No one gets fired for hiring IBM - how our pitch was stolen from us - <AUTHOR> http://www.solidstategroup.com/what-we-think/no-one-gets-fired-for-hiring-ibm

<comment><USER3> It happens - indeed it happened to me a few years back. I was part of a business that was asked to pitch a system specification to solve a particular business problem. We worked hard on the spec and felt sure we had covered all the bases - well we must have done because the business we pitched handed the whole thing over to their "preferred supplier" and asked them to build it - just as we specified it.

Lessons were learned. No more free consultancy. We got much more cautious about pitching to new prospective customers and made sure that any specifications were high level and trod carefully around key technical issues.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the comment. These are exactly the learnings I am attempting to get across by writing this article.

<comment><USER5> The thing to do in the pitch is to demonstrate that you understand the problem space thoroughly, i.e. rather than pitching the solution, pitch yourselves as the best people to discover and implement the solution.

I too have worked at a company that learnt this the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the problem is that you sold an idea that can easily be copied rather than a product. Perhaps an NDA might be the legislative path to take - <USER2> sometimes there is another approach:

There is a story, which may be an urban legend, but it exemplifies this story nicely: An Optimizations Research (OR) company tries to sell a product that can do crew scheduling for a airlines company. To show its power, they presented an optimized schedule where several million dollars could be saved, compared to their current models. The OR company was declined, but the airline took the data and implemented it.

What they did not know, was that the data presented were poisoned. Normally, when optimizing, you also account for the robustness of the model, so emergencies does not bring the whole system down. Being smart, the OR company had removed the robustness constraints, which severely hit the airline.

So the bottom line is: Try to poison the sales pitch. Know that you keep out something which is crucial to the solution, but does not impede the impressiveness. Make it into a game: If you choose us, you get to see the rest of the hand, what you don't know is if it is a royal flush or 4 of a kind :)

</comment><comment><USER7> That's the last straw, I'm going to make my gilded egg purchases elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> Fabergé the present-day company has also made sure that an exhibition of Fabergé eggs in a museum in Baden-Baden may not be called anything with "Fabergé"[1].

I'll buy my gilded eggs at a local eggsmith instead.

1\. in German: [http://www.badische-zeitung.de/baden-baden/faberg-darf- nicht...](http://www.badische-zeitung.de/baden-baden/faberg-darf-nicht- genannt-werden)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Burning bridges can be cathartic, but keep in mind that it is virtually impossible to only burn one bridge at a time.

<comment><USER10> Yup. This situation must be awful, and Matthew Evans has every reason for feeling so much more terrible even then he lets on in this post.

But he just pissed off IBM. And Faberge. And in all likelihood scared away a whole number of potential future customers who suddenly think 'if I talk to the Solid State Group, and then use someone else, are they going to bad mouth me to the whole world?'

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm Matt's business partner.

To be honest we thought long and hard about going public with this, as it all happened quite some time ago now.

We've built our company on being open, up front and honest with people. I was sick of working for companies that would be economical with the truth in front of clients, and say whatever needed to be said in order to win some additional work. I think that being honest really is the best way of building long-term relationships with people. Eventually they respect you for it ;)

We know that this goes on all the time, and up to a point we just suck it down as it's part of the industry that we work in. We absorb the cost, so in the end people do pay for this sort of work, just not directly.

The reason we decided to write about this was due to the audacity of what had happened. Our ideas were pretty unique, we felt, and so it was clear to see what had gone on when the site eventually went live.

At the end of the day, if we lose business because of this, then it's probably the sort of business we would have no interest working on in the first place.

<comment><USER11> If the key element that you're upset about was telephone guided co-browsing, I call "not unique".

You may very well have been the ones to introduce the idea/term to Faberge, but if you were the first ones to pitch AJAX or Flash to them, should they be barred from using that in their eventual solution, too?

<comment><USER12> AJAX and Flash is a generic technology, telephone guided co-browsing is a specific implementation, most likely using that technology. There's a big difference there, especially when Flash and AJAX are ubiquitous on the web and the phone guided browsing is more innovative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Co-incidentally a very good friend of mine actually worked on the Faberge project at IBM, I saw a sneak preview about a month ago and it was very well implemented. I have sent him a link to your post.

It is unlikely that he will be able to share any significant details of IBM's side of the story with me because of client confidentiality, especially anything he would be willing to say publicly, but if he does I'll post here.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have friends who work in the advertising industry, and they tell me that this is the situation with most clients.

One friend told me Google did this exact thing to them a few months back. Now, if Google's not above this sort of behaviour (and whatever you think about them, you must admit they tend to have a higher standard of behaviour than most other companies) you can imagine that others will also be willing to stoop to this.

<comment><USER15> That's quite a claim to levy with no details. I'd be curious to hear which of your friend's unique ideas Google stole.

<comment><USER16> And since when does Google contract out for development work?

<comment><USER17> I think swombat is talking about advertising, not development

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It sucks that someone used your idea.

If it's any comfort, I pitched exactly the same concept to a purse designer a few months ago. (We didn't get that one, either -- no word on whether or not it was IBM.)

</comment><comment><USER19> I am reminded of the perhaps slightly less practice of soliciting RFPs from companies with whom you have no intention of doing business. A buyer who wants to use a particular vendor but must convince upper management that his decision was made objectively often solicits RFPs from companies whose pitches easily can be discredited.

<comment><USER20> Isn't this the majority of RFPs? Most are just there for props as part of an attempt for some guy to sell his favourite company to the boss.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately... I have seen this happen more than once, and even the big fish can get taken for this ride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In posts here, I read of others independently coming up with the same scenario. You cannot be certain that your "pitch was stolen". In general, my belief is that if I can think of an idea then someone else can too. But I don't tell others about it unless I'm willing to let the idea go.

<comment><USER23> This seems plausible.

How could we be sure IBM didn't pitch a similiar idea in isolation? I don't know what the RFP looked like, but it doesn't seem crazy that two teams would come up with similiar solutions to the design constraints, even with.a relatively unusual idea such as this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a number of friends who work in creative sphere and this is extremely common in the industry.

Probably clients get away with this so much is because many creators shy away from describing these "misappropriations".

Why do clients do it so much?

IANAL, but pure ideas can have little legal protection, so legally(not morally mind you) they are in the clear.

You going in the open about this is actually healthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am wondering how potential clients would look at an NDA in that industry. If they are not used to that, it might scare them away.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is this article gone now? It would be a shame to see this story go away.

Edit: Looks like it's back now.

<comment><USER4> Yeah sorry, our site suffered from traffic overload and we quickly implemented some caching. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Document fully your pitch work and if possible, put in place NDAs_

this.

<comment><USER28> I won't listen to a sales pitch that is under NDAs. But I also won't ask the seller to specify the solution for free.

<comment><USER27> They didn't approach Fabergé with a sales pitch out of the blue. I wouldn't expect a NDA for that. But Fabergé did ask them to come up with a pitch to relaunch their brand - I wouldn't come up with it and present it without some kind of document saying that they can't take the idea and run with it with someone else.

<comment><USER28> The pitch is a product. I would bill them for it.

<comment><USER13> It may not be that simple to pull it off. If you are the smaller fish in competition with IBM and IBM offers to do a pitch without charging for it (which they can afford), it's unlikely you would get paid for it.

Having some sort of agreement about IP, on the other hand, is possible but enforcing it would be costly any way. There's no easy solution.

<comment><USER28> I agree there is no easy solution, but, still, you have to set your limits somewhere.

When you are a small outfit, you cannot afford to work for free and you must make it perfectly clear to your prospects. If they can't respect that, you shouldn't try to serve them.

It's very easy to win a contract and then be completely crushed by your client. Believe me: I have seen it happen a couple times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thats it. i am not buying from Fabergé.

Although it's not like I could :)</comment>


Hg and Git : Can't we all just get along? (pycon 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://blip.tv/file/3359640 <comment><USER2> A little warning please. I can't stand links to videos that auto-start.

</comment><comment><USER3> dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1200074>

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, I used the bookmarklet and was counting on url detection, I was actually surprised it went through.

I've actually discovered that submitting things is the least effort method of finding discussions, since a duplicate submission counts as an upvote and delivers you to the comment thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, they can get along: <http://github.com/schacon/hg-git/></comment>


HTC Desire Mobile Phone Fail [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.eevblog.com/2011/03/21/eevblog-156-htc-desire-mobile-phone-fail/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the WORST nerd rants I've seen in a while.

He has a 2 minute long video about the fact his HTC phone makes a 4 second long startup jingle. Which only happens when you power it up or power cycle it, not an everyday, or even every week thing for most users.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a tad over the top I agree, but that's this guys way. Personally I find him highly amusing.</comment></comment>


Stop Asking Me Math Puzzles to Figure Out If I Can Code (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://countaleph.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/ <comment><USER2> I agree. I've coded for more than a dozen years, and the most advanced math I ever had to use was modular arithmetic --- which is actually quite simple. I call it advanced because I went all the way through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, and I never once had a lesson on the modulus. I learned it on the job out of desperation. As many of you know, it comes up a few times in certain programming problems. While I find pi intriguing and the 100 Prisoners Problem fun to ponder, I never was into math like some people, and I dread the day I have one of those kinds of interviews.

In fact my background is in English. I tripped into programming quite against my will and now love it, and I always thought that all those math nerds who think programming is most like math never really understood English Composition, because I see parallels all the time (the kind taught in The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, which are classics but actually unlike most writing books). Emma said, "To my surprise, CS wasn't different from math at all." To my surprise, CS wasn't different from English at all (again, English Composition, not English Literature).

By the way, I will say that Emma not only is a master of math but also English. Her article was very well written. As casual as it seems, its rhythms, word choice, and humor are masterful. It outstrips the attempts of most bloggers who try to be chummy and funny and who wind up just being annoying.

Actually what programming most reminds me of is organizing, sort of like cleaning my room, trying to fit suitcases in a trunk, or filing papers. Which items are most like each other? How can we fit them more closely together? What if we rotate this one or repackage that one into a different shape? I suppose then it is like architecture or engineering, although I've never formally studied either one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the key quote here is :

> "Listen, the very last thing I want is to sound ungrateful. At that first > job, I learned all of those things I listed, and more, because the senior > engineers patiently sat with me and put up with my stupid questions and > never got frustrated with me, even when I got frustrated with myself. But it > took me more than a year."

So, you tell me a company succesfully trained you, fresh out of school, in a little more than a year ? It seems to me their recruitment process was actually very good !

Had they pick someone clueless about maths, but good at everything else you listed, they may have never successfully trained her in years.

Of course, maybe maths wasn't relevant at all for the job, in which case it probably was a bad process still, but without more information, it looks correct to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> > CS theory and problem-solving skills are the important things, the difficult > things, and if you know them, everything else is easy.

Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because yes, I absolutely thought that - this blog post is the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise. A smart software manager would be working to pair up people like her who are good at and enjoy algorithmic puzzle solving but not as interested in the code with people like me who aren't so great at solving riddles but can apply stuff like a mofo. Instead they insist on trying to save money by finding a one- size-fits-all solution to every problem and end up losing more than they could ever save churning through people they see as pawns and expendable resources.

</comment><comment><USER5> > In a particularly egregious example of this, when I was interviewing for my > second job out of college, I was asked to come up with an algorithm to > eventually sink a submarine with unknown (but integral) position and > velocity that was somewhere on a number line. (Spoiler alert: to solve this > problem, you need to know how to enumerate the rationals.) Once again, zero > lines of code.

Once a new employee in a company posted this problem for discussion, claiming that the wording is intentionally changed to make it unsearchable, and the year was 2008. So I'm really interested how this wording came here - was the task popular enough to make it to the Web afterwards or is Emma's knowledge traceable to that employee through a chain of interested people? Or is there some other explanation?

</comment><comment><USER6> There are problems with evaluating people all around. I had a recruiter flat out tell me I'm simply unqualified for the position. Had I not been so passionate about the product and company, I'd have moved on. Instead, I did an end run around the recruiter and accepted an offer within a couple of weeks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Recruiter, with evidence that better problem solvers on the spot are more competent: Nope.

<comment><USER8> My hypothesis is that on-the-spot problem solvers are likely good at playing office politics, which can lead to the appearance of being more competent. I have never seen a quick thinker be bad at office politics.

<comment><USER9> Clearly you've never been to grad school in pure maths.

<comment><USER8> Grad schools aren't an analogous environment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Never noticed News.YC's CO2Stats before.  How do they compute this stuff anyway? - <AUTHOR> http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=K2Tx2MnQ5f <comment> patrickg-zill Smoke, mirrors, reading of dead chicken entrails...

You know, the usual PT Barnum stuff to impress the rubes.

Interesting paragraph from their site: "CO2Stats reserves the right to cap REC purchases in case of excessive use, as its own discretion."

That is, you could pay them $100 a month and they may or may not purchase offsets to cover your 5 million page views.

<comment><USER2> No measurement of this type is ever going to be perfect. Do you think, because of that, that it's not even worth trying?

<comment> patrickg-zill The reality is, that all proposed "climate change" models are mathematically suspect and thus there is no actual evidence that reducing CO2 from man-made sources would in fact modify global temperature.

For instance, sunspot activity or the lack of it, has a far greater correlation to short term warming or cooling.

For longer term warming or cooling, any true scientist should readily admit that the tools currently available have very limited utility, since the mathematical models cannot possibly take into account enough of the real behavior.

For example, the Gulf Stream, which we know has a great deal of influence on East Coast weather, is one of the most studied, yet still is not understood very well; thus no mathematical model of its behavior can be said to be accurate.

CO2stats is more about selling "liberal guilt credits" than anything else.

<comment><USER3> > there is no actual evidence that reducing CO2 from man-made sources would in > fact modify global temperature.

There is no evidence that such a modification in temperature would be a bad thing, either.

Basically, it's just a stack of assumptions. I'm not saying it's necessarily false or anything, but I find it strange to see supposedly intelligent, rational-minded, etc. people (= "hackers") step into this one as easily. Let's question all those assumptions first, would you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess mirroring the OP, I like this concept behind C02Stats, but I am very curious as to how this is precisely calculated (or even roughly estimated.) Do CO2Stats know the power grid the servers are on? How do they account for the disparity in power usage behind different systems (a mainframe != laptop)? Without having detailed knowledge of a building, how could they possibly know about air conditioning costs or other secondary electricity use (lights, etc)?

<comment><USER5> Averages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great question! We measure quite a variety of signals, including but not limited to client locations (e.g., is traffic coming from coal-burning areas?), visit lengths, server locations, transfer sizes, transfer times, and window sizes. These signals are fed into a "hand-built" database that allows us to compute aggregate carbon footprints.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting . . . best of luck with the venture!

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey CO2Stats - A couple questions for you:

How do you account for different monitor sizes, types and brands and poor wasteful electricity in older buildings?

Thanks!

<comment><USER8> There is no way they could account for the types and brands of the monitor, the efficiency of the individual computers, etc.

They also cannot make an accurate assumption about where the power is coming from because there is such a thing as an electric grid, which draws power from a variety of sources.

Furthermore, the calculations to determine what goes in to processing a page have to be almost comical. For example, if it was Google, one search request can take thousands of machines, not to mention all the crawling required to produce those pages. Good luck getting that information.

There are so many holes that need to be filled here that their calculations cannot even be remotely accurate.

CO2Stats is bogus. I hope they don't charge anybody, because that would be fraud.

Perhaps they should publish their algorithm, to provide a little transparency and openness.

<comment><USER9> You ever notice that whenever you walk into a 7/11 at 2am there's always at least one carton of orange juice there waiting for you, even if you've never been there before? I think you're missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.

<comment><USER8> I understand what they are trying to do. But the sheer inaccuracy of what they provide clearly negates the supposed benefits.

Would you donate to a charity that mismanaged or wasted most of your money, if only just because donating to charities is good? Or wouldn't that mismanagement negate most of what is good about donating to that particular charity.

I'm sure the people behind CO2Stats are not stupid. So they must be aware of the shortcomings and limitations of their service. Yet they continue to run the service anyways, calling it accurate. That is dishonest.

(and no, questioning CO2Stats does not make me a conspiracy theorist)

<comment><USER9> "But the sheer inaccuracy of what they provide clearly negates the supposed benefits."

How? Do you understand what it is that they do?

<comment><USER8> People pay them to offset the carbon footprint of their site. Except if they are paying them an amount based on an inaccurately calculated footprint, that's a problem.

If you wish to continue drinking the Kool-Aid, go ahead! It sure is tasty! But don't blame me when your teeth fall out.

<comment><USER10> Problems like this need to be solved. That is, the real world demands that we estimate things that cannot be estimated reliably. To take a less controversial example than global warming, consider the risk of avian flu. Clearly, we cannot get a reasonable quantitative estimate of the chance of a flu epidemic, or how many people it would kill, etc. Nevertheless, we are forced to decide what preparations (if any) to make anyway.

Just because the problem is hard, doesn't mean it isn't worth attempting. I see no problem with what they are doing, as long as they are honest about the uncertainty in the estimates they hand to you.

<comment><USER8> Putting the global warming debate aside, I totally agree with you.

However, I don't see them being transparent. Furthermore, I think given the complexity of determining what they claim, the simplicity of their model is almost certainly not adequate.

I like your Avian Flu example. I think in that case, we would both agree that there is a point at which preparations for such an event would be almost useless when there is a certain lack of information, when what we do know and what we don't know is so muddled that we are not even sure what direction to take. Obviously doctors and scientists are not blind here and know generally what direction to take in their preparations, just not to what scale.

What I am arguing in terms of CO2Stats here is that the likely inaccuracy of their calculations just about voids what they are offering because you don't know that what you are getting is in the proper proportion or even that it actually helps to the degree that they say it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Inspect the data that their "complex heuristics"-based widget sends back about the client. I'm positive that you'll be pleasantly surprised at the _breadth_ of information.... or, it sends nearly nothing. And nothing of relevance to actual consumption. But c'mon, CO2Stats is totally legit, guys... really...

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting concept. What I don't understand is why as someone running a website I should offset the CO2 from my data center, my client's homes and the networks between them.

<comment><USER13> For the same reason that Amazon has free shipping?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Math.random()

I don't think the numbers matter. It's just a badge to say "We're green" isn't it? Seems like it's leveraging off the current "CO2 is evil" fad.

</comment><comment><USER15> Instead of a seal that nobody cares for (hack-proof, privacy seals are OK, but green-certified seal?), why don't they enter the carbon credits market?

This seems like a misuse of technology. Use this technology to help companies trade carbon credits. A few bulge bracket banks are already in this game. They buy carbon credits from African cooperatives cheaply and sell them at a healthy profit to factories who need these credits.

And they are making millions from it. What are you waiting for guys?</comment>


SiFive to Debut RISC-V PC for Developers Based on Freedom U740 Next-Gen SoC - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/09/15/sifive-to-debut-risc-v-pc-for-developers-based-on-freedom-u740-next-gen-soc/ <comment><USER2> Bring it on. If Arm is the future of desktop computing, it'll need a competitor.

<comment><USER3> The likelihood of ARM sailing off into the distance and x86 disappearing is very slim. It's worth keeping in mind that they have more in common than you might think (i.e. RISC and CISC don't mean a huge amount any more when the old x86 instructions aren't used any more and ARM had/has a JavaScript instruction)

<comment><USER4> Sorry for going off topic, but your comment confuses me. Doesn't "sail off into the distance" mean to disappear? But you're saying the opposite in your comment?

My reasonibg being that when a ship sails off into the distance it disappears from view.

<comment><USER5> You read it right.

I think they are saying it is unlikely ARM or x86 disappear, and that these instruction sets share some unexpected commonalities. They are not otherwise comparing/contrasting x86 and ARM, they are basically evaluating if either one seems likely to disappear and answering in their opinion: "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder to what extent the digital logic design is open source. The RISC-V core ought to be, but what about the memory controller or PCIE root complex, (or USB3)? Those parts are also very important.

<comment><USER7> Just because it's RISC-V doesn't mean it's open source. RISC-V is an open architecture so anyone can make an implementation but those implementations can be closed source. SiFive have released some open source stuff ([https://github.com/sifive/freedom](https://github.com/sifive/freedom)) but the majority of their work is closed source IP. In a way they're quite similar to arm.

<comment><USER8> Just like ARM, the only thing standard is the core and there is massive (and almost always publicly undocumented) diversity of everything else.

<comment><USER9> Not _just_ like ARM. You don't need a license to implement a RISC-V compatible machine. IIUC, you only need to pass a compliance test to brand your machine RISC-V and use the trademark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Press release:

[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200914005108/en/SiF...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200914005108/en/SiFive- To-Introduce-New-RISC-V-Processor-Architecture-and-RISC-V-PC-at-Linley-Fall- Virtual-Processor-Conference)

</comment><comment><USER10> If this is anywhere reasonably price and has open firmware, I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sigh. Still without the Bitmanip instructions.

Meaning, no popcount :-P

<comment><USER9> That spec is just a draft, and still undergoing revision. Its close in spirit to a Scheme RFI (request for implementation). Until the consortium ratifies it (ie, members state their intention to implement it), its just a wishlist. A well-reasoned wishlist, but a wishlist just the same.

<comment><USER11> Exactly the point: _no popcount_.

It is just hard to imagine the thought process that would leave something as important as popcount to such a dodgy and long-delayed prospect; hard to imagine omitting it from the core instruction set, so that it is only ever implemented, if ever, in the most distended and expensive chips.

<comment><USER12> The Pentium didn't include a popcount opcode. One wonders how such a crippled chip ever made it in the world.

<comment><USER11> Everything has it now. The NSA demanded that any machine they use have it, going back to the '60s. For reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have not seen any RISC-V offering from the Chinese yet. I wonder if SiFive will have any competition.

<comment><USER14> Here you go: M5Stack tiny computer with a camera, LCD and RISC-V AI-capable Chinese chip (Kendryte K210). Available on Digikey for $26.50: [https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=K027&v=2221](https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=K027&v=2221)

<comment><USER15> This is not Linux-capable though. The choices are FreeRTOS and bare metal. The chip is pretty unbelievable at that price though. You get a lot of functionality for $9. And it works - I have it on my desk.

<comment><USER16> For some value of "capable": [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/riscv/con...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/riscv/configs/nommu_k210_defconfig)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BT set to launch 'ultrafast' internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f7cad70c-4da6-11e1-b96c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1lGkOGiqZ

<comment><USER2> WOW! A faster internet speed. This is a good news.

<comment><USER3> i wonder how fast really it is..</comment></comment>


ZeroBrane Studio – Lua IDE with code analyzer, live coding - <AUTHOR> http://studio.zerobrane.com/

<comment><USER2> This is great, and a compelling alternative to TextAdept in the lua-scriptable text editor space.

<comment><USER3> Yep TextAdept never really got mush visibility, but it was (is?) a great approach to a having a editor fully scripted in lua, much more so than Scite which also has lua scripting and of course is uses the same scintilla text editor component as TextAdept.

These days Adobes Brackets is using pretty much the same approach in the JS side of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might sound absurd but sometimes back when I was totally new to Lua I wanted a REPL. To my surprise, I couldn't find one. Can someone suggest something so I can use it when I get back to lua again.

<comment><USER5> Just run `lua` and you'll be dropped into a REPL. It's pretty basic compared to some other REPLs though, and I'd also be interested in hearing if there are some more user-friendly options out there.

My main gripe with the current REPL is it doesn't print anything to the screen without an explicit print call. So myMethod(x) will not print anything, instead you have to assign the result to a variable and print it or wrap everything you do in a call to print.

<comment><USER6> Here is a hacky "REPL" of sorts in Lua:

      while true do
        io.write("> ")
        exp = io.read()
        print((loadstring("return " .. exp) or loadstring(exp))())
      end

Actually kinda works. Example session:

      > 5 + 5
      10
      > msg = "Hello"

      > print(msg)
      Hello

      > double = function(x) return x * 2 end

      > double(2)
      4
      > a = 4

      > b = a + 5

      > b
      9

<comment><USER7> Trading the ability to have multiline expressions for the ability to skip "return" sounds like a bad deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great!</comment>


Study debunks myths on organic farms - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestarphoenix.com/business/Study+debunks+myths+organic+farms/5462520/story.html <comment><USER2> I have a hard time taking this at face value. If organic farming is so much better than "conventional" farming, why did farmers ever start using these toxic chemicals and other non-organic processes? There must be a reason for this. I might imagine that switching to a chemical-based approach produced better yields initially, but production slowly decreased over time (such that people didn't notice) until dropped below the yields of the original "organic" farming methods. But this is just a theory, and I'd love to know the reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read through their "full report" (<http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/FSTbookletFINAL.pdf>), which is barely more than a press release, and the only mention of how they conducted the study tells me it was a poorly controlled experiment:

 _"The crop rotations in the organic systems are more diverse than in the conventional systems, including up to seven crops in eight years (compared to two conventional crops in two years)."_

Also, be sure to keep the source of this study in mind:

 _"Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach. For over sixty years, we've been researching the best practices of organic agriculture and sharing our findings with farmers and scientists throughout the world, advocating for policies that support farmers, and educating consumers about how going organic is the healthiest option for people and the planet."_

For me, a poorly conducted experiment by a very biased source, who doesn't publish any details on said experiment, and which contradict most conventional wisdom should be met with great skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER4> Excerpt:

" _In fact, studies like the Rodale trials (www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years) show that after a three-year transition period, organic yields equalled conventional yields. What is more, the study showed organic crops were more resilient. Organic corn yields were 31 per cent higher than conventional in years of drought._

 _These drought yields are remarkable when compared to genetically modified (GM) "drought tolerant" varieties, which showed increases of only 6.7 per cent to 13.3 per cent over conventional (non-drought resistant) varieties._ "</comment>


Show HN: Continous Heart Rate for Android Wear and Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.cardiogr.am <comment><USER2> Capturing HR once a minute is of really limited use. More than benchmarking against resting HR, the interesting thing is to look at heart rate variability, and to do that you need to scan several times per second. For that using purpose-built devices is just better. I am thinking: [https://jawbone.com/store/buy/up3](https://jawbone.com/store/buy/up3) or [http://www.getqardio.com/qardiocore-wearable-ecg-ekg- monitor...](http://www.getqardio.com/qardiocore-wearable-ecg-ekg-monitor- iphone/)

<comment><USER3> Photoplethsymographic heart rate requires a lot of algorithmic compensation for noise and motion artifact. There are some pretty sophisticated strategies available for beat interpolation, but individual R-R intervals are tremendously more difficult to recover accurately against real-world noise. HRV measurements are also very intolerant to error in R-R interval, and even less so to dropped beats. There are certainly conceivable solutions to these problems, but no major manufacturer of PPG based consumer heart rate devices allows access at a level low enough to get R-R time series or understand R-R interval confidence. OEM module manufacturers for pulse ox devices do allow direct serial access to the PPG waveform for those interested in hacking at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really useful! Would you mind emailing me at email@example.com? I'd love to know more.

<comment><USER3> Hey Brandon, I replied to you from an address containing 'dash'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I'm the OP. Let me know if you have any questions.

Just for fun, this was my heart rate while launching this: [https://twitter.com/AppCardiogram/status/591377862441046016](https://twitter.com/AppCardiogram/status/591377862441046016)

<comment><USER4> Is there any watch on the market that has enough battery to do real continuous HR monitoring? Last I checked, they all only measure continuously in the "sport" mode for an hour or two, and in the "regular" mode they measure HR once every 10 minutes or so.

<comment><USER5> I have a Fitbit Charge HR that checks every second during exercise and every 5 seconds otherwise. The battery lasts about 4 days for me.

[https://www.fitbit.com/chargehr](https://www.fitbit.com/chargehr)

<comment><USER4> Indeed, found this on the linked page:

 _Stores heart rate data at 1 second intervals during exercise tracking and at 5 second intervals all other times_

Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An app like this could save a life one day, for sure. My uncle recently died from a heart attack. It's impossible to know for sure but perhaps if he'd been wearing a smart watch, it could have told him to seek help before it hit.

<comment><USER7> I'm not a doctor, but based on what little research I've done in the past, a basic heart rate monitor such is this is unlikely to provide any pre-warning of a serious cardiac event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use a fitness tracker called MIO Fuse - it's a great сontinious Heart Rate Monitor, but Mio has very painful and useless both Android and iOS app. I wish to have access to raw data or integrate it with something like Cardiogram because it's really insightful to see how your heart responds to various events.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious about the privacy aspects of it. Can anyone elaborate on where and how the data is stored?

<comment><USER10> In a related question, does anyone know of any monitoring product (e.g. FitBit or whatever) that does NOT send your data to a centralized server outside of your control?

<comment><USER11> As far as I know the Apple Watch is the only one that doesn't sync to a server somewhere. All data is kept stored in HealthKit on your device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this work on Apple Watch? AFAIK, WatchKit doesn't give access to the heart rate sensor.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you so much, I had hoped that there would be something like this inbuilt with motofit/google fit but was quite disappointed when I discovered how inadequate and manual it was. I don't need to sell my android watch anymore.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey Brandon, I'm doing usability research at Virginia Tech on EEG's and EKG's. I'm trying to figure out how to do continuous heart rate for Apple Watch for an app/study.

How are you getting the Heart Rate on the watch? I've looked into WatchKit and I couldn't find anything about getting the heart rate back out of the device. I was thinking about using Healthkit to try to do something similar. If there's any chance, we could talk/skype sometime, please let me know!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, email me at email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> OP - I love the concept, but the execution isn't there. I installed it on my Gear Live, and it pops up a "Heart Rate" notification, that until acknowledged leaves the heart rate sensor on. (the green light underneath). This would obliterate the battery. It needs to do it's thing, and go away, not wait for me to tell it to, or even notify me at all. I'm not sure with the API if this is possible or not, but for now, I'm sorry.. it's just not usable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it. The notification actually doesn't control the sensor (green light) -- I think the timing was likely just a coincidence.

That said, we haven't had a lot of people with Gear Lives test the app yet, so it's always possible you've stumbled on some novel bug that only appears on certain hardware. Wouldn't be the first time. :)

If that behavior is reproducible, can you send a bug report to firstname.lastname@example.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool! How soon until you can tap into a calorie app/database (MyFitness?) and start to guesstimate the user's caloric burn rate each minute?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a frequent feature request, so hopefully soon--the thing I'm not sure of is whether those things are even close enough to accurate to be worth it. I think "guesstimate" is a great word for it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Google Fit handle heart-rate data?

It'd be great if I can access my data there.

Nice work! I've been looking for something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do indeed sync the data to Google Fit—so it both reads your activities (walking, running, biking) from Google Fit and any connected apps you have, and writes the raw heart rate measurements back to Google Fit.

<comment><USER17> Cool.

I just realized who you are.

Taking time off from healthcare.gov?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! I wrapped up my involvement last fall. It was a 2-month rotation that became 3 months, then 5 months, then 8 months, ...

After taking a couple months off, I started collaborating with some UCSF researchers--we know that in the next few years, millions of people are going to be wearing heart rate monitors. But what does that mean for healthcare? Can we actually detect things like heart attacks or lethal arrhythmias before it's too late? Could we potentially build the "check engine light" for your heart?

So that's what this app is a first step toward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great! I've been looking for something like this.

Uh, now I just need an Android Wear device...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a Moto 360 and like it a lot!

It was recently on sale for $180, and I'm going to guess it'll be on sale again, since the Apple Watch is just starting to ship and new Android watches are expected to be announced around Google IO in late May. [https://moto360.motorola.com/](https://moto360.motorola.com/)

Note: the heart rate monitors on these early devices aren't great! We have to do a lot of work to make sure the sensor works well and the graphs are understandable. But I think the hardware will improve rapidly in the next 6-18 months.

<comment><USER18> Thanks! I guess I'll hold out for a while on the device, then. Good luck with Cardiogram!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've read the Apple Watch will have this feature built in.

<comment><USER20> You can read about it here.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204666)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice work! Quick tip on the copy: continuous has two u's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's embarrassing. I'm sure both my math and English teachers are shaking their heads right now. Fixed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to hear some thoughts on how this affects battery, especially on some battery-challenged devices such as the moto360 ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Way better than I expected—on my Moto 360, total battery consumption is usually 1-2%, and the beta testers have reported the same. In my experience, the biggest optimization you can do for Moto 360 battery life is to disable tilt-to-wake, since the most power-hungry part of the watch is the display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been using Cinch up til now; it would be great if Cardiogram sent the data to Google Fit to graph like Cinch does!

<comment><AUTHOR> It does send the data back to GFit! Warning though—the GFit graph isn't necessarily built for this resolution of data. That's part of why we built our own chart to show you the details.

<comment><USER23> That's great to hear! I barely touch Google Fit myself; I was more wondering about it because I use Google Fit to send HR data to gyrosco.pe.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Worth looking for cheaper VPS than Digital Ocean? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I want to get a Linux VPS on a yearly plan, to use for experimenting with some small side projects on Linux. The projects may not make any or much money, at least to start with (more for learning).
So is it worth checking out cheaper options than Digital Ocean, which, last I heard, was 5 USD per month for the lowest plan?
Also, if anyone recommends any other VPS host, have you tried it, and is it fairly reliable in terms of uptime, resources (RAM, HDD< bandwidth) provided is what is advertised, etc?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions/tips.
I'm not very experienced with handling VPS's, though I've used them a bit in the past. But have a fair amount of Linux experience on local machines at home and work. So a few tips on things to watch out for or take care of, regarding VPS vs. local Linux box, are very welcome too. Or if preferred, I can make that a separate Ask HN post. <comment><USER2> Since you're shopping around, take a look at Vultr [0]. It's the same price ($5/month) and they've been recommended before by other HNers.

If you're just toying around for now, AWS offers a free 'micro' instance. It's low-powered but enough to run a simple, low-volume site on.

[0]: [https://www.vultr.com/](https://www.vultr.com/)

<comment><USER3> The great thing about vultr is they have Australian based servers at the same price. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a 10ms ping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may look at lowendbox.com for some really cheap vps options, performance may not be ideal. Also beware that you might end up in an unsavory ip address range, fine for most things but any emails sent from that ip will most likely fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> >might end up in an unsavory ip address range

What is that? you mean, like, bots are run from such a range?

<comment><USER5> Biggest issue is spammers, resulting in anti-spam blacklists blocking the IP ranges, so many mail servers won't accept mail you try to send from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it now, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check OVH [0] ($3.49 is the lowest plan) or for even less, take a look at Time4VPS [1], they have really cheap servers, but I wouldn't use them in production only for dev and private use.

[0]: [https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-ssd.xml](https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps- ssd.xml)

[1]: [https://www.time4vps.eu/pricing/](https://www.time4vps.eu/pricing/)

<comment><USER7> Hello,

My name is Roman and I represent Time4VPS. Our storage units can be deployed in production environment. Storage servers apply for 99.95% of SLA guarantee as same as standard VPS.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW, after looking a few of the options (both those I found on my own and those mentioned here), I saw that some of them mention things like OpenVZ. I guess that is the virtualization software used. Do we need to know something about the underlying virtualization software / hypervisor that runs the VPS, or is it enough to know Linux? Last VPS I used, I only interacted with Centos, and did not know what the virtualization software was.

<comment><USER4> There are differences in performance and implementation technology that can affect performance and such, but normal Linux administration techniques should always work. IDK off the top of my head, but OpenVZ guests I think need to run the same kernel version as the host, so that may play into it. KVM and Xen I belive don't have this drawback. OpenVZ doesn't give you dedicated access to resources i.e. it will allow other guests to use what you aren't using which affects performance. KVM and Xen I believe reserve ram and CPUs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Good info, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should include your own time in calculating the cost of a VPS host.

Before I discovered Linode and Digital Ocean, I tried to use the free VPS that was developed and maintained by the computer club at my school. It took me hours upon ours to get to an SSH terminal and would have been way cheaper for me to just work a minimum wage job and pay for one maintained by people who had the time to think about user experience rather than exams.

<comment><USER9> You're saving yourself really some time when using digitalocean, they work without a problem and you know exactly how much you're paying at the end.

When you're a student you can get even 50$ credit through Github [https://education.github.com/pack](https://education.github.com/pack).

In my opinion it's worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Digital Ocean for the cost conscious. Linode for the support.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who replied.</comment>


A better C++ assertion library which also prints a debug message - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amallia/better_assert <comment><USER2> You do that instead of

        better_assert(a != 1, "a should be 1 ...");

with

        assert(a != 1 || !"a should be 1 ...");

No need for a library at all.</comment>


Juul, Philip Morris Sued Under Racketeer Act for Targeting Kids - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/juul-philip-morris-sued-under-racketeer-act-for-targeting-kids <comment><USER2> Juul had this radio campaign that was made up of 2 spots one after the other. The 1st spot would give you the pluses of the product followed by the warnings and how it was not for kids. The second spot would imply that what you had heard about Juul's minuses and warnings were false. They were not blatantly saying it but because of the way, the 2 spots were played one after the other you certainly got the idea. It was a bit surreal. It certainly minimized the minuses and warnings. In a way, it was brilliant since you could never prove that they were trying to undermind the warnings but it certainly had that effect. It's a shame they were using it to promote their products rather than a product that is good for you.

They have some brilliant marketing people working for them.

<comment><USER3> >>They have some brilliant marketing people working for them.

These people are not brilliant. They are utterly deceitful. To go along with this shit in this day and age is utterly contemptible. Imagine all the people and the planning and the brainstorming to come up with such a trick - how can any of them not feel really really bad and storm out of the room?

Oh yeah, profit.

<comment><USER4> I suspect there is a lot of cognitive dissonance involved. I remember having dinner with a developer who worked on pokie machines. He fully believed that there was nothing wrong with the machines and that people just needed to have self control. This is someone who's job involved programming the highly addictive things.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people simply don't care. I've met people who've worked for casinos and tobacco companies in management and decision making roles, and they are fully aware that they are trying to make people addicted and maximise profit on their habits.

I've asked them about the morality of it, and they're apathetic. It's not like some Wolf of Wall Street attitude where they enjoy ripping people off or making addicts, but just corporate apathy. The job pays well and they get to enjoy the finer things in life, so why should they care?

<comment><USER6> Isn't consumer-internet hypergrowth built around the same properties? TikTok regularly has posts from teens describing staying up until dawn in the infinite scroll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My father went to high school in the 1930's, and cigarettes were called "coffin nails" at the time.

The first thing every doctor would advise sick patients to do was quit smoking.

Every doctor who autopsied a dead smoker could see how bad smoking was for you. I remember seeing a smoker's lung in a jar in the 1960's. It was black and rotten. It was terrifying.

The idea that nobody knew cigs were bad for you until the 1960's is completely false. It was common knowledge.

<comment><USER8> I think you're missing the point. When the evidence started to mount, there was an orchestrated campaign to mislead. [https://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf](https://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf)

<comment><USER9> "all-synthetic aerosol to replace tobacco smoke, if necessary … I know this sounds like a wild programme, but I'll bet that the first company to produce a cigarette claiming a substantial reduction in tars and nicotine … will take the market." (Philip Morris,1958)

It's interesting that idea is exactly what we are talking about today.

RJR tried doing smokeless cigarettes in the 80s and 90s but they apparently tasted like a fart. They still sold them up until 2015. It seems to work somewhat like a hookah, a hot carbon tip is used to heat air before it passes over the tobacco. Supposedly these kinds of cigarettes were the only ones you could still consume in the RJR office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "IT'S NOT RICO, DAMMIT": [https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its- not-rico-...](https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico- dammit/)

<comment><USER11> That's a great blog post. But per the article, this is a RICO suit. Maybe it's not a good one, I'm not qualified to judge. But that's the complaint. And this industry has been successfully sued (by the DoJ) under RICO in the past, so it's not without precedent.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for posting this. I was interested to see what was the cause for the tobacco companies being liable under RICO, and this article, [https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial- toba...](https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-tobacco- control/tobacco-control-litigation/united-states-v-philip-morris-doj) , had a pretty good overview.

The main point seems to be that the tobacco companies _fraudulently_ covered up what they knew about the dangers of smoking (don't know all the details but assuming this fraudulent activity falls under one of the specific "racketeering activity" crimes).

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but for Juul, would seem to me that it's not enough just to call some of their products "Cool Cucumber" or whatever else can appeal to children, but would need to point to some specific fraudulent activity that Juul engaged in.

<comment><USER13> IIUC, the traditional tobacco industry is disallowed from marketing to minors. I don't know if those regulations apply to Juul, but if they do, producing advertisements targeted at underage audiences while claiming they're for adults might qualify.

<comment><USER14> Looking at the Joe Camel case, it doesn't appear to have hinged on "tobacco" per se:

"The FTC charged that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the seller of Camel cigarettes, promoted an addictive and dangerous product through a campaign that was attractive to those too young to purchase cigarettes legally."

[https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/1997/05/joe-c...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/1997/05/joe-camel-advertising-campaign-violates-federal-law-ftc-says)

<comment><USER15> It's be interesting to see the "War on Drugs" shift to focus on (or at least include) tobacco and related products. ;)

<comment><USER14> It has happened in at least two instances that I can think of: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is now advocating for a variety of policies not always oriented around drunk driving[1].

Second, the State of California's Department of Public Health is currently running both an anti-vaping campaign, and a smoking cessation campaign, without linking vaping to a reduction in tobacco smoking. In short, they have transformed from anti-tobacco to anti-nicotine.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving#Activities_and_criticisms)

2\. [https://www.flavorshookkids.org/](https://www.flavorshookkids.org/), [https://stillblowingsmoke.org/](https://stillblowingsmoke.org/), [https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DCDIC/CTCB/Pages/Cal...](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DCDIC/CTCB/Pages/CaliforniaTobaccoControlBranch.aspx)

<comment><USER15> I was more thinking "deregister the tobacco companies and put all of their employees in prison. With life (maybe death?) sentences for the executives and senior management".

Just to get it in line with the treatment of other War On Drugs substances.

I mean, why should tobacco get special treatment when the other ones don't? ;)

<comment><USER14> I've never heard of anybody suggesting tobacco nor nicotine be scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but it's kind of a shame. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Godspeed. These companies have proven themselves morally reprehensible time and time again. I'd love to see serious criminal charges for the executives though.

<comment><USER10> Then call your representative and tell them to pass a law that makes e-cigarettes illegal.

<comment><USER17> So kids go back to smoking non-e cigarettes like in the good ole days?

<comment><USER18> In recent years, teen vaping rates have increased far more than teen smoking rates have dropped. [https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2019/jun/12/t...](https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2019/jun/12/tim- kaine/has-vaping-wiped-out-progress-reducing-youth-smoki/)

<comment><USER17> That still doesn't excuse making e-cigarettes illegal and not normal cigarettes as well. Also, you have to compare against marijuana and other drugs as well if we are accounting for what teens are doing to act out.

<comment><USER18> Maybe, but the point is that banning e-cigarettes won't result in all the e-cigarette users going back to normal cigarettes. E-cigarettes have _grown_ the market, not simply captured a subset of existing smokers.

I'd also point out that the problem isn't "acting out". It's the act of smoking cigarettes itself, which is objectively harmful. Marijuana is much safer. E-cigarettes seem to be as well, but the jury is still out.

<comment><USER17> There are many who have quit cigarettes that rely on e cigarettes to keep from relapsing. Banning e-cigarettes would just screw them like crazy. As someone who had to quit cold turkey, I can appreciate how hard this is, and how easy relapsing is.

Even if the market is apart is partially grown, peer pressure and acting out was going to get many of those teens on something. If it is just vaping, that is much better than cigarettes, marijuana, heroin, meth, ... really, perfect is still the enemy of good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The thing that get's me about Juul is that it's basically a bunch of marketing money and visual design piled on a product that's strictly worse that the vaping options that came before it.

The biggest thing vs a regular mech mod is that it has single use proprietary cartridges that you have to throw out afterwards, vs spending less money on a bottle of vape juice that will last for way longer.

<comment><USER20> Isn't there a claim that Juul popularized nicotine "salts" that are more satisfying than traditional vaping options for cigarette smokers?

<comment><USER21> As I understand it, yes. According to my friends who vape, Juul is still way ahead of everyone in the juice department. So much better they'll spend close to $60 a week on the stuff...

Pretty sure that's more expensive per volume than printer ink!

<comment><USER14> Pretty close to what I was paying as a pack-a-day cigarette smoker. They're copying the streaming TV subscription business model!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see a couple different aspects here:

1\. _Targeting Kids._ I don't see the targeting. Marketing a product as "cool"[1] is a valid tactic for the, say, 18–35 age demographic, too. Is there a way to market to 18-year-olds _while actively dis-marketing to 17-year- olds_? Serious question.

Anecdotally, the radio ads I hear for Juul are all testimonials from middle- aged smokers who switched. Which is not to say that they don't have other tactics, but this particular one can't be particularly attractive to teens.

2\. _Deceptive Marketing_. Probably more legit, but not limited to tobacco. No marketing is going to tell you why _not_ to use their product. Now, alcohol, nicotine, gambling, high fat/sugar foods, credit card debt, etc. should be held to a higher standard than, say, Forever 21.

[1] I.e., "social media posts glamorizing vaping", "flavors including mango, mint and creme brulee", "depicting the devices and those who use them as cool and sexy". Or from a sub-linked article, "mak[ing] it look cool and sleek".

<comment><USER23> They target a young audience on social media.

Also, the fact that you hear the ads on the radio makes teens not the target demographic. But here is a more in depth article: [https://www.vox.com/2019/1/25/18194953/vape-juul-e- cigarette...](https://www.vox.com/2019/1/25/18194953/vape-juul-e-cigarette- marketing)

<comment><USER22> That's my point: of course they do (well, used to). A key demographic is 18–35. Ads portraying "happy, playful 20-something models" seems legit for that demographic, including using social media as a channel, where that demographic tends to be.

That young models, a sleek device, and social media is _also_ attractive to the 13–17 demographic that Juul is being accused of illegally marketing to is impactful, but not damning in of itself.

So that goes back to my question: is there a way to market to 18–35 and actively _not_ market to 13–18? Let's be clear: "teens" 18–19 and people in their early 20s _are adults_.

Otherwise, the proposed solution is not to market <35 at all... _which seems to be exactly what Juul is doing_.[1] So then the argument is that they _used_ to, and that's good enough to cry foul.

All this comes back to "targeting". In my mind, it's very hard to draw a distinction between targeting 18–35 that happens to be attractive to 13–18 ( _because of course it does_ ), and _targeting_ 13–18. Then, you can argue whether incidental attraction is a "feature or a bug", and whether or not it was part of an insidious strategy all along.

[1] "[In 2018], Juul's ads began to look more adult and conservative... with the slogan 'Make the switch,' the ads now feature testimonials from [people over 35]."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tobacco industry has not changed.

In the old good times British American Tobacco had a plan to start selling candies with nicotine so that they would get children hooked before they can smoke. They had to abandon the plan because sometimes children eat so much candy that they would get overdose and nicotine poisoning.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not by accident that Juul adopted similar marketing styles of big tobacco, the marketing and design of the products should speak for themselves [0]. WSJ also made a video exploring this business relationship a couple months back [1].

[0] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D3u7m6nXoAA628x?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D3u7m6nXoAA628x?format=jpg&name=900x900)

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/video/how-juul-took-a-page-from-big- toba...](https://www.wsj.com/video/how-juul-took-a-page-from-big-tobacco- playbook/80048489-676D-47BC-9D6A-A2E6BE4712B9.html)

<comment><USER26> Juul ads and the old time cigarette ads from decades ago remind me of Coca Cola ads as well. These massive marketing budgets all take some ugly thing and make seem like you can't have fun or be cool without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was wondering what took so long. I vaguely remember seeing the very first juul ad and I was under the impression that they might have been affiliated with snapchat (Same vibrant color scheme etc). After finding out that they were nicotine vapes, I was truly shocked that it was so blatantly targeted towards teenagers.

</comment><comment><USER28> Australia has the right idea with cigarettes. They aren't outlawed, but the packaging shows decayed lungs and the marketing is very regulated.

We shouldn't outlaw vaping, but we do need to clamp down on targeting kids with their design and marketing. Maybe we should force all vape packages to include information on the harmful effects of nicotine.

<comment><USER29> Is there some reason we shouldn't outlaw vaping? People who want to quit nicotine, or who consciously choose to become addicted to it, already have the gum and patches. And clearly vaping is creating a lot of new addicts.

At the very best, I think we should ban all advertising and paid marketing of addictive substances, and tax them heavily enough to provide free anti- addiction services to anybody who wants them. The whole theory of free markets, after all, is people making rational decisions, and the point of addictive products is to prevent them from doing so.

<comment><USER30> 1\. i thought the idea of banning something died with the "war on drugs".

2\. alcohol and coffee are addictive substances. 88k people die from alcohol every year: [https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-facts-and- statistics](https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-facts-and-statistics)

3\. how about cars? 37k people die from cars every year (not including pollution-related diseases): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER29> As ferzul points out, we ban plenty of things just fine. Shady-looking dealers are not selling loose asbestos and highly flammable children's pajamas on the streetcorners.

Alcohol and caffeine are at this point culturally established, so rooting them out is more trouble then it's worth. But we have the opportunity to stop Juul from foisting a highly profitable new addiction on millions, so I think the cost-benefit tradeoffs are different.

I'm entirely fine with banning private cars. Let's start by licensing and regulating them and their owners. Then we'll just keep ratcheting up safety requirements until the death toll is very low and most people are riding in safer vehicles driven by competent professionals. Looking at the progress Amsterdam has been making, I figure we can do it in 30 years if we put our minds to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not an American nor am I familiar with american laws. I'm curious to know whether tech companies that manipulate content to increase the time spent on an app/device can be scrutinised under the above act? Isn't spending hours and hours on an app/device basically an addiction?

<comment><USER16> Like tobacco, it will probably take the US government several decades to react appropriately to the threat after the harm has become clear to the scientific community. Corporate lobbyists will fight it tooth and nail, just like they have in the past, stalling progress by bribing immoral politicians and confusing well meaning but stupid politicians with carefully worded bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Read the complaint here: [https://docdro.id/ODq2yNC](https://docdro.id/ODq2yNC)

Count one is civil RICO. Make of that what you will.

Edit: Very similar to this: [https://www.classaction.org/media/nessmith-v- juul-labs-et-al...](https://www.classaction.org/media/nessmith-v-juul-labs-et- al_1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Nicotine alternatives help people stop smoking, and Juul's is the most innovative and compelling yet. Demonize them if you will but they have helped a lot of people's health.

<comment><USER34> What's better though? Helping existing smokers with Juul, or exposing a whole new generation of kids to "cool hip smoking"?

<comment><USER9> Raising the age for tobacco is a good first step. Next is to raise prices on traditional tobacco products and incentivize smoking cessation products like gum and patches. Vapes can help with getting rid of the smoking part but it can be even easier to keep using them as compared to cigarettes. The health effects are so much less that, I'm guessing, many people stop smoking by switching to vapes and then never stop vaping. If you remove a lot of the obvious downsides to smoking (tar, smell, price, etc) and add in tasty flavors, why would anyone want to quit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> personally Juul is the only device that helped me quit smoking tobacco. i've tried other vapes and none compare to how easy it is to use a Juul, and how consistent their hits are. added bonus: i still get my nicotine, but without the rest of the cigarette chemicals (which btw, are radioactive: [https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactivity- tobacco](https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactivity-tobacco)).

but this "Juul targeting children" thing is not new. i know they've been the focus of the US gov in the past, and they enacted some changes to their marketing (including removing some flavours and the like).

not sure what sparked this case thou, as in Europe (where i'm located) the whole tobacco industry is tightly regulated. but we can still get our nicotine without the government banning it (see San Francisco), although at a much lower strength (1.8 vs 5.0 in the states). this lower strength also helped.

so I hope due to this case Juul removes all this marketing BS and simply focus on their initial primary goal: making people drop tobacco and cigarettes.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you haven't seen it, The Insider (1999) is well worth watching. It's based on a true story about a whistleblower in the tobacco industry. In the film the CEO knows nicotine is addictive and perjures himself.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_\(film\))

</comment><comment><USER36> I was recently on a tobacco case jury. I mentioned it to my Mom. The tobacco companies came to her high school in the 1950s and handed out free packs of cigarettes, 3 in each pack.

</comment><comment><USER37> Of course, of course. Wait to sue them for $2 a customer until they've acquired the customers with a LTV of $30k for only $50. That'll teach 'em.

</comment><comment><USER38> A complication to the whole story about the risks of vaping is that nicotine alone doesn't appear to be particularly addictive. The evidence suggests that it's specifically the combination of MAOI and nicotine found in tobacco that's actually so addictive:

[https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#addictiveness](https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#addictiveness)

<comment><USER39> Yeah, that's my experience too.

I vaped a lot, lost my vape and didn't buy a new one. The period afterwards, with no vape/nicotine, was completely unproblematic, I had no issues quitting at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://outline.com/uHgUPZ](https://outline.com/uHgUPZ)

</comment><comment><USER41> [https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/class-action-lawsuit-filed- against-...](https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/class-action-lawsuit-filed-against-juul- and-altriaphilip-morris-builds-past-litigation-against-big-tobacco)

<comment><USER10> Someone linked the complaint in the comments below.

<comment><USER41> The complaint looks remarkably similar to the Nessmith complaint in Florida.

[https://www.classaction.org/media/nessmith-v-juul-labs-et- al...](https://www.classaction.org/media/nessmith-v-juul-labs-et-al_1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Only a matter of time before they go after Cheeseburgers and Cola.

And the consequences... It's isn't safer product. It's price hikes, less choice and higher taxes -- and a few extra parasites making bank.

</comment><comment><USER43> He should have also sued Pax Labs, the company that spun Juul out (likely for this very reason) when it was still getting off the ground as R&D.

This structure was definitely chosen to protect Pax Labs.

</comment><comment><USER44> the biggest medical advance in 20th century by impact is getting doctors to tell patients to quit smoking. i'm not sure why vaping is even legal when there are less harmful drugs that are illegal

</comment><comment><USER45> when I get old, i will tell my pot-smoking grandkids how there was a time whe tobacco wal legal, and they won't believe me

</comment><comment><USER46> Speaking as someone who started using a Juul at 17, this is absolutely ridiculous. People are responsible for what they choose to consume. Got asthma? Maybe avoid inhaling chemicals that might affect your condition. Now, I'm 19 and I have to drive to North Carolina (about 30 minutes) to even buy tobacco products, since they raised the legal age to 21 in Virginia. Thanks, nanny. I really hope this little prick goes home empty handed.

<comment><USER47> > People are responsible for what they choose to consume.

People are influenced by advertising. Especially those under the age of 25 such as yourself where the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that involved with decision making) is usually not completely developed yet.

"People are responsible for what they choose to consume" only takes you so far when people's ability to decide what to consume is shaped by their peers, the advertising they see and ten million other factors in their life. I remember thinking the way you do... and then I grew up and realised people are infinitely more complex than I had given thought to.

<comment><USER48> Don't you see how extremely patronizing it is to say, essentially, "you can't make your own decisions, your brain isn't fully developed"? I get that this is occasionally necessary to say to actual kids, but it does not seem appropriate to say to anyone we deem capable enough to vote and drive a car.

<comment><USER49> They even add on the old "I was like you, then I changed, so obviously you too may one day be so fortunate as to advance into being like me"

<comment><USER47> It's true, shrug. I distinctly remember thinking "Why don't other people make the right decisions?".

I'll admit including it is patronising and in itself immature. Maybe this is my "Why don't people realise that other people are complex beings?" moment and in another dozen years I'll be chiding my past self again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I have never understood the attraction to juul's but the majority of individuals who I know who use them are all young adults and it is alarming that it is so simple for them to have access to this product.

<comment><USER51> I started smoking cigarettes at 9 and was able to consistently get my hands on them by 14. It's never been hard.

<comment><USER52> Damn, and despite this, you're posting on HackerNews. I wanna hear your life story.

<comment><USER51> Ha, it had some twists and turns. Smoking was maybe the most innocent part of my high school experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> tinfoil:

1) false flag lawsuit directly planted by big tobacco

2) who will claim "hey it wasn't a tobacco product so our previous lawsuits didn't apply",

3) thus creating public outrage (think of the children) about this classification

4) leading to broad stroke regulation of vaping e.g. expensive certifications, etc, which will

5) quash the small time vape industry which in turn

6) benefits the tobacco companies.. who will

7) pay a pittance in fines to

8) regain marketshare in the vaping market and

9) profit!

</comment><comment><USER54> I have a great idea for a vape that, instead of a heating element, uses a high power laser to heat the oil. In this way there is no byproduct from the heating of the coil in the vapor.

<comment><USER16> Maybe a better invention would be a device that fires a high-power laser beam directly into the eyes of anybody who tries to 'innovate' in the addictive substance industry.

<comment><USER48> Virtually anything that is enjoyable is potentially addictive. Trying to police the "addictive substances industry" will very quickly turn you into the fun police.

<comment><USER16> Do I get a badge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Anybody dumb enough to still think cigarettes are good for you these days can't be helped. Its not big bad tobacco's fault.

And obviously they want to minimize negatively advertising themselves, thats what companies do. You can only expect them to sabotage their sales so far. But I have seen no evidence that they are purposefully marketing to kids. It'd be pretty dumb to seeing all the trouble and negative attention even the whiff of being accused of doing so is bringing. Hollywood even these days when they are selfconscious about it is still probably doing more to promote the image of smoking. Heck when's the last time you've even seen an add for regular cigs period?

If you think smoking should be outlawed go ahead and outlaw smoking. Otherwise how much further do you expect the companies to go? Wire their packs to give people electric shocks?

<comment><USER56> Flavored cigarettes are banned on the presumption that they disproportionately appeal to kids. Why would flavored vaporizers be treated differently?

<comment><USER10> Regardless of whether or not they should be treated differently, the regulations as they stand now _do_ treat them differently. If you don't like that, the solution is to change that, not to creatively interpret "wire fraud" to mean anything a jury decides is bad.</comment></comment></comment>


House Bill Targets 'Burner' Phones After Paris, Brussels Terrorist Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/bill-burner-phones/ <comment><USER2> Power want to require us to carry their chips. Registering the chips to individuals is an obvious step along the way to an InternetID (because ya know, the terrorists use wifi too).</comment>


Grindr and OkCupid Spread Personal Details, Study Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/business/grindr-apps-dating-data-tracking.html <comment><USER2> Be careful with OKCupid. I'd been using it on and off for a while and recently I got a notification saying that my email address on my account had been changed, then 2 minutes later, that my password had. You don't need to confirm anything to change the email on your account! Not even click an email link!

I was panicking

I was still receiving phone notifications despite not being to log into the app. I could see that messages were being sent and received but couldn't access my account. I believe that others are being scammed using my account

I quickly changed all other passwords and contacted OKC immediately. It's been a week now with no response. OKC have lost a paying customer for life

<comment><USER3> > You don't need to confirm anything to change the email on your account! Not > even click an email link!

Same with instagram. If you don't have 2fa on. I've had my account taken over and couldn't believe it. Utterly pathetic levels of security

<comment><USER4> You mean you can change the email without a password? Why would it be a problem if they require your password but nothing else in order to change your email?

<comment><USER3> I'm saying its a problem to change the email without using an email verification link to do so

<comment><USER5> What if you're changing email because you no longer have access to your old one?

<comment><USER3> What legitimate scenario would manifest that situation?

That is a by far and away a tiny, minuscule, edge case

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well duh.

OKCupid specifically requires your real name which is beyond stupid for a dating site.

Anyone whose done online dating knows about stalkers and the need to hide your identity but these guys want real names.

As for Grindr we'll isnt that owned by China? What better place to entrust your most compromising personal information, and what better long term investment if you want compromising information that one day in the distant future might be to your advantage.

<comment><USER7> This sounds to me more like "better police involvement around the crime of stalking" than "okcupid are bad"

I can see why having "screen names" is good and why having "Jenny S from NYC" beats "picture of Jennifer Smith, 32 acadia Avenue Queens" on the site profile but if it's crime we worry about, it's police we need.

I would be interested in knowing if I am deaf to a much larger problem than I am aware of.

<comment><USER8> Isn't it better to prevent undesirable behaviour in the first place rather than place additional burden on the police (for a trivial mostly non-dangerous behaviour)?

Also, is stalking actually a crime now? When does "wanting to talk to someone" become a crime? Are recruiters _stalking_ me on LinkedIn? What if they keep sending me emails and I keep not replying?

I think the bar for putting people in jail should be much higher than that.

<comment><USER9> Eh, we are not really talking about facebook "stalking" with someone looking at your facebook profile, but about people continually harassing you and trying to contact you through all sorts of means.

I think the bar for putting people in jail for the above is just right, might even be too low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With their multiple-choice questions, OkCupid has a lot of in-depth personality data that is a total privacy nightmare if leaked to anyone. And therefore very valuable. Things like diet, sleeping habits, sexual preferences, religious and political alignment, addictions, everything really.

<comment><USER11> "Leaked?" "Privacy nightmare?" Last time I used OkCupid was like a decade ago. Back then you could view everyone's answers to their multiple choice questions right on their profile. It's purpose is (was?) literally to be read by others. Just like the purpose of this HN post is for others to read.

Edit: I think you could view them only if you both gave answers to the same question.

<comment><USER12> >Edit: I think you could view them only if you both gave answers to the same question.

Correct, but it would show you the questions you hadn't answered and let you answer them right then and there to see their response, meaning a couple of clicks. Scripting that for mining would have been trivial via the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Link to full reports and release: [https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/new- study-the-advertising...](https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/new-study-the- advertising-industry-is-systematically-breaking-the-law/)

Twitter threads: [https://twitter.com/finnmyrstad/status/1216988370632695809](https://twitter.com/finnmyrstad/status/1216988370632695809) [https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/1216954710248259585](https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/1216954710248259585)

<comment><USER14> Grindr is section 5.1.5, page 72 of the report PDF: [https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp- content/uploads/2020/01/202...](https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp- content/uploads/2020/01/2020-01-14-out-of-control-final-version.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think a dating app (especially the ones which have vulnerable groups like Grindr in this case) should never be ad supported. OkCupid also has a lot of detailed data about users and that getting leaked to third parties is absolutely horrible.

<comment> blaser-waffle > I think a dating app should never be ad supported

Then it's subscription based, which has been shown to be a hard market to work in. Plus any company that gets paid via subscription has an incentive to keep users on the site and paying money -- which, if a dating app works, won't do. Like, if the app is effective then people will find a partner and stop using it, ending their subscription and cutting costs.

> (especially the ones which have vulnerable groups like Grindr in this case)

I fail to see how their privacy is different from anyone elses. Or how their kinks are any less or more destructive than others. Grindr is already banned in Iran, Turkey, and Saudi anyway

<comment><USER15> Not really. All the match.com's owned apps (Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge etc) have very successful subscription models. I follow the top grossing apps for iOS and Tinder, Match, OkCupid are always on the list. It's more so that here, the Match.com people want to squeeze every dollar out of their users and are willing to compromise their privacy by supporting ads.

I understand and agree with the point about subscriptions leading to an incentive to keep users on the app. But this is also true for ads supported ones. Dating apps have conflicting goals with user goals. That's why Tinder grosses so much money - because it's a mostly hookup app where quantity matters. So people keep coming back to the app and Tinder keeps making more money.

I do think if the data for the vulnerable groups falls in the wrong hands, it can destroy people's lives. Imagine an international student from Iran visiting US and having a profile on Grindr. If this info somehow gets leaked back home, his life is in danger next time they visit back home. This also has higher chances of being used as blackmail material by someone else.

This is one of the cases which the 2 Nigerian brothers have against Jussie Smollett's lawyers - the lawyers had made a claim that the brothers were attracted to Jussie. The brothers make the claim it's not true and that also puts their life in risk when they visit back home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly this is not new. Back in the days (at least in 2013) I played with wireshark to find out what dating apps were sharing with advertising platform to generate banners. There was the following data:

\- OS platform with version

\- Prefered language

\- Career network

\- Current connection (3g/Wifi).

\- Exact position (altitude/latitude/longitude)

\- Sexual orientation

\- Twitter ID and Facebook ID (as long as the app can have access to it).

But all of this over HTTP, not HTTPS!

<comment><USER17> > \- Exact position (altitude/latitude/longitude)

Given the context, when I first read this I was like wow! Advertisers want to know your sexual position? Then, I saw lat, lon and then realized that either way shouldn't surprise me.

<comment><USER18> I can see it now "We only want to advertise to 'missionaries', we find their click-through rates are better."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a dating site with reasonable privacy / data security policies? Asking for a friend, of course...

<comment><USER20> I'm not aware of any. But if someone does has a reasonable privacy policy, how do you know that they actually adhere to it?

I've used dating sites in the past, but more recently I learned that it's much more fun, and works much better, to engage in real-life activities that get me around people I don't know, then ask interesting people out directly.

</comment></comment><comment> La-ang I was hacked 3 times on okc. Thankfully, all the info there I put was fake, I somehow sensed their security is wack judging from the user interface and the constant app crashes and bugs. There are also multiple reports of users who got hacked. I remember on one occasion my phone number was on a conversation and was picked up by hackers to text me in person pausing under some "Jessica".

</comment><comment><USER21> Absolutely no surprise..

> The report, "Out of Control: How Consumers Are Exploited by the Online > Advertising Industry,"

While it seems a bit hyperbolic, its really not.

Out of interest, are there any restrictions/regulations on which parties can actually purchase that information ?

I could see hate groups taking aim. Then who is at fault ?

<comment><USER22> Perhaps I'm naive, but given Grindr's very vulnerable user population I expected more...

<comment><USER21> I would never assume or blindly expect companies to be dilligent. It's not like we've ever seen great examples of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Exibitionist445 likes that.

Seriously it is probably not restricted to dating sites, but information about sexual orientation and preference is especially worth it to marketeers. Not just products but also media companies that might like to know how to cater to specific audiences and their needs.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand how certain laws exist yet without the obvious steps to ensure it is followed - no oversight for companies like this? I'm pretty sure the companies taxes will be checked every year.

<comment><USER25> Pragmatic Solution: Implement a federal tax on data use.

<comment><USER26> How about a ban on establishing a database of individually identifiable user profiles? Restrict data storage to anonymised statistical usage only. A technically possible way to achieve this is using a system like Keybase which could transfer profile data ownership to the individual.

<comment><USER25> > How about a ban ...

A ban costs politicans money to enforce. A tax gives politicans more money when enforced.

Draw your own conclusions.

<comment><USER27> Politicians don't spend any of their own money more than any other taxpayer. However, the more money politicians can influence to be spent, the more influence they have.

For example, the ban on marijuana has yielded tremendous returns for politicians and their associates in the police equipment and prison businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Neither Grindr nor OkCupid are non-profits. As the apps are free as in beer, if you don't pay with money, you pay with your data. If they didn't sell data, how would they make money? How would they get those valuations? If paid dating services do this, which they probably do, I agree it's scandalous. But in this case, it's more or less implied. Of course it's sad that so few people are aware of this fact.

<comment><USER29> They both make money from premium memberships that give extra functionality and features. Remember kids, collecting and selling data is never okie dokie.

<comment><USER28> Good point. They are a paid/non-paid hybrid then. Paying money for a service and getting your data sold is extremely shitty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://archive.is/pxyUE](http://archive.is/pxyUE)

</comment><comment><USER31> Funny Europe media report more about Tinder being among the worst data abuser, but the US version mainly talk about the Chinese application Grindr...</comment>


The Secret Code Of Apple's App Rejection Process Laid Bare  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/the-secret-code-of-apples-app-rejection-process-laid-bare/ <comment><USER2> Give me a break. How desperate are these people for news. I can write secrets to. Here's the secret code to tenthings' thought process:

if (lame) write_about_it; else write_about_it; notify_press; waste_my_time; act_like_a_dillweed;</comment>


Is This The Future Of Search? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/is-this-the-future-of-search/

<comment><USER2> I hope it is not the future of search. There should be a better way, learning from users actions instead of querying them directly.

In fact I think Google already has these ways, with Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and Adwords tracking users behaviours among other things.

So I suspect, if this voting stuff comes, it would be more psychological than technical? Maybe people are happier with a site if they are allowed to "vent".

A bit like the escalator engineers who placed mirrors next to the escalators so that people would not notice the waiting time so much. It doesn't improve the technology, but makes people happier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well it is good to know that Google is experimenting with Social Search in this way.

I am very enthusiastic about Social search and even built one (with the same commenting, voting features).

Wikia is doing the same, so, nothing new about this for people like me, but, feels great to know that Google is atleast 'experimenting' with social search.

<comment><USER4> do you think the voting should affect the results?

<comment><USER3> yeah, sure, otherwise why display that feature?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know its been talked about with several threads already, but this is the first post that has a video of it in action.

So for the many people who are not able to use the new search feature (like me) - this is a great help to visualise where Google is trying to take it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This could be quite awesome. Only thing is, I have a hunch the comments will be of Youtube quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> The only thing that worries me about the voting functionality is how this will work in regards to SEO - specifically people spamming with votes for less relevant search results in their various niches. I have no doubt that this kind of voting will work for broad terms, but would be less valuable in very specific keyword phrases which only get few searches.

What would be fantastic is if Google could weight these votes based on how "alike" the person voting for it is to me.

EG, if I was interested in say, Kung Fu and Knitting, and there were other people interested in Kung Fu and Knitting, then the options that they vote for would be more relevant to me than someone who was doing SEO work on those various sites. So hopefully those would rank higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> could this possibly be a joke?</comment>


Startup Quote: Marissa Mayer, vice president, Google - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3087317670

<comment><AUTHOR> If you need the user to tell you what you're selling, then you don't know what you're selling, and it's probably not going to be a good experience.

\- Marissa Mayer (@marissamayer)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3087317670></comment>


Ask HN: I signed a 12-month contract. Can I quit? - <AUTHOR> I signed a 12-month contract to develop software for a startup. While there is a termination clause that allows the client to terminate, the contract says nothing about me being able to terminate. I am 2 months into the contract, and while I am not pleased with the work environment for multiple reasons that I won't get into, I feel confident that the client is not breaching any part of the contract.
Can I quit without being liable for damages, like I would if this were a full-time job, or am I obligated to finish out the contract? I will talk to a lawyer, but first I'd like to understand my options a little bit more.
Note: this is all within the US. CA specifically. <comment><USER2> Fortunately slavery isn't legal. Just tell them you're not going to be able to complete the work due to personal reasons. If they press you, just tell them everything about the work environment and leave it at that. It's easier for them to find someone else than sue for damages.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's probably illegal and also illegal for them to cancel your contract after signing it anyway.

It's best to talk to a lawyer instead of asking on this orange site for advice.

<comment><USER4> > It's best to talk to a lawyer instead of asking on this orange site for > advice.

Seconded. And talk to a lawyer with experience regarding this sort of contract. These things can be tricky sometimes.</comment></comment>