" here. I'm just calling out the hypocrisy of the upper middle class who would like to, at the same time, have high carbon upper middle class lifestyle, and cry about climate change on Twitter. It's always got to be someone else who has to "sacrifice".

As to me personally, I work from home, so I likely emit considerably less than most people. And most of my energy consumption is electricity ($200/mo - servers in the garage), but in my state that's mostly hydro. I do eat meat though, and I'm not about to stop eating it.

<comment><USER8> What does this accomplish? Calling people hypocrites for "crying" about climate change just makes them deny that their lifestyle is a problem in the first place. That is strictly worse than "hypocrisy": It reduces the prominence of climate change in public discourse and moves public opinion even further away from "let's not destroy our livelihoods" to "muh jobs". In addition, someone who does take their carbon footprint into account but is a flawed human being rather than Jesus still has a lower footprint than someone who ignores it to avoid being a hypocrite.

<comment><USER7> But they are in denial already. Calling them hypocrites is just stating the obvious. Hopefully it'll make them think, even if for a fleeting minute, and not buy that third Hawaiian vacation this year.

<comment><USER8> No, someone who denies the importance of protecting the climate by definition cannot be hypocritical for not protecting the climate. Also, making hypocrites think is pointless because their thoughts aren't the problem to begin with, their _actions_ are.

They say you cannot make someone believe something when their salary depends on not believing it. Of course you can't if society deems it more important that your thoughts match your actions than that they match reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know whether to be outraged or quiet. I'm what you'd call a bubble team

<comment><USER10> > I'm what you'd call a bubble team

Care to define this for the 99.99999% of consciousnesses outside your head who have no idea what that means

<comment><USER9> Other people got it because they upvoted. But to shed a little light, a bubble team is a term from the NCAAB for a team that may or may not make the final 64 team bracket. Thus my comment, which again other people understood, is that idk if I'm in the 42M or not.

Hey look, arrogance aside you learned something today or not. I at least learned that you have no clue what march madness is. So downvote away it doesnt change your gaffe. Its pretty sad actually that you go through my comments and start flagging things after you got shut down. That's some pathetic shit if ive ever seen it

<comment><USER10> Thank you for clarifying. It's an unknown, basically. I too feel in this category about the 42M, although I suspect i'm on the offending side of the line.

I have no clue about "march madness", all I know is it's some kind of american sports thing. I did not go through your past comments, jesus. Anyone who did - stop it.

<comment><USER11> It was a poor assumption to think everyone would know that term outside of America, my apologies. Almost every major university in America has a men's basketball program so it would be hard not to come upon the term while at 4 year college here in the states.

<comment><USER10> Just so you know, north of 95% of people are "outside of America". We have no idea, or desire to know, about your school basketball programs. Just FYI

<comment><USER12> I'm American, born and raised. I've heard of March Madness (though I don't actually know what it means).

I had no idea what _bubble team_ meant whatsoever. It was wholly unfamiliar to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At a moment when we need to retool our whole economy to run on carbon free energy, we really can't afford to still have people running massive super yachts and palatial mansions.</comment>


The Economic Organization of a POW Camp (1945) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://varoufakis.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/economics-of-pow-camp.pdf <comment><USER2> Slightly off-topic, but Primo Levi's "If this is a man" is an excellent description of life in a camp. In his case, it was Auschwitz.

<comment><USER3> I'll second that recommendation, in addition to a description of life in a camp, it's diving into how one finds meaning in life after catastrophic and seemingly inescapable loss and tragedy, certainly helped to put my issues into perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facinating. Reminds me of _Andersonville_ and _King Rat_

Also, I wish there wasn't so much material gated behind copyright and only available if you have access to a JSTOR subscription. To download the whole article (13 pages) if this wasn't being hosted on somebody's wordpress site, it would cost $43! [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2550133?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2550133?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)</comment>


NSF grant changes raise alarm about commitment to basic research - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02272-x <comment><USER2> "[B]ills introduced to both houses of Congress... increase the NSF's budget by US$100 billion over five years. The bills... would... allocate the new money to technology development, rather than to basic science."

Quantum computing is described as "applied" rather than "basic" research. A lot of serious "basic-but-applied" chemistry/physics research happened at Bell Labs. If NSF is using a similar heuristic for the next 5 years, that might be a good thing.

I just hope NSF doesn't interpret the change as a mandate to "de-risk" research.

<comment><USER3> > I just hope NSF doesn't interpret the change as a mandate to "de-risk" > research.

I fear this has happened already elsewhere in science, and it will inevitably happen for the NSF at some point. Too many people who don't understand science and the subject of the research are trying to measure the effectiveness of individual projects, as well as funding programmes overall. Government loves to measure how effective things were, and put a number on it.

In the last 5 to 10 years, anecdotally, I'm seeing less adventurous bids, and more "safe" bids which have more defined outcomes. In a way, science has moved to a system where you "bootstrap" ahead, test and de-risk something, then bid for the money to do what you quietly bootstrapped, knowing yourself it will succeed. You then use that funding to bootstrap the next step of the research, and deliver the de-risked work you already did. In essence, I think many researchers are quietly working on the next thing on their current bid, to be able to de-risk it going forward.

When there a pressure to define outcomes of a project for funders or stakeholders, that means projects do and don't succeed, and that's often attributed to the researchers, rather than the underlying research hypothesis simply not working out.

My fear is this will get worse if these changes come through, as the focus will push even more onto measuring outputs, and on knowing the outcome before the work is done, to avoid funding an unsuccessful project. We need to remember that moon-shots are good to fund, and shouldn't be considered as failed projects, but unfortunately they are generally less interesting due to the funding body focusing on its own metrics.</comment></comment>


Hyperloop – How much will it cost to make a 5km workable prototype? - <AUTHOR>

why we donot see anyone working on Hyperloop concept as disclosed by Elon Musk? At-least on paper model building real cost-structure for Short-mile prototype? <comment><USER2> IMHO some of the criticism was substantiated, especially around safety and passenger comfort.

<comment><AUTHOR> @dandare I wanted more of list people/groups working on the concept</comment></comment>