Ballmer, is he a problem for Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/05/27/steve-ballmer/

<comment><USER2> Ballmer's greatest failure was not giving Windows Mobile the attention it needed. I might even call it a critical failure. That was Microsoft's core competency and somehow the opportunity was completely blown. If Microsoft put the same commitment in Windows Mobile that it put into Xbox we wouldn't be talking about Android right now.

Everything else under Ballmer's watch is arguably fine. Windows 7 is a great OS. Microsoft has great developer tools for desktop and web. The Xbox has conquered the living room. You could say Microsoft is still missing the whole software as a service thing, but it is positioned to capitalize on it better than Apple and Apple is doing great. It just needed to be a part of the mobile revolution and all would have been forgiven.

EDIT: I also submit a comparison between NASDAQ and MSFT. MSFT more or less tracks the NASDAQ during both the Gates years and the Ballmer years.

[http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...](http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Logarithmic&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1306267200000&chddm=2671823&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:MSFT&cmptdms=0&q=INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC&ntsp=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> The really funny part is that if Bill Gates returns to Microsoft to save it, they would be, once more, copying Apple ;-)

After so many years of Ballmer, I would expect the top two or three tiers of managers to be irreversibly damaged. A newcomer would have to fight a lot to get things done and, probably, replace a whole lot of people. That wouldn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the fact that many of the people who think that Ballmer needs to go because he's "out of touch with the times" are praying for Bill Gates to come back. Is there any evidence that Gates who hasn't worked in the industry day to day for years, would do any better?

</comment><comment><USER5> According to the Article, Greenlight Capital owns 9 million Microsoft Shares.

Steve Balmer owns 333 million shares - which is more than any institutional investor and thirty seven times the ownership of Greenlight. The only person or fund with more is Gates, himself.

[[http://www.dailyfinance.com/company/microsoft- corporation/ms...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/company/microsoft- corporation/msft/nas/institutional-ownership)]</comment>


Pretty Women Are Bad for the Heart - <AUTHOR> http://www.asylum.com/2010/05/03/university-valencia-pretty-women-are-bad-for-cortisol-levels-the-heart/?sms_ss=hackernews <comment><USER2> There was no control in the experiment. This "study" would carry a little more weight if they had also put the sudoku-ers in a room with an "unattractive female" (or just another person for that matter!) and compared the results.

Ugh.

<comment><USER3> I'm hoping that the article simply neglected to mention the control. It's hard to believe that the researchers would be so colossally inept as to forget to have a control group.</comment></comment>


Bloomberg Admits Terminal Snooping - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/bloomberg-admits-terminal-snooping.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Essentially the issue is that the reporters had access to Bloomberg's internal analytics/crm system.

Pretty much every single sophisticated SaaS company in the world collects this data (login frequency, etc.) - it's invaluable for sales, support, debugging, product management, etc. hence it also makes sense that the information is widely available within the firm.

There's obviously an ethical issue in that Bloomberg's reporters shouldn't have had access to that data, but it's worth noting that the information is similar to what everyone else in the SaaS space is collecting.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how many SaaS companies are at the intersection of as many critical business flows as Bloomberg is. And then, amongst those that are, how many of them are tied to full blown news operations.

While I think the green dot/red dot controversy is overblown, the paranoia is driven by the ubiquitous aspect of the terminals combined with the massive number of workflows that are centralized on Bloomberg terminals. Here's a sampling:

* Proprietary email and IM systems integral to interactions with customers and counterparties * Trading systems in virtually every asset class. TOMS, the fixed income system, is the defacto standard for bonds. * One of the top financial news gathering organizations * Best-in-class financial data and analytics

So when you think of what someone could do with access to the system, it almost boggles the mind. Ability to know who is looking at what. Who is saying what to whom. And in certain asset classes, the best possible data on who is buying what. A rogue support person, for example, could do incredible damage to the company. Hopefully they have good mechanisms to control that - the fact that we haven't heard about it thus far is a good sign.

Given the overlap of workflows available on the terminals, plus the relatively low-cost of extra features once you're already paying for the terminal, makes me view Bloomberg as an anti-trust case waiting to happen. I wonder if they think so too - and to feed more paranoia, I've wondered whether that explains why Mayor Bloomberg is in politics. (Either that and/or to promote BGOV - growth in the government sector as wall street retrenches).

<comment><USER2> Bloomberg's main competitors are Thompson Reuters and News Corporation, both of whom are substantially larger in revenues and market cap than Bloomberg (although you could argue News Corps financial arm is smaller). So it seems unlikely they'd be considered for an anti-trust case.

<comment><USER4> Thompson Reuters financial revenues are comparable to Bloomberg's (I think Bloomberg might be slightly ahead of them); Thompson Reuters also operates in a bunch of businesses Bloomberg doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In retrospect I suppose this seems like it would be obvious that they'd use client data this way. Bloomberg terminals are a weird beast. I don't have lots of experience with them, but from what I've seen they're an amazing example of the term "network effect".

They're basically leased windows computers with a dedicated application that displays realtime market data. They run about $20k/yr. They come with a funky keyboard, and the app has all sorts of messaging and searching functions into a wide variety of markets. Typically, the average user uses only a tiny fraction of the capability they have via these terminals (the pork belly futures trader doesn't ever bother with high tech semiconductor trades). Because everybody is on a Bloomberg terminal, and it has a dedicated messaging system, you need a Bloomberg terminal to chat with other traders to make deals - hence the network effect. It also marks you as a "serious" player, even small offices with a couple guys will have these terminals.

Since Bloomberg has total vertical integration, from data source to keyboard, it means they collect, or have the potential to collection incredible amounts of information about their user community. Every chat, every query, every trade, every login, logoff, every keypress.

So the unsurprising question is, why wouldn't other parts of Bloomberg have access to some/all of this data? And even if everybody was terribly offended by that, what are they going to do? They're pretty much locked in at this point.

 _edit_ relevant WP <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal>

<comment> grey-area _So the unsurprising question is, why wouldn't other parts of Bloomberg have access to some/all of this data? And even if everybody was terribly offended by that, what are they going to do? They're pretty much locked in at this point._

Bloomberg are playing with fire here, partly because they're almost a monopoly, and partly because they could be so easily replaced on the quotes side (if not on the financial news market side). Technology has moved on and exchanges are more open with data than they used to be, and this is probably only going to continue - I'm sure they'd love to cut Bloomberg out of the picture and charge their own fees separately.

There is no justification for Bloomberg journalists to be poking into private account information about Bloomberg clients - the potential for abuse of this position is huge, apart from anything else the journalists could use it for insider trading, which is of course illegal. They could also take information from one trader and sell it to a competitor, there is huge scope for abuse, and the only way to avoid it is to have very clear (and tight) boundaries for the usage of stats collected.

In the same way that newspapers have a firewall between editorial and advertisers, to try to stop advertisers influencing editorial, Bloomberg should have a firewall between the division which sells financial information and that which investigates financial news in order to get that information. I find it astonishing that so many people are defending this sort of privacy invasion as standard practice. It's not acceptable to use information such as queries and logins to measure specific individual actions and find out (for example) how active a particular trader has been in a certain market, then spread that information. It's fine to keep these stats and anonymise them in order to generate statistics about usage, but quite another thing to use them to track individuals and trading patterns. If Google for example used the content of private emails from a CEO to target companies to sell adverts to, there would be outrage, and rightly so.

<comment><USER2> Exchanges charge their own fees in any case which Bloomberg passes on to the end client with no markup, hence they don't really care about the fact that it goes through Bloomberg (in-fact because Bloomberg make it easy to subscribe to new exchanges Bloomberg is probably a net positive for the exchanges).

Insider trading is a risk, but no-more so than with everyone else in the financial industry. If you work in finance typically there's pretty tight restrictions on what you're allowed to trade on a personal account (i.e. no shorting, no holding equities for less than 30 days, etc.) and you have to register any non-blind investments (both so things like insider trading can be tracked but also to prevent conflicts of interest).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bloomberg LP grew up in a different era, when a client of a communication service had no expectation of privacy from the company running it. You think telegraph operators weren't snooping on what was being transmitted? Do you know what the song _Wichita Lineman_ is about? Think the mailman doesn't keep tabs on who's subscribing to Playboy?

Times have changed, though, and the expectation now is that users have absolute privacy from their service provider except on a need-to-know basis, and Bloomberg is going to have their work cut out for them adapting their systems and culture.

<comment><USER7> If the mailman was also the editor of the local newspaper and was using his knowledge of your subscriptions to source stories about you, that'd be much more in line with what was going on here.

The problem is that Bloomberg sells data services to tens of thousands of companies while also running a media company that sells reporting to news organizations. You can't mix those two and expect people to be happy about it.

<comment> UVB-76 I may be wrong, but the impression I got from this article was not so much that Bloomberg reporters were using the data to source stories _about_ their clients, so much as using the data to connect with their clients and use them as sources.

Whereas reporters from other news organizations would have had to ring around and fight to speak to a relevant source, Bloomberg reporters had direct contact details at their fingertips, as well as information telling them exactly when they are logged in at their Bloomberg terminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll be sincerely surprised if anything ultimately comes of this besides a slap on the wrist. Firms are so dependent on Bloomberg to determine whether their numbers are right that I can't imagine anyone migrating elsewhere outside of very small sectors. Literally no one else has the coverage and accuracy.

<comment><USER9> Tradingscreen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone unfamiliar with these 'terminals' the OP was extremely confusing. Evidently, reporters had access to authorization timestamps of accounts for a system that reported stock prices and new.

No credentials were exposed.

What's the issue?

<comment><USER11> Bloomberg has information about what you're looking at as well (far more than just stock info; a wealth of information about just about every market & market-relevant news). If you can tell what someone is looking at you can easily infer they have a position in that market, which is very valuable (and very proprietary) information. Furthermore you could look at overall flows and make decent predictions about, eg, future volatility.

It had been speculated that Bloomberg employees were looking at the actual content of searches, which would be a death blow to their reputation as a trusted platform. This story is Bloomberg saying "Yes, we gave access to info to employees we shouldn't have, but it was actually pretty banal."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> how did gs find out?

<comment><USER13> [http://m.nypost.com/p/news/business/goldman_outs_bloomberg_s...](http://m.nypost.com/p/news/business/goldman_outs_bloomberg_snoops_ed7SopzVLaO02p9foS7ncM)</comment></comment>


Facebook just killed their startup with Moments. Now what? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/3a0o40/facebook_just_killed_my_startup_with_moments_now/ <comment><USER2> I really do not like this mentality among CS people. So what if fb has a similar product ? Do we expect to see monopolies all over software ?

Linux was created in a world with millions of OSes.

Even today there is no shortage of demand for creating freaking OSes.

In the grand scheme of things we are only getting started when it comes to software as an industry.

Its like after the first guy who created wheels using stones. If we stopped re-inventing the wheel, we would be stuck with wheels made out of stones.

The first program that I wrote ever was a simple bubble sort. It was really shitty code but It lead me to do a lot of original programmer later on.

This young man makes something original and its great ! FB needs as much competition as they can get, so does reddit, hacker news and silicon valley.

Don't let the MBAs tell you the world is an zero-sum game.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Takes me back to the good old days when Kiko was killed by Google Calendar

What would happen if someone were to try a startup doing what Kiko did ?

or for that matter, repeating any of the startups that users loved but were acquired and killed by Yahoo or Google ?

If I were to create (yet another) photo sharing site, what obstacles would I face because of Google already having Picasa/Photo and Yahoo owning Flickr ?

</comment><comment><USER4> Takes me back to the good old days when Kiko was killed by Google Calendar. It sucks but at least you've gained some skills and validation for your idea!

</comment><comment><USER5> Facebook's new features haven't killed anything in a long time, if ever. Remember Beacon? Paper? Poke? Etc

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or can they still fill a demand by focusing on privacy?</comment>


Unmanned Aircraft to be Prohibited in America's National Parks - <AUTHOR> http://home.nps.gov/news/release.htm?id=1601 <comment><USER2> Actually the policy sounds quite sensible and doesn't sound like it will lead to a permanent ban--just a policy about how you can or cannot annoy your fellows in a commons.

As the sky gets fuller, it will be less and less likely that users will be able to get away with acting like they are the only ones flying.

<comment><USER3> I agree this was a great call by the National Park Service, however I hope it does become a permanent ban- the only people using drones in the National Park should be Park Rangers.

Civilians have no place operating drones anywhere near a nature preserve.

<comment><USER4> Allow me to disagree slightly. If I'm on El Capitan in Yosemite I might think it was a stellar idea to get a picture of me and my spouse from the perspective of just _off_ the face. That would both put me in the picture and put this amazing rock formation in it as well. Currently you can only do that if you hire a helicopter.

'Getting the right shot' kills a lot of tourists (I wish I knew exactly how many), if they were using drones to position the camera into that potentially dangerous position they might not die.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that you're interrupting the view and the serenity for others while you take that photo. It doesn't take too many people doing that and all of a sudden, the airspace of the park would be full of drones, spoiling it for everyone, a classic case of a tragedy of the commons.

How frustrating would it be if you couldn't get that nice photo without someone elses drone in it from your flying drone?

I live near the Banff National Park in Canada, and it's a continuous game of tug-of-war for the wardens trying to decide what activities to allow in the park. With no restrictions, the place would quickly be overrun. When the point is to experience the wilderness, you have to be very aware that some activities can very quickly, and with very few people, destroy that experience for everyone.

<comment><USER6> I can see making the tourist vistas be drone free. Some of these parks are huge. Operating a quiet drone a mile from the nearest other human diminishes no one else's experience.

The park service allows automobiles, needlessly loud motorcycles, generators for RVs (within limits), and any number of greater nuisances. (Including the other 20,000 people who came the the Grand Canyon south rim on the day I did.)

<comment><USER7> > The park service allows automobiles, needlessly loud motorcycles, generators > for RVs (within limits), and any number of greater nuisances.

And they restrict where all those things can go, too. If they restricted drones the same way, they might as well ban them outright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I get the complaints about noise and potential danger. Some of these drones are potentially lethal! When I'm flying my drone, I am always very careful to look for areas without unaware bystanders and where I won't be a nuisance. For the more advanced drones being built and bought today, they typically use an autopilot with a GPS and barometric sensor to assist hovering and positioning. If any part of the system fails, it can very easily come crashing down or even worse, become a "fly-away" and land who-knows-where.

Given these issues, I do understand the reasoning behind the ban. At the same time, I cringe because it will likely be years before one will be able to get a permit to fly in a national park again, and given some of the footage I've shot so far from my drone, I would have loved the opportunity to shoot locations to which I couldn't walk or hike.

If you want to see an example of what one of them looks like and what they can do, take a look here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDF3-35aekk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDF3-35aekk)

</comment><comment><USER9> As long as there are reasonable exceptions for legitimate scientific work (and I'm sure there are).

In Yellowstone, there's a scenic overlook where you can look through a telescope at a distant hot springs. The springs have a thin crust over boiling mud, so humans cannot enter them. I can see valuable scientific research on such areas using inexpensive drones.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was in Zion National Park about a month ago and overheard two rangers talking about these drones. At the time, it was illegal to take off or land inside the park but, as they did not control the airspace, you could fly them in the air.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm guessing this won't be the last place unmanned aircraft get banned. Probably the places they can actually be flown might eventually be fewer than the places they are banned.

In fact, I am guessing as the technology matures and inevitable problems arise because of drones, rather than addressing the problems and working out a solution the first response will generally be....."Ban It!". This might change when/if demonstrable public benefits (beyond a guy taking some pictures) arise.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a shame. I think they would be useful for preventing poaching.

<comment><USER13> Is poaching really an issue in USA? Honest question. Doesn't seem too common [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=poaching+US+national+parks) More plants and trees than animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There should be an exception for search and rescue operations.

<comment><USER15> There already is, if you read the article.

"The National Park Service may use unmanned aircraft for administrative purposes such as search and rescue, fire operations and scientific study. These uses must also be approved by the associate director for Visitor and Resource Protection."

<comment><USER14> Oops, the one article I didn't read this month. :S

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thats a bummer for model airplane enthusiasts

</comment><comment><USER17> i am all for this ban.

but how are they going to enforce this? drones will increasingly be able to flown from miles away.

are they going to shoot them down?

</comment><comment><USER18> put a string on it and call it a kite.

now if the unmanned air craft were silent and didn't spook wildlife I could see not have a restriction

</comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't this not effect anything if you fly over 500ft AGL?

</comment><comment> shawn-butler Yes, because you will use "public" lands and enjoy them in exactly and only in the way we tell you to.

This is just a precursor to them selling a permit for $1000 a day or something.

<comment><USER20> How right you are. Why, I should be allowed to drive however I want on "public" roads, because they're for the public. What a fantastic world that would be.

<comment> shawn-butler You can drive however you like on "public" roads so long as you are not a harm to yourself or others. You can go where you like, when you like and drive your choice of vehicle.

Please explain to me how a UAV is a harm to someone in national parks.

PS to those down voting me (for as usual on HN no clear reason whatsoever other than disagreement) that the national park service has been using UAS for years. I'm sure their use is "safe" and will continue for years to come.

[http://www.nps.gov/fire/aviation/safety/unmanned-aerial- syst...](http://www.nps.gov/fire/aviation/safety/unmanned-aerial-systems.cfm)

The FAA has been handing out exemptions to its ban on UAV to sister federal agencies and denying the public fair use.</comment></comment></comment>


Software philosophy: Release early, release often vs polished releases - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/articles/software-philosophy-release-early-release-often-vs-polished-releases/ The world had cars, cameras and movies, much before Software. So, how and why did people got accustomed to this way of life, when it comes to Software? Will you accept if your new car, in its "version 1.0″ doesn't speed up beyond 60? Will you accept if the car manufacturer promises a free "engine update" in the "near future"? <comment><USER2> Another week, another false dichotomy article on HN.

If there's an inverse correlation between the speed of deployment and the quality of your software, you're doing it wrong.

The Continuous Delivery philosophy is borrowed from Lean Manufacturing, and a fundamental tenet of that movement is "Build Quality In." In fact Lean is nearly synonymous with TQM, or Total Quality Management. If you've separated the two, then you've missed the entire point.

This tenet is carried over into the software world by Martin Fowler in his book Continuous Delivery, as well as all of the major advocates of lean software processes, for instance David Anderson and the Poppendiecks in their highly influential series of books on Lean Software.

Essential to a successful continuous deployment process is unit testing, continuous integration and built-in testing processes all along the way to feature deployment. These should be focused on quality all along the way: that's the point of continuous deployment, to allow for focused feature development that is highly tested and can be released with higher confidence than the old method of multiple feature release, which are heavy, harder to test and have more integration concerns.

The point of fast releases should _never_ be to allow for "shitty software," but rather to deliver features that users can enjoy as soon as possible, create a process where deployments become highly automated, low-risk events, and gather feedback early and often on the experience of users with finished _polished_ features so that effective product evaluation is happening constantly and the company can adapt quicker to new data and new trends.

A quick perusal of even the first chapter of _any_ of the major volumes on Continuous Delivery should clear this up:

<http://martinfowler.com/snips/201006021426.html> [http://www.amazon.com/Lean- Software-Development-Agile-Toolki...](http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Software- Development-Agile- Toolkit/dp/0321150783/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322492548&sr=8-1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Lean-Software- Development...](http://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Lean-Software-Development- Concept/dp/0321437381)

And there's a fantastic presentation by David Anderson on Kanban on InfoQ, which nicely illustrates why quality is one of the major reasons you should consider a rapid release process like Kanban:

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/kanban-for-software>

<comment><USER3> Can you point to any examples of high quality software products created using the methodologies you mention?

<comment><USER2> Offhand I can think of a few: ThoughtWorks uses it on most of their projects afaik. Github I believe does as well. They published an interesting blog on their deployment process a couple of months ago.

<http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html>

Where I work at LivingSocial the web application is deployed daily, sometimes dozens of times a day. I've recently taken over the Android project's infrastructure and we're in the process of implementing Continuous Delivery for that app as well.

David Anderson gives examples of implementing it at both Microsoft and Corbis, Bill Gates' other software company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case, you can't access the article...

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.mugunthkumar.com/articles/software- philosophy-release-early-release-often-vs-polished- releases/&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&strip=1)

<comment><USER5> Here's a better readable version of the cached article, thanks to Readability: <http://www.readability.com/articles/o9rjarrr>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expected this article to just recover some old material, but it actually raises some interesting points.

In particular, working on games, I believe (like with films), I don't think "release early, release often" is a good idea.

It might work with massive multiplayer games, where users tend to keep re- exploring the same content, but in general with games once someone has played a game once they don't tend to want to play it again.

I tried "release early, release often" with an iPhone game I wrote, and it was a mistake. The biggest problem is that users get angry if you take away, or significantly change, content from users. That's reasonable, but it means once you have added a level it is hard to take it away, even if you have a new, better level to replace it with.

<comment><USER7> > In particular, working on games, I believe (like with films), I don't think > "release early, release often" is a good idea.

Although, as a counterpoint "release early, release often" works well for Minecraft.

<comment><USER8> It worked great for Minecraft: many ideas from the mod community were siphoned back into the main game.

The iPhone does make this difficult, as a release usually takes one week to go through Apple's approval system. Therefore you can't make mistake today and fix it tomorrow.

This is what the Android market is good for. However the stores are different, so lessons learned on the Market may not suit your iPhone audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The software successes I see in the App Store take a two-pronged approach: launch with a polished 1.0, but then iterate quickly with similarly well-built .1s, .2s, etc. The upside of releasing multiple updates after a good 1.0 is out the door (on the App Store at least) is that your app shows up more frequently in the App Store Updates area so if people haven't used your app in awhile, they may be incensed to give it another try. A downside of releasing too often is that all the great reviews you got for the 1.0 will be gone once enough reviews for 1.1 are in. If all you did was drop a bugfix into 1.1, you may not receive as many glowing reviews and your overall app rating will drop. This really sucks, but it's a reality of the ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER10> Expectations from software are lower than other products like cars, televisions. A car breaking down in the middle of a drive to work is far more "severe" an incident than Internet Explorer hanging and crashing. Further, software engineering as a field is very very young, with a far lower barrier to entry, resulting in products and processes which are much less evolved and mature compared to other industries. I think these are important factors why software tends to have lower quality bars than cars or physical products.

<comment><USER11> "[O]ther products like cars, televisions" include embedded control software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Release Early/Often example describes a situation of releasing a product that does not have all the features of its competitors: "The Windows Operating System, in the initial version (1.0) did not support overlapping windows which was a breakthrough feature on the then contemporary Macintosh."

Identically, the Polished Release example also describes a situation of releasing a product that does not have all the features of its competitors: The first version of iOS "(then called as iPhone OS), did not even have MMS"

Seems like the author didn't pick a great example to demonstrate a Polished Release.

<comment><USER13> His example outside of software[1] is not the best either. Movies do have "versions", they are called _cuts_ ; an example of multiple published cuts for a movie is Blade Runner.

[1]> Every single release of a movie, whether it is The Jurassic Park and its sequels or The Matrix and its sequels or Steve Jobs's own Toy Story and its sequels never had "versions".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Releasing well-polished version of products makes sense most of the time. With all due respect to movie directors, engineers, software developers and game designers you _mostly_ know how to do a movie, a car, an MP3 player, or yet another take on video editing program.

Sometimes, however, things are so new that the only way to get to the good result fast (or, to get to the good result at all) you need to release early, release often. Lotus 1-2-3 was such a huge improvement over paper sheets and such a new idea that it totally warranted "release early, release often" mantra.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think release early, release often works well in some cases, especially for pre-release software. If you're working on the initial versions of something, that quick iterative process is key. Once you've released, however, you have an obligation to your users, so it becomes less of a valid mantra.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting article. Well done sir!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site ycombinatored. Please use Google cache.</comment>


Ask YC: Moonvertising, is it coming? - <AUTHOR>

There is a billboard in my home town that has a cryptic message about watching the next full moon, and it provided a website to go along with it: moonvertising.com.
It appears that Rolling Rock Beer is behind this somehow. I was curios to see if it was a marketing hoax or if it was actually possible (and going to happen).
My question to HN is this: Is something like this possible? How would it work, and what would be required for it to work? I did some googling and found out that Coca Cola wanted to try this once but was prohibited because of the risk of the lasers blinding pilots or having other adverse consequences. (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/departments/features/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003556617)
What do you guys think about this? Following Coca Cola's lessons, would a laser fired from a satellite work? <comment><USER2> Hmm. Back of the envelope calculation:

In order to project something on the moon to have it visible during a full moon, you'd want the projection to be at least as bright as the sunlight hitting the full moon (about 1 kW per square metre).

In order to have a readable logo you'd probably need it to cover at least, say, 1% of the moon's visible surface area (about 9 million square km).

So that's 9e12 * 1000 * 0.01, or about 9e13 watts, which happens to be about fifty times more power than is produced by all the power plants in the world put together.

So I'm thinking that's a no.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't have to be visible to the naked eye. For Coke's purposes it would be enough for it to show up in highly magnified photos. And once the logo gets smaller you can project it into the shadow of a crater rim. You'd want to put a small logo next to a crater anyway, since otherwise it wouldn't look moony enough in a magnified shot.

...this feels alarmingly like what I do in my day job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I think they actually had it in mind to have it visible to the naked eye. Imagine a perfectly round, full moon with the coke bottle right in the center. I think that's what they were going for.

<comment><USER4> If someone built a laser powerful enough to illuminate tens of thousands of square miles, advertising would be the least of our worries.

<http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/SamuelBernard1.shtml>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We thought about something better a few years back.

If you have a satellite with a reflective surface of roughly 1m2 you can make it look like a star when it is in low earth orbit. The reflective surface can be made out of space grade cellofan, and unfolded when it reaches orbit. Now if you have 50 satellites like this and are able to position them relative to one another (this is the tricky part) you can make a logo with 50 stars that will blaze across the night sky. You can even reposition them to create other logos.

We did a short feasibility study, and it is possible, but quite expensive.

Would be pretty cool though..

</comment><comment><USER6> "Drink enough beer and you'll see our logo on the moon"

Being able to use the moon as an advertising billboard would be an interesting achievement. I somehow doubt it will happen anytime soon though and I'm curious of other details like who is in charge of regulating advertising on the moon?

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of this old joke:

\- Mr. President! The Russians have landed on the moon, and they are busy painting it red!

\- No problem. When they are done, we will just write "Drink Coca-Cola" in big white letters.

</comment><comment><USER8> maybe some kind of orbiting device that filters light...like shadow puppets on the moon. ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you build your MVP - <AUTHOR>

Share the tech stack you use or suggest to build quick MVPs for your ideas? <comment><USER2> minimum money maximum functionality</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get over the pain of refund requests? - <AUTHOR> Every time I get a refund request I feel like I've been personally attacked -- often they're customers where its incredibly obvious that they're intentionally exploiting my favorable refund policy, and as such I shouldn't be insulted, but still, I feel it.
My refund rate is fairly low (less than 2% -- I've talked to other vendors in my niche and they report much higher refund rates). I have a prewritten response to refund requests that asks for feedback and offers a range of solutions -- in fact, it stops about 50% of refunds from being actually wanted. Its the other 50% that are mostly not in good faith anyway that are really bothering me.
I know I'm not alone here. Should I just be paying someone else to deal with my billing stuff entirely to separate my emotions from how things are going on the sales front? <comment><USER2> Sell more. You'll end up issuing more refunds, and eventually get used to it. It will stop hurting eventually.

When I first started <http://anynewbooks.com>, the occasional un-subscription or "Enough! Stop sending me emails." message would bother me a little.

Today, I don't even blink at unsubscribe notices. And when I get the occasional "Remove me!!!!111!!!!", I simply unsubscribe the person who doesn't understand that an unsubscribe link is provided.

No big deal. I know that refunds are a little more personal, but like most things in life, you get used to it. You'll grow a thicker skin.

Just focus on selling more copies of your product. And focus on improving your product for all those people who didn't ask for a refund.

If after issuing dozens of refunds you still can't get over it, then outsource it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have issued dozens, probably about 200 at this point, I'd estimate. Selling more is always good advice though, +rep.

I'm in an extremely niche market for my best selling stuff, so selling more is likely going to involve new products. Something I am working on, of course. :)

<comment><USER2> Got it. Here is what I'd do.

1) Direct requestd for refund to a specific form on a page.

2) Have a virtual assistant receive such emails.

3) Instruct such assistant to issue legitimate requests for refund under whatever process you currently follow.

4) Ask her to forward bona-fide feedback to you. So that you can use it to improve your product.

5) At the end of each week or month, ask for stats.

This should prevent you from dealing with the issue first-hand, while still figuring out any real issue.

BTW, are you an Italian developer living in Canada, too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Run the numbers, calculate the percentage of your income lost, and just consider it another unavoidable cost of doing business. I imagine you don't __like __paying Paypal, Google Checkout, or merchant account transaction fees, but I also imagine you don't feel personally slighted at having to pay them. Put people exploiting your refund policy in the same bucket.

If this is a subscription service, automate the refund process such that you can you can send a single email with a link that will let them provide feedback, cancel their service, and refund their money.

If you're selling software bits consider a serial number system that will allow you to remotely disable people who have requested refunds. Also, keep your refund policy but stop advertising it. This way you prevent bottom feeders from even knowing it's an option. If you notice this is costing you more sales than you gain, go back to advertising it and re-read paragraph one.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it sucks, but I'd keep doing it yourself for a few reasons for both refunds or even folks who want to cancel your service after some time (assuming its subscription-based):

1\. It'll offer you an opportunity to get feedback which can help make your product better.

2\. It can turn a hater into a net promoter if you do it right.

3\. Direct outreach from the founder of a company makes your firm more human (not sure what industry you're in but in ours, people really appreciate it). It may not turn the "gamers" into buyers, but if you believe most people are good, they may be less inclined to game if you're not just some "evil business"

And although I also sometimes remember rejection more than successes, I find these requests motivate me.

Note: I've got no sense of volume you're dealing with so I'll caveat the above with that if it's becoming a time-suck.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a 'no questions asked' refund policy? Do you still ask questions as of to why?

We do have such a policy, but we do ask 'why?' in a manner that aims to clarify and improve our service. A subset of the users are nice enough to explain and sometimes addressing that root cause cuts refund rates by about 25%.

Btw, would you mind sharing the points in your refund response email template? I would assume the effectiveness would depend on the nature of product, but it'll still be educational me thinks.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get used to it. I think paying someone else to deal with billing stuff is a fine idea, but don't distance yourself too much. I could easily delegate out the "refund reply" job, but I choose to do it personally.

It's really easy to turn a refund request into a repeat customer. If you're getting people "gaming" the system, change your policy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I offer an unconditional refund policy at my service business, and I've had to deal with the same feelings. In my case, I would often spend a few hours working personally with the client, only to refund their money afterward.

However, I continue to offer the policy because my refund rate is low (about 1-2%) and the increase in sales due to the policy is substantially higher than that. The way that I see it, giving out a few refunds is a cost of doing business, and I don't begrudge refunds any more than I begrudge taxes, merchant fees or rent increases. Looking at refunds mathematically takes some of the pain out of paying them.

I'm also somewhat comforted by the fact that a refund policy is a way to resolve genuine client dissatisfaction: In my view, giving refunds to undeserving people is far preferable to clients actually leaving dissatisfied and possibly badmouthing my company.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could you explain this a little more:

"Its the other 50% that are mostly not in good faith anyway that are really bothering me." particularly "not in good faith"

</comment><comment><USER9> Consider it this way: a lot of less successful startups and service providers would _love_ to be issuing refunds!

</comment><comment><USER10> console yourself with the knowledge that handling a refund is better than a dealing with a credit card chargeback.

</comment><comment><USER11> The answer is simple: yes. If you find dealing with purchase support emotionally stressful, definitely outsource it. Just make sure you receive weekly reports so you can keep your eye on trends.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are these repeat refunds or just one-time customers? Also, are you sure of the reason for the refunds is what is bothering you and not that the money from the sale was already spent?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its certainly not that the money is already spent. I'm in a fairly good position right now with respect to that.

</comment></comment><comment> general-marty Refund is good. I hate chargeback!

</comment><comment><USER13> You need to develop a thicker skin. It's just business.

<comment><USER14> Except nothing is as personal as business.</comment></comment>


Do's and Don'ts of #FollowFriday - <AUTHOR> http://mikedesjardins.us/wordpress/2009/07/the-one-where-i-rant-about-followfriday-dos-and-donts/

<comment><USER2> I have just one Don't! Don't follow people blindly. Unless you find them interesting, don't follow them.

Don't follow so many people that you cannot participate in conversations. While twitter is good as a one way broadcast medium, it is much better as a conversation tool. Especially short conversations.</comment>


Category Theory for Programmers  by Bartosz Milewski - <AUTHOR> http://www.blurb.com/b/9008339-category-theory-for-programmers <comment><USER2> pdf here: [https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp- pdf/](https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf/)

related HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372856)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Order it today and you can get a 25% discount with discount code QUICK25.</comment>


Netflix Roulette API - <AUTHOR> http://netflixroulette.net/api/

<comment><USER2> So is this information scraped from the Netflix website or is this using/relaying the official API that used to exist from Netflix but is now closed to new applicants?

Either way I don't see how Netflix would let this site continue. The domain name containing their brand name probably just makes it more likely to happen.

<comment><USER3> [http://andrew.codeusa.net/post/83792164852/things-i-didnt- ex...](http://andrew.codeusa.net/post/83792164852/things-i-didnt-expect-to- happen-today) This is why (I'm friends with the developer)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How programmable is an Android phone, really? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not thinking of the apps, so much as how 'open' the basic operation of the phone is for users who want to hack it around. I'm struck by this engadget story http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/02/motorola-milestone-does-what-droidont/ where they point out that a Euro version of the Droid has multitouch, which is missing in the US, perhaps because of a patent situation with Apple. When I first heard of Android I was attracted by the idea of a totally programmable phone, which might allow the user to implement thing the carrier doesn't necessarily offer - like call blocking, for example, or custom behavior in response to incoming emails from various people. As things are, it seems like apps float on top of a more closed-off level of firmware.<p>Any Android developers out there care to share their insights? <comment><USER2> If you buy the Android Dev Phone from Google, you get full support for building and installing Android from source. The source code includes the kernel, libraries, and applications - except for a few closed-source apps from Google (Maps, GMail, Google sync providers) or added by carriers.

Every phone sold by a carrier (at least, all the ones I know of) is TiVoized. That is, the user does not have root access and there is no supported way to modify or reflash the system partition. However, for most models the community have discovered ways for owners to bypass these restrictions and jailbreak their devices. Once this is done, you can install modified OS builds.

Even on a stock, non-rooted phone, Android applications are less restricted than, say, iPhone applications. You can install an application over USB or HTTP. (Unlike the iPhone you do not need any sort of certification or third- party signature.) With user confirmation, applications can override standard functionality. For example, you can write your own home screen or dialer or email app and then use it to replace the built-in one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for the content-rich reply.</comment></comment>


How to visualize a Formula 1 race - <AUTHOR> http://mihafeus.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-visualize-formula-1-race.html?spref=fb

<comment><USER2> This is what you get if you connect to the F1 live timing. It's live (as it says) and updated in real-time during the race:

<http://www.formula1.com/live_timing/live_timing.html>

I always have that open during a race, because you get a lot more detail from that than from the commentators. Some camera shots of the pit lane wall show exactly that screen.</comment>


List of Telnet-accessible Systems (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lights.ca/hytelnet/oth/oth000.html <comment><USER2> CDNow.com was an online retailer. The company was founded in February 1994 by twin brothers Jason Olim and Matthew Olim of Ambler, Pennsylvania. Initially launched as a Telnet service in August 1994, CDNow became a retail website in September 1994.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, CDNow started before Amazon despite later being merged into Amazon.

I used to buy CDs through CDNow using Telnet in 1994-1995.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside from a variety of MUDs (see topmudsites.com for a bunch), one of my favorite Telnet destinations is HORIZONS ([https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi)).

> This tool provides a web-based limited interface to JPL's HORIZONS system > which can be used to generate ephemerides for solar-system bodies. Full > access to HORIZONS features is available via the primary telnet interface.

<comment><USER5> Came here to post this one. I've had some seriously awesome times messing around with this service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikimedia has a telnet gateway with a TOR hidden service: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Telnet_gateway](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Telnet_gateway)

</comment><comment><USER7> OK, I bit the bullet, scraped all the webpages, and tried all of them in a loop.

\-- None work. --

Sorry.

However, it was interesting to observe that some of the domains do still actually resolve.

\--

Here's the general idea I used (I think this is all of the commands), in case anyone is curious.

      $ wget http://www.lights.ca/hytelnet/oth/oth000.html
      $ mkdir x
      $ cd x

      $ wget $(grep -o ']\+' ../oth000.html |\
        sed 's,<a href=,http://www.lights.ca,' |\
        grep oth)

      $ grep '^TELNET ' * | cut -d' ' -f2 | while IFS=: read -a x; do
          echo -n "${x[0]}: ";
          dig +noall +answer A ${x[0]} | sed -n '/IN\tA/s/.*IN\tA\t//p' | tr '\n' ' ';
          echo; done | tee workingdomains.txt

      $ grep '^TELNET ' * | cut -d' ' -f2 | while IFS=: read -a x; do
          grep -q "${x[0]}: [^$]" workingdomains.txt || continue; echo "${x[0]}";
          ncat -w 5 -v ${x[0]} ${x[1]:-23}; echo ---; done

Not perfect by any means, others will likely have much simpler ideas, but it worked, I guess.

The first grep command spits out the list of working domains and may be of interest.

The command is blind to the three straight IP addresses in the HTML files, which I tested manually (also didn't work) for completeness.

</comment><comment><USER8> Until a few years ago, a lot of freenets (like the 'AzTec' one) were still online and publicly accessible. It was always fun to roam those in search of some forgotten gems.

</comment><comment><USER9> List needs to be amended with StarWars over telnet:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl ([http://lifehacker.com/373571/watch-star-wars- in-text-via-tel...](http://lifehacker.com/373571/watch-star-wars-in-text-via- telnet))

<comment><USER10> I like to imagine a world where that is the only copy.

</comment></comment><comment> d-crane My favorite telnet destination, and one of the few net destinations I still visit ~5 years later, is telehack.

telnet telehack.com

I've seen it mentioned a few times on HN, but only intermittently. I know they've recently added a system to exchange files (including BASIC programs, iirc!) with other users, which is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER11> SDF still provides a free shell:

ssh://firstname.lastname@example.com

[https://sdf.org/](https://sdf.org/)

<comment><USER12> nit: SSH != Telnet

<comment><USER13> Until about a month ago, new account creation was still through telnet, but in this "mobile first" age, that didn't make much sense anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tried 5 of them randomly picked. None worked. Guess this is more for historical value.

There's also what looks to be an Apache SSI error at the top and bottom of the page: [an error occurred while processing this directive]

</comment><comment><USER15> I like modems. How feasible is it to run actual, real modems over IP-based network? Sampling audio at one end and playing it back on the other. We could have the old BBSs back. That would be great.

<comment><USER16> [http://iaxmodem.sourceforge.net/](http://iaxmodem.sourceforge.net/)

I ran a business on this, it works fine.

<comment><USER15> Yeah that's a software modem. I meant using real modems over internet. I know, makes no sense really. This is only nostalgia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pong and Tetris playable via Telnet

        telnet milek7.pl

</comment><comment><USER16> telnet bbs.l0pht.com # worked in 1997!</comment>


The Toxoplasma of Rage (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ <comment><USER3> | Under Moloch, everyone is irresistibly incentivized to ignore the things that unite us in favor of forever picking at the things that divide us in exactly the way that is most likely to make them more divisive.

In social networks the leverage point in eliminating toxoplasma from your life are the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense in your in-group, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your feeds/circles of influence.

I wrote more of efficient defense systems in the age of attention at [https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention](https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention) .

<comment><USER4> So the solution is to make the bubble impregnable? The medicine sounds worse than the disease to me.

Thing is, there are bad ideas spreading out there, and you should learn of their existence less they grow out of control with nobody knowing/caring.

Conflict is a regulating tool in human species (and not only for our species). Wishing it away is an utopia that like all others will end up dystopian if put into practice.

<comment><USER3> Your attention is a scarce resource. A basic point here, is that rage eats your attention for breakfast, and by cost of opportunity, bubbles you into your tribe. By cutting out rage & related weeds, you can actually expose yourself to a significantly larger, and more diverse set of viewpoints.

Conflict as a regulation tool might have worked for our evolutionary ancestors, where resolution can be swiftly found and incentives re-aligned; however, if you reward conflict, the modern machine can generate an endless supply of it, on the tap. The correct solution is to shift the incentives, and reward with your attention the kind of stuff you want to see growing.

<comment><USER4> I think first of all, conflict rewards itself, no? The conflict has a winner. What you are talking about (and the original article) is about fabricated fake conflicts. Well these ones have winners as well - the ones who fabricate them at least. And if you are on the receiving end of these outrages you are kind of forced to win it. And in doing so you might crush those who overextended their rage doing society a service.

Lots more could be said, but to keep it short I believe we can't simply ignore it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes. This I can wholeheartedly agree with. Which makes me sad, because it means social and news media usually works _against_ fixing the issues which most of us agree should be fixed. Instead they focus only on the things which keep us all discussing, forever, how evil some tiny minority is. We've DDOSed our ability to get things done.

On a tangential note, an important skill in this environment is simply ignoring people who want you to be angry rather than constructive. "X did Y! Bloody murder!" → Ignored. "How to ensure Y never happens again" → Let's hear it.

</comment><comment><USER6> > A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people's face and they'll admit > it's an outrage, just as they'll admit factory farming is an outrage. But > they're not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every > day, you're going to need more than that to draw people out of their shells.

I sometimes recall how the civil rights movement got together and amplified the story of Rosa Parks over Claudette Colvin. The optics were much better with Parks:

> "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be > controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the > boycott," Colvin says.

That I think turned out to be a good move. In the absence of this guiding force I think Colvin would end up debated and talked about more.

<comment><USER7> But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans _intentionally_ amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular policy goal.

Today Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have machine learning models trained to amplify the amount of attention spent on advertising. Any policy outcome will be a side-effect of that.

<comment><USER8> > But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans > intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular > policy goal.

It's tangentially related to TFA but... The Civil Rights era leaders were very strategic thinkers. MLK, Jr., especially, shortly before his death, was describing very serious, very ruthless strategy to accomplish goals that I do believe would've worked, had they been given the opportunity.

I think that we have ruthlessly strategic thinkers (in our politics and political movements) today but I don't believe their goals are to drive policy any longer.

<comment><USER9> > shortly before his death, was describing very serious, very ruthless > strategy to accomplish goals

Do you have a link for this?

<comment><USER8> His last book, "Where Do We Go From Here". [0]

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Go_from_Here:_Chao...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Go_from_Here:_Chaos_or_Community%3F)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I liked this. It serves as a useful followup to and expansion to the CGP Grey video "This Video Will Make You Angry" which explored the phenomena of how groups talk about events and each other. In short, people tend to self- segregate into opposing groups that don't talk to each other. Instead, they talk amongst themselves about how horrible the other group is.

<comment><USER11> See also: _You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you_ by The Oatmeal:

[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe)

<comment><USER12> I always get so depressed when I see things like this. I know they're true. I also know there is a concerted effort to influence the things i see/think.

How am I going to be able to sort through the noise to find the signal? Is there even a point? What is the purpose of even trying? Why not just step into traffic?

<comment><USER10> The signal can even be diluted by well-meaning people. For example, Washington did have a set of teeth that included those of slaves. However, his financial records include the purchase of teeth from "Negros" for the purpose, which at the very least indicates he didn't have someone hold his own slaves down and rip teeth out of their heads. It doesn't preclude there being an element of racism and abuse in the path those teeth took from their origin to their purchase by Washington, but it does show there may not have been, and that Washington wearing slave teeth is not a mark against him personally.

The whole "owning slaves" thing is of course, but that's a separate issue from the dentures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >If you want to signal how strongly you believe in taking victims seriously, you talk about it in the context of the least credible case you can find.

I think there's another angle to picking the least credible case in that it requires more psychological investment. Those who join the group are stronger and have expended more psychological effort. Because the cases that are chosen to fight about are ambiguous, to fight about them requires a form of committent and faith. Any doubts about the case and validity of the morality or faith would cause a painful admission of the amount that was psychologically invested in it. The strength of your belief is signalled but the strength also deepens your involvement in it.

<comment><USER14> Consider also that cognitive dissonance under peer pressure can produce stronger result than peer pressure alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The PETA thing also showcases another couple of behaviours I particularly enjoy watching:

* Distributed low-commit morality: tell other people to "do the right thing" without actually doing anything yourself.

* Proximity creates responsibility: the best way to avoid having to do anything for anyone is to pretend you didn't see it. The moment PETA admitted they knew what was going on, they had to redirect all their efforts to solving it or they'd get stick

It's pretty funny since it's so predictable. You can always do these things and the reaction means that the right time to do it is to seek attention through it.

</comment><comment><USER16> > If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all > decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the > most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for > the next two months. Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and > racist, and something would get done.

This has to be the most hilariously and accidentally observational comment in the history of the Internet. Times apparently have changed since 2014.

Brilliant article.

<comment><USER17> Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case: a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless, with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation.

The thesis of this article has a lot of validity though. There is an escalating "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" arms race that has no interest whatsoever in solving problems, only in getting attention.

<comment><USER18> As far as I can tell, someone actually happened to record a video of a slightly different ideal case: it was obviously a police officer murdering a black man when carefully framed and portrayed that way, the most clear, vivid, brutal and unambigious demonstration of police racism and brutality - but only for people who already believed this. Basically, a cross between what this blog post describes and a maximum-strength scissor statement [1]

The most vivid demonstration of this is that one phrase: "I can't breathe". It really is the most vivid image of racist police murder imaginable: a white officer kneeling on a black man's neck, slowly cutting off his air as he begs for mercy. It's appeared again and again in protests and news coverage worldwide. There's only one slight complication: Floyd started repeating that he "couldn't breathe" before he was down on the ground at all [https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body- camera...](https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera-shows- george-floyd-told-officers-i-cant-breathe-before-being-restrained) All of a sudden, things get a lot more fuzzy in terms of cause and effect and what the officers should've realized, and naturally one idelogical side has been claiming it debunks the whole thing whilst the other is using a different framing to claim this shows the police were even more depraved cold-hearted murderers than previously thought: [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd-police-killing-transcript-i-cant-breathe) It's almost the perfect scissor.

Even if it had been the most clear-cut case imaginable, one of the first things that happened was to turn it into something divisive and effective for signalling by - for instance - demanding charges against the other officers present that seem extremely hard to justify legally speaking, and calling for Minneapolis to burn until that happened. There is no escape from the process described in this blog post.

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

<comment><USER19> \- One poll showed only 10% of Americans calling the Floyd death a "Tragic accident." With the majority calling it murder. That's not even close to a perfect scissor.

\- I have several cop friends, from a relatively geographically diverse range of the US. All of them say that how Floyd was arrested was at a minimum against procedure, and almost certainly contributory to his death.

\- One cop I spoke to pointed out that his training mandated that once a prone subject is handcuffed, their training mandates rolling them onto their side, as being unable to leverage oneself up can restrict breathing, even if nobody's kneeling on you. He also pointed out that kneeling on the neck or back in order to handcuff someone is well within procedure at his department, but continuing after they are restrained is obviously not.

<comment><USER20> "\- I have several cop friends, from a relatively geographically diverse range of the US. All of them say that how Floyd was arrested was at a minimum against procedure, and almost certainly contributory to his death. \- One cop I spoke to pointed out that his training mandated that once a prone subject is handcuffed, their training mandates rolling them onto their side, as being unable to leverage oneself up can restrict breathing, even if nobody's kneeling on you. He also pointed out that kneeling on the neck or back in order to handcuff someone is well within procedure at his department, but continuing after they are restrained is obviously not."

That's the thing I don't get and that is the most upsetting thing to me about this situation: why aren't police officers speaking out more against each other? The only voices I hear from the police are coming out in defense of other officers who did something bad. This to me reinforces the impression that it's not a small minority that's the problem, but the entire institution. Is the media just not picking these voices up?

If there had been strong voices within the police calling for reform and officers had kneeled with the protestors instead of attacking even peaceful ones, the situation now would look very different.

<comment><USER21> > That's the thing I don't get and that is the most upsetting thing to me > about this situation: why aren't police officers speaking out more against > each other?

There's a word for this: _solidarity_.

This is what it looks like from the outside.

<comment><USER22> Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip them of their ability to continue harming others.

I can't remember the last time that a doctor or lawyer blatantly murdered someone on tape and had their peers go up to bat for them about how they're actually the victim and did nothing wrong. When it comes to law enforcement and correctional officers, I can find a dozen of such instances from the last 12 months alone.

<comment><USER23> > Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and > ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip > them of their continue harming others.

While professional groups are often mistakenly analogized to labor unions, they aren't and have very different functions. Professionals in organized professions like law or medicine may also be in labor unions (this is unusual in the US outside of the public sector), but the labor union and the professional organizations aren't interchangeable.

<comment><USER22> When was the last time a union carpenter, welder, electrician, or engineer was caught on camera murdering someone, and their peers went up to bat for them explaining how they were really the victim, and they did nothing wrong?

When an engineer's structure causes injury or loss of life, it is studied and taken very seriously. Liability falls on both the engineer and their employer, if there is one. Blatant negligence means the removal of licenses or the ability to practice in the field they're licensed in, along with civil lawsuits or even criminal charges.

When a cop causes injury or loss of life, the entire system tries to brush it under the rug completely, and learn nothing from it. Then their peers go up to bat for them explaining how they're being unfairly persecuted and that they did nothing wrong. Cops are often shielded from civil and criminal liability for abuses that other professionals would end up in prison for.

Trying to place the blame on unions is pretty far-fetched, and you're speaking to someone who is against the idea of police unions in particular.

<comment><USER21> It may be worth bearing in mind that one thing police union contracts can and do win as a concession is cities taking on civil liability and paying for legal defenses. The whole system is set up to dismiss and ignore poor behavior because those are the grievance-handling processes designed by police and enshrined in union contracts to serve that purpose.

Police unions have played a major role in protecting union members from management. Or as we call it elsewhere in politics, accountability.

I'm not saying solidarity is bad. I'm saying it's a tool that police unions have weaponized against the general public.

<comment><USER22> > _I 'm not saying solidarity is bad. I'm saying it's a tool that police > unions have weaponized against the general public._

I think that reducing the problems of policing in the US down to "solidarity" isn't apt, as solidarity in other unions doesn't produce this level of opaqueness, lack of honesty and responsibility, negligence, ineptitude, or criminality.

The issue is at play is culture, one that comes from the top and is reinforced every step of the way to the bottom.

I agree that police unions have a strong hand in enabling and enacting the policies that shield police from accountability, but police are given powers that are unique to any other government or otherwise union worker. Allowing easily abused power to consolidate to the point that it has is why I'm against police unions in particular, but not others.

<comment><USER21> My apologies! I can see I have been unclear. Please allow me to correct this error.

I do not think, do not believe, and do not claim that all the problems of policing in the US reduce to weaponized solidarity. I think, believe, and stand by my claim that solidarity has been weaponized by police unions. I also stand by my previous claim that the particular behavior pattern other commenters pointed to is one form of weaponized solidarity in action.

I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. Again, please accept my apologies for my failures in communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >> Studies sometimes claim that only 2 to 8 percent of rape allegations are false. Yet the rate for allegations that go ultra-viral in the media must be an order of magnitude higher than this.

Which implies that publicising a rape allegation makes it difficult to prosecute it successfully. The article suggests instead that feminist activists specifically select false allegations for publicity, which seems to assume that feminist activists possess some kind of ability to identify false allegations before they are prosecuted, or, indeed, to _predict the outcome of a rape case_ with high accuracy. This is a very strong assumption and is the first thing that should be tested for consistency.

A simpler explanation is that rape allegations are more likely to lead to a failed prosecution, than they are likely to be false. If that was the case, we should expect to also observe a higher rate of failed prosecutions in general (i.e. regardless of publicity) than the rate of false rape allegations.

Though I can't find much relevant data for the United States (there is more for the UK) some sources suggest that such an effect can indeed be observed:

 _According to FBI statistics, out of 127,258 rapes reported to police departments in 2018, 33.4 percent resulted in an arrest.[13] Based on correlating multiple data sources, RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) estimates[30] that for every 1,000 rapes, 384 are reported to police, 57 result in an arrest, 11 are referred for prosecution, 7 result in a felony conviction, and 6 result in incarceration. This compares to a higher rate at every stage for similar crimes._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Pros...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Prosecution_rate)

In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the article), about 0.7% of rape allegations are successfully prosecuted. Such low rate of successful prosecutions would easily account for a high rate of publicised cases failing without the need of a specialised rape prosecution outcome prediction organ in feminist activists.

<comment><USER25> > In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the > article),

When i read articles about rate of false rape allegations, the established percentage was really a percentage of rape allegations that were assessed 'false' by police during investigation. Most rape allegations were just lacking evidence on both sides (not enough evidence for prosecution, not enough evidence for rejecting as false), so they are not counted in this statistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is not necessarily the case that Floyd died from a knee on his neck. His official autopsy (not the "independent" one paid for by his family) shows that he had a potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system (11 ng/mL) in addition to 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine ([https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7uB-1oJ:https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public- safety/documents/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)). That combination of drugs is one variant of what's known as a "speedball". It can cause death by respiratory failure. [https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/](https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/). The autopsy also says "No life-threatening injuries identified", in particular "No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures", so it is unlikely that the death was caused by Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd's neck.

There is also the problem of motivation. What possible reason could Derek Chauvin have to murder George Floyd? Surely he understood that doing such a thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him to find employment. Much more likely is that he believed the hold he used was nonlethal, and, given what we know from the Hennepin County autopsy, that it actually was nonlethal.

<comment><USER27> Floyd went from walking around, talking, and apparently able to breathe with no problems, to dead, during the first ~5 minutes that Chauvin's knee was on his neck. Is your claim that Chauvin's actions had _nothing at all_ to do with his death - that he simply died of an overdose by coincidence at that time, and that it would have been equally likely that he dropped dead during the five-minute period before Chauvin showed up? That would make for a hell of a coincidence.

Also, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine isn't a therapeutically active concentration - it's not even enough to trigger a positive drug test [0]. And 11 ng/mL of fentanyl is on the low end of the range recommended for anaesthesia [1] - <USER2> same source states that "[b]lood concentrations of approximately 7 ng/ml or greater have been associated with fatalities where poly-substance use was involved," but no other substances were present at high enough concentrations to be therapeutically active. It's possible that Chauvin's actions wouldn't have killed him if he hadn't had fentanyl in his system, but that's not a defense [2].

[0] [https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test- catalog/Clinical+and+Int...](https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test- catalog/Clinical+and+Interpretive/8257)

[1] [https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/drug- profiles/fent...](https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/drug- profiles/fentanyl#pharmacology)

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

<comment><USER26> > that he simply died of an overdose by coincidence at that time, and that it > would have been equally likely that he dropped dead during the five-minute > period before Chauvin showed up

I'm saying that's a real possibility that is suggested by the county autopsy.

Thank you for the additional context on the drug levels. If you are right about this, then I am not sure how to explain what happened.

The neck restraint is described as "Compressing one or both sides of person's neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway", consistent with the county's autopsy finding of "no injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures". See page 9 of [http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile- Cases...](http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile- Cases/27-CR-20-12951-TKL/Exhibit67807072020.pdf).

Here are some more details about what happened. Have a look starting at page 15. [http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile- Cases...](http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile- Cases/27-CR-20-12951-TKL/Memorandum07072020.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a good article. The only criticism I have is that regarding rape and racism cases, the author misses another explanation as to why the cases that go public never seem to be cut and dry... It's possible the author is inverting cause and effect there. As a case goes public, investigative journalist dig, because that is their job.

Hypothesis: most people involved in a criminal event have something in their past that can be cast in a negative light. This is not a statement of causality---I am not saying that they are involved in a criminal event because of things they did in the past---merely of correlation. But if that hypothesis is true, it could explain why the publicized cases don't tend to be cut and dry... They were more cut and dry before investigative journalists started tearing apart the history of all parties involved.

<comment><USER29> > most people ~involved in a criminal event~ have something in their past that > can be cast in a negative light

Fixed it for you. If you are looking to condemn someone, it's not difficult to do.

<comment><USER28> I don't actually know that's true, and I don't think we have numbers to test that hypothesis. But I also don't know it's false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's such a shame that he stopped writing about culture - he was really the only one I've ever read who could.

</comment><comment><USER31> > From the memetic point of view, they're as complementary as caterpillars and > butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally > created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something > makes them stop.

Caterpillar DNA is butterfly DNA. Toxoplasma DNA in the cat is toxoplasma DNA in the rat.

While there's poetry to saying the hatred is a single life form regardless of where it lives, I think it's a more accurate model to say there are two symbiotic replicators, whose impact on the environment (mostly) makes it more hospitable for the other. Bombs, however directed, contain only a tiny portion of the information content making up the meme.

</comment><comment><USER32> I kinda disagree with him. Bringing up borderline cases is not just about signalling. It's also how important precedents are set.

</comment><comment><USER33> I feel like I don't understand the essay fully. Take for example George Floyd's case - I'm under the impression that it falls under the category of a "clear cut" case, doesn't it? I'm not American, so maybe my assumption is simply incorrect. But if it is indeed "clear cut", then why did it get so much traction? Following the author's reasoning, it should've sizzled out quickly, without much discussion.

Is my recollection of the events wrong, or is there an error in the essay?

<comment><USER34> The George Floyd case is the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing everybody was talking about was not the fact he was murdered – it was the rioting, the looters. The controversy. The conclusion of this comment was _intended_ to be "so the article's not _wrong_ , it just isn't covering every case" – but this actually turned out not to be the counterexample I thought it was.

I heard about his murder before the riots, yes. But it was just "oh, look, another guy murdered by the police in the US, now what's going on with that x86 operating system?". It wasn't on the _news_ until there were protests, and wasn't really international news (except BBC and the like) until there was rioting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A few years later he revisited this theme as fiction: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article, but please don't jump to solutions from the problems presented. Any such solution will only make things worse.

These are the downsides of rage. But rage is an useful tool. It's sometimes misused, but which one isn't? Tribalism is the same.

Philosophy like this article is great at asking questions. Answers are not inside of one man but in the conflict of many.

<comment><USER13> One should also watch out of accepting these tools just for use within our in- group and condemning them in the out groups. "they are not like us, when we use rage we do it for a good reason"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The part about memes and the self-reinforcing cycle of anger reminds me of: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc) "CGP Grey: This Video Will Make You Angry"

</comment><comment><USER37> > _Consider the war on terror. They say that every time the United States > bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere, all we're doing is radicalizing > the young people there and making more terrorists._

And it's true. Reminds me of the onion caption for a picture of a bomb "capable of creating 1,500 new terrorists in single blast."

Going on 20 years of forever war, why is there such strong bipartisan support for keeping Americans embroiled in the Middle East? Are we going to allow Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that's traditionally been a tent pole for the progressive left?

This politicians keep us turned on each other with petty, polarizing subjects while they keep doing what they've always done. I'm baffled. I hate it.

<comment><USER38> > Are we going to allow Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that's > traditionally been a tent pole for the progressive left?

Okay I'm gonna quibble with this. If I had to compare Trump to any previous political figure, it would be Pat Buchanan, who was and is a paleoconservative. Paleoconservatives are anti-war in the old isolationist sense. Ron Paul popularized a more libertarian spin on paleoconservatism but Trump is steeped in it—to whatever degree he's steeped in anything beyond his own narcissism—and the American right has a rich legacy of anti-war paleoconservatives who once thought maybe FDR was doing too much to provoke Germany and Japan. That just got set aside for about a half century after Pearl Harbor, but they've been there this whole time and after the controversies of GWB and his "neocon" advisors, paleocon ideas had a resurgence.

<comment><USER39> It's also the case that the anti-war right has had much more consistent anti- war positions than Trump, who might have used isolationist arguments to justify reducing US presence in the Middle East overall, but has also defended the notion of keeping troops there to secure oil, escalated with Iran and mooted military intervention in Latin America. The anti-war right wouldn't have appointed the likes of John Bolton to advise them on security.

<comment><USER38> This is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a great article, but it'd be much better as five much smaller articles

<comment><USER41> Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles.

Which is fair, your preferences are yours, but I much prefer single expansive essays like this that give the author room to develop large complex idea structures, and to reach out from the central idea to disparate but interestingly relevant related themes. This might not (or might) be the majority preference, but Scott (and the 'Wait but Why' guy, among others) has built up large enough audiences from this type of musings, and mostly good quality audience too, so it's working for him.

<comment><USER42> Your second paragraph is diplomatic and even-handed. I can get behind it.

Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. Of course the OP was expressing their opinion. They weren't making a statement of fact. What good comes from "correcting" them? It just makes you look bad.

<comment><USER41> > Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way.

For what it's worth, I was avoiding the "FTFY" format which always sounds aggressive and rubs me the wrong way, so I chose this as the milder option. I can see it being impolite by the standard that (I hope) HN comments should aspire to, so I'll use something even milder next time. Thanks.

<comment><USER31> Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."

In general, I think it makes sense to avoid implying that the other person is _wrong_ when you've decided to try addressing in a strict logical way something that was uttered as conversational English.

<comment><USER43> peteretep: > This is a great article, but it'd be much better as five much smaller articles

sundarurfriend: > Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles.

dllthomas: > Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."

You seem to have struck a loop, you are asking that the correction "Correction: That should say it's your opinion" should be "In my opinion, you should say it's your opinion".

Your issue is that they claimed objectivity when they called the poster subjective, which seems like an endless rabbithole to go down, since it is only your subjective opinion that they should do so.

<comment><USER31> You present my comment as criticism, but you left out important context. I did not respond directly to "Correction:" but to a comment by sundarurfriend that seemed to be acknowledging that "correction" did not play the desired conversational role, even as it represented an attempt to be less confrontational than "FTFY". My comment was friendly suggestion of alternatives, along with some measure of analysis as to what went wrong.

The issue I was pointing to was not subjectivity vs objectivity at all. I was pointing out that the way language is used often doesn't square up neatly to a narrow semantic analysis, and that acknowledging the intent of the communication _even when you are moving to a more explicit, semantically- oriented regime_ might help sundarurfriend achieve more of the kind of conversational outcomes that I understand them to prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> TL; did read, and it was worth it, but for those who find it too long the takeaway was captured by this quote:

"It's in activists' interests to destroy their own causes by focusing on the most controversial cases and principles, the ones that muddy the waters and make people oppose them out of spite. And it's in the media's interest to help them and egg them on."

</comment><comment><USER45> Interestingly, outrage has two definitions: 1. injury or insult, 2. the anger and resentment aroused by injury or insult.

</comment><comment><USER46> >there aren't any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found.

so not true. ALEC with their AETA and other related laws immediately comes to mind - and they are just a spearhead of the pro-factory-farming forces.

<comment><USER23> But they are the opposite of "grassroots".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Damn, thanks for this. Absolutely genious.

</comment><comment><USER48> How does this article apply to SSC's fanbase working up into a lather at the NYT?

<comment><USER49> What part of the conflict between SSC and NYT do you disagree with?

<comment><USER50> This conflict is complicated and our understanding of it is limited.

* We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter.

* The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means.

* SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out.

* Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press.

* It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.

<comment><USER43> 1\. I do not think this counts as a rebuttal or a reason to distrust either side 2\. Scott never claimed that his home address would be published, and implying he did just to disprove it likely would be considered strawmanning 3\. I think this is the real point that should be used here, and credit should be given to it. That said, the people who did this are not Scott, so I think he should not be blamed anymore than J.D. Salinger should be blamed for an assassin carrying _The Catcher in the Rye_ 4\. This seems to be entirely irrelevant to SSC-vs-NYT at all, I cannot see how this weighs on them 5\. He has made a clear effort, but he isn't running a darknet market, so there will be holes. As a fan, I have only ever seen his name on a website that is over a decade old and I cannot find this book for sale. That said, I'd be willing to concede that he failed N years ago if you can find that the book and link me to it.

<comment><USER50> 5\. Here is the book and one instance of Scott's full name in the book.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=wtQkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR...](https://books.google.com/books?id=wtQkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq=scott+siskind+springer&source=bl&ots=lNUaoNyW-_&sig=ACfU3U1etM2mMzafQ1ZY04734yjLbV_3jA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLhMPEhsPqAhXYqp4KHfiBAf8Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=scott%20siskind%20springer&f=false)

Voluntarily publishing something like that makes me believe that Scott did not make a clear effort. It's not about holes or opsec. It's about Scott putting his full name out there and then regretting it. He doxxed himself, and he can't be undoxxed.

2\. Scott never claimed that the reporter was going to reveal his home address, but he said the reporter threatened to doxx him for clicks. I have a very hard time believing that, and I define doxxing very differently than "publishing a name that the subject of the article has already voluntarily revealed."

3\. Scott is an old hand at Internet flame wars. I consider it highly likely that he knew that, by claiming that the reporter threatened to doxx him, that the reporter would be doxxed. The rest is protesting too much.

1\. What it means is simply we do not know the whole story. We definitely do not know that the reporter, in fact, threatened to doxx Scott. In any case, I think Scott has a very different definition of that word than most people do.

4\. If we believe that Scott encouraged his fans to turn up the heat on the reporter, then he is participating in a trend, which I highlighted, that bodes ill for American and the free flow of information. Every time an independent press tries to write a story, do its reporters get doxxed? I guarantee you will read fewer interesting stories when that is widespread.

<comment><USER43> Sorry to reply late, I do not check comments frequently.

5\. That isn't what was claimed, that's a book that included him, not a book he published (as far as I am able to tell). It seems to be _very_ different given that he did not make the effort to publish and the book even fails to call him "Scott Alexander", making it hard to link them together.

2\. As point above says, the argument has become incongruent now that it becomes clear he did not publish the book. And, again, there is much value to not publishing a piece on how you are tied to fringe groups online even if your full name was once connected to them in a print book.

3\. This isn't a very fair assumption. You, and others, are calling what he did bad because he knew what would happen, but aren't showing he knew ahead of time. It is very easy to say you would have realized WWII would have started, but even something that large would be outside the reach of most people's predictors in the moment.

1\. I think _you_ are the one with a different definition, and I would also note that the lack of the other side being published should speak to some extent too. He showed his side, but you are taking the lack of evidence against him as proof he did something wrong, which is not very sound.

4\. This attempt at universalization doesn't hold very well given that this was not a reporter trying to cover the story with full honesty; his name was a largely irrelevant detail. They could have named him "Big Bird" and the story would have been the same but with no chance of controversy, since his identity in his private life is not important to the story.

Thanks for the well-organized points, it makes replying a lot more sane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This must also be why antivaxxers are so widespread. Does it mean nothing can be done about it?

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone needs to create a meme that will simultaneously offend everyone of every conceivable belief system or political persuasion.

It would be the 2020 version of this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI)

Seems tough... maybe it's a job for deep learning?</comment>