RGB.to - color converter with unique URLs and JSON download - <AUTHOR> http://rgb.to/

<comment><USER2> Hi guys. Thanks a lot for pointing the hash '#' bug, I din't realized myself (and was very simple to solve). Now I think it works fine, no matter you enter the hex value in the input with or without the '#'.

I'm trying to find a workaround too about passing the '#' in the URL too, but I still did not find a good solution.

I'm working right now in adding support for Pantone and RAL color formats...

Thanks again for your testing ;-) Greetz. cc

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to see the fix! I've been using it for a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool, but if I enter a hex value with the pound sign at the beginning, I get a 404 error

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, looks like they tried to support multiple color formats <http://rgb.to/about-help> but that seems like sthg they should support too.</comment></comment>


Options for Enhancing Video of a Burglary? - <AUTHOR> My home was burglarized last week. My neighbor's security camera captured two 30s video clips of the individual, one at my front door prior to forcing it, and one with him leaving with a cloth grocery bag containing property he was taking.
The video shows his face, but it's not as clear as I would like. I don't know how to quantify its quality except to say its "not bad" but "not great either."
I would welcome any suggestions for extracting and improving still images from the two clips. I'd prefer to outsource this to someone that has experience in this kind of work.
I don't have a lot of confidence that the local police are going to invest a lot of time and effort in this, only because they are overloaded.
Any recommendations for providers or other actions to take would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> I work in the video surveillance space. The short version is that you are unlikely to be able to do anything worthwhile with those videos.

If you want to contact me privately I can take a look at them and maybe offer some specific suggestions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

I would welcome any suggestions you might have. If you'll contact me at email@example.com I'll send you the two clips. I don't see how to find your email and I'm reluctant to ask you to disclose it publicly.

<comment><USER3> Might want to obfuscate that address a little – perhaps replace the @foo.bar with "on ProtonMail's dotcom domain" or something, if it's worth it to stay off unsophisticated scraper lists.

<comment><USER4> Is this worth the trouble? I'm seriously asking. Seems like a ripe arena for a cat&mouse game similar to adblockers. The script kiddies writing email scraping tools surely have regex searching for "[at|@] * dotcom" type of concepts.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I pretty much assume that any email address is "compromised" (as in no longer spam free not pwnd) as soon as it is created. It may not be that bad, but I honestly believe the first time the email address is used as an ID then it is.

<comment><USER5> >Maybe I'm too cynical, but I pretty much assume that any email address is "compromised" (as in no longer spam free not pwnd) as soon as it is created.

It's not binary, as in, either "compromised" or not. There are lots of different spammers using different methods. Posting your email address on a public website will dramatically increase the amount of spam you get.

<comment><USER6> It's often about being the second easiest option, not the hardest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes, if you have multiple shots where the subject hasn't moved much, you can combine them to get accurate subpixel resolution (i.e., resolution higher than the camera has). However, this works best to subjects that are "fixed" like license plates.

Here's a "practical" way to do it:

[https://www.dpreview.com/articles/0727694641/here-s-how- to-p...](https://www.dpreview.com/articles/0727694641/here-s-how-to-pixel- shift-with-any-camera)

And here's an example of a research paper about it:

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.04590.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.04590.pdf)

The local police will spend no time and effort on it. And any video you produce/enhance will not be able to be used as evidence by them.

<comment><USER8> This is what I was thinking as well. Superresolution techniques aren't going to surface information that was not already in the image. However, combining multiple sequential images of the same subject can have this effect.

The problem is that I'm sure the subject moves considerably from one image to the next. You will have to isolate his face in each frame and transform the face grabs so that they line up perfectly before the images can be combined by averaging.

It's worth a shot!

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it would be a pretty good weekend project.

Detect faces in each video frame, skew/stretch so that the area of each detection is the same, apply this super resolution technique in OpenCV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A company called MotionDSP makes a tool called "Forensic" that costs $250/month: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_B5PUYaIIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_B5PUYaIIA)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. That seems like a pretty compelling tool. I may license for a month and see what it can do.

Thank you for taking the time to help me with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was able to save a group photo with this technique once: [https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/](https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/)

<comment><USER12> It would be interesting to save a frame to a modern iPhone, edit it in the photos app AND then apply this technique to the output of the iPhone edited pic. I have been able to get a lot more detail from a photo in a dark setting on the photos editing app on iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You might want to consider reaching out to ClearView AI. Ethics aside, they probably can help you identify the burglars. With regards to the comments suggesting super-resolution, just remember that the Second Law of Thermodynamics prevents recovery of information that does not exist. Neural networks and ML can give you a good guess at what the face may look like, but you won't necessarily get more information out of it and if done incorrectly, might even get a false positive. What neural networks are useful for here is to extract the feature vectors from the face and perform facial recognition on them.

<comment><USER14> The key breakthrough here (for the typically crappy footage) will probably involve

a) using many frames to ID the perp

and perhaps

b) working at a native H.264 I/P frame level with the neural networks, rather than at a decoded framebuffer level.

<comment><USER15> Why would the encoded frame be better vs the decided? Deblocking? Other filters? I would think temporal filtering might help? Not an expert here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a totally random shot, but I wonder if Pixelmator Pro's new ML Super Resolution could be of help here:

[https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/machine- learning/](https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/machine-learning/)

You could grab individual frames of the video and run them through this and see what the results look like?

(no connection to Pixelmator - just played with the software and it looked pretty darn cool)

<comment><USER17> There is a reason Google's initial DNN project was called "deep dream"\- It's because it essentially uses "dreaming" to generate new content based on a source database of unrelated images.

It is making up new image details (highly convincing and realistic new image details) and hence this tech is completely inappropriate for handling criminal evidence.

<comment><USER18> It's definitely not appropriate for suggesting that a certain person is in the video. Instead, what it can do is help (or poison) the imagination of a viewer, by inserting what a person matching the few details that are in the image/video would look like with average other details added.

Maybe your person has a darker pixel on the one side of their face you see: might be a mole, a face tattoo, or a five-o'clock shadow, or maybe they've just got a bit of mud on their face from falling in the dark. DNN will 'helpfully' provide that large facial moles and tattoos are less common than facial hair in their database, and most of their models wipe mud off their face before having their picture taken, so it will give your suspect a bit of realistic salt-and-pepper growth. Or maybe it has a bunch of interesting pictures of a guy with some facial hair and face tattoos that it can fit to the video. Suddenly you find you've been burglarized by Post Malone.

It's only useful if you're trying to get an idea of what an average situation looks like because you can't imagine what you're seeing in the noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You might want to try out some stacking based resolution improvement methods, like the ones used in astronomy. They take data from multiple "sources" and combine them to produce a high resolution picture.

For example, check out [https://www.astronomie.be/registax/](https://www.astronomie.be/registax/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Beyond the video...Depending on what was stolen, if it is likely to be sold, then monitor craigslist, offer up and FB garage/yard sale groups in your area.

<comment><USER21> Second that. Actually got 4 tires/rims back that way (found them on ebay)

</comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh With a video player/editor, locate the I-frames (or simply the best looking ones, playing frame by frame), extract them, then use _any_ photo editor to sharpen, adjust contrast/luminosity, enlarge, etc, and print them. It is not rocket science and will give you something to show to the police/whoever, in about an hour of work.

Before investing real money on this, be aware of the legal value of these videos: do we really see the burglar forcing the front door? Taking your property? Is your neighbour entitled to film that area? The answer strongly depends on your local laws.

</comment><comment><USER22> You can enhance the overall image quality using: [https://github.com/alexjc/neural-enhance](https://github.com/alexjc/neural- enhance) on every frame. [https://letsenhance.io/](https://letsenhance.io/)

For faces: [https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2017/06/04/enhance-upscaling- im...](https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2017/06/04/enhance-upscaling-images-with- generative-adversarial-neural-networks.html)

<comment><USER23> I would strongly recommend against neural enhancing for identifying faces. There's a good chance the face will get "enhanced" into somebody in the training set that kinda looks similar to the blurry photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> OpenCV has a bunch of image processing algorithms that I searched for, but don't see mentioned CLAHE Contrast Limited Histogram Equalization _ I have used to good effect to get better contrast Neural Network DeNoising [https://papers.nips.cc/paper/4686-image-denoising-and- inpain...](https://papers.nips.cc/paper/4686-image-denoising-and-inpainting- with-deep-neural-networks.pdf)

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.08176.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.08176.pdf)

I'm sure github has some repos on this

</comment><comment><USER25> If you have the time stamp you could also reference other areas where he could have walked and get more footage. But the faster you go and get these cottage the better as some are not kept after a few days

</comment><comment><USER26> I've always assumed those scenes in TV shows where they pull up blurry photos / video and "enhance" them 10-fold was just hollywood.

Can this actually be done to any degree of usefulness?

<comment><USER27> Correct, if the information simply isn't present no amount of trickery will conjure it up.

<comment><USER28> Well, these days there is plenty of trickery that will conjure up plausible details to put in place of the information that isn't there. It won't be _true_ information though.

<comment><USER29> Sometimes enriching possibilities is good enough to break out of an investigative minima but other restrictions prevent you from recapitulating that evidence in your line of thinking. That's why parallel construction is helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Put contact info in your profile or here so I can contact you. I do research in exactly this area (super resolution for target detection/identification).

<comment><USER31> OP replied to another comment with firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are links to the two videos:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkyxlkh0aa5d24m/IMG_5402.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkyxlkh0aa5d24m/IMG_5402.mp4?dl=0)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxgwpe6bn39p0re/IMG_5404.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxgwpe6bn39p0re/IMG_5404.mp4?dl=0)

<comment><USER32> First video shows he touched a few things. Perhaps fingerprints off those? Those clothes would mark that guy depending on locale. Perhaps other cameras saw him as well?

Also, now you know your camera isn't doing the best, add other camera(s) where it would have helped. Eg to capture face-on angle as you approach door. Consider upping the resolution of the cameras you add.

On a more general note, rethink about how this guy found your place as a suitable target. Mitigate what you can. He knew he had plenty of time. And he seemed quite comfortable being there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Topaz Labs have some amazing photography enhancing tools that can help. They are claiming they use AI for the enhance. Topaz Studio have this feature ClearAI for me even on standard settings is doing an amazing job to clear the photos. For batch processing you have to use it as a Photoshop plugin , the frames of interest from the videos have to be extracted as separate jpeg photos.

<comment><USER34> Using AI to enhance CCTV footage for the purpose of identifying criminals seems somewhat unfair to the individuals whose photos were used to train those AI models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is not a practical recommendation by any means... but fast ai has a lecture on image restoration with deep learning.

[https://www.fast.ai/](https://www.fast.ai/)

[https://youtu.be/9spwoDYwW_I?t=2913](https://youtu.be/9spwoDYwW_I?t=2913)

<comment><USER36> Oh god this is a terrible idea when talking about identifying a suspect. You're basically making an educated guess to construct evidence that could then be used to falsely accuse someone. Please don't do this.

<comment><USER35> Yeh that is a good point. It would likely be a composite of training data rather than the suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It may or may not work, but try applying the below project to a few frames to see what you get. Make sure to preserve the original footage on the original media, though.

[https://github.com/alexjc/neural-enhance](https://github.com/alexjc/neural- enhance)

</comment><comment><USER38> You can't get information from a photograph that isn't in that photograph in the first place. Any software technique that purports to fill in those blanks, like a neural network, is drawing a face in based on what it knows about faces in general. The face you get may look realistically like a face, but it won't look like the face of the person who robbed you, except perhaps by pure coincidence.

<comment><USER39> Video frames can be composited to improve clarity the same way it is done in Astrophotography.

And your assertion that "any software technique...won't look like the face" is incorrect. Again using multiple frames, it's entirely possible to infer what clearer underlying detail would result in the less-sharp pixel values in the video, given the training data establishing the relationship. It's a specific technique for reconstruction, not just drawing in a realistic but synthetic replacement like Photoshop's content-aware fill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://www.ghacks.net/2019/10/23/videocleaner-is-an-open- so...](https://www.ghacks.net/2019/10/23/videocleaner-is-an-open-source-video- enhancement-tool-for-forensic-purposes/)

</comment><comment><USER41> The tools provided by Topaz Labs are incredible for enhancement and have free trials.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not going to out OP's location by linking, but the actual video was posted in Ring (so publicly available). OP, if you want experts to help, maybe consider just posting the link.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if the "stacking" software often used in amateur astrophotography might help.

Or possibly using the Super Scale feature in Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve?

</comment><comment><USER43> You can try with ffmpeg to upscale video and improve quality. On GitHub there are some tools that do a pretty decent work upscaling up to 4K

</comment><comment><USER44> A better camera next time sadly. I prefer indoor cameras, better light conditions help make better videos.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow small world! I saw you post this on Ring. Hello from the greater Seattle area :)

</comment><comment><USER45> Even if you can see his face clearly, how will you find him? It's just a face.

<comment><USER46> If police put out the clearest image possible, you still have to rely on those that know him to be willing to identify him. Friends of criminals aren't usually the type to turn each other in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can try and take a shot at it using my Pic.Hance model

</comment><comment><USER39> wow small world - I saw you post this on Ring. Hello from the greater Seattle area :)

</comment><comment><USER48> You're assuming that getting a clear face view would result in:

1\. Identifying the person

2\. The authorities finding this person

3\. The arrest of this person

4\. A conviction of this person

and possibly also

5\. You getting your things back.

In my cynical experience, _every single one_ of these five assumptions is _extremely_ unlikely to actually happen. Note that each one of them depends on all the previous ones.

<comment><USER49> That's not what OP asked and probably not the answer he/she really wants to read. This being hacker news I had hoped the top comment would be something that actually might help someone who wants to create better stills from video.

I see this on a lot of forums: people not answering the question but feeling that they just _have_ to give their piece of advice that OP is having the wrong problem.

Stop it. It isn't helpful. Especially to others who look for answeers to the same question (but perhaps for entirely different reasons).

<comment><USER50> But this isn't just a Q&A forum. It's also a discussion forum, and OP's post contributed to the discussion. It's good info, and can save the poster a lot of time, headache, and expectation.

<comment><USER49> The OP didn't ask for legal or procedural advice. The question was a rather straight forward technical one.

However, it came with context, which was a mistake because it drew focus away from the actual question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Where does enhancement stop and tampering with evidence (18 U.S.C. § 1519) start? With sufficiently powerful machine learning the video can be deepfaked to have Elvis robbing you.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519)

<comment><USER52> Is it still tampering if you provide the original and the "enhanced" one?

<comment><USER53> It will probably not be considered tampering, but at the same time, it will probably not be accepted as a proof officially.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TouchScale.co, weigh things in Safari on iPhone 6S - <AUTHOR> http://www.touchscale.co <comment><USER2> Measurements from my device vs. Kitchen dcale: Small clementine: 48g vs 64g Apple: 78g vs 180g Pear: 125 vs 200

<comment><AUTHOR> It is definitely more accurate than that. I made some changes to make sure it is compatible with all sensitivity settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Paul Graham's essay from 2010:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/tablets.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/tablets.html)

        Many if not most of the special-purpose objects
        around us are going to be replaced by apps running
        on tablets.

        I wouldn't be surprised if by playing some clever
        tricks with the accelerometer you could even replace
        the bathroom scale.

It's yet to be seen, how the bathroom scale will be replaced. But maybe the new touch sensitivity in phones (which PG includes in "tablets" in his essay) is one step into that direction.

<comment><USER4> Wow, pg is already at "delphi's oracle" levels already. Even banal passing comments that anybody with a minimum knowledge of technology could have formulated, are now read into like they were incredible prophecies...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When the iPhone was launched back in 2007, there were parody videos that showed the "real" potential of iPhone e.g. using it as bathroom scale. Looks like they weren't all that wrong :)

<comment><USER6> "This one's actually kind of cool: you step on your laptop and it weighs you, it tells you how much you weigh, like a scale. Scale.com."

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ul4geRaM5dY](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ul4geRaM5dY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is incredibly cool, even though I can only imagine one real-world use for it (measuring drugs).

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice proof of concept, totally unreliable. It's interesting only because Apple rejected that scale app to weight stuff with a spoon, and now someone's done it on Safari. Is it from the same devs? All in all, this is just a bad gimmick, right now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Somewhat related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467847)

</comment><comment><USER9> Sort of works with my Nexus 6. The measurements aren't accurate, but there is a relative scale depending on how hard I press on the screen.

</comment><comment><USER10> Now just you watch, as Apple removes JavaScript access to the 3D touch sensor data, hahaha :)

</comment><comment> nv-vn Interesting, it works on my Note 3 when I use the stylus.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't have an iphone 6S, how accurate is it?

<comment><USER12> read the article

<comment><USER11> What article ? I just see a circle and a blue button on that page.

edit: got it , thanks.

Finally found a "weight your drugs in the street app" /s

<comment><USER13> You don't see the link at the bottom? ("How does this work?" \- [http://ashertrockman.github.io/ios/2015/10/24/3d-touch- scale...](http://ashertrockman.github.io/ios/2015/10/24/3d-touch-scale.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really clever!</comment>


Why isn't there a British Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/kamal-ahmed/7543198/Calling-all-entrepreneurs.-What-must-we-learn-from-the-spirit-of-the-States.html <comment><USER2> Well, your tax laws need some changing and fixing your stance on free speech (libel). Can't do anything about the weather.

<comment><USER3> well ghee whiz cowboy - let us know when poor people no longer need to die of treatable illness in your country...

I think part of the UK silicon valley is called the M4 corridor - the other part is in Scotland. With a country with fast internal communications (partly but far from wholly a function of size) location is less important. You can find great software developers and great engineers just about anywhere.

<comment><USER2> Well, I grew up under US Gov health care (IHS), and I'll take private practice anytime (they almost killed my Dad (too much blood thinner) and mis-diagnosed my and my brother's backs among other things).

Check your tax structure, it doesn't help.

This whole tax versus no health care is such a crock. The high taxes don't buy good health care - heck - they don't even buy decent social services. I am neither a Republican or Democrat (shame the US only has two parties of note), and really didn't like how Pres. Bush spent our money nor am I happy about the current Pres. Government needs fundamental restructuring and barring that - cutting off most of the tax money at least keeps it from interfering too much.

//cowboy - that really makes me less of you....</comment></comment></comment>


Why is the certificate for Wi-Free displayed as being "unsecure"? - <AUTHOR> https://support-en.upc-cablecom.ch/app/answers/detail/a_id/9949/~/certificate-for-wi-free <comment><AUTHOR> "The security of our Wi-Free service is very important to us"

but

"Some devices which use Apple OS and iOS software display a warning stating that _it is an untrusted certificate_. You can accept this certificate without having any concerns."

Seems like a nice way to deliver your own untrusted certificates to the users of UPC Wi-Free. And "some which" here means "all which."

Also:

[https://support-en.upc- cablecom.ch/app/answers/detail/a_id/1...](https://support-en.upc- cablecom.ch/app/answers/detail/a_id/11900)

</comment><comment><USER2> You can trust we give you security because we say so.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do, blog post or HN post ? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a fairly large posting, I expect it to be ~20K characters when it is done.
Is there a limit on HN post size that I should observe ?
Is the preferred method to post elsewhere then post a link on HN ? (that seems rather blog spammy) <comment><USER2> Post it on your blog, then post the link on HN.

Whether you post it here or on your blog doesn't affect whether we will find it interesting (you have already decided that some of us will), but it will affect how easy it is for us to read: mid-grey on light grey is not that legible in large quantities, and it is nice to be able to click on links.

<comment><USER3> Regarding the colors and un-linkability... why is that? To discourage lengthy "Ask HN" posts?

While I appreciate the commenters who do it, I think it's kind of silly to have to comment a "clickable link" for HN submissions that need it. Why not just change that?

<comment><USER2> The unlinkability is to prevent people who post a link from essentially posting a (biased) comment that can't be voted down.

The colours is just to discourage lengthy "Ask HN" posts I think, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _that seems rather blog spammy_

Don't worry about that. This point has been raised on many occasions, and the conclusion every time has always been the same: Submit interesting material, and ignore where it comes from. If you've written something which you would submit if it had been written by someone else, you should submit it anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> _that seems rather blog spammy_

Only if you do it several times a day, or several times for the same post.

And you definitely shouldn't write something that long on HN itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> i vote for blogging it, and NOT posting a link to that blog on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why ?

The subject is a switch from the PHP environment to Django/python, after asking a lot of questions here regarding this subject I figured I would give something back for all the help I got (including unsolicited emails with great advice).

<comment><USER6> wow, i got downvoted :) sorry i didn't reply earlier.

for some reason, i thought there was some (un)written rule of not linking to your own stuff, like on metafilter and other sites. I checked the HN guidelines again and didn't see any such rule. That mix-up was the reason for my "and DON'T post it to HN" line. Sorry for the snark, and maybe just post it with a small intro text in the HN post?

<comment><USER7> I don't think there's a rule, written or not... it's just the mob mentality towards self promotion can be pretty brutal sometimes, and people on HN generally don't like that. Get some traction on your blog post, and hope someone else posts it around HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How would you build a human computer so that people can write possibly ambiguous code in high-level English and have it "execute" by others using common sense? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You would need to have precisely defined concepts from standard English in genera/differentia format in such a way that the system could determine contextually which concepts are being used in the user's query, and with that you could execute whatever you wanted. The differentia would have to be framed in a logical format, preferably using Fred Sommer's Term Functor Logic (dramatically superior to First Order Predicate Logic. This is the problem our startup was first working on last September (we started research for this in 1997 - we are deploying a very "lite" version of this in our new application).

The biggest barrier to solving this problem is the difficulty of formally defining English words. It took us several years to figure that out (with the Epistemolgy Aesthetics Study group and heavy reading of Aristotle's Organon) and we ultimately found that definition through an inductive approach was key to success. There will come a time in the not too distant future that people who can correctly define concepts will make serious money.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Consider for example writing a sorting algorithm in plain English and "executing" it on sample inputs using crowdsourcing.

If the algorithm is ambiguous, the people executing the code could use their common sense, vote on interpretations, and even get back to you if they are really stuck.

The execution would be done by hand, although some users who know how to program might write some code to help them out.

You could of course do this sort of thing at a very high-level of abstraction. Consider prototyping a word processor in this way for example.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but for example:

"Give me a list of search engines sorted from best to worst" (an ambiguious english expression - <http://www.tallstreet.com/view/Search_Engine/> )

Then people nominate answers (by investing in them), which get weighted by how many people nominated, how they weighted different answers compared to each other, and also takes into account the persons "judgement history" (net worth - i.e. if they have been previously good at making good nominations they have more authority)

An then when people run the "algorithm" they rate the output which is fed back to the nominators who are rewarded or punished based on the quailty of their answers - so over time the system improves.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can explore such a human computer along multiple dimensions.

On one level, you can have someone specify a spec in English so that human workers would execute an algorithm of their choosing on the supplied input.

On another level, you can have someone specify an implementation in English so that human workers would execute that algorithm on the supplied input.

Such a human computer would be extremely slow, but..

\- it would have common sense.

\- it's a way to give _everyone_ a feeling of what programming is all about

\- it's a way to prototype ideas without getting down to specifics

Moreover, you can have an error correction mechanism by making sure that enough human workers have validated each other's work for you to trust the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The right way to do such a thing would just be to have a very abstract language with "common sense" embodied in the right defaults.

</comment><comment><USER5> is anything closer to a layman's pseudo-code than python?</comment>


Will The Need For Tech Talent Become Obsolete? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/will-the-need-for-tech-talent-become-obsolete-2012-4 <comment><USER2> Linkbait title. The author would have to be a moron to make such a suggestion with a straight face. Not worth the read.</comment>


Show HN: AI tool reads privacy policies, tells you which sites sell your info. - <AUTHOR> http://www.privacyparrot.com <comment><AUTHOR> I've been a member @ HN for quite a while, but I usually just tend to focus in on security and privacy topics. One of my good friends is visiting, and we wanted to work on something challenging together. Both of us find privacy policies overly confusing and annoying, so we decided to tackle the problem. We built a tool that that crawls for privacy policies and uses guided machine learning to analyze them. We would love any feedback you have.

<comment><USER2> It got the right answer for my company's website: [http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy-policy-for- identified.c...](http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy-policy-for- identified.com)

The site is pretty slow. I noticed that entering my site a second time didn't produce a result any faster than the first time. You might consider adding some caching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad we got it right. The site should be much faster now thanks to some tips folks have given here.. and turning off excessive debugging info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can go so much farther with this. How about letting me paste in any TOS and have it analyzed for important bits or things out of the ordinary? I'd love having my own personal robot lawyer to read over all the stuff I sign or agree to!

<comment><USER4> Would you trust such a lawyer? No offense to the developer, I think he id a terrific job, but trusting a machine to parse a contract for something fishy seems a little too... Well, risky.

Of course it'd be great when you have a positive match.

<comment><USER5> I view it more as a bug-finding tool. That is it can indicate the presence of data sharing/selling (bugs) but cannot prove that there isn't any.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site is loading extremely slowly. Might I suggest you turn off, or dramatically reduce, the KeepAliveTimeout?

Header:

      Connection:Keep-Alive
      Date:Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:27:19 GMT
      Keep-Alive:timeout=15, max=100

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up and the tip, we are getting way more traffic than expected here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about inconsistent privacy policies?

For example, <http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy> states that they never "share any information about you" but then has an offhand mention about the site using Google Analytics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out, we've updated it to say "never share any personal information about you."

We've trained the analyzer to mentions of sharing PII with 3rd parties to point out sites that sell data.

<comment><USER8> I consider Google Analytics a great harm to my privacy and brushing it off with "We give you a cookie so Google analytics works, but it's nothing personal." gives me a dishonest and careless expression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a more serious note, I have two real questions:

1\. So, having crawled a boatload of privacy policies, what fraction of them say that they'll sell your data?

2\. Are you worried that the lawyers will find your tool and tweak their policies to beat it?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far we are looking at

14% can sell data

66% do not sell data

20% sell only when they go bankrupt or get acquired

We view people trying to beat the system as a way to improve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this idea, but here's how I think it could be improved:

1\. Consider porting the entire service to a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox, and making the homepage more of an information/FAQ center.

2\. Demo video. A good demo video explaining why "John Doe" should worry about his personal information being sold would be more convincing - this is how you get your service to less savvy internet users who aren't primarily concerned with privacy.

3\. Find a way around inconsistencies. It would be better to report if a website _actually_ sells/uses your personal information rather than returning a simple search result with TOS findings. A website can tweak or flat out lie. You should try to account for this.

4\. Are you planning to commercialize this in any way? How do you plan to fund it, if at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Seems we got a lot of feedback and requests for an extension. Sounds like a good idea to me too!

2\. Yes a demo video explaining why this is important would be helpful to folks

3\. Not sure how to address this. The tool reads and classifies terms of service. Any suggestions on how we can do what you suggest

4\. Potentially, want to explore a bit more and make sure it works well first. We have ideas for premium and related features/services that would key off of this well if it becomes popular and trusted.

<comment><USER11> As for 3: A simple feature to add would be to add a form for users to submit samples (links, comments).

BTW: Cool tool with a lot of potential! See also <http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html> (They analyze EULAs, not Privacy Policies though. Also I wasn't too impressed when I tested but a nifty idea and I only tested it a few years ago so it might have been improved a lot in the meantime.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just curious, if it could highlight the offending phrases it used to figure out the difference between selling, not selling, and bankruptcy selling. This way when we put in our revisions we can better help it learn.

Also if you aren't planning on making this a commercially viable product, could you release source code? Things like this make the world better and safer, (not to mention easier and funner.) All in all though it was rather interesting. (Still trying out websites and i see myself doing this until the end of the day at work.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Of the two sites of mine that I checked, one came up as "Danger! Warning! They're going to sell your information in case of a Bankruptcy!!!"

Why?

Reading one of the submitter's comments below, it seems to lump "sold the entire company, therefore the user database went with it" into the same category as "we're running out of money, so let's sell everybody's email addresses to spammers."

They're not in any way related. I'd suggest splitting out those two categories, as I suspect it will drop that "bankruptcy email fire sale" category down to somewhere near 0%.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a good point. Perhaps the way we've worded it is giving an incorrect impression.

It's tough, most policies look something like this

In the event that XXXXXXX is involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, your information may be sold or transferred as part of that transaction

From what I gather, the example above implies that the company considers your data an asset and it "may be sold" as part of the transaction or bankruptcy.

Help me come up with a better way to describe this situation succinctly! =)

<comment><USER14> This may be OT, but I'd like to know more about organizational practices (and corresponding contractual language) that mitigate this risk.

My vague impression is that unless one takes deliberate steps to remove such information from the available... "asset pool", when bankruptcy strikes, all bets are off (in the U.S., at least).

Any effective limits after that point seem more often to be PR-based (bad PR decreasing, negating, or even outweighing the value of the information) than due to legal stricture. Or else a matter of getting a "one-off" restriction from a court proceeding.

This is just my impression from the news. I would welcome any clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why does it automatically add www in front of what I type in the URL box? If I type in news.ycombinator.com, it says "www.news.ycombinator.com does not exist".

Well, yes. That's why I didn't type that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. We've got an issue with our crawler when it comes to subdomains. Working on it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It'd be interesting to have a browser extension based on this popping up a warning on websites with a suspicious privacy policy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Browser plugin was our initial plan, but wanted to get something out there for folks to test and give feedback on without having to install something.

<comment><USER10> If you made a Google Chrome or Firefox extension I'd install (both of) them. In fact, porting this service to an extension seems more logical and streamlined if it could push notifications in real time as you entered a website, the way Firefox can warn you if a website has a false certificate or is a registered scam/phishing website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In a galaxy far away there was once conceived the idea of a machine readable privacy policy ... checking the interwebs reveals that <http://www.w3.org/P3P/> was updated for the last time in 2007.

After some more searching: <http://www.cdt.org/paper/looking-back-p3p-lessons- future> points to more information about that path from the past. What would the p3p.xml of facebook look like?

On another note: www dot freeprivacypolicy dot com [1] seems to generate the kind op privacy policies the site featured in this post sets out to parse. There is humor in that.

[1] don't want to feed page rank as privacyparrot says: "Your information may be sold during a bankruptcy"

</comment><comment><USER18> I entered facebook and got two results, one saying facebook.com does not sell; the other saying www.facebook.com does sell. See <http://www.privacyparrot.com/search?search=facebook.com>

</comment><comment><USER19> Follow up idea, read mutual fund prospectuses and identify anything "out of the ordinary."

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, wonder if we can get some training data for "out of the ordinary" and screen for companies that are big frauds and then short them (like <http://www.muddywatersresearch.com/> does)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A bug report: if someone already added ".com" to their results because of no result, don't offer to add it again if there are still no results.

Example: [http://www.privacyparrot.com/search?search=http://www.noSuch...](http://www.privacyparrot.com/search?search=http://www.noSuch.com)

Also, I suggest when you suggest adding ".com", you strip spaces from the search as well. For instance, I searched for "Less Wrong" and found nothing, and you suggested "Less Wrong.com". That doesn't exist, but "LessWrong.com" does.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not a lawyer but...

How can someone trust you to parse the policies correctly? What if someone sues you for incorrectly interpreting a policy which they then use to make a decision.

<comment><USER22> A lawyer could probably advise them quite quickly as to a TOS that would limit their liability from such an action by specifically informing users of the site that the information should not be relied upon. I'm not a lawyer either, but it doesn't look like it would be a big deal to get a good TOS to prevent these issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah this is a very good suggestion. We'll get a TOS up there so we don't get into hot water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it really possible to keep user data safe during a bankruptcy? It is a tangible asset that may provide value to creditors.

I really want (for my co) the answer to be "yes".

<comment><USER24> If the site's privacy policy explicitly states they will never sell your information, it may be possible to sue if they do so. There is some precedent with a toysmart.com case back in 2000, though it was settled out of court.

The main point of checking for the bankruptcy clause is to raise awareness of the risks involved so people can make an informed decision before trying a new site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am just learning some of these machine learning tools and am rapt, so forgive me for asking, but would you be able to explain a little about what you are doing?

How are you generating features? Stanford parser? Are you using logistic regression or something more advanced?

I love the idea. I am interested in applying some of these concepts myself. Do you have any ideas that you are not able to pursue yourself, that I might take a crack at?

<comment><AUTHOR> Works just like spam filtering: We're using a naive Bayesian classifier with training data. Built and tested a custom extractor that makes the most sense for the legalese of privacy policies.

Ideas: email me at michaelaiello (at) michaelaiello.com

<comment><USER26> Might I suggest adding at least this sentence to the training set: _"We sell your private information."_

Your Policizer happily tells me that the sentence means _"They DO NOT sell your private information."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Would it be possibly to also identify sites that share your information?

A great example: facebook.com Does not sell your private information.

But they obviously do share information and while this is apparent to most users, how many sites practice the same and users are not aware of it?

Also, any plans to capture change in privacy policies over time? Often times, site owners do not proactively notify users when their policies or legalese has changed.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do plan to note changes in the policies. Considered a feature that lets you subscribe to the policies you are interested in and get notices if they change, or if in the news, it is mentioned that the site loses your data. What do you think?

<comment><USER28> I'd love a site that stored diffs off all legal docs for large organizations. I was trying to find old TOS of amazon.com the other day, and couldn't find them anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It does not appear to like subdomains. I've been trying to get it to visit <http://news.ycombinator.com> and see what it thinks. But I keep getting back, We were unable to connect to <http://www.news.ycombinator.com>. If it exists, please try again later.

<comment><USER30> Also, this is a problem: <http://imgur.com/K0d2z>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - had an old version of the scan in from when we weren't correcting for the www.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > See if a site sells your personal information.

Rather, see if a site tells you that it sells your personal information. It's an important difference.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is very cool. Maybe you could make a scriptlet bookmark that pops something on the page you are viewing. Here's one that will redirect you to the privacy parrot page : javascript:location.href="[http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy-policy- for-+location.ho...](http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy-policy- for-+location.host);

</comment><comment><USER33> Would be useful to reproduce the part of the terms which causes the parrot to reach the conclusion it does.

</comment><comment><USER34> I tried the policizer with some copy and pasted policies but it frequently told me "CAN SELL" just because the text did not include any specifics regarding selling and bankruptcy

it that the intended behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER35> Where's the code?

Seriously, where's the code? Your server seems to be getting hit pretty hard. Would be nice to be able to hack on it and to be able to host a mirror.

<comment><USER36> Or, where's the data?

Seems to me most of your traffic is going to be people asking about the same sites - would be interesting just to publish that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if Facebook does (<http://tinypic.com/r/wjctow/5>) hmmm... that interesting..

</comment><comment><USER38> Thank you so much for the effort. This is really something useful. Would love to see more projects on making privacy themes more accessible.

</comment><comment><USER39> Who new the singularity would start as an arms race between AI writing obfuscated legal documents and AI decoding them :oP

</comment><comment><USER40> What are the AI tool's terms of service?

</comment><comment><USER9> bool CompanySellsPrivateData(string privacy_policy) { return true; }

</comment><comment><USER41> it says doubleclick.net does not sell my private information...

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's wrong, help train the parrot =)

[http://www.privacyparrot.com/feedback/correction?site=http%3...](http://www.privacyparrot.com/feedback/correction?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.doubleclick.net&policylink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fintl%2Fen%2Fprivacy%2Fprivacy- policy.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> facebook.com Does not sell your private information.

www.facebook.com Can sell your private information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - had an old version of the scan in from when we weren't correcting for the www.</comment></comment>


The Maturation of Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/mark-zuckerberg-2012-5/?mid=nymag_press <comment><USER2> As much as you can criticize Facebook for its privacy fumblings and other missteps I have an enormous amount of respect for Zuck for one simple reason:

For someone of that age with so little experience to guide something that started from his dorm room into a (potentially) $100B company in ~10 years while still maintaining effective control of it is a truly remarkable accomplishment. There would have many, many opportunities (and traps!) to exit, get ousted by investors or whatever.

The fact that he didn't cash out and maintained his singular vision is (agree with it or not) a remarkable trait.

He does seem like he has come a long way since his virtual meltdown at the All Things D conference 2 years ago.

<comment><USER3> What happened at All Things D?

<comment><USER4> He got nervous and started sweating. Might be a bit aggressive to call that a "meltdown."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1-page version here --> [http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/mark- zuckerberg-2012-...](http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/mark- zuckerberg-2012-5/)

<comment><USER6> Maybe there should be an official HN policy to post one-page stories when available, and perhaps even alter story URIs when necessary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The crazy thing to me is how well suited people of Zuck's age group are to running companies suited to web technology. A more "mature" CEO would not have the right mindset to steer something as pliable as a web app into a product that keeps up with the non-stop competition for users' attention. If something cooler comes around the corner and enough people latch onto it, you're fucked. Zuck gets this because he probably thinks exactly how his target audience thinks. So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see what's coming next?

<comment><USER8> > So the question then becomes: What happens when Zuck is too mature to see > what's coming next?

He can buy/hire people who are good at that.

<comment><USER9> But will he listen to them? What if "they" can't even agree amongst themselves? How would he decide?

<comment><USER10> A heavy theme of the article is how good Zuck is at building a suitable management team. He'll have to pick a Tim Cook someday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "Basically, there are two ways to build an organization," a former Facebook > employee explains. "You can be really, really good at hiring, or you can be > really, really good at firing." Zuckerberg has been really good at firing.

There seems to be a plethora of news about hiring, but when was the last time you saw something about firing?

<comment><USER12> I thought the firing aspect was the one new thread in the entire 5 page article. The rest was simply a rehash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "It is a huge sum, even in context. Zuckerberg's impending fortune is more money than Wal-Mart's 10,000-plus stores made last year."

This line is a little disingenuous. It's more money than Wal-Mart "earned" last year, not "made". Wal-Mart earned ~$15B on revenues of $447B in 2011.

Still, sort of surprising given the company has annual revenues higher than many countries' GDPs...

<comment><USER14> Considering the author of the story is permanently banned from Wall Street for fraud, it does not surprise me he is loose with the numbers.

I would also question the rest of the analysis as well.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. Context via Wikipedia:

>>Henry Blodget (born 1966) is an American former equity research analyst, currently banned from the securities industry, who was senior Internet analyst for CIBC Oppenheimer during the dot-com bubble and the head of the global Internet research team at Merrill Lynch. Blodget is now the editor and CEO of The Business Insider, a business news and analysis site, and a host of Yahoo Daily Ticker, a finance show on Yahoo.

>>Blodget received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and began his career as a freelance journalist and was a proofreader for Harper's Magazine. In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. In October 1998, he predicted that Amazon.com's stock price would hit a pre-split price of $400 (which it did a month later, gaining 128%).

>>This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.

>>In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement."

Link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget>

<comment><USER16> This is what made me spit out my drink at the top of page 2

      But that crash was a product of investors' and analysts' overexuberance (sorry!),
      not evidence of a fundamental flaw in the tech industry's start-up ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like hindsight is still 20/20. I wonder how much of this is simply crafting a story loosely around a person/company.

</comment><comment><USER18> Of late, I'm seeing a lot of articles about Facebook doing this great thing or that. Agreed what they do is technically challenging and they are extremely interesting, but these also seem to be a sequence of puff-pieces meant to whip up the public with feel-good sentiments about the company before the IPO? The HN readership might want to keep that in mind while reading these articles - indeed, we did have another post a couple of days ago about exactly this - <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

/2cents

</comment><comment><USER19> The IPO is timely because there is no telling how long it will take for Facebook to become the next MySpace. It could be 6 months or a couple of years, or never, if they find some way to reinvent themselves before then.

<comment><USER8> I'm not at all worried about Facebook failing. I'm worried about them succeeding beyond all expectations.

<comment><USER19> You shouldn't be worried about either.

Smoke and mirrors are always in stock.

<comment><USER8> Not the stock I'm concerned with. It's the fact that 1 in 8 people in the world now use Facebook monthly. When that becomes 1/3 or 1/2, what happens? A successful IPO can make that happen.

<comment><USER20> I can't really see how a successful IPO helps them grow, its not like they need the cash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Because not only is Zuckerberg declaring that he considers Facebook's social mission a higher priority than Facebook's business and financial mission—a view many on Wall Street would consider treasonous

Wall Street, meet the wall.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting read, but man, those are the most obtrusive displays ads I've ever seen - and I'm in the ad industry.

</comment><comment><USER23> Zuckerberg deserves many of the accolades he's received for his maturation at the helm of Facebook, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened to him had Facebook failed?

<comment><USER24> He'd probably be a mid-level software engineer at Sony, a division of Myspace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> " Zuckerberg all but stopped writing code for Facebook in the summer of 2005."

Did he really stop coding? How can one give up coding and focus on managing? I really find it difficult.

<comment><USER26> I don't see how he _couldn't_. Managing and coding are both full time jobs. How could he possibly run one of the fastest growing and most influential companies in the world while still remain an effective member of the Engineering team?

On an anecdotal note, I recall reading a story recently about how the FB Engineers gave Zuck a canned 5-minute bugfix which ended up taking him close to an hour. He's clearly rusty, and with good cause.

<comment><USER25> I know he can. but, I feel that it's not easy. I myself find it extremely difficult. One does not simply give up coding.

I think there must be many others here who must have faced difficulty in making a transition from developer to manager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> great discussion. interesting topic. garbage article. really. read it. it's absolutely atrocious.

<comment><USER28> Why is it atrocious? Care to explain?

<comment><USER27> sure. the line that was toughest to swallow was this one:

"In a market where speed is critical, venture-capital funding allows young companies to move faster than they could if they had to rely only on revenues to fund product development. Entrepreneurs who understand that tend to stick around to make plenty of money later"

really? do they really stick around to make plenty of money? sentence 1 may be true, but that doesn't make sentence 2 true.

i couldn't finish the article. here are a few more choice phrases:

"Many promising tech companies place too much emphasis too soon on the business rather than the product"

"Most entrepreneurs are creative and impatient, an often fatal combination—trying to do too many things, they spread their tiny companies too thin"

it's just not my style of writing. at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had to read the headline five times to get what it's really about. (mast __) Sorry :/

</comment><comment><USER30> "Facebook was not intended to be a company."

I'm still not sure it is a company. What exactly does FB produce? It's main asset is your personal information. Which of course it does not own.

FB users produce everything, and hand it over for free to the "funethical" crew of FB "engineers" to play with. As Zuckerberg would say, "Dumb fucks."

<comment><USER31> > "Maybe he's not a good guy, but he's not a bad guy." Translation: He has too > much money, and FB has too much potential influence on our readers, for us > to tell you what we really think.

that's unduly cynical. if you read the rest of the article, they explain their reasoning - mainly that, when zuckerberg might have fired people ruthlessly in his rise to the top, they did not feel that any of those firings were actually unfair.

<comment><USER30> "rise to the top"?

I think you mean _protecting_ his position at the top from "executives". Some of who may have little skill to offer the company (as someone above said, age is a factor) but are who are quite adept at maneuvering their way into higher salaries and greater powers of decision-making.

<comment><USER31> rise to the top of the social network mountain (or dungheap if you prefer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People who bash Zuckerberg fall into 3 categories. Haters, entitlists or are jealous of Mark.

If you are so pissed off at Facebook's privacy stance, don't use them (Yes it really is as simple as that).

If you cry foul and say this is unfair because you won't be able to keep in touch as well with all of your family/friends just remember this. YOU are not entitled make your own rules when using someone elses' company services.

All the whining does nothing - only votes matter. You have your vote (your free choice to use or not use Facebook). if enough people agree with you and decide that it is not worth it to use Facebook - then they will be forced to make changes. All the whining in the world will not make a bit of difference if they still know that THEY HAVE YOU and you along with everyone else will continue to use their service (meaning no significant amount of people are leaving and growth is still good).

<comment><USER33> >If you are so pissed off at Facebook's privacy stance, don't use them (Yes it really is as simple as that).

While I agree with you in general I think that the matter is not so simple. Of course, it is in fact true that when you don't like something, you simply won't buy/use it.

However, many people have had similar view with regards to Microsoft and Google (and other big companies). But when a big company does something it affects so many people/companies that it's not _just_ an issue of voting with your wallet.

<comment><USER34> In this case, it really is that simple. Unlike Google, which provides a necessary service, Facebook is not necessary. I have lost nothing at all from not using Facebook. Social media might be important for advertising, but chances are that you personally really don't need Facebook.

Delete your account and go on with life. Some people might not forward you an invite to some event, but they are really not friends if they choose to do this. Writing a short email is not a big time investment. Hell, you can write one email to all your non-Facebook using friends!

<comment><USER35> I +1 you and agree with you. Its funny how people say "just dont use it". Well, I would have stopped using it have I had opportunity to educate all my friends (at once at one sit!!) that your privacy is at huge risk. But since this is impossible to happen, you keep protecting yourself as much as you can and keep "partying" with friends and family online. Its like with government. Take paying high taxes, for example. Nobody likes it but everyone has to do it, and unless everyone takes on the issue, noone can legally quit it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, tough life. Another terrible first world problem.

Zuck has had the best "learning by experience"opportunity ever. Whatever happens he has done something totally unique.

</comment><comment><USER37> Am I the only one who misread the second word in the post title? Maturation is not a word often used, but there is a similar looking word that is...

Looking forward to the IPO. Should be a wild ride.

<comment><USER38> Oh, grow up.</comment></comment>


4 reasons why Docker could change the cloud computing scenario - <AUTHOR> http://cloudacademy.com/blog/4-reasons-why-docker-could-change-the-cloud-computing-scenario-world-wide/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one who feels that Docker complicates more than simplifies?

I've been experimenting with Docker for the last month. I'm not sure whether either I do not truly understand Docker, or Docker at its current state does not fully accomplish it's goals. I'll share my thoughts with you and I'll be happy to hear opposing opinions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that Docker _is changing_ the cloud computing scenario, no doubts about it. Docker is like a swiss army knife. AWS is doing great integrating docker with Elastic BeansTalk and we can say that AWS is becoming even more a PaaS provider now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Docker is great, I'll admit that. But is there anything it can do that you can't already do with LXCs? I mean, the scripting can be a bit more complex, but it is a full-blown OS running incredibly lightly!

<comment><USER5> Well, AFAIR (as far as i read), LXC are C and python and Docker is go- friendly, so recently they included libcontainer and slowly will remove the piggybacking on LXCs, i feel so, its optional with new release. [http://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing- execut...](http://blog.docker.com/2014/03/docker-0-9-introducing-execution- drivers-and-libcontainer/) So in that case, they will bring along more features too,that will surpass LXCs.Also its the matter of statefulness and statelessness. LXCs are stateful and dockers are stateless so this is a big win here for dockers. Libcontainer brings more dimensions to dockers. So if state is not a concern for you, LXCs are any day great ones to go for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The concept of Cloud Portability is really fascinating, but is it really enough to bring some standardization and uniformity in the DevOps community?

<comment><USER5> Alex, one tool doesn't define devops, it will require support of entire eco- system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been using Docker for some time now. I think mixing it with fig makes things much easier. Good article.

</comment><comment><USER8> Creating sock puppet accounts to comment and upvote on your HN submissions does not work.</comment>


The Rise and Demise of RSS - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mm4z/the-rise-and-demise-of-rss <comment><USER2> This seems to be a popular meme, especially on HN. RSS is not 'demised'. It's still used heavily for podcasts, wordpress (and many other blog sites) expose it, and there are countless mobile and desktop apps for fetching RSS and displaying them. RSS is alive and well, even if Google Reader is no longer a thing. Or is considering that RSS did not replace everything on the internet 'proof' that it is dying?

<comment><USER3> _RSS is alive and well, even if Google Reader is no longer a thing._

The subtext I get from this article: Big Tech didn't want RSS, because they wanted their own silos/walled gardens. For awhile, Facebook was a superior feed. There's no reason why the superior feed couldn't have been built on RSS, except the desire for companies to control the whole thing.

 _Or is considering that RSS did not replace everything on the internet 'proof' that it is dying?_

Big tech wants RSS to die. This is why they kill applications that are still popular, and why articles appear in the media talking about it being dead.</comment></comment>


The Louis C.K. Experiment is Flawed - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/103263839307540915364/posts/hp6GBoxHNG4 <comment><USER2> This guy doesn't get it. Here are his two main misunderstandings:

1) Every artist who's made an online release of their content in a desirable format (without DRM, etc) has seen sales in proportion to their general popularity. Every single one, without even one exception. The author claims Louis got an "inordinate" amount of attention, but I'm not sure this is the case. I suspect the same level of buzz would have been generated had he somehow managed to produce a DVD at the $5 price point with identical content.

2) Popularity is derived from interesting media products. There's no mumbo- jumbo about old media/new media. If you've produced something interesting and compelling, people will want to talk about it. Attributing the acquisition of fame to "traditional media" is brainless. Old media is no different than so called new media -- they both carry stories of interest relative to the level of interest.

And there are countless examples of folks who've generated their own buzz by producing a compelling product, as folks on HN should know better than anyone. You can buy a bit of publicity, but it's compelling, interesting and memorable content that creates a true monetizable spot in the public's consciousness. This is very repeatable and it is done daily.

<comment><USER3> > 1) Every artist who's made an online release of their content in a desirable > format (without DRM, etc) has seen sales in proportion to their general > popularity. Every single one, without even one exception.

That's not true. Radiohead pulled the plug on their In Rainbows experiment after only 3 months in 2007. They decided to go the more traditional route instead. Why would they (an incredibly popular band) do something like that if sales were truly in proportion to their popularity?

<comment><USER4> Do you have a link for this "pulled the plug" assertion? It's my understanding that Radiohead always intended to release the CD in stores all along because "some fans would not have the technological means to obtain the new material." according to Wikipedia.

Yes, they do still believe in traditional distribution to a point (after giving it away for three months), but I think it's unfair to characterise it as a failure.

<comment><USER2> He's suggesting that because Radiohead eventually took down the page, the experiment was a failure. He's conveniently ignoring the fact that their online opt-in pay system generated more revenue than their last published album before they dismantled it, demonstrating that demand/revenue in the new model exceeded the old.

I _do_ have a link to cite: <http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/40444>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author makes some good points, but it's a bit of a tautology. Louis CK is successful because he's really good at what he does, works really hard, and has been doing it for a long time. Yes, he gets mainstream media exposure. Because _that's what happens when you're a successful entertainer_.

Obviously, not every comedian can do this overnight. But neither did Louis CK. He's been working at it for over twenty years, doing a lot of standup at clubs all over the country. Building his career brick by brick until one day he has enough star power to sell his stuff direct.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's a tautology. I mention several well-known online personalities that don't have big media exposure and they obviously don't have the same level of success.

The formula for C.K. involved major television networks. My point is that I don't think you could do this without them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Radiohead tried a similar experiment to Louis C.K.'s back in 2007 with their album In Rainbows. But after 3 months they decided that the online sales weren't working out and that they should pursue the more traditional avenue of selling CD's out of retail stores. Two similar stories with vastly different outcomes.

I say that it's similar because both are well established acts in the entertainment industry, releasing their work unencumbered by DRM (or other encryption) via a website. As I see it, the main differences are (in very general terms):

\- Radiohead said that fans could pay whatever they wanted for the album, Louis C.K. charged $5 \- Radiohead are a band, Louis C.K. is a comedian \- Radiohead tried it in 2007, Louis C.K. in 2011

Of these 3, the most significant difference that I see is that Radiohead didn't set any price tag on their work while Louis C.K did. By some estimates more than half of the people who downloaded In Rainbows did so without paying a penny for it. Louis C.K., on the other hand, charged $5 right up front. The price tag was so low that it was a pretty easy decision for most who bought it, but it was there nonetheless.

I think that speaks volumes about setting customer's expectations appropriately, an area in which the software industry traditionally shoots itself in the foot. Ask your customers to pay something. If you have something of value, they will.

<comment><USER2> That's a nice story about Radiohead but it isn't true. In fact, Radiohead's online release of In Rainbows was a smashing success and generated more money in opt-in online sales than their entire previous album. Cite:

<http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/40444>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Sales_and_chart_pla...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows#Sales_and_chart_placings)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is a one-off attributable only to Louis's popularity, how do you explain the success of the various Indie Bundles? At least in some form, the low-cost no-middlemen wide-reach movement seems to be gaining steam on all fronts. Maybe it didn't work for In Rainbows, but Bandcamp seems to be going great guns.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's a great way to release things. Since so few people release actual numbers, it's hard to know what counts as a success. When they have big ones, like C.K. did, they tend to trumpet them loudly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's flawed only in the sense that it says nothing regarding the topic of artists rising to fame with this business model. Who ever said that was the point? This is like saying a clinical trial for a cancer treatment is flawed because it says nothing about seat belt safety.

<comment><AUTHOR> NY Times and Wired.</comment></comment>


8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90 <comment><USER2> Interesting post. It is baffling to see what a small country can do for its citizens' quality of life as opposed to a giant mess like the EU. If Switzerland is not the perfect example that a country doesn't need to be big to succeed I don't know what is. The perfect counter-example to the inefficiency of the EU.

</comment><comment><USER3> Economically, you would still get a better deal in Silicon valley. Rent/Cost of living might be comparable, but salary would be higher for sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> That was a good read. Does anyone know how these things compare in the Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland?</comment>


Noby Noby Boy website (no flash) - <AUTHOR> http://o--o.jp/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the iPhone app just got released. Started right clicking around on the site to see how it worked. I was surprised to find it wasn't flash.

Also, I love the domain name!</comment>


The 'Preserving American Privacy Act' would ban weaponizing of drones - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/02/16/the-newly-introduced-preserving-american-privacy-act-bans-drone-weaponization-require-warrants-for-law-enforcement-use/

<comment><USER2> I've never thought of being shot as a violation of my _privacy_.

<comment><USER3> I thought that was interesting. Also, I'm not sure why we need a specific law on the books to prevent people from being summarily executed by the government without due process. It's substantially disturbing that it might be necessary though.

<comment><USER4> The problem is we are already executing American citizens overseas with drones without trial or due process. They may have been terrorists but they are still citizens and have a right to defend themselves against the charges presented to them.

It's not a huge stretch that someone could be considered a domestic terrorist and be targeted.

<comment><USER3> The rules of war on a battlefield are not and cannot be the same as the rules of civilized society. The problem is that today the two have become far too mixed, and the boundaries of what is a battlefield during a time of war have become indistinct and blurry. To the extent that basically anything outside US borders can fit the bill at any given time, depending on the circumstances.

I would say that this definitely goes way too far and we'll probably need a constitutional amendment to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like we need an enforced Single Responsibility Principle for legislation. I sometimes wonder how effective it would be to require that all bills be less than, say, ten pages long. Banning armed drones except for the military is probably a good idea, but as anigbrowl pointed out[0], it doesn't have much to do with privacy.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229999>

<comment><USER6> Regarding privacy:

"The bill stipulates that drones operated by the government must obtain a warrant before they can "collect information that can identify individuals in a private area." In public areas, the government has to post notice that it will be collecting information in that location."

With cameras, infra-red, mics, and x-ray, they're a real threat to privacy. They could even be armed with mobile and wifi tapping technology.

<comment><USER5> I know, but those are sensors. That's a very different issue from weapons which can kill you. I think they should be in different bills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Police or other government agents are already required to get a warrant before collecting information. It doesn't matter if it's a phone tap, an unmanned aircraft, or a GoPro on a stick! Is it necessary to re-iterate existing laws for every new technology that pops up?

<comment><USER8> The police are already prevented from using helicopters to collect visual information from places that would not ordinarily be visible. I can't see why drones would be any different.

I really think people are responding to the somewhat disconcerting idea of drones watching you from the air while you're out in public. Essentially, people are worried about cops having a more efficient way to do something they could legally already do: observe you while you are in public.

<comment><USER9> By what logic do you think the police are prevented from using helicopters to collect ordinarily unobservable areas? The main relevant Supreme Court case I could remember was Kyllo v. US [0], but in refreshing my memory, it seems that that case only applies to intruding the privacy of the home, especially with technology that is not widely available. In fact, two cases linked from that article [1][2] directly support the ability of police to perform aerial surveillance, but only for things officers can see with the naked eye.

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States>

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Ciraolo>

2: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It will be interesting, should this pass, to see how broadly the phrase "collect information that can identify individuals in a private area" will be interpreted. Wishful thinking to hope for it to be applicable to our activities on social media, etc?

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a pretty big waste of Congress' time. The Department of Defense, the only part of the government that actually has weaponized drones, is specifically exempted. I somehow doubt that any of the three-letter agencies will pay attention to the ban on using drones to collect information.

I hate the fake constitutional concern, too. The founding fathers didn't recognize privacy as a right. And even if they had, it wouldn't be in the constitution-- it would be in the Bill of Rights. The closest thing you can find is probably the fourth amendment, which protects against "unreasonable search and seizure." If we really cared about the fourth amendment, we'd get rid of stuff like the DEA, the TSA, and Echelon. Somehow, I don't see that happening in this bill. The net effect will probably be more red tape for anyone who wants to build a drone.</comment>


Ask HN: Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleofconversation.com

<comment><USER2> I like it too. I might even use it, if there are enough high quality participants.

I read the whole Theory page and it struck me as blah blah blah blah blah, _except_ for these two points:

1\. Conversations on topics you want, going on right now; 2\. Karma keeps the quality high.

To me those are the core, and they're a pretty cool core. If I were you I'd strip everything else out. And emphasize those two things on the main page.

Personally, I'd drop the recommendation system, or at least drop talking about it. There's so much tripe surrounding that kind of thing that, when I read it, I noticed that your credibility instantly dropped in my mind. I'd rather you put your effort into making it really easy for me to browse/search what's going on so that I can make my _own_ choices. Recommendations won't make me want to use your site if there isn't a lot of value there already. And if you do develop a kick-ass way of recommending related stuff, don't talk to me about it, just show me a few suggestions unobtrusively and I'll eventually catch on.

I also like the slogan "chat rooms that really work".

Edit: on reflection, I seem to notice a pattern which, if it really is there, I suggest you avoid like the plague. It is the idea of the system being "intelligent". It comes out in details like your choice of the word "Theory" and the title of this post, as well as in the emphasis on the recommendation system and its overtones of AI. To me this is a big turn-off. I don't _want_ a chatting system, and I certainly don't want an "intelligent" chatting system. What I want is intelligent conversation. It seems to me you've got the kernel of something that could actually offer me that, which could be genuinely valuable. Focus on that and try to get the system _out_ of the way.

Edit 2: while it's fresh in my memory... I noticed another thought going through my mind which was, "I wonder who is on here that I know from somewhere else", like HN for example. I wonder if people would be willing to link their user names to their names from other communities. I would, if I knew that lots of other people from HN were talking about stuff on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the kind of helpful feedback I was banking on. Thanks much.

Originally there was no recommendation system planned, but once I realized how easy it would be I had some infatuation-based feature creep. Going back to the drawing board with 'don't tell them, show them' as priority 1.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps add a "lobby" room on the dashboard page with no particular topic? That'd show 'em.

Also, showing more tips hides the input box. It prevents people from being sure they're implementing tips right, and adds more complexity to saying things for new users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I rather like it. No idea if it will take off or anything, but it's really nice.

Your approach to user signup is superb.

There should be an explicit "tag this conversation" link. Otherwise nobody will even know that they can do that.

Can I post a link to an ongoing conversation in some other place, like Twitter or, say, here?

The "Theory" page is... a bit too theoretical. I mean, everyone here will get it, but not the mass market. I doubt that many AOL Chat users understand what "asynchronous" means. Don't delete the existing page... just make a slightly simpler, shorter Theory page and relegate the existing text to a second-level "Theory of the Theory" page.

Other than that... it's hard to know what to critique. Many of the essential design features of such a site will only become obvious when it's flooded with traffic or overwhelmed by griefers. That's hard to test. Maybe you should start a really _provocative_ conversation and then post a Digg link to it. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! In a way the signup process is my favorite thing about the site, since there's no process required at all. I love it when I stumble upon a painless method of any kind.

You can post the link from your address bar, but the next step will be to make each tag and conversation a static URL which can be crawled by Google.

The theory page was basically written for the HN and reddit/r/programming audiences, because I wanted to get some serious feedback on the concept itself. In the next month or two everything will be made more palatable.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys! I've been building this app in my spare time. It's based on a simple idea I had over a year ago - somehow after all this time there still has not been a great web 2.0 chatting site to come into existence, so I've been steadily working at it whenever I've had the chance.

You can read my whole spiel at <http://www.circleofconversation.com/#tab=theory>, but basically the idea behind the app is that people like talking to strangers online(like we're doing right now) as long as there is a sufficiently precise topical specifier(like we have here). The app attempts to accomplish this by letting users give their chat rooms tags which fade out over time and then disappear if they aren't refreshed/spoken aloud. They're constantly replaced by now- accurate tags, so ideally every conversation has a very precise set of topical specifiers at all times, making them worth joining.

I'd love to get some feedback on the general concept as well as execution specifics, though the UI is rough and the feature set is basic. Thanks, HN.

P.S. I'm intentionally posting this in the evening to try to avoid any significant traffic, and to give myself time to hot-fox any glaring bugs, since I do client work during the day. I bet this sounds familiar to at least half of HN's readers.

<comment><USER5> The UI definitely needs work.

I didn't completely understand it until reading your comment.

Seems very difficult to get off the ground without a large, extremely active userbase.

I don't use twitter or friendfeed but it looks very similar to it.

Still not sure if I see a real use or appeal for it - I could be wrong. I'd like to see how it plays out after some time.

Domain name is wayyy to long..

Nice work so far though.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I didn't completely understand it until reading your comment.

I'm finding it hard to sum the site up in a phrase, but I know this is important.

>Seems very difficult to get off the ground without a large, extremely active userbase.

Yep, same old problem. I don't have a marketing budget, so I'll just have to try doing it the hard way.

>Domain name is wayyy to long..

At this point in the game it's either made-up words, non-descriptive domains, or descriptive, long domains. I like conversational speech, so I went with the third option. I think it's very easy to remember, which may offset the length. I think it's funny that we consider three words so long when it comes to the web, but I basically agree with what you're saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great concept. I would start by putting everything into the dashboard page. Perhaps borrow from the look and feel of the Wikipedia main page, in terms of fitting everything into four different boxes. The theory page isn't necessary; I know it's only for HN readers, but once the site is good enough the concept will speak for itself (it already does for the most part.) Choose a snappier name. This has the potential to get really big. (The YouTube of conversations?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the notes, I'll take some of these suggestions. The "YouTube of conversations" idea really resonates. Sometimes a simile does far more than a detailed explanation - Command Shift 3's "like Hot or Not except (...) you click on hot websites" is perfect, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good idea and nice start.

Suggestion: Add up-down voting for tags/topics, then rank the tags/topics on a redesigned front page that looks more like HN or Reddit. You could make the site behave like a HN for which all link submissions were self-referring (like this one), and all commenting/conversation happened in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER8> The feedback here is valuable, but leaves out one point which you might not be aware of: an "intelligent chat system" will enjoy about as much widespread success as a poetry board. (Which is not to say that you should stop, or that this isn't valuable.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I really like the idea. A few things I noticed:

Tagging a conversation with a pronoun like "I" will probably means it sticks around forever.

Can you join multiple conversations at once? What happens if two conversations share a tag? Are they merged?

To stop conversations being tagged incorrectly, you could perhaps ask users that join via that tag if it was accurate or not.

It'd be awesome if you could automate tagging of conversations. I'm not sure how many people will be motivated to maintain metadata about their conversations (the only way to find that out is to get more users though).

</comment><comment><USER10> Are conversations archived somewhere? Here's my reasoning:

1\. Some conversation and/or the site gets dugg

2\. Thousands of incoming users waltz in with good karma

3\. Everything goes to hell

Wikipedia, Everything2 et al. have some resilience because the audience is more than just who's using the site at the moment. Dunno if you've thought about that in great detail or not. Also,

* Friend system. Encourages people to band together against the trolls

* Bookmarking

</comment><comment><USER11> "Under construction" is a phrase I have an immediate, strongly negative reaction to. I'm probably not alone. How about "Coming soon"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that's a bit of a GeoCities throwback. Changed it to "in the works," thanks.

<comment><USER12> Is there a need for a such a phrase at all?

I think it's pretty clear websites continually evolve, grow, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really needs a quick way to get your friends in the room. Should actually be very visible and very easy to get them in that room chatting with you.

Perhaps an obviously marked URL to copy/paste or something like that?

</comment><comment><USER14> Typo on the theory page:

"Coupled with an analysis of your actual chatting history, this data lets Circle makes helpful suggestions as to what conversations you're likely to enjoy."

"makes" --> "make"

</comment><comment><USER15> Really cool!! I put all my comments in the chat system. We really need to link this with hacker news so we can discuss things.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to put a downer on things, but this is not going to be useful for me at all. Why should I want to chat with complete strangers about random topics. And why online?

<comment><USER17> Right now, you are here on HN :)

<comment><USER16> Totally different. Socializing is happening around a directed activity here, and it's asynchronous.</comment></comment></comment>


The United States slaughters 1M pigs every 3 days - <AUTHOR> https://publicemails.com/blog/display/1043/The-United-States-slaughters-1-million-pigs-every-3-days <comment><USER2> I am more concerned about the pollution and environmental impact this kind of factory farming and CAFOs are responsible for...</comment>


Even my grandmother got immutability - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/11/28/immutable-nanna/

<comment><USER2> Actually, what grandmother got was something different: the problem of overloading the "=" operator with variable setting. If you instead use, for example, arrows (as Knuth does in TAOCP) the problem goes away, and grandmother is no longer confused.

</comment><comment><USER3> As much as I'd love to imbue his grandmother (and by extension all grandmothers) with innate understanding of some programming principle that some seem to have trouble with I'm afraid this event or at least the authors recounting of this event does not lead to that conclusion.

The grandmother may not have been having trouble with the immutability of X. Her question was not "how can X be anything other than X?" It was "How can X be X+1?". Which could convey the more likely case of the unlearned coder not understanding the order of operation in program flow. I'm sure she understood that X could be assigned a value, I'm sure she even understood that X could be changed--what she was having trouble with, most likely, was how could you use X on the right hand side of the equator? How can you define a value with the value itself (Circular reference). And I can totally relate--when I first learned programming it was something that confused myself at first as well. I hadn't learned that the right hand side of the equator gets evaluated with X being resolved to it's "present" value which is then used to calculate the value and finally stored back in the variable.

I hate to be a downer, it certainly is a fond memory, but the initial supposition is inconclusive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Grandmother parses code as X == X + 1. Hilarity ensues as her confusion of the misapplication of the equals sign from math is later mistakenly attributed to a grasp of immutability.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions that grandmother was possibly a teacher, and it seems reasonable for a schoolteacher to be confused by programming's "variable x" vs. algebra's "unknown x", in addition to the confusion of "assignment operator =".

</comment><comment><USER6> Another grandmother gets thrown under the bus. Grandma as the archetype of computer ignorance is a played out plot device.

<comment><USER7> I've disliked that stereotype for a while.

My mother (who is 68) started off programming with punchcards when she was working on her Masters in Economics, she eventually moved into executive work but still kept up her chops with Basic and Fortran well into the 1990s. Nowadays, she uses VNC to telecommute into work every morning to avoid having to deal with traffic.

If I had married earlier and had kids as soon as some of my schoolmates did --and my kids did the same in turn-- she could have been the great-grandmother of 20+ year olds.

I think we should almost be to the point in computer history where age-based archetypes/stereotypes of computer ignorance can be safely retired.

<comment><USER8> Haha...you've got to be kidding!

Have you ever seen an old person drive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> sounds like she might not have been confused if the bit to the right of the equals sign didn't contain an "X".

in other words, maybe it's not mutability that is confusing her.

...this isn't to say i'm not a huge fan of immutability :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't think is relates to immutability. This is an example of the "=" operator being overloaded for assignment.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to confess that I read this as his grandmother _acquiring_ immutability, the way, say, one might _get_ "+5 health" in a game.

Why you'd want an immutable grandmother, I'll never know.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another nail in the coffin of the claim that imperative programming is more intuitive, persistently asserted without good evidence.

I submit that when people make claims of this sort, what they usually mean is actually "I'm used to doing it this way". Some actual studies of how new programmers learn would be valuable, and allow us to begin to evaluate claims like the above with at least a modicum of objectivity.

<comment><USER2> I don't think that referring to a single anecdote as a "nail in the coffin" of a position while complaining of the lack of "actual studies" in support of that position is terribly consistent.

<comment><USER12> The position I'm attacking is the claim that it's just obvious that imperative programming is more intuitive, not that it _is_ more intuitive. By exhibiting counterexamples to this supposedly obvious assertion, it's shown that it is not in fact obvious. Whether imperative or declarative programming is in fact more intuitive is, of course, not something to be settled by the anecdote give in the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sweat anecdote, however it has even less value than people realise.

If you want to explain an algorithm to Grandma, it's far easier to make her think at cookbook recipes -- X is a cup of sugar, now imagine that at every step you're adding one more cube of sugar to it.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are a few quotes from college I'll never forget. One of them was by my chemistry professor who said, "I have a great deal of respect for the equal sign."

He put one student's homework on the screen. Instead of answering:

      A + B = C
      C + D = E

she took this shortcut:

      A + B = C + D = E

(Variables replaced for simplification.)

It was clear what she intended, but what she ended up with was a total fail.

Funny this post reminded me of a little incident and a great quote so many years ago. To this day, I _still_ have a great deal of respect for the equal sign.

Thank you, Professor State...

[http://sites.allegheny.edu/magazine/fallwinter-2003/best- abo...](http://sites.allegheny.edu/magazine/fallwinter-2003/best-about- allegheny/)

[http://www.memorialsolutions.com/sitemaker/sites/hathew0/obi...](http://www.memorialsolutions.com/sitemaker/sites/hathew0/obit.cgi?user=harold- state)

EDIT: I just realized that Professor State's class was one of the few that actually helped me develop good work habits for life. I once wrote about that here on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1544573>

</comment><comment><USER15> Great example of "Involuntary Memory" : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory>

</comment><comment><USER16> Dijkstra's mother asked the very same question. The story can be found somewhere in the EWD archives[1].

[1] <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/></comment>