Math versus Dirty Data - <AUTHOR> https://jeremykun.com/2019/06/08/math-versus-data/ <comment><USER2> Is it the new normal to vent about your job on a public blog post, talking about how it's not very exciting and how it involves mostly "poop-smithing," and how you'd be thinking of quitting if you didn't have other stuff you were doing, and for the company to be totally OK with that?

<comment><USER3> A long time ago HN used to be a place where people had a general distrust of large corporations and it was much more impressive to be working for an ambitious startup than being highly paid an a large company just grinding out the status quo.

I'm really happy to see posts like this here. Jeremy has done lost of great work and so it's somewhat refreshing to see that even someone like him struggles at times at a place like google. It's also important because it show that FAANG isn't all it's cracked up to be and so it is a completely legitimate career path to remain in small startups, maybe getting paid less, but having more fun getting paid.

I've worked at both the big and small and this post definitely resonates with me and certainly makes it easier to go into work knowing that I'm not the crazy one.

<comment><USER4> > It's also important because it show that FAANG isn't all it's cracked up to > be and so it is a completely legitimate career path to remain in small > startups

I don't think there's just these 2 options. There's the other 90% in between.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how Google is perceived in the public as an all-knowing organism, gobbling up petabytes of data public and private to fuel a superior intelligence... Actually it can't even get clean data about its own internal operation...

<comment><USER6> Do you believe the two scenarios are mutually exclusive?

I've definitely seen people be extremely disorganised in some aspects of life but also sufficiently, moderately, or fairly, successful in others.

I suspect companies are also capable of exhibiting similar behaviours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I dealt with this issue in my PhD research on data mining, and it motivated me to search for a new line of work. The benefits of data based products never justify the customers changing everything just to make life easier for the data nerd in the corner (in my case at least). What made them happiest was when i assembled some basic tools to mine their data on their own - "teaching a man to fish, ruining a business opportunity".

I think dirty data are like the refs in a football game. Nobody comes to see them, but they'll be part of the game until you have perfect players.

</comment><comment><USER8> In most organizations I have interacted with getting data with known sampling is always a problem. "The temperature sensor sends a measurement every 5 minutes." Except, I learned after a lot of debugging, when the air-conditioner gets maintained and the readings become a fixed value.

It's not the organizations fault. Discovering and maintaining a known sampling for the data is part of the process. I consider it a win when I can get a team to accept that the data process will need to be debugged just like code.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just came back from an oil and gas conference, and this dog running after missing/wrong data is painfully accurate. Datasets are often partially or completely suspect. Two geologists might have contradictory opinions regarding the interpretation of logging data. Even when you have good data, it might not be useful six feet into a formation.

</comment><comment><USER10> > I don't have data-intensive applications or problems of scale, but rather > policy-intensive applications.

As I understand it, this problem - "policy-intensive" \- is a lot of changes of requests from the customers of the system. In other words, customers don't know fully what they need and produce a stream of requests. This stream or requests may converge on some stable "global" requirements, or, alternatively, may represent "moving target" (not converge).

Additionally, some of those requests are caused by different (supposedly better) understanding of the nature of data - the object of the system. That is, with evolution of the system customers (with the help of developers) understand more and more specific details about the data - missing parts, ambiguous parts, alternative sets of attributes etc.

The approach for such problems, which so far is most promising, is to organize the system as a set of independent, composable as much as possible operations. When another request comes from a customer, or another detail about the data becomes known, the system built from such composable components better allows incremental modifications towards processing such a change.

A good set of operations sometimes develops with time. This approach requires constant reflection on what a particular change mean to the existing process, uncovering assumptions and making them explicit and changeable...

</comment><comment><USER11> I now want to start a math cafe. Chalkboards. Coffee. Hang pieces from local generative artists. I'll stop short of making puns about pie. But it'd be nice. I already know what to name it! Satz. (German for theorem / coffee residue).

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

</comment><comment><USER12> If anyone is interested, we are working on a solution to the dirty data problem at [http://treenotation.org](http://treenotation.org).

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry to sound pessimistic, but I don't think that there's any _technical_ solution to dirty data.

The problem is usually not "This data was sent as a JSON without any schema and with syntax errors", it's "This avro file has a completely useless schema (e.g. everything is typed as string|null) and there are multiple enumerations where the same value is encoded as 3 different strings (e.g. yes, y, true)"

<comment><USER12> If we make it 10x+ easier to define schemas and reuse existing ones, by making authoring, concatenation, extending, sharing, and discovering such schemas easier; and provide great translation mechanisms to/from existing languages like sql, Json, csv and xml; and provide new auto scheme generation and data fixing from better deep learning models....I think we can get there.

We are working on all of that</comment></comment></comment>


The 70 kilo single person plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-kilo-person-plane.html <comment><USER2> I went to the <http://www.flynano.com/> website, I have to say that the main image isn't exactly inspiring. Sure it looks like the guys having a good time flying, but he also appears to be flying in some post-apocolyptic scene.

I'm curious how much pilot weight affects a craft with such a low weight already, and why they would start with a water based craft, as I assume it takes more energy to get up to take-off speed from the water than from land.

<comment><USER3> _and why they would start with a water based craft_

My guess would be related to minimizing things, no need for landing gear speeds up the process to get to release. The only moving parts appear to be the prop, otherwise it's all chassis.

Also crashing in water is at least a little more forgiving that landing on concrete.

I want one.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it minimizes moving parts. HOWEVER. Takeoff and landing on water is more difficult than land, because the water actually sucks the hull downwards, thus takeoff is more challenging than with wheels. Wheels would add some manufacturing complexity, but inexpensive and lightweight landing gear is a solved problem for ultra-light aircraft. I'd certainly like to hear their rationale for this. If they are real, I'd guess that they are going after a market--such as people who own cottages--where access to water is plentiful but access to prepared runways surfaces is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It appears to at least have been built: <http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-04-14_aero.asp>

The craft hasn't yet had it's maiden flight. It's an interesting concept. I've always liked the joined-wing concept from a structural standpoint but, if the wing nuts in my graduating class were to be believed, stability and control of that layout isn't trivial.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link!

 _This striking box-wing airplane is all carbon fiber composite and can start only from water. It is probably the most interesting airplane proposal at this fair. The maiden flight is planned in a few weeks. Because of severe winters in Finland, flight testing was made only with scale R/C models._

I'm mystified as to how they can promise deliveries this summer if they haven't even had a full-scale flight yet. Can you comment on their production optimism?

Also, I can't see any control surfaces for pitch or roll. What am I missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know what's important here? Deliveries start Summer 2011. There is so much vaporware with small vehicle companies. Well okay, not vaporware, but years of delays at least. It's a great MVP, not perfect, but still awesome.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone have a video? What kind of certification and/or testing is needed for a craft like this?

Looking into how to buy an order option (provided it's not vaporware).

<comment><USER6> Depending on where you are, this plane may possibly fit in the Ultralight category ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aviation> ) - i.e. none or very little paperwork required. Not sure about max/stall speed requirements - seems like it doesn't fit in US definition of ultralight, it's LSA ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-sport_aircraft> ) in US probably.</comment></comment>


San Bernardino DA says "dormant cyber-pathogen" is made up - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/what-is-a-lying-dormant-cyber-pathogen-san-bernardino-da-wont-say/ <comment><USER2> > release a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen" into the county's computer > infrastructure

I'm reminded of Phone Losers of America.

[http://www.phonelosers.org/media/book/phone-losers-of- americ...](http://www.phonelosers.org/media/book/phone-losers-of-america.pdf) (pdf)

\--

"Circle K, this is Larry," he answered, sounding extremely bored.

"Hi, Larry. This is John from Visa. We've been having some issues with the credit card network tonight. Has your manager told you about this problem yet?"

"No, I don't know anything about it," Larry replied.

"I see," I said. "Well, there's a major computer virus in the network that processes credit cards and I need you to unplug your credit card machine immediately, before the virus reaches you."

"Oh, okay," Larry said as he fumbled around with the wires in the back of the machine. "Okay, it's unplugged."

[...]

"Okay, now take the credit card machine and set it far away from the phone lines, just to make sure the virus can't get to it. If you have a stainless steel sink there, put it in the sink because that will help shield the machine from an airborne virus attack."

</comment><comment><USER3> If his concern over this hypothetical were sincere, he would be ordering a full forensic analysis of all IT and electrical systems that may possibly have been accessed by the shooter.

If he's not doing that, the only conclusion that makes sense is that his concerns are disingenuous.</comment>


Ask HN: 'Systemic' vs. 'Systematic': which is the correct one? - <AUTHOR> Systemic describes something that happens or exists throughout a whole system. It is the newer word; it entered English in the early 1800s.

  "He has a systemic infection."

  "The new police chief had to address systemic corruption."
 Systematic describes something that was thorough and intentional, methodical, or implemented according to a plan. It is the older word, having entered English around 1670.

  "Doctors began a systematic treatment plan."

  "Ending systematic discrimination was his first goal."
 <comment><USER2> They're two different words with two different uses, neither can be called "correct" without providing the context into which it is going to be used.

"The Doctors began a systematic treatment plan to treat the patient's systemic infection."

"Systemic corruption was found to be the root cause of systematic discrimination throughout the department"

</comment><comment><USER3> They could potentially both be right, depending on the subject matter they address describing.</comment>


Show HN: Sensible Ads Beta – a modern, privacy-conscious ad platform - <AUTHOR> https://sensible-ads.com/ <comment><USER2> This isn't the type of product - highly mature, fairly complex market with tons of privacy issues - for which you slap together a MVP for and fish for feedback. I mean, the privacy page is just this sentence: "When you visit our site, your IP Address is logged for 10 days for security purposes and is not shared with anyone."</comment>


IPhone GUI PSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=447

<comment><USER2> It seems like most of what you'd do with this would be easier to do in Interface Builder. It even has nice little guides to snap things to where the HIG says they should go.

<comment><USER3> I think the advantage comes from allowing multiple people to play with the files and end up with an image you can quickly email to a client or insert into a document. Plus you don't have to own a Mac to work on interface design.</comment></comment>


Why Africa May Never Produce a Facebook, Groupon, Zynga or Google  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/mfonobongnsehe/2011/04/07/why-africa-may-never-produce-a-facebook-groupon-zynga-or-google/ <comment><USER2> So because there are no VCs _now_ , Africa may _never_ have some?

"Never" is a pretty big word, don't use it unless you really mean it.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the title was "May Never", not "Will Never".

<comment><USER4> In anything other than perhaps a human life, Never just feels too definitive. The may just makes it sound wishy washy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I recently read Parmy Olson's interview with Yuri Milner on Forbes's recent Billionaires issue... But as I read the article, I could not help but ask myself the pertinent yet habitually unanswered question: What about Africa?"

Why would you ask "What about Africa?" I don't get it. This article is so generic. Yes, you need a lot of capital and a large, advanced market, and you don't have that in Africa. You also don't have it in about a 100 other places.

Much more advanced countries in Europe can't do it, why would you ask "What about Africa?"

<comment><USER6> Because the author was born and raised in Nigeria. <http://blogs.forbes.com/people/mfonobongnsehe/>: _I was born and raised in Nigeria_

Its more of a personal article and a call to VCs from around the world.

<comment><USER7> Still it begs answering this question first in order to understand the nature of the problem: why hasn't rich Europe produced Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and Facebook?

<comment><USER5> Markets aren't that big, not enough investors/capital, different culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article starts to hint at one thing I think is really interesting about Africa and other developing nations: by having leapfrogged some past infrastructure-heavy tech, they're in a unique place to get huge bang for your innovation dollar, both access-wise and out-of-the-box thinking wise.

The article cites a lot of examples from South Africa, which is actually a pretty developed country. CIA Factbook has it as the 26th largest GDP in the world, ahead of countries like Greece and Austria. Obviously that's only one metric, but I would guess that some VCs will give it a look eventually. The more interesting question is what will happen to less developed Africa countries - i.e. the ones, whether for better or for worse, you imagine when you read the headline.

<comment><USER9> South Africa is in the unique situation of having developers and business communities with access to all of the resources and education of the West living as little as 20 minutes away from townships with millions of people who are as under-resourced as any in Africa (well almost - they do still have access to a well-funded government). It is the perfect proving ground for applications for Africa.

Obstacles against success are in brief:

\- Schizophrenic government policies, swinging from incredibly enlightened consumer protection legislation to, "We should establish a regulatory body for the press to prevent them from embarrassing government officials when corruption scandals occur"

\- A legacy of underinvestment and draconian regulation in telecommunications. My 10Mb line costs me > 100 USD / month, and that's the fastest connection money can buy here.

Another country worth singling out is Kenya, which has produced incredible innovation like Ushahidi (<http://ushahidi.com>) and MPesa (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa>). Technology is a focus of government investment there, probably more so than SA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about corruption and lack of political stability ?

<comment><USER11> Not all of Africa is corrupt and politically unstable. It's a pretty big place.

<comment><USER10> I totally agree that each country is different (I am half-african and I've lived in a west african country for more than 15 years). The issue is way more complex than it appears. But as far as my experience can tell, corruption makes every single effort required to build something a real pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm frustrated that so many VCs want to make a "Next Silicon Valley" in New York, Chicago, or another part of the U.S. The rest of the world needs one significantly more.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/03/goog...](http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/03/google_opens_af.php)

"Nur Bremmen reporting on Memburn writes that Google has chosen Cape Town in South Africa for a pilot startup incubator called Umbono - Zulu for "vision", "sight" or "idea"."

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a blog post I wrote this week about a Samsung initiative to provide capital and equipment for promising projects out of the University of Cape Town (in South Africa).

[http://onesizefritzall.blogspot.com/2011/04/samsung- smiles-p...](http://onesizefritzall.blogspot.com/2011/04/samsung-smiles- part-i.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ironically enough Naspers, a major South African media empire, owns 35% of Tencent and I believe 28% of DST.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ubuntu was produced in Africa.

<comment><USER15> The word, yes. The code, not so much.

<comment><USER16> Mark Shuttleworth started his company in South Africa, and he has bankrolled Ubuntu with what he got from selling it. So while "made in Africa" isn't quite right, there's a component there, in a somewhat roundabout way.

<comment><USER15> Ok, but Canonical has directly or indirectly written, what, 0.1% of the code in a typical Ubuntu install? Maybe 1%? There are _tons_ of hardworking (and overwhelmingly non-African) programmers that are forgotten every time the press writes another breathless piece about Ubuntu. (Or, for that matter, Red Hat - their contributions are much larger, but still a _tiny_ part of the finished product.)

<comment><USER16> No argument there, but I wasn't talking about the code.

<comment><USER15> No argument there, but I _was_ talking about the code. ;-)

Seriously, though, good point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fire the workaholics - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/902-fire-the-workaholics <comment><USER2> Any business in it for the mid-to-long term is a marathon, rather than a sprint. Yeah, there are times when a all hands on deck is needed to fix a bug or meet a deadline. The problem comes when you realize that you have to do it every year (or every release, or...). It's better to plan and avoid burnout than set yourself up to fail when critical staff walk rather than keep at the grindstone. While some folks are truly capable of working extraordinary hours, most aren't. Satisfy your customers and keep a stable staff.</comment>


Why Hate the for Loop? - <AUTHOR> http://cafe.elharo.com/blogroll/why-hate-the-for-loop/

<comment><USER2> I, for one, much prefer python generator/list expressions or map/reduce/filter combo of functional languages over regular for loop. At least most of the time.

That's because writing for loop (however trivial most of them are) forces me to switch thinking mode from conceptual to implementation. Writing filter(isValid, items) or sum(price(items)) I stay on the higher level. And context switches are bad for my productivity.

Besides with for loops you need to come up with an useless name for a variable (hence i convention), and you can easily make off-by-one error (hence standard form (int i=0; i<n; i++). Not a big problems, but still problems, and you don't need to have them in the first place.

And last reason - there is a big difference in perceived effort to do sth between writing in-place function invocation (like join(filter(isNotValid, items))), and backing of, declaring temporary variables, writing small for loop, and returning back to the point where you needed your new for loop result. Sometimes the difference is just big enough, that you don't go the extra mile to show your error better, or log more useful debug information, etc.

And vertical space is very important in programs. I like my functions to fit into one screen. For loops use 3 or more times as much vertical space as functional equivalents.</comment>


Monitoring applications from remote site - <AUTHOR> I have to manage 32 sites that connect to various SaaS, AWS, Private DC locations and I was wondering if anyone has thought through ideas on how to provide "application quality of experience" monitoring. The AppNeta and other similar providers are quite expensive and require on prem equipments. The RMON capabilities are limited to network monitoring only. Thoughts/Ideas? <comment><USER3> In my experience, website monitoring can be started from these several aspects:

\- network transfer layer. Monitor each other from difference IDCs - <USER2> clouds, I mean geo-regions.

\- api. Introduce some monitoring providers, ensure basic api work correct and performance at acceptable level.

\- client side, real use measurement(RUM). Monitor the most importance elements of the page, with some javascripts to measure and collect performance metrics.

For example, for the front-page of a site, do:

1\. ping the domain/ip from several host at different regions.

2\. api status check from 3rd party.

3\. on page javascript, measure 'onload' time, and send to your monitor backend.

If you have anything more, can touch me via twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> Liulantao

Thanks for your response. This is very helpful. I'd ping you on Twitter for a private chat.</comment></comment>


Scott Adams: How I (Almost) Saved the Earth  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704868604575433620189923744.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle

<comment><USER2> Interesting article. However, there's one aspect that I find a bit puzzling. I currently live in Germany and Adams' summary of tips how to build a greener house is pretty much a description of how houses have been built here for ages. I mean - the regular houses, not the ones considered particularly green. The general topic seems to be very big in this country, and apparently caters to a huge market. Almost everybody building a new house these days, not only the Earth savers, is trying to implement as many energy efficient measures as possible - that's because Germany, unlike California, is not a very warm place and to save on heating costs means to save big time. I don't actually know what it means, but the term "zero energy house" is a marketing term you see a lot here. Solar energy in private homes is heavily subsidized, too. And Germans don't move as much as Americans, they tend to build their houses to settle and grow old in them, so sustainability is a logical value.

<comment><USER3> It seems that the art of building efficient houses is contained only in Europe.

The houses in the US all seem to be made of wood, without much insulation. "Problems" that that causes are all dealt with using "efficient" heating or air conditioning systems. From what I've seen the same is true of Australia and New Zealand though. There you see a whole lot of portable electric heaters being used for the winter, which are probably the most inefficient way to generate heat.

The way typical Americans treat "energy conservation" is also an affront to people from Europe. Nobody in the US seems to think about conserving water in any way. Just look at the toilets, they flush a _massive_ amount of water compared to the ones in Europe. Or the amount of ice that is used in drinks, the amount of water that is served and thrown away in restaurants.

It's all the little things that make a huge difference, and there seems to be a huge gap in the way these things are treated in Europe and in the US.

<comment><USER4> I really would like to write a more articulate reply, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll leave you with:

I don't believe you.

Portable electric heaters can be incredibly efficient, since they only heat the room in question. I don't know much about building materials, but the article suggested that most heat loss is through windows, so worrying about wood building seems unnecessary.

Water conservation discussion need to be very localized. Lots of places in the US have very low population densities and plenty of water. Conservation is silly in this case. Whether your toilet uses a lot of water or a little, the same amount of poop and same amount of water are going to end up back in the river. Besides all this, toilet flushing and ice in drinks is peanuts compared to agricultural usage. They are little things and do not make a huge difference.

Please site your sources. Here are some of mine:

[http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Hea...](http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Energy_Efficient_Space_Heaters)

<http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html>

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

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that this is what jvdh had in mind, but any pure-heating device is by definition 100% inefficient. Any physical device which does work produces heat as well (well eventually. The energy may feed into other processes before it ends up as heat). A 100% efficient device is one that produces work equal to the amount of heat (I think - my thermodynamics is a little rusty). A pure heater produces heat without doing any work whatsoever with the energy. The most efficient heating would be done either by a heat pump (backwards air conditioner), or by doing some work with it.

Your point about heating only the rooms required is quite true, though. portable heaters may be more efficient than other extant kinds of heater. One other disadvantage is that many of them are air heaters, and the human body is more sensitive to radiant heat than air temperature. (It feels a lot better to be warmed by the sun, than to breath warm air).

There are portable radiant heaters, though far less of them around than there used to be. I think people see them as less safe, which I guess they are.

<comment><USER6> An electric heater is inefficient if the electricity was generated inefficiently.

Inefficient: burn methane at a central point running a steam engine generator, dumping tons of waste steam into the air, run the electricity to your house and turn it into heat there.

Efficient: pump methane to your house and burn it there.

More efficient: burn the methane at a central location running a steam engine generator, carry both the steam and the electricity to your house, heating it and running appliances.

The moral: live densely enough that steam pipes are practical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alternatively you can move to a location with a decent year round climate (Redwood City, CA) and move into an apartment.

My PG&E Bill for 29 Days ending 4/21/2010: $5.00 - 40 Kwh @$0.11877. Easily the most massive energy consumer was the refrigerator - I would have cut that energy use by 2/3 if I could have figured out how (conveniently) to do without a fridge. My Hot water came from the building, but, at 97 degrees, and northern california water pressure, I know I was probably in the lower 5% of consumers in that space as well.

Just hitting the breaker to all your wall warts / WiFi when you leave to work has a very significant impact on energy consumption.

Scott Adams touches on one very, very good point - Having Northern exposure (in an apartment not on the top floor) means (in Redwood City) that from about April through late September you will never be uncomfortable. Apartments have awesome insulation - though I guess it's possible I was leaching heat during the winter from five of my neighbors and the hallway. I never bothered turning on (or even figured out how to) the central heat.

It's amazing how much a difference your apartment orientation can make to your quality of life.

<comment><USER8> I lived in an apartment in Northern England one winter.

In about January I found out that I hadn't understood the thermostat and the central heating had never turned on. I went through the whole of December oblivious (and warm) thanks to the surrounding apartments providing heat through the walls, floor and ceiling.

<comment><USER9> I once made it a month into the cold season here in Michigan before realizing that my house's only heating was coming from my computers...

<comment><USER10> Lived above a restaurant for two years, which kept me comfortable in a sweater in the winters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _"Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me."_

That doesn't make any sense, does it? Making something will always require energy, what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative. (Making a bike needs less energy than making a car, riding a bike needs less energy than driving a car.)

Scott Adams' writings always seem very shallow to me. He says something that sounds sorta good if you don't pay too much attention.

<comment><USER12> "what matters is whether something needs more or less energy than the alternative"

Does it? Does Mother Earth care whether your pollution came from a car or bicycle? You're just another polluter, you big bad polluter you.

More seriously, I think the reference here is to the idea that you can somehow objectively measure your negative impact and that anything above zero is bad. Since I pretty comprehensively disagree with that statement (impact to something as dynamic as the ecosystem can not be measure concretely, most people's metric of "impact" are incoherent when you really examine them, zero impact isn't a useful metric in light of these things, and I have at least as much "right" to exist and impact an environment as a beaver), I tend to agree with you. My point here is that it depends on your point of view and there are common points of view that disagree with you, and the piece was very clearly invoking this "radical" green point of view very often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just as a counter-point, I recently visited a friend in Prague who is both earth-loving like Mr. Adams and an architect. She and her husband recently rebuilt their home, and it looks fairly nice for the area despite being quirky for the energy savings. They have a grass roof which I was told was actually low maintenance once they had it in. That said, they weren't 'idiots' and didn't buy into photovoltaics.

Your mileage may vary depending on if your wife is an architect.

<comment><USER14> Grass roof... they have a slightly bigger one at Ford Rouge River:

"The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing groundcover. The sedum retains and cleanses rainwater and moderates the internal temperature of the building, saving energy. The roof is part of an $18 million rainwater treatment system designed to clean 20 billion gallons (76,000,000 m³) of rainwater annually, sparing Ford from a $50 million mechanical treatment facility."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0G6zNStTE>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One house item which shows no progress on the green side is the refrigerator. Obviously it should be a split system: fridge is inside and heat exchange outside the house. If it's hot outside, I don't want fridge to heat up air inside the house so then my AC has to cool it (an you know, my house has quite limited AC capacity). If it's cold outside, I don't want fridge to consume energy - just dump excessive heat outside. It puzzles me for years why with all this green movement I haven't seen a single split fridge yet.

<comment> cool-RR I thought about this too. It would be really nice if there was a central compressor that will pump that cold gas into ACs and refrigerators of multiple homes. I think that will be a lot greener than the other stuff suggested by Scott Adams.

<comment><USER16> Finland is now doing that for industry and warehouse refrigeration, and for some large retailers too. It might eventually find its way into homes too.

<comment><USER14> Finnish retailers are also converting en masse to refrigeration units which have a cover/door. It is a big investment to convert, but it also saves about 35% of the energy.

All new installs are of course with the doors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Houses in the developed world simply aren't designed to be "green". Painting your roof, reducing the number of windows, and adding insulation are all band- aid solutions to a much deeper issue. All the common "green" solutions might cut your energy consumption in half, but half of a large amount of energy is still a large amount of energy.

I've seen some extremely green homes, and they're far more bizarre looking than the example given in this article. Homes designed around sunlight, earth (for insulation and heat regulation), and airflow turn out looking VERY different from homes that have had energy-saving features tacked on.

<comment><USER18> Depending on the climate, they don't have to look too futuristic. Here are a bunch of "passive houses" in Sweden (houses without a dedicated source of heat, instead surplus heat from cooking, showering, people etc provide enough heat due to good insulation):

[http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&...](http://www.google.se/images?um=1&hl=sv&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Asv- SE%3Aofficial&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=passivhus+site%3A.se&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Arrgh. Scott sometimes mistakes his ignorance for wit. He could've outfitted his home with heat-pipe solar thermal collectors, like the Thermomax ones. These things work well, even in the winter, even in cloudy, chilly old England, where they were designed. I suspect they'd do a pretty bang-up job in California. Connecting those up to the hot water heating the floors would've taken a _big_ chunk out of his carbon footprint, even if he couldn't heat his home completely with them. They're worth it just for the hot-water preheat.

<http://www.thermomax.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> There is a short and entertaining TED talk on this topic.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_gree...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/catherine_mohr_builds_green.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Smaller houses consume less resources and are more efficient. (In most cases.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Solar cells are expensive now, but production of them has been going up at something likely 20-30% a year for a decade. You got to figure that a lot of the price of a cell is going to the rapid ramp-up in manufacturing capacity, and that at some point the supply will have increased enough that the price will drop.

</comment><comment><USER23> Scott Adams, 2012! For a better America.

</comment><comment><USER24> "As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence."

:)</comment>


Scotland to House Largest Tidal Turbine - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/scotland-to-house-largest-tidal-turbine-on-the-planet/ <comment><USER2> Here's a description of an earlier attempt, [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/inside-worlds- firs...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/inside-worlds-first-large- scale-effort-to-harness-tidal-energy-180960632/)

All the press releases and articles describing work in the Pentland Firth are breathlessly optimistic. The environment here is fantastically unkind to marine equipment and at least one previous project (can't recall or find the details) was destroyed in a very short time.

To give you an idea, the current at Duncansby Head at the opposite end of the channel reaches 10 knots.

This stretch of coast is great to visit, especially on a clear day in winter. As it starts to get dark, you can watch about 8 lighthouses on the neighbouring islands switch on and flash their beams across the cold, dark waters.

[https://www.nlb.org.uk/lighthouses/duncansby- head/](https://www.nlb.org.uk/lighthouses/duncansby-head/)

Disclaimer: Grew up in Wick, 20km to the south.

<comment><USER3> What are your thoughts on the project as someone familiar with the area? Good, bad, mixed?

As an outsider, it seems that Scotland is leading the world in offshore wind, which is someone Scottish Engineers could export to many other places. I see it as exciting.

<comment><USER2> It's a resource that's hard to ignore. There are good electricity grid connections nearby because of the, now decommissioned, fast-breeder reactor at Dounreay. It's a hellishly difficult place to work but that's kind of the point - if the technology can be made to work here then it will work anywhere.

There's a long history of marine engineering in the country. There's a lot of good expertise here and the Scottish government sees renewables and the associated technology to be a good export opportunity for the country. It would be great if the country to take the experience gained in the oil industry and use it in more environmentally friendly ways (if you ignore all the fish that the tidal turbines will be turning into an all you can eat sushi buffet for the local gulls).

<comment><USER4> > here are good electricity grid connections nearby because of the, now > decommissioned, fast-breeder reactor at Dounreay

That and the recent 400kV upgrade of the Beauly to Denny high voltage transmission line to provide additional capacity for renewable energy sources:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_Scotland#Beau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_Scotland#Beauly- Denny_power_line)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently this is a 2MW turbine

[https://simecatlantis.com/2018/09/13/simec-atlantis- energy-u...](https://simecatlantis.com/2018/09/13/simec-atlantis-energy- unveils-worlds-largest-single-rotor-tidal-turbine-the-ar2000/)

<comment><USER6> Isn't 1,5 - 2MW much the same amount a standard onshore wind turbine would provide? I assume the tidal power generation must have some advantages (e.g. more constant output?)

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's the fact that it's constant, as it's predictable - you know when the tides will happen, unlike wind where you might have a week of low wind.

<comment><USER5> Actually wind and sun are very predictable, but intermittent.

The main benefit, I think, is having multiple generation sources as these will smoothen out any power drops from other sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tidal power is very challenging. Tidal stream devices like this have a very high LCOE (levelized cost of energy) because the stresses on them are massive so they are built like tanks but capture little of the energy flowing past them. Tidal range designs like La Rance ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station)) are significantly more economic, but actually developing them and building them due to the size they need to be to be economic presents a major headwind for developers. There is huge potential globally for this but the will from investors and governments to really focus on it hasn't been there. These are mega-engineering projects with big risks, so capital flows to simple solar and wind instead.

</comment><comment><USER9> Their ancestor : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station)

</comment><comment><USER10> They tried one (2mw project) in Canada's Bay of Fundy but the turbine got damaged. I think we have a ways to go before seeing tidal power generation being commercialized

[https://globalnews.ca/news/4644316/cape-sharp-tidal- turbine-...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4644316/cape-sharp-tidal-turbine- damaged/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's a good video on why getting Tidal power to work is hard: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMRiKmgxrh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMRiKmgxrh0)

<comment><USER12> I've just skimmed it, but that video appears to be about wave power rather than tidal power?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Oh flower of Scotland When will we see Your like again".

Well done Scotland!</comment>


Python Packaging Do's and Don'ts - <AUTHOR> http://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2014/07/15/python-packaging-do%27s-and-don%27ts/ <comment><USER2> Oh yes, use virtualenv and don't use your OS's package system. Let's make sysadmin's life difficult together.</comment>


How We Detect Adblock - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagefair.com/2013/detect-adblock/?cmp=52	 The tech behind the detection. <comment><USER2> So has anybody ever tried to address the root cause of adblocker use, i.e. ads are really fucking annoying? I don't like ads in general, nobody does, but that alone wouldn't be enough to make me bother to install and maintain AdBlock. What does it is strobing "YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON" and animated "one weird trick" scams and softcore porn. This shit is _everywhere_ , even on allegedly respectable news sites.

If you want me to turn off AdBlock, you need to insist on reasonable, non- offensive, non-animated ads. If your ad provider doesn't do that, get a better one, or lean on yours until they do. If this industry spent one-tenth as much energy pushing ad services for better quality standards as they do wringing their hands about ad blocking, shit would happen.

<comment><USER3> I'll continue to ad-block even if ads are non-intrusive or annoying. I prefer no ads to any ads.

If your website requires a monetization scheme to exist, and you can't find a monetization scheme that doesn't pollute your product with (even nice simple) ads, that's not really my problem. I didn't force you to publish.

If I want your content, then I'd be happy to help pay for its generation. If it satisfies my terms, of course (open licensing, no ads).

<comment><USER4> I'm curious. What websites do you currently pay for access to? Any?

<comment><USER3> I donate to Wikipedia, Democracy Now ([http://www.democracynow.org/](http://www.democracynow.org/)), and TVO ([http://www.tvo.org](http://www.tvo.org)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it really worth potentially breaking your site for innocent, non-adblock folks in order to serve ads to a user who has explicitly and deliberately taken steps to not be served ads?

Take the reddit approach: put a humanizing message kindly asking users to disable it and then don't make offensive/hostile ads. And then make some percentage of the ads a "thanks for whitelisting us, we really appreciate it" message.

<comment><USER6> What potential break are you referring to? They're not recommending disabling functionality for users with ad block on.

It's nice that they're discussing these techniques, hopefully other sites will do it better. I browse with click-to-play for plugins and it's often mistaken for ad block.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >We then carefully observe what happens when a page loads. onLoad and onError events tell us if they're successfully retrieved or if requests have been blocked

Unfortunately for them many Adblock users also use Noscript or Javascript Blocker. Circumventing Adblock this way will just drive more people to prevent untrusted websites running code on their machines. A net win for web security but probably not the intended effect.

<comment><USER8> Can anyone else confirm this? Personally, I've always used AdBlock, but never used a Javascript blocker because it is substantially more effort and I am lazy. I do use Disconnect, though, to block that certain flavor of JS.

<comment><USER9> The first two things I install on any fresh browser is NoScript and AdBlock. I then make a point of permanently blocking JS from any domain looking like it might be used only for ads. I'll selectively turn on JS for one (very constrained!) domain at a time if I need to do something (like login to purchase or comment), but if I'm just browsing and a site no-worky-without-js? Tab closed, no second thoughts. There's a certain blogging platform site (can't remember what it's called) that gets linked here a lot that doesn't work with JS off; I've never read anything posted there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You guys should take a look at piracy and how well that worked out for content creators. They still get paid, but it'll always be whack-a-mole.

I have a comfy six figure IT job, and I'd still spend a few hours for fun just to figure out how to work around your javascript. Now think about how much time someone determined will spend on it.

Pivot and go do something with a higher possible success rate.

<comment><USER11> I agree. Google's business model doesn't seem sustainable and I doubt they'll ever be profitable.

\s

<comment><USER12> He's talking about being in the ad block circumvention business, not being in the ad business.

However, I don't like Google's business model either. Being profitable isn't a measurement of making the world a better place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> AdblockPlus, NoScript and RequestPolicy are my tools to control the content my web browser displays. My general rule is that I'll only disable ad blocking on a few trusted sites and never on a site that uses a third-party advertising network.

Most advertising networks have intrusive or annoying ads that actually block my ability to read a site by using pop-overs if my mouse cursor accidentally touches a keyword, divs that obscure content until I've paid sufficient attention to locate and click the "X", etc. If that wasn't bad enough, these third-party networks also present a security risk and have been used in the past as delivery vehicles for malware.

In the end if a web site relies solely on intrusive advertising for support and they plead with me to disable adblock, I'll most likely choose to stop reading/participating on the website rather than make an exception for them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Coincidentally I just open sourced some JavaScript I've been using to detect adblock: [http://esd.io/blog/detecting-adblock- javascript.html](http://esd.io/blog/detecting-adblock-javascript.html)

There's not much to it, but it's important to note that many ad filters actively try to avoids detection by whitelisting "test ads" or blocking externally loaded adblock detection code. That's why I suggesting inlining this javascript snippet but all of this, of course, is ultimately a cat and mouse game.

</comment><comment><USER15> Destructoid reported an ad-block rate of 30-45%. In general the wider estimate is 30% of ALL ads across the web are getting blocked.

[http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers- blo...](http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-block-our- ads-now-what--247904.phtml)

At Quartz we're lucky - it appears to be 13%. I've used Ad-Blocker for years in the past. Not sure why I stopped (new computer, never installed?) but its been a few years at least.

However now that I work more on the ad side of things (how to make site experience better and maintain reading experience) I can see that blanket ad- blocking is harmful to sites bottom line.

I'm not sure what the answer is, its still Users right to manage their browser VS site operators trying to stay in business

<comment><USER14> I don't have much data yet, but on our B2B news sites it appears to be in the 4% to 9% range depending on the industry.

I don't think ad blocking specifically is behind the trend away from leaderboards and towards "native content" advertising, but it's only going to accelerate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I assume that you are just injecting some snippet of JS into pages. What does protects you from getting (ad-)blocked?

If you get more customers somebody will create ad-blocker-blocker-blocker (we are going deeper). And ad-blockers have much better position than you have, they can execute anytime and intercept code before it is evaluated.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I find AdBlock to be superfluous.

I just block advertising websites from my hosts file.

In particular, using this: [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I know several people (me included) that installed AdBlock because of YT annoying pre-roll ads. Google seems to be shooting themselves in the foot.

</comment><comment><USER8> To all the bashers: detecting AdBlock or other plugins like Disconnect is sometimes necessary for ad-free sites as well. Some sites malfunction when the user has such an extension installed, and it is a great user experience when the developer is thoughtful enough to put up a banner at the top of the page saying "This site may not work correctly if you are using AdBlock". (sorry for the "some sites"; I was browsing recently and saw such a banner, but cannot recall where). Of course the better option is to test your site under AdBlock and make sure it works regardless, but sometimes the detection is needed.

</comment><comment><USER2> What does PageFair do, exactly? I mean, they're very proud of themselves for detecting Adblock, but it's not clear what they do with that information.

<comment><USER18> _We won't bore you with complaints here though; hopefully you've now got enough information to understand what's going on in the background when you sign up to use our free adblock measurement service._

From the homepage: _Measure: How many of your visitors are blocking ads and how much does it cost you in advertising revenue?_

etc etc. They are selling a service.

<comment><USER19> While I get the point, you can't claim revenues you never received are a "cost."

<comment><USER20> It does cost you if the ad revenue is supposed to cover your bandwidth costs. If you're hosting something heavy and users don't offset it by clicking the ads every once in a while, it's a problem. Also there are plugins out there which will load the ad content, but never display it - that means if you pay to advertise somewhere, you just paid for nothing (service was provided, but noone saw the ad).

<comment><USER21> Having ads that nobody likes and ads that nobody sees pays the same.

The case where you need to know if ads are being blocked or not is when you're trying to determine if you should change the ads or find another way to monetize the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How to get me to turn off Adblock:

1) Make ads that aren't annoying 2) Make ads that are low bandwidth 3) Make ads that don't take over the whole page (hiding the real content) 4) Don't show offensive ads (pornography, crude humor, etc) 5) Only advertise stuff that is of high quality and an excellent value for the money -- no junk.

Of course I realize that this will never happen, but one can dream.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've long thought that a useful feature for Adblock to include would be the option to load ads into the cache, then immediately delete them. This way the websites would make their money, the costs being pushed onto the advertisers instead.

<comment><USER18> But he script supposedly detects elements in page, css etc so this would not solve the issue of views, but I have no idea what the payment model is - is it just views or clickthroughs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there somewhere I can go to see an example of Pagefair in action?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can check out this article on Destructoid to see how they used the tool (fyi- we used to be called "Block Metrics")

[http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers- blo...](http://www.destructoid.com/half-of-destructoid-s-readers-block-our- ads-now-what--247904.phtml)

<comment><USER25> I'm curious if Destructoid paid a licensing fee to use Hopper's art. I'm skeptical that adding another figure (sad Keanu or not) qualifies this for "fair use" in this particular case.

And if they're skipping out on that payment then calling out people who block ads makes me think of a certain kettle and pot.

If they _are_ paying for that content then props to them for practicing what they preach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Only a matter of time until someone writes code to detect PageFair.

<comment><USER27> AdBlock -> detected by PageFair AdBlock -> detects PageFair and destroys it

Seems easy enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My prediction; Websites/Services will eventually start providing an Advertising Policy similar to today's Privacy Policy or Terms of Use. This Advertising Policy will help the content consumer understand the Websites/Services Stance on Advertising, what types of Ad's they allow, etc. This will help consumers choose what Sites they want to allow (aka support Ad revenue), and what Sites they want to Block.

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter detects if you're using an adblocker before logging into their ad platform: [https://ads.twitter.com/](https://ads.twitter.com/)

"To use this site, you need to disable AdBlock or any other ads-blocking extension you are using, or customize it to show ads on this site."

</comment><comment><USER30> "Filter lists also name particular files for which requests should be blocked regardless of domain; for example any javascript file called ads.js"

We have a file called that which has nothing to do with showing ads. If that's correct it will effectively break the service for anyone using AdBlock.

<comment><USER2> These days, it's a good idea to test your site with AdBlock the same way you test it with multiple browsers. When a page appears to be broken the first thing I try is temporarily disabling AdBlock; the second thing is loading it in IE.

It does suck that you have to jump through these hoops because flagrantly intrusive ads have poisoned the well for innocent site-owners. I wish it were otherwise.</comment></comment>


Selected Translations from "Factory Stories" - <AUTHOR> http://chuangcn.org/journal/one/the-future-is-hidden-within-these-realities/ <comment><USER2> It's probably insensitive to make any sort of comments about an article like that but the line from the first story: "perhaps this will be my entire life as long as I'm "affirming" my labor-power in the factory" was a kick to the head after a good beating. Not only do they work excessively hard but they suffer "corporate speak" like us on top of that. I would've thought that would be the one thing they would be spared.

<comment><USER3> If the purpose of newspeak was to make expressing dissent impossible, maybe the purpose of corporatespeak is to make expressing anything other than eagerness to be overworked impossible. Regardless it works just as well if you earn a hundred thousand dollars a year or a hundred dollars a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The alarm clock wakes me up at exactly 7:20 in the morning. I go to the > toilet, wash my face, change my clothes, no time to brush my teeth, I take > my key and run straight to the factory.

Perhps consider setting your alarm to 7:17 and brush those teeth.

<comment><USER5> Where are those three minutes going to come from?

There is no spare time when you're working at least 11 hours a day and are so time pressured that "Some don't even go to the toilet—not because they don't need to go, but because they're afraid they won't meet the production quota if they do. Most people wait until they finish their work, so the toilets are always packed at the end of a shift."

At that level of time poverty, sleep is the only remaining place from which to take time. Three minutes seems inconsequential to me and you because we're lucky to have enough spare time that three minutes really is inconsequential for us.

<comment><USER4> Those not going to the toilet are during the workday when they are on line.

Oral hygine is important. Yes take 3 minutes in the morning from sleep. This fella sounded depressed more than anything, not willing to scramble to get in line for a better meal than pickled vegetables. I don't blame him necessarily. 11 hour days as a factory worker must be soul crushing.</comment></comment></comment>


I created a tool to help people understand their option bets - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I built my first product :D! It's called Waffles.
https://www.waffles.finance
Waffles is a visualization tool to help people understand their option bets. Waffles rethinks how you build trades. Just select your desired strategy and let Waffles build it for you. No more tedious option picking. Learn quicker and discover insights.
There is a large and growing market of retail traders who are placing option bets without fully understanding what they're doing. Waffles aims to be the brokerage-agnostic tool of choice to help people understand their trades. <comment><AUTHOR> pre-built trade: www.waffles.click/tbc</comment>


Social Network Clone Script PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.thewallscript.com

<comment><USER2> I don't think anybody is gonna pay for this

</comment><comment><USER3> Copying is a good way to learn, buuuut...</comment>


Why The Web Is Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/04/26/businessinsider-square-coo-explains-why-the-web-is-dead-2011-4.DTL

<comment><USER2> Just because native apps are back in trend again because of the mobile devices, doesn't mean the web is dead. The web is still "killing" desktop applications.

What is happening though, is that the whole cycle is starting from scratch on mobile devices. That means the mobiles also need to go through the "native" cycle before they jump to the "web" cycle, just like desktop PC's.

<comment><USER3> The reason is the platform vendors (Apple and Google, mostly) are doing a really poor job implementing modern HTML features into their browsers. The browsers, while continually getting better, and still far behind desktop. I'm not just talking about in performance, but in feature parity. I'm not sure why Google is having such a problem speeding up their development of the Android browser, as they have no trouble on the desktop. I suspect that the Android browser is made within the Android team and not within the Chrome team, which is a problem.

I'm also worried that because the browser is such a central part of the mobile experience (appearing in the doc, being opened from within any app), it makes it VERY difficult for competitors to gain a market, much more so than on desktop. Add to this that Apple doesn't allow competing layout engines and I'm worried that the mobile browser might never get to the point where the desktop browser is today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Setting aside that this article is completely empty of actual content let alone any argument it makes the same sad mistake that many people do when discussing poverty.

The income gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger which must mean that poor poor are getting poorer.

Or more and more people are using mobile devices which must mean that less and less are using the web.

So basically I am going to use my laptop/desktop for work and then when I want to check my facebook status I am going to whip out my iPad and check it there, because it's mobile.

Jezz... why didn't I think of that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Considering they're confronted with a strident "Use the free Yelp app" banner, it's no surprise people steer away from the Yelp web experience on iOS.

<comment><USER6> More importantly, Yelp is most useful after you've already left home. There are tons of resources on the "web" for finding reviews of various local stuff, and a web search works pretty well for finding good stuff. When you are on the move, however, web search is (generally) a real pain, and non-mobile sites are (generally) a real pain. Yelp's app really fills a need.

I used the app extensively recently while trying to find an apartment, and I didn't see anything they were doing in the app that made me think, "This has to be a native app." I think what's being confused here are the two different "webs" that exist in todays tech parlance: the first is the one that you use a web browser to access and the second is the technology stack that allows you to deliver a device independent experience using a bunch of tools that helped build the first web (plus a bunch of new stuff). With the advent of things like PhoneGap, and the native platform fragmentation that's already begun, I suspect that we're going to see more, not less, efforts going into mobile web applications.

One side note: The extra emphasis placed on iOS and iPad in the article is also telling. Sure iOS may be winning in the tablet world, and doing a damn good job in smart phone world, but Facebook has 500+ million users. Even if you throw in Android, you're not even close the total number of Facebook users just in the US. If I was the Zuck, I would be thinking about a mobile strategy that wasn't caged in by specific device/platform growth too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a temporary situation to me. At least, hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is ridiculous. HTML5 apps just need to get better, and closed gardens need to open up. Viva la PhoneGap!

Seriously, why do you need to code an app in Objective C just to get native features? They should be exposed to Javascript. As usual, OPEN will win, and that means the web!

<comment><USER9> Some of the third-party solutions, such as PhoneGap and QuickConnect iPhone, do a lot to alleviate that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, but I refuse to vote up yet another article declaring the internet, marketing, credit, the world, the universe, human communication or anything else 'dead'.

Try some original thought, people.</comment>


Oil price rebound gathers pace as Trump stokes Iran tensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/89340432-0f0c-461b-aded-26cc862a1eac <comment><AUTHOR> > Those gains came after US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered > American warships to destroy any Iranian vessels that posed a threat.</comment>


Things I Believe - <AUTHOR> http://gduverger.com/i-believe.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I have been reading Hacker News for a while but this is my first post. My name is Georges Duverger.

I have been working in the Web industry for more than 5 years—3 startups, 2 countries, 1 acquisition—but until now I never took the time to write down what I believe in (professionally, at least).

I would love to hear your feedback on those thoughts. Thanks!</comment>


A Hermes "thermal event" (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://fanf2.user.srcf.net/hermes/doc/misc/orange-fire/ <comment><USER2> To provide some context for the uninitiated: Hermes is Cambridge University's email system. The SRCF this page is hosted on is the 'student run computing facility' which provides certain sorts of hosting to students (it was where I first learned how to use a Linux command line).

<comment><USER3> I should add that the SRCF offers services to pretty much anyone at the University (or its colleges), including staff and of course the students you mentioned.

I am involved in running the SRCF nowadays. It's always encouraging to hear that it's been beneficial as an educational aid, as well as through pure utility!

Some people migrated their work pages to our web hosting from the University's equivalent service, which was abruptly shut down recently [0]. This follows an incident that got some attention on HN [1] -- chronologically at least, if not causally as well.

[0]: [http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/](http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/) [1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283922)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That page dates from when we were moving our users off the old NetApp / Sun / UW-IMAP version of Hermes onto the new Linux / Cyrus version, with a 10x quota increase. My colleague David Carter had extended Cyrus with application-level replication, so our new mail storage architecture was (and still is) a sharded cluster with multi-site replication. David's replication code was later adopted by Fastmail and incorporated into upstream Cyrus. It was pretty cutting-edge at the time. [http://fanf2.user.srcf.net/hermes/doc/talks/2004-02-ukuug/](http://fanf2.user.srcf.net/hermes/doc/talks/2004-02-ukuug/)

</comment><comment><USER5> _" In mid-April, I received a phone call from a Sun UK manager saying that Sun were upset by this web page and would like it to be taken down. Although it was down for a while, I have put it back since there is no reason to be embarrassed about a machine failing after five years of heavy use. And my boss likes this page better than he likes Sun."_

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on everything I've ever seen, "RED State Exception" was SUNW service code for "you'll be needing a new system board".</comment>


One-off ketamine dose may reduce heavy drinking, say scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/26/one-off-ketamine-dose-may-reduce-heavy-drinking-say-scientists <comment><AUTHOR> Article: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13162-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13162-w)

</comment><comment><USER2> Ketamine is now being legally offered for treatment of depression in my city. Alcohol is far cheaper, however.</comment>


Ask HN: advice on link widget startup - <AUTHOR>

Resubmitting this as an Ask HM.
I just closed down my first startup SkreemR.com to focus on a new project called LinkGym.com. The idea is that you submit a link to your website and in return you get a small widget of other links (similar to a blogroll) to host on your own site. We will ensure that all links have an even distribution and receive an equal number of page views. Ideally, we want this to become the easiest way to get traffic to your site, particularly if it is a new site or startup. With one submit, there will be links to your site from all over the web.
I am trying to gauge interest in such a service and get feedback on what people think of this idea.
Over on digital point forums, people were concerned about being penalized by search engines for using the widget.
So, I'd love to hear your feedback and if you are interested in the service please sign up to be notified when it is ready at LinkGym.com. <comment><USER2> I really like the idea. It's something different than all the expensive SEO sites. And I know how hard it is to get visitors on the page for the first time. +1 for this. And: I know it's off-topic, but I really liked Skreemr. What are the reasons for taking it down? And is it possible to get the source code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. As for SkreemR, basically it stopped making money and we did not want to go in the hole, so we closed it down. I think basically we are too busy to do anything with the code right now. Besides, you could probably make an audio search engine that uses YouTube as a source in a day or two anyway.</comment></comment>


The User Is Priority #1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.robbywalker.name/1/post/2007/08/the-user-is-priority-1.html

<comment><USER2> Seems to me, great service to the customer is everyone's first priority. The advantage a start-up has over a large company is their ability to have more intimate time with their customers. Once a company grows over 25 people, meeting with each other inside the company to discuss the customer seems to become more important then meeting directly with their customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree this is another advantage startups have.

I do also think great service to the customer often gets lost behind risk analysis, corporate politics, bizdev agreements, etc. Early stage startups don't have these situations to balance and they can focus solely on the user.</comment></comment>


End-To-End Performance Study of Cloud Services - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/26/end-to-end-performance-study-of-cloud-services.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HighScalability+%28High+Scalability%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Interesting! Matched my experience with the slowness of SimpleDB.

That said, this benchmark web application does not hit the sweet spots of SimpleDB and AppEngine: parallel queries.

For AppEngine, using a single entity group (for transactions, data needs to be server-localized, and that is one thing that an entity group does) is really not using the platform correctly.

That said, good article!</comment>


Forget Snow, here's how you write good PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/icheishvili/phoauth

<comment><USER2> Much better than the pecl extension.</comment>


Reddit reaches for profits through a geek-culture bazaar - <AUTHOR> http://reuters.com/article/2013/12/28/us-reddit-gifts-idUSBRE9BR04F20131228 <comment><USER2> Dear Reddit,

Making money on the Internet is a solved problem. You just need to sell ads. Please suspend these nerdy business experiments and just focus on improving and promoting your ad platform. That is literally all you need to do.

And even if you choose not to do that, you can achieve profitability within the next 2 months by merely moving away from AWS to a more cost-effective website hosting platform, since hosting costs are your greatest expense.

Since you can easily raise revenue and cut costs at the same time, if you're not profitable in the next 2 months, it's only because you don't want to be profitable. And, hey, that's cool if your investors don't care.

<comment><USER3> Reddit has always been anti-ads especially since they feel strongly that their userbase hates ads and would actually revolt in a mass uprising if Reddit started getting more aggressive with the ads they show.

I'm actually with you about them finding more cost effective ways to serve all that content. I wonder if they should think about using peer-to-peer caching using HTML5/webworkers and other distributed caching methods. Given that the community has strong support for reddit (they even give money freely via the donation bar), maybe they would be okay with allowing spare bandwidth to be used to keep the site running.

On the ads side, I think the proprietary system they have is not doing them any favors when it comes to getting a piece of the ad spend pie during RFPs. I don't even know how an advertiser would begin to figure out which subreddits they should target w/o having to sit down and dive into all the stats. The other core issue I think is that reddit specifically touts the fact that you target by subreddit not by demographics/users/behavior, etc. but I think that data is extremely important to most advertisers.

<comment><USER4> _revolt in a mass uprising_

What actually happens: the old timers complain for three days then just put up with it.

People still conflate online complaining with meaning and desires of the entire user base. Sadly, online comments aren't independent statistical samples from your entire user base.

What's the rate again? 2% of users actively participate in sites while 98% happily browse and put up with ads?

<comment><USER5> You're making a huge, possibly fatal, assumption about quality remaining constant.

<comment><USER4> Quality of submissions or comments?

I was part of another forum-based company that went from zero advertising to full display advertising with banners and adsense (the ads brought in another $200k to $500k per month). Some of the vocal members (read: always bitchy about everything, even mild color or margin changes) complained at first, then went back to their normal bitching about everything else in the world.

All changes hurt at first, but we can't not change everything forever.

<comment><USER5> Quality of the site as a whole, both subs and comments.

Again, you're assuming that the presence of additional advertising will have no effect on the content. Perhaps your example webboard always sucked, you know?

One additional way to look at it is to gauge whether your webboard is more popular and/or more highly trafficked than its related subreddits. This last point doesn't necessarily speak to content quality, but it does relate to the relationship and motivations of its community.

A tenet of advertising is to maintain a blindspot for self-reflectivity, to assume that everything would be the same whether they were present or not. Leaving aside the economics of production, for a simple example of TV shows, a lack of advertising would enable longer shows and thus more content, which is what people presumably watch these shows for. A negligible number of people watch TV only for the advertising content, and I think we can agree that a station that is only comprised of advertising would not be very popular. QVC will never get the ratings that "Duck Dynasty" does, much less one composed entirely of 30sec spots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How would the HN community react if any of the ideas suggested in this thread were implemented by PG?

Non-redditors need to understand the overwhelming revolt against any sort of advertisement in the reddit community. Yishan Wong (CEO) had to respond to one of the "top" comments when this article was posted in r/technology[1].

While reddit "fans" will support the company through "Reddit Gold"[2], advertisements in the form of "sponsored links" or "feed ads" doesn't seem to work under the beloved format [ex: 3]. If you're interested in learning about Condé Nast and other investors , I found a "myth busters" blog post [4].

[1][http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tvfze/reddit_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tvfze/reddit_is_going_for_profitability_next_year/cec2256)

[2][http://blog.reddit.com/2013/10/thanks-for- gold.html](http://blog.reddit.com/2013/10/thanks-for-gold.html)

[3][http://www.reddit.com/comments/1o6f63/now_you_can_fly_histor...](http://www.reddit.com/comments/1o6f63/now_you_can_fly_historys_greatest_warplanes_in/)

[4][http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth- busters_6.html](http://blog.reddit.com/2013/08/reddit-myth-busters_6.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some time ago I read that Andover.net/Geeknet made most of its money via ThinkGeek. It still didn't made the company any profit [1].

[1] - [http://beta.fool.com/ddelony/2012/09/20/will-selling- slashdo...](http://beta.fool.com/ddelony/2012/09/20/will-selling-slashdot-and- sourceforge-save-geeknet/12332/)

But making profit off selling stuff is only half the challenge. As the sale of Slashdot to Dice Holdings illustrates, the Internet doesn't quite like cross- subsidies. That's what's undoing traditional media: in newspapers, the cartoon page attracted viewers and the real estate listings attracted paying advertisers, and between those the paper rag could pay for the foreign correspondents, or for the reporter at Town Hall. Now it's everyone for themselves, and some outlets make writers responsible for their own traffic, article per article. That's how we end up with listicles all over the place.

But I digress. Reddit has two challenges: one, make the profit off sales that it can't make off running The Front Page of the Internet. Two, maintain the cross-subsidy once the managers realise they have a profitable store weighed down by this money-losing forum, so hey, "couldn't we make more profit if we didn't have the forum?"

</comment><comment><USER8> Two words for ya reddit: "Feed Ads" (aka inserting ads in between pieces of organic content/stories)

It works for Facebook, it works for Twitter, it will work for you. The only thing is you have to be careful how you present it and design it into the existing platform.

<comment><USER9> Feed Ads would cause a user revolt _overnight_.

Reddit is caught between a rock and a hard place since users like Reddit _because_ of the nonintrusive ads.

<comment><USER10> It's so true. It would be much to risky to do that. Reddit could risk a Digg- like exodus if people got too pissed off. I think a more viable strategy would be to somehow expand the reach of reddit so that it isn't merely a replaceable social media/news site.

<comment><USER4> _could risk a Digg-like exodus_

That only happens if there is somewhere else to jump to. What else is there?

We don't use the best of all possible systems, we use the best available system, which is always highly imperfect.

<comment><USER11> I'd suggest that Imgur will be a nearly complete replacement option for Reddit (no coincidence, it's intentional). At the rate Imgur is increasing in size, and the rate at which they're moving toward social, this is seemingly just a matter of time now.

<comment><USER12> I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a big overlap of the early adopter core user bases from kuro4hin, slashdot, reddit, and HN - i.e. a lot of the same people moved from one to the other and created the editorial direction (so to speak). By that measure HN is 'the next Reddit'.

<comment><USER13> Unless HN starts supporting sub"HN"s (or starts allowing porn, jokes and My Little Pony-related posts on the frontpage) I don't think it's a viable replacement for Reddit.

<comment><USER12> It's already got a lot more political stories (though necessarily post- Snowden); HN feels pretty much like early reddit now. Though I do think Reddit morphed its community precisely to avoid just being another in this list (Digg exodus helped that too of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The tech posts by their admins always make for good reading. Initially I thought "how hard can it be?", but they have to generate so much of their stuff dynamically that I'd be seriously impressed if they can make the numbers work. Especially since that dynamic complexity doesn't scale all that well.

</comment><comment><USER15> They're better off creating a job board for the entire site. I've tried advertising on Reddit 3 times and each has been a complete and total failure. It's BOTH the users and the method of displaying which is leading to poor..er...no results.

===== Reddit Users =====

● Advertising on Reddit is equivalent to a business hustler in a suit approaching you at a hackathon. Ads are unwelcome because no one on Reddit is there to buy anything.

● Even if you get lots of traffic, there's no conversion. Out of 1,000 unique visits I've had ->1<\- person actually bought a calendar. I joked around saying "I'd probably get more sales advertising on a porn site" and just for the hell of it actually went through with it. Gay porn sites seem to be the cheapest on blogads.com with the lowest cost per impressions + high impressions & big community. So I booked a 1 week spot on "TheBananaBlog". I actually got 3 sales from it. So advertising a calendar on a gay porn site is more cost effective than advertising on Reddit. Think about that next time before you try to buy ads on Reddit.

===== Reddit's Ad Methods Flaws =====

● Reddit doesn't understand what an "ad" is. Plain and simple. It tries to fit "ads" into a "content" form factor and group them into the "content feed" where they DO-NOT-BELONG. Users don't like this. They don't like this on Reddit and they don't like it anywhere else on the web.

● By mixing ads and content Reddit is making their advertisers seem deceitful and dishonest. Like we're trying to sneak a money making scheme into their pristine community of readers. When really we're supporting their community.

● Reddit lacks version control and the ability to test out different ad type content.

● Too many Reddit users tend to be "dough bags". The type that always ask you for food/pizza/ride/cigarette/drink and never repay you. I'm sorry but it's true. They'll rip images from people's personal blogs and link to them directly rather than linking to that person's page with the entirety of the content. Or they'll just re-upload stolen content to imgur where all their images are hosted. Their excuse is that they won't want "blog-spam". Everything to them is blog-spam -_-. They like to take and not give back when it comes to content. So advertising to this crowd will get you no where.

===== Possible Solution =====

● Use 1 traditional ad on the right side with "Today's Community Supporter:" above it. Make sure the ad doesn't use "ad like code", rotate, and is a static image that way it's much less likely to get blocked by ad blockers.

● Nothing. Reddit was like this since the beginning. I remember Reddit back when it was just 1 reddit (before subreddits) and the community behavior was similar. Snarky, condescending, anti-entrepreneur.

What makes Hacker News awesome is the community's understanding of self promotion: Posting a link or plug to your startup/business when relevant is acceptable: The calendar I mentioned above is here at my custom webstore: [http://dayonepp.com/](http://dayonepp.com/) you can use coupon code: "hn" to get $3 off.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reddit's real product has always been its hipness. You introduce something on Reddit, and 1000 bots-or-people "upvote" it, and suddenly the press picks up on the story.

How does this translate into dollars and cents? Reddit could use its platform to popularize new hip counterculture products. When advertisers purchase ad space, the real ads would be in the links and comments.

All it takes is about a dozen people to upvote something within the first 8-10 minutes after it is posted and it stands a good chance of "going viral." That's harder to sell than ads, but perhaps more valuable.

<comment><USER14> >Reddit's real product has always been its hipness.

I disagree. Their strength (in my view) is that its a build your own community DIY. If you feel strongly about turnips then start a turnip subreddit. vb forum etc doesn't have that flexibility.

EDIT: FML...someone claimed /r/turnips already.

<comment><USER17> >I disagree.

I think it's both. Your turnip site instantly becomes the hippest turnip site due to it's location on Reddit.

<comment><USER14> Fair point - building a community is easier if you've got a bunch of community's that are effectively neighbors.

The other thing I just realized is that the smaller subreddits benefit from elitism - as ugly as that sounds. i.e. /r/pics is driven by raw masses, while /r/turnips would likely be driven by a small group of die-hards.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two iPhones Strapped to a Rocket - <AUTHOR> http://diegocalderon.info/2013/05/08/rocket-phone/

<comment><USER2> Video recorded on an iPhone is not viewable on an iPhone?

<comment><AUTHOR> ?? sorry try this link <http://youtu.be/KSowEzGPf5U>

<comment><USER2> I must say, the pay out was good! That was really cool. I used to build and fly rockets. I forgot how much fun they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you give me some context? why was this done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically for fun. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and put together more posts of how I did it and why, but this is what I have so far.</comment></comment>


Seesmic Aquires Popular Twitter AIR Client Twhirl - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/03/seesmic-aquires-popular-twitter-air-client-twhirl/ <comment><USER2> I hadn't heard of Seesmic till now, I suppose that means that this acquisition probably already paid for itself with the press it's getting.</comment>


Andrew Ng: What Artificial Intelligence Can and Can't Do Right Now - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-artificial-intelligence-can-and-cant-do-right-now <comment><USER2> Refreshing. The hype around AI/machine learning in places like here and TechCrunch is exhausting. It doesn't help when people like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk speculate about nightmare scenarios that seem to have both feet firmly in the distant future. We're so, so far away from anything resembling so-called "general intelligence". It's totally nuts to compare clever engineering scenarios like Google's Go project to general intelligence. It just isn't.

My theory is that paid per click advertising/clickbait is making it increasingly difficult to say anything that gets attention on the internet, so people increasingly use hyperbole. "Internet journalists" will trump things up to make it sound more exciting, feeding the hype machine. Those that don't succumb to the practice are just not heard. There are, of course, exceptions. But a well-reasoned, calmly stated argument from a nobody is never going to go viral in the way that an outlandish story from that same nobody could. i.e. Seth Godin doesn't have reach just because he's interesting, it's also because he's been working at it for over a decade, but any idiot can make up some fake story that goes viral and impacts the public consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess because business people tend to be confused by hype or anti-hype and sometimes unable to care about five years from now this is a realistic message.

But he really emphasized the supervision and input -> output parts which is a bit of an oversimplification. There is definitely less supervision than before and demos from groups like Deep Mind or OpenCog that are powerful interactive agents.

<comment><USER4> "...the amount of work we can automate with AI is vastly bigger than before. As leaders, it is incumbent on all of us to make sure we are building a world in which every individual has an opportunity to thrive."

Andrew Ng is cerainly an AI liminary, but the above excerpt begs for a refreshed discussion summarizing leading ideas on what this new "AI-infused" world looks like.

In a 2014 Bloomberg article, Ng stated "There will always be work for people who can synthesize information, think critically, and be flexible in how they act in different situations."(1)

This logic worked for the Industrial Revolution (IR), and I'm sure it will certainly hold true for our lifetimes and perhaps a few generations onward. However, while steam engines and special purpose machines of the IR drastically increased productivity, displacing many physical labor jobs, humanity still carried the reserve of our intellect to fall back on in a post IR world. There was still a largely untapped reservoir of intellect and creativity.

I suspect the transition to an AI-infused world will occur gradually over a few generations and my great grandchildren will have a much different sense of nastalgia and what it means to live a meaningful life in a world where people gladly receive a base wage and spend the day consuming the latest computer generated song, novel, or scientific white papers. A world where computer creations arrive at a pace and quality faster and higher than humans could never compete with, so why bother?

In my current mindset, however, that just doesn't seem like a fun world to live in. Every single thing I do being far inferior to what a computer can do. If I were transplanted in that world, I think there would be many products where I would draw the line and opt for a good portion of non-AI generated products. Like a modern day Amish person I suppose.

1\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-12/your- job-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-12/your-job-taught- to-machines-puts-half-u-s-work-at-risk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ai community needs to put out more clear writing like this to help educate business world on what is possible and what isn't.

<comment><USER6> The AI community is the source of false information. They will never tell you that AI is fundamentally impossible because a machine cannot think; it can only do as its told by its programmer. That is the bottom line.

<comment><USER7> How is that different from a human or a dog?

<comment><USER8> Creativity imo. We can choose to create novel things, with intention, that fulfill a use.

<comment><USER7> Dogs are creative as well, though not as much as humans. The comment I was replying to simply _asserted_ that people have something a machine inherently cannot. I wonder what that thing is, and if the writer thinks it's a machine- vs-nature issue or a humans-vs-all-other issue.

FWIW I don't believe the assertion in the slightest. I do believe it is quite likely to have an AGI that does not recognizably exhibit _conciousness_ but that, to me, is irrelevant.

<comment><USER8> That's fair, I understand your stance on that, and definitely agree with you on the AGI.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hackers wanted - analyzing Computer Science job posts at MIT - <AUTHOR> http://marciovm.posterous.com/hackers-wanted-1000-job-posts-to-course-vi-at

<comment><USER2> I read the email in footnote #5 a few weeks ago when it was sent out to the list and had a good laugh. Jobslist has an awesome smattering of startup ideas but also lots of what seems to be delusional business students who have "the next big idea" and "just need hackers/coders".

</comment><comment><USER3> The course vi jobs list is, in my experience, the closest thing i've seen to "the pulse of the startup world" - because most startups with any money want MIT programmers. I have always wanted to see an analysis like this.

Surprising that "ninja" isn't as frequent as we all think (or maybe it's that those times it _is_ used it's just particularly notable/gross).

<comment><USER4> Or that 'ninja' isn't used by people who want to recruit at MIT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather see the words scored by how much more frequent they are here than in English in general. E.g. [http://wry.me/blog/2010/04/08/quantitative- tolkien-studies.h...](http://wry.me/blog/2010/04/08/quantitative-tolkien- studies.html) analyzed The Lord of the Rings that way, with a link to the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point -- I will try that, thanks. I'll link to the code as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Odd that you never mention that it's Anne Hunter's jobs list; did you think I wouldn't want to have my name out there? I started it at the dawn of the dot.com boom to make students aware of all of those opportunities. My record number of msgs on one day is said to be 27, just before a Career Fair. I almost always "clean up" the subject line to make it more standard, dropping ninja, rock star, wizard, etc., and I definitely send out the ads from MBAs for comic relief. My sense from talking to current students ALL DAY LONG (that's my real job) is that they want to do their OWN startup with their OWN idea, not become somebody else's coder (even if you call it CTO).

Great analysis; be sure and let me know when you do more, and give credit, please.

Anne

<comment><AUTHOR> Anne -

My apologies, I was not aware this list had an owner. I updated the post to credit you. Thanks very much for maintaining the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that Android edges out both iPhone and iPad. This would be a nice resource for students looking for skills that will land them jobs (mobile web yes, UNIX rockstar no).</comment>


Chinese official mistakes Twitter clone for private chat tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/06/21/sina-microblog-affair/

<comment><USER2> "A journalist subsequently interviewed Mr. Xie via telephone and he owned up everything"

I wonder if he owned up to the impropriety of using your official position to reimburse your mistress for things she bought for herself.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how serious the corruption charge must be in China before facing execution.

<comment><USER4> Proportional to public outrage.

<comment><USER2> Also inversely proportional to the strength of your connections to higher ups.

<comment><USER5> Actually, @potato has it right.

If the public gets mad at you, you AND your mistress are goners in China.

It's crazy how things work over there. Trial is only used as a method of providing justification for the execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, that's a serious usability fail, looking from the technical point of view.

<comment><USER7> Is it really? I feel like it just takes a basic amount of curiosity to ask yourself: "Huh, is this really how it works?" I'm optimistic about the general population asking those kinds of questions, but I might just be a(n elitist) technophile. :-/

Something my dad told me: Never be one misstep away from a big mistake.

<comment><USER8> Even if he did ask himself if it was actually private, he apparently didn't attempt to ensure he was right. That should be obvious to anyone. Who doesn't look over the shoulder before talking about a sensitive subject, even if you are alone in a public place?

I have an obsession about checking the door handle when using public bathrooms, which is why I hate the accessibility adapted door handles very common here in Sweden:

[http://picasaweb.google.com/beth.hochman/GoteborgUniversityS...](http://picasaweb.google.com/beth.hochman/GoteborgUniversitySweden#5174373068299178450)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> what's so surprising was that even after thousands of people started to follow them, they still didn't notice that it was a public conversation they were having...

</comment><comment><USER9> They should have claimed that Lulsecz hacked both accounts and made this fake conversation for the lulz :)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, blame it on the western imperialists!</comment></comment>


Best choice for tipjar microtransations outside of the US? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in Australia right now and while I'd love to use Gittip, they don't really support non-US countries that well.<p>Is there a tipjar service like Gittip that I can use? <comment><USER2> If you have a PayPal account and are earning enough on Gittip, there is a script that will transfer the cash weekly. 41 people were paid that way on the latest run: [https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/2340#issueco...](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/2340#issuecomment-41944793).</comment>


Ask HN: Why jsfiddle.com is not owned by jsfiddle.net? - <AUTHOR>

If you go to jsfiddle.com it does not redirect you to .net, why is that? Who owns it? <comment><USER2> Probably because someone else bought it and is asking too much money for it.</comment>