Show HN: a conspiracy theory generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.verifiedfacts.org <comment><USER2> I put "Hacker News" (which I thereafter identified as a organization or group by the drop-down selector) into the search,

<http://www.verifiedfacts.org/search>

and generated this new conspiracy theory,

"During the Bush wars, Hacker News began plotting their eventual rise to power.

"Local historians living near Area 51 have noticed strange connections between it and the Feds, stretching back to the Bush wars.

"Mentalists and psychics report that strange aura disturbances can be seen wherever fluorine is found in Area 51.

"Outspoken academics who research this topic have had their research silenced by those in power.

"The increased militarization of US police forces can only mean one thing-- when the government's failure to properly address fluorine sparks a rebellion, the Feds will be leading death squads across the nation.

. . . . "

Several parts of that read very much like Hacker News comments I have seen recently under various threads.

About Paul Graham, identified as a person, I get

"Paul Graham isn't just an individual-- they're an organization, and they have doubles everywhere.

"Do you know that if you post a tweet about #mercury and Paul Graham, it will 'mysteriously' disappear from your page within minutes?

"You may think free speech ensures your right to talk openly about Paul Graham's negative influence on our society, but their powerful friends in Libertarians have, in the past, used crippling libel lawsuits to silence brave citizens who did exactly that.

. . . . "

<comment><USER3> Selecting "dangerous thing" was pretty amusing too:

The Truth About The NSA and Hacker News

[http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/the-nsa-and-hacker- news/NjA5M...](http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/the-nsa-and-hacker-news/NjA5MA)

 _The NSA is trying to control the minds of the American people-- probably with Hacker News, which they invented and created._

I would love to see some of the emails you get from <http://www.verifiedfacts.org/report>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations! You are a genius. You have created a MVP comedy generator!

You're about 15 iterations away from making a billion dollar service that creates and sells movies to hollywood and television stations.

 _On a serious note: I've lived with a conspiracy theorist and the pattern I've noticed is this. Theorists take things that were mistakes or unintended and say that they were done on purpose to benefit someone. 9/11, Iraq, etc.. So you're actually really close._

I love this. Someone should get a really serious looking gentleman and make videos of his reading this as if it were real conspiracy news.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have any reflections on the psychology of conspiracy nutters?

I have two friends who will believe pretty much anything that involves the government/corporations and nefarious activities. Evidence is strictly optional. Indeed, evidence to the contrary is not sufficient to disprove these theories. Or its just part of the conspiracy.

The funny thing is these people are otherwise quite intelligent and capable of rational thought. They have decent careers and neither are social outcasts.

If they had failed careers/relationships etc I might understand it as a coping mechanism to internally justify failure. But that is not the case here.

I dont understand why they believe these things. But then I dont understand how faith works for religious people either.

Anyone have any insight to this?

<comment><USER6> Hello. So-called 'conspiracy nutter' here.

The fact that someone believes something which you do not believe does not mean that they have a mental health problem. If that were the case, we (atheists) could say that there were a billion or more insane Christians out there. But everyone knows someone who has religious beliefs.

Everyone, no matter how mainstream their opinions, has a worldview which is comprised of a set of beliefs. Everyone. Now, it is just the nature of beliefs that rational arguments and evidence do not readily alter them. No matter how widespread, or how fringe the belief is, or whether you judge it to be 'crazy', or whether the belief has a scientific basis. Those are the default nodes in your cognitive framework. You just don't change them very easily. Any more easily than I change my beliefs.

One thing that you may not realize, or perhaps may not accept as fact due to your own worldview, is that the 'conpiracy theorist' label has been historically, and still is, a tool used to suppress dissent by ridiculing opponents who accuse an establishment of wrongdoing. Here is a Wikipedia article about it.

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

> As scholars have long argued, governmental and medical institutions code > menaces to authority as mental diseases during political disturbances.

>...In the 1970s, Martha Beall Mitchell, wife of U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, was diagnosed with a paranoid mental disorder for claiming that the administration of President Richard M. Nixon was engaged in illegal activities. Many of her claims were later proved correct, and the term "Martha Mitchell effect" was coined to describe mental health misdiagnoses when accurate claims are dismissed as delusional.

I anticipate that most people with mainstream beliefs in the US would assume, based on their worldview, that political abuse of psychiatry only applies to other countries, or to other times. I think this is wrong, and part of the general myth perpetuated by the establishment that it rarely (or at least, not in contemporary times) does anything that can't be morally justified.

[http://conspiraciesthatweretrue.blogspot.com/2007/01/list- of...](http://conspiraciesthatweretrue.blogspot.com/2007/01/list-of-proven- conspiracies-from.html)

<comment><USER7> While many people like to make fun of and dismiss conspiracy theorists, they don't realize that some conspiracy theorists have been following particular events closely for many years and are making connections between events that are decades apart. Whereas the opinion of someone who is less informed on certain things would be that a current event was a standalone anomaly.

<comment><USER6> When you mention making connections between events rather than thinking of them as standalone, the first thing that comes to mind is the way that government and media sources always portray the wars in the middle east as being isolated instances rather than as being part of a larger strategy and ongoing campaign. Its not just less information. Its misinformation oftentimes too. Such as war propaganda. Every one of these wars has a supposed explanation, which is never given as being strategic or connected to a larger campaign, always some bullshit about 'weapons of mass destruction', 'humanitarian crisis', 'freedom fighters' etc. which is always later revealed to be lies.

I mean, to me its pretty obvious that the US has a long term campaign going on. Just look at a map. We invade and occupy a country on one side of Iran, then the other. Then the Egyptian president, who just happens to have been blocking US plans to invade Libya (one of the strongest remaining Iranian allies in the area) since the 80s, is removed by way of an amazing 'spontaneous' democratic online uprising (which to me looks like propaganda, information/cyberwarfare). Then Libya is taken over by US-backed 'rebels'. And now Syria, the other Iranian ally, is being taken apart from within by more 'rebels'. All countries in the same geographic area, with the same types of prized resources, one after another, all opponents of the US.

The problem is that the mainstream media lies about the motivations for military action are always accepted by the majority. In the context of the previous lies getting us into war, they are obvious deceptions. Yet they blast the propaganda from all angles with the same bullshit over and over and it becomes the closest thing to reality that many people have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that most people don't realize is that the government will label real information as a conspiracy theory as an easy way to discredit it. So that word is actually an important propaganda tool. Once you realize.that, jokes.about.conspiracy theories arent so funny.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the government, with their ability to, you know, just label stuff. Just any old thing, slap a government label on it and Bob's your uncle.

<comment><USER9> Sure. The Man is remarkably well organised and has an endless fountain of resources—after all, he does print the money.

Lost direction in your life? Try the startling clarity of paranoid delusions. Soon you'll be saying "It all makes sense!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got the following about Microsoft and Fox News - funny!

 _The Truth About Microsoft and Fox News_

Many astute citizens have already noticed the recent censorship of media pieces critical toward Microsoft. Don't fool yourself: this is definitely part of a master plan, and Fox News are probably the ones behind it.

The value of Fox News's hedge fund investments have doubled over the past 70 years-- while ordinary Americans have seen their investments vanish in waves of depression and recession. Coincidence? Definitely not!

Many members of the Federal Reserve are secretly working for Fox News on the side. Their air travel habits are proof enough for this, but there's a wealth of additional evidence that the Federal Reserve doesn't want you to see.

Employees of Microsoft were seen at both the US Election of 2000 and WW1-- despite the fact that they had no good reason to be there.

We've taken a big risk to post this information on the internet-- many others have seen their careers destroyed for doing much less.

The only way for upstanding citizens to protect themselves from this madness is to retreat from modern society entirely.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is not what it seems. See here: <http://goo.gl/b8uWE>

</comment><comment><USER12> Haha, some of them are hilarious. Some more obviously generated than others, but still... good job.

How are they generated?

I managed to get some gems like this:

> The earliest Nordic settlers in the Old Northwest were shocked when they > discovered their lands had been inhabited by a sentient race, which has been > confirmed by scientists to have used Google products over 300 years before > today.

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing Markov Chains[1]. Effectively, each phrase is determined randomly from a pool, the options are dictated by the preceding sentence. They're a surprisingly effective way to produce a few sentences that seem logically connected, despite being more or less random. After a few hops, of course it can go off the rails.

And they have a simple grammar that allows them to pull famous names, places and drop them into predefined slots. Someone else already pointed out, it's basically Mad Libs.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Truth About Monsanto and Dead Parrot

All products made by Monsanto are produced using Dead Parrot and its derivatives. It's intentional: they want that stuff in your bloodstream.

In 1851, Civil War general Robert E. Lee reported a strange disturbance in the sky over the Potomac. A squadron of six men who had been sent to investigate disappeared for 12 days, and when they came back they had no memory events that had transpired. Lee wrote in his diary, "Our inspection of the men turned up nothing, but their forearms were branded with a curious unknown symbol: 'Monsanto'."

Talking about this kind of thing openly is likely to get you put on a no-fly list.

Did you know that toxins created during the Dead Parrot manufacturing process also turn up in children's toys?

Invested parties have done a lot to make sure this stays under wraps.

Rich and powerful bankers have aggressively invested in and exploited Dead Parrot, despite the danger it poses to ordinary citizens. Chances are they took a hint from Communists.

After setting up this website with these startling facts, I have been contacted by FBI agents three times.

Apathy toward this issue will be the death of our civilization. Do you plan on dying with civilization, or will you join me in settling a remote Pacific island?

</comment><comment><USER15> With a little brush-up, this has the potential of being the next The Onion News Network. Great job, and I like where this is going.

</comment><comment><USER16> I randomly got "The Truth About North Korea: North Korea has been planning a silent invasion of North Korea for quite some time." I'm not sure if this is a bug that should be fixed, or if that's just what North Korea wants you to think.

<http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/north-korea/MTcxNDc>

</comment><comment><USER17> "The Black Plague was a time of great confusion and hardship for ordinary citizens-- but through it all, Fox News enjoyed suspicious prosperity."

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks like it's a mix of markov chain generator and mad-libs style random fact generation, am I close?

(sorry for curling the site way too many times)

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.verifiedfacts.org/directory>

pick one, and it seems to have several articles on the same topic. like other have noted, the source for this would be an interesting read.

<comment><USER20> So the website is more of a directory of generated conspiracy theories, rather than a conspiracy theory 'generator'. Go to a specific article and note that the article is always the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry it's not clear - you can generate your own at <http://verifiedfacts.org/search>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> See also; [http://www.amazon.com/Foucaults-Pendulum-Umberto- Eco/dp/0156...](http://www.amazon.com/Foucaults-Pendulum-Umberto- Eco/dp/015603297X)

<comment><USER22> First thing I thought of when I saw this web app as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love this. How does it work?

> Salmonella helped beyoncé achieve a meteoric rise to fame and influence.

In 1750, Benjamin Franklin was observed by over fifteen residents of Philadelphia as he branded an unidentified man with an Illuminati insignia. He was overheard telling one of his associates, "my work will be done once beyoncé arrives to complete it."

</comment><comment><USER24> I opened lots of HN links in new tabs with their comments. I looked at this one and thought "why are stupid antisemitic conspiracy theories being posted on HN?".

Then I clicked the comments tab.

</comment><comment><USER25> Now all we need is a really natural text-to-speech and some stuff like FCC licenses and we can start building fully automated Alex Joneses.

</comment><comment><USER26> Search for Oracle is truly hilarious!!

'The Truth About Brad Pitt and Oracle

Did you know that Brad Pitt gets checks from Oracle once a month, for services rendered-- but unexplained? That's not all that Brad Pitt gets up to when the public's watchful eye is turned.

Oracle clearly has a secret deal with Youtube-- all videos highlighting the abuses it committed while in North Korea are taken down without explanation.'

Awesome work!!

</comment><comment><USER27> Hold on guys! Before you believe anything you read on there I've uncovered an interesting article on the dark truth behind verifiedfacts.org! <http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/verifiedfacts-org/MTg5OTQ>

</comment><comment><USER28> It's awesome. May I suggest a 'read more' button, which would elaborate more and more on the conspiracy. Sources should probably be click-able and also function as a 'read more' button. Would be great if I could sign up for conspiracy-of-the-day to have it emailed to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good stuff. Reminded me that the Postmodernism Generator is still out there as well, and as equally, gloriously incomprehensible : <http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/>

</comment><comment><USER30> Records indicate that Barack Obama's ancestors were present at Fukushima.

Obviously.

<comment><USER9> In the spirit of conspiracy theorism, I deduce that the United States government has access to time machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of this gag:

<http://www.bbspot.com/toys/slashtitle/>

Looking at some of those really makes me feel...not quite old, but dated.

</comment><comment><USER32> So well done. We have to get this on Rachel Maddow's show.

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems legit: <http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/Markov%20chains/MTcyMjc>

</comment><comment><USER34> I predict you will be slashdotted.

Edit: I just saw the "Report Inaccuracy" link. Ho boy, you guys nailed this. I hope you monetize it big time.

<comment><USER3> Did you know East Germany is practically owned by Slashdot? [1]

1\. <http://www.verifiedfacts.org/i/Slashdot/NzAzMA>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is not quite timecube level of crazy, but nevertheless good job with semi-plausable text generation!

</comment><comment><USER24> I found a bug: Try entering the name of an organisation that has a # symbol in it, or a /

</comment><comment><USER36> "The Truth About Morgan Freeman and Meth" seems like libel.

<comment><USER37> Can algorithms be charged with libel? I did some googling, but couldn't find anything solid on the subject.

<comment><USER36> If you write code that you know because of the data that it uses has the ability to generate libel about a famous figure on a public site, then you could be charged. The likelihood of being charged is much less than having written it yourself clearly and perhaps linking to the page and promoting it as valid news, but the possibility of being charged is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Fukushima was an inside job."

Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER39> Fun :)

Would be awesome to bait conspiracy theorists with these.

</comment><comment><USER40> Best freakn' site ever! Thanks for the share!

</comment><comment><USER41> This is so awesome. It just made my day.

</comment><comment><USER42> Love The Wall reference I came across :)

</comment><comment><USER43> I just read an amazing one:

"Oswald acted alone and Ruby got no help from anyone"

And I've got a bridge to sell you too ; )

Must be nice to live in a land made of pink-ponnies and honest people who'd never abuse the system.</comment>


Simple API with Nginx and PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://rny.io/nginx/postgresql/2013/07/26/simple-api-with-nginx-and-postgresql.html <comment><USER2> This article gives a good example of why you SHOULD consider using an existing framework to create a REST API.

I see no concern about authentication, authorisation, scalability, protection from SQL injection attacks, nor making the output easily parseable by third- party applications.

None of these are issues you can simply say, "I'll deal with that later when it becomes a problem." They are reasons why an existing framework is helpful.

Any example of a web application using a database should NOT be using string concatenation for adding field values to an SQL statement. Ever. Really.

<comment><USER3> "protection from SQL injection attacks"

In the module he's using, there is a postgres_escape function.. so there's no reason he couldn't have used it.

[http://labs.frickle.com/nginx_ngx_postgres/README](http://labs.frickle.com/nginx_ngx_postgres/README)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately when defaults are inherently insecure, they lead to people building insecure systems. If every single parameterized SQL command needs to include (possibly multiple) escapes then it'll be missed in some places.

It's unnecessary anyway. It would be _way_ better would be if the parameters were bound as named parameters. Ex:

        location ~ /articles/(?<id>\d+) {
          postgres_pass database;
          rds_json  on;

          postgres_query    HEAD GET  "SELECT * FROM articles WHERE id = $id";
          postgres_rewrite  HEAD GET  no_rows 410;
       }

See how $id has no quotes around it? The DB driver should parse the parameter and bind it as a _string_ in that position. If you need to use it as a different data type (ex: integer) then you can do an explicit type conversion. _That 's_ how you prevent SQL injection.

<comment><USER5> "The DB driver should parse the parameter and bind it as a string in that position. If you need to use it as a different data type (ex: integer) then you can do an explicit type conversion."

Not sure exactly what you mean here. The protocol and libpq support sending literal values entirely outside of the query itself. There is no reason for the DB driver to do any parsing.

<comment><USER4> Miscom on my part. By driver I meant the nginx module that's calling out to libpq (which would more accurately be referred to as the DB driver).

I meant that libpq supports bind variables and the nginx module should be using them rather than performing a string substitution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was a bad move not include protection against SQL injection to begin with. I was thinking about keeping it as simple as possible and just show a simplified example. But I think this was a bad thing to do so I have updated the example so it now uses postgres_escape.

And yes, this approach should only be used for very simple APIs. If you're building something bigger, use a framework.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you use lapis[1] things will be much easier.

[1]: [http://leafo.net/lapis/](http://leafo.net/lapis/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't couchdb accomplish this? (out of box REST API with little config)

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Couchdb is preferable to this for so many reasons. The author is effectively using the Nginx configuration language for server-side scripting. The result ends up looking a lot like a bad PHP crud app. With couchdb, the REST API is already built in.

<comment><USER9> Except if you already have a postgres-based system and you want to build a simple REST api around some small piece of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I'd like to see how you implement role based access control and sql injection safeguards. How would you define complex validation schemes? In stored procedures?

<comment><USER11> Simple, you'd use a framework.

<comment><USER10> I thought as much. If the goal is to not write code then writing stored procedures is akin to writing code, just in a different language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I made it to the bottom and thought the article was cut off. Turns out, it really is that simple. (Sans the sql injection and auth stuff).

Fantastic.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing.. page could use some whitespace at the end or a footer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like the simplicity of this approach, but are the Postgres calls asynchronous? If not, it won't scale...

<comment><USER14> I think the answer is yes, it performs the calls asynchronously. I've been searching through the source code for the postgres module ([https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_postgres](https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_postgres)), and it appears to use the libpq asynchronous API ([http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/libpq- async.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/libpq-async.html)).

Of course, one could easily use the async API in a non-async manner, so I'm not 100% certain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I want to chime in that I have been using a similar setup: nginx, ngx- postgres, postgresql 9.2.4 in production for a while. It has been _very_ snappy and rock solid till this point.

I used android async-http to talk to the server from my app to have everything online. This is an intranet app so latency is not really an issue.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you created stored procedures in postgresql that accepted a json/hstore argument, you'd have a pretty flexible/fast system here.

i.e. PUT to "/api/blah" with {"id": 1, "name": "Joe"} could call the update_blah stored proc passing in that json.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty neat, what about SQL injections?

<comment><AUTHOR> This example is not secured against SQL injections but you can do it easily. Look at the documentation here: [https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_postgres/](https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_postgres/)

<comment><USER5> To clarify, it looks like "postgres_escape" is the way to do escaping.

Unfortunately, it seems a bit awkward to differentiate between empty and NULL strings. That's something to be careful of.

Also, I really think this should be included in the blog post, even if it's simple. Protecting against SQL injection is not optional, so leaving it out only muddies the comparison with more traditional frameworks. Also, there's always going to be someone that copies and pastes it without thinking much about it.

That being said, this is very cool and I hope to see more development and exploration in this area.

<comment><USER9> From the docs re _postgres_escape_ : "Because nginx cannot tell the difference between empty and non-existing strings, all empty strings are by default escaped to NULL value."

This behavior actually is what anyone who has used Oracle is accustomed to (empty string is NULL). I don't recall the default behavior in Postgres but Postgres is "Oracle-ish" in a lot of ways so I would be surprised if this is not the default there as well.

<comment><USER5> The "empty string is NULL" behavior you describe is a standards violation. Postgres does not follow Oracle off of that particular cliff; postgres does differentiate between the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't you be throwing away your ability to add a caching layer. I guess their are ngx modules for Memcache/Redis but coding even a simple api in nginx.conf can get difficult?

I still like the idea of nginx being able to communicate with different datastores. For example, let's say you want to serve a file but it requires authentication, you can pass some signed request via query string and cross check it in session in redis/postgres wherever.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you want a really good REST API for Postgres you're better off using HTSQL. [http://htsql.org](http://htsql.org)

</comment><comment><USER20> Every time I see something like this I think it is an opportunity to finally do something with [http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/](http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/). How cool would it be to come up with a simple (external!) DSL to mount SQL queries over HTTP routes, and transform the whole thing to a nginx configuration file?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this a "look how cool/flexible nginx is!" article or a real proposal about how to do API's?

<comment><USER22> Hopefully the former. It would be difficult to build anything non-trivial with it. However, I suppose you could build a basic counter or key-value system over HTTP with it.

<comment><USER9> It is by definition difficult to build anything non-trivial regardless.

This looks like a very nice way to build small simple REST APIs especially if you're already using nginx and postgres anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can this be done with redis, or memcache?

<comment><USER24> Same developer made this:

[https://github.com/agentzh/redis2-nginx- module](https://github.com/agentzh/redis2-nginx-module)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> very cool, add in some lua scripting and you can get some pretty solid single purpose endpoints: [http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpLuaModule](http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpLuaModule)

maybe not perfect for a whole app but maybe depending on your goals.

<comment><USER26> Can you recommend a public repo which demonstrates use of the HttpLuaModule? [Edited to add:] Another comment mentions the Lapis framework which gives [me] a good starting point.

@subs: thanks!

<comment><USER27> Hope this will help you [http://blog.cloudflare.com/pushing-nginx-to-its- limit-with-l...](http://blog.cloudflare.com/pushing-nginx-to-its-limit-with- lua)

This helped me setting up nginx/lua/redis setup on Ubuntu [https://github.com/ehazlett/nginx-rt- log/blob/master/readme....](https://github.com/ehazlett/nginx-rt- log/blob/master/readme.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> An oldie but goodie on this sort of stuff on nginx ... [http://agentzh.org/misc/slides/nginx-conf-scripting/nginx- co...](http://agentzh.org/misc/slides/nginx-conf-scripting/nginx-conf- scripting.html#1)

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what the difference in performance would be compared to NodeJS and Express.

<comment><USER30> [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7&test=db&f=g-8-0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why use a SQL database when all you really want is a key-value store?

<comment><USER32> Who says he wants a key value store?

This setup is powerful by its simplicity. Only two layers. And stored procedures can help you do validation, so one could imagine a full Twitter like implemented this way (lest the ui, obviously)

<comment><USER31> The API he implements suggests a key-value scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is amazing, always wondered if I could move things from the app server to the web server level.

but are there any performance benchmarks ? I suppose nginx would have a better performance.

<comment><USER21> Very curious - why would you want to do that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> On an unrelated note, timestamptz is advisable over timestamp.

<comment><USER35> Timestamptz is one amazing reason to use Postgres over MySQL frankly. Proper time + timezone storage is quite useful.

<comment><USER36> Postgresql doesn't offer proper timezone storage, or in fact any timezone storage. Timestamptz is just a UTC timestamp that is converted to/from your connection-specified timezone. You completely lose the "what timezone was this originally specified in" data.

<comment><USER37> The point is that the timestamp type is meant more for calendaring, unless you're manually normalizing the dates you're passing into postgres to a certain timezone like UTC. Timestamptz is what you actually want 99% of the time.

<comment><USER36> Yes, timestamptz is the one you want 100% of the time. But there are a ton of people who don't realize it doesn't work the way they think it does. Lots of people think it stores the timezone, and it is really important to understand that is not the case when designing your app. Postgresql is actually completely lacking in the ability to store and validate timezones, as well as converting values to other timezones in useful ways. It is quite possibly the biggest weak spot postgresql has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Postgres already offers HTTP interface:

[http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HTTP_API](http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HTTP_API)

<comment><USER39> I'm looking for information on how to return homepage or template files from such pure REST interface. If you have any idea, please share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great for a quick little hack, but I wouldn't want to maintain that conf file once the project grows.

<comment><USER41> Well, this is for a _very_ simple REST API and the post acknowledges that much. I mean if this does become a "project", I'm sure it's time to move it to a proper framework, but as you say for a quick hack, it's a pretty nice way to do it (with proper sanitization, of course).

I'd also venture that this is an order of magnitude faster and more responsive than a framework so there are definitely some plusses and minuses to consider.

<comment><USER40> yep agreed. if you're comfortable with nginx and just want to test something quickly, this is many times better than downloading a framework, setting up, routing, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How does one do user authentication and resource authorization?

<comment><USER43> Auth Basic can be done directly against postgres, plus a few more modules (headers-more and eval was how I did it, IIRC). Could probably do it with just openresty too.

After authentication, you have the credentials needed check authorization, it'd probably just involve a few changes to the SQL in the article.</comment></comment>


Weaponising Information: Enter an Age of Unbridled Hyperconnectivity - <AUTHOR> https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/index.cfm/articles/Speed-Kills/2017/06/09 <comment><USER2> I've been coining a term in my local circles called "Data Terrorism"

Before I dropped out of Georgia Tech, I was going to publish a research paper explaining my reasoning for "Data Terrorism".

This article didn't touch on my points, I'm focused on weaponizing personal information. Atlanta is split between two counties, and one of them (DeKalb) used to have a website which published booking information. This allowed private websites to crawl the data and setup "ransom"-esque business models (pay us to delete your entry form our site).

I guess if you're ignorant, you would say "oh, well that's only for criminals"...but no. They're doing the same thing for all public records.

I recently found out that my 1st grade teacher filed for bankruptcy and foreclosed on her home around 2010....and her mortgage was around 250k. This came off a simple Google search of her name.

There is no reason that I should have ever known that.

<comment><USER3> > There is no reason that I should have ever known that.

Take into account this is largely a cultural opinion. It is well know that in Norway, your salary and taxes are public. So you mosty know how much everyone is making.

It is possible that something unthinkable today is tomorrow cultural norm.

<comment><USER4> In the US for most persons paid by the public sector or by assorted non- profits, the salary is public information. That's accepted as a given. So I wouldn't be surprised to be able learn the 1st-grade teacher's salary, if she is still working. But the details of her mortgage troubles?

<comment><USER5> Even if that wasn't up on the site, it would appear at the top of any basic credit report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main implication of hyperconnectivity is the breakdown of physical borders as the most meaningful cultural boundaries. It has actually been happening for a while when you consider the rise of air power, ICBMs, broadcast communications, the internet, etc.

The Army is fundamentally a real estate focused organization - their role is to take and hold territory.

The Navy is about slow influence - control of the seas allows you can deploy and retract the threat of physical violence depending on the political situation.

The Air Force is about the ability to deliver devastating violence on space- age timelines. But they still require targets.

My cautiously optimistic view is that these forms of violence become far less relevant when geography is no longer the key dividing line in tribal affiliation. You will see a rise in low level violence, and that will be associated with a decline in the primacy of the nation state. But it will reduce the risk of globally devastating conflict.

<comment><USER7> "The Navy is about slow influence -" ROTFL. The Navy is only of use to intimidate some 3rd tear nations and for "mine is longer than yours"-comparisons.

[http://www.johntreed.net/sittingducks.html](http://www.johntreed.net/sittingducks.html)

BTW, have you heard about the Russian Zircon missiles?

<comment><USER8> The Navy has the US's most fearsome nuclear weapons.

Ballistic missile submarines are incredible. Each Ohio class has 24 Trident missiles with up to 8 warheads each. That makes each one a bigger nuclear power than everyone except the US, UK, Russia, France, China and Israel.

The Navy's nuclear attack submarines are also fearsome. Much quieter than old nuclear boats, fast and able to be anywhere and fire cruise missiles.

As you point out carriers are now vulnerable. But they can be held out of range and aircraft refueled. They can then deploy aircraft a long way away from them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk and Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World argues....that the most transformative characteristic of the contemporary environment is the sudden onslaught of threats emerging from the dark underside of hyperconnectivity.2 It is difficult to exaggerate the degree to which hyperconnectivity enables—according to the study's authors, researchers, and the defense-focused communities of interest and practice it consulted with—the following:

Hostile or disruptive virtual mobilization worldwide;

The collapse of privacy, secrecy, and operational security;

Penetration, disruption, exploitation, and destruction of data storage and transmission, as well as the use of data and data-enabled systems;

and finally, The unfettered manipulation of perceptions, material outcomes, and consequential strategic decisions through the strategic employment of various forms of information."

<comment> FLUX-YOU >The collapse of privacy, secrecy, and operational security;

Says the same government still asking for crypto/device backdoors! Auuuuuuuugh!

<comment><USER9> Not sure why this is being downvotes. It was my thought, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of this is good.

Governments (and their agents) _should not_ have impunity for misbehaviour in private.

Governments _should not_ have the level of strategic advantage over their populations that they've been used to. They _should_ feel imperiled by popular wrath if they earn it.

<comment><USER11> > Governments should not have the level of strategic advantage over their > populations that they've been used to.

But, see, governments _always_ have that. They always have a bigger gun than you do.

You want to shine light on government activities. That's good, and you are right to want it. But the cost is that the government will also be able to shine _even more_ light on your activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like the ideas and insights of John Boyd and his disciples (whose ideas on 3rd generation warfare became the core doctrine of the USMC, and the disciples wrote a paper on 4th Generation Warfare were largely ignored) is finally being taken seriously in the US.

<comment><USER13> An article from the Atlantic in 2001 explaining the idea behind 4th Generation Warfare.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/fourth-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/fourth- generation-warfare/302368/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Richard Stallman was prescient</comment>


WikiLeaks Embraces Torrent and Magnet Links - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/wikileaks-embraces-torrent-and-magnet-links-100609/

<comment><USER2>
      "What if WikiLeaks was a sort of Wiki-BitTorrent, served
      by thousands of people around the world running a
      background process on their computers," mused  Edward
      Benson, a Ph.D. student at the MIT Computer Science and
      Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

This has been done. Ten years ago, in fact.

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

Anonymous, encrypted, person to person, fault resistant, it's got it all. The price for all this is that it's slow, of course. Really, really slow.</comment>


TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.prlambert.com/2013/01/29/tc-vs-hn/

<comment><USER3> Your HN post[0] led to a blog post: <http://www.learndot.com/findings/how-to- name-your-startup/>

Your TechCrunch post[1] led directly to your homepage.

With that in mind, we can't trust these numbers at all.

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4779410>

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its- learn...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/13/learndot-launches-its-learning- platform-for-corporate-universities/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Numbers are always trustworthy if they're accurate. You just need to right context to interpret them in. These numbers are straight from Google Analytics, and you are correct that one was a direct link and the other was via TC. I say this in the article.

This is a real world scenario. Many people ask how much traffic we got from being on TechCrunch. This is just data, take it as you want. I do my best to explain the main caveats, including the one you pointed out. There are many.

<comment><USER4> They're untrustworthy to answer the question "TechCrunch vs. Hacker News: Which is a better front page to launch your startup?"

<comment><USER5> Having said that, HN is definitely the best site to get your TC vs HN blog post to the front page

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is one major flaw in this thinking. He says LTV should be at least 4x cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and that he would pay $60 for a warm lead. So let's assume he follows this and 4 x $60 is his LTV = $240. With 22 leads from TechCrunch the total potential value of those leads is 22 x $240, not 22 x $60

TC leads were potentially worth $5,520 if fully converted (not $1,320 - <USER2> is the _cost_ he's willing to pay for equivalent leads)

Of course, very rarely do all conversions occur but I think when doing marketing it is important to know the fully converted value of each channel (in this case PR) so that you can figure out how much to spend. In general $5,000 of potential revenue (or TCV) is my minimum bar for a PR story, for example, so this story makes the cut just barely. I think the TC traffic they got was pretty abysmal, probably would be worth it to hire PR next time since they've got a B2B product that can afford $60 per warm lead

Conversion rates can change and constantly be improved on the product/sales side (public pricing, free trial, free + premium features for upsell, etc) but I've found that often growing the TCV (total converted value) of the channel is more worthwhile than trying to optimize in the early days when fixing conversion is harder than just finding attention opportunities. If you can find channels that consistently drive you leads worth 10-20x CAC and continue opening the channel more (getting more TC stories for example) you can figure out where its limit it.

This topic has been on my mind a lot, needs a whole blog post on DistributionHacks to dig into channel methodology and running multiple experiments to find the TCV of leads for each, stack rank, and implement system for scaling that as a business machine with predictable inputs and outputs --- but I haven't had time. Maybe this weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the confusion. When I say I will pay $60 for a warm lead, that's assuming a number of them will not convert. Our LTV is in the 1000s, but another part of the cost of acquisition is the time on the phone to close the deal.

It's more like this: \- We'll pay $300 bucks for 5 warm leads to hand off to sales. \- Sales will work the leads to close, spending another $200 of time. One of them will close. \- We'll get a customer with a LTV of greater than $2000, for $500. LTV >= 4x total CAC.

In valuing the leads from TechCrunch, it's a mistake to assume they'll all close (in which case their value is beyond $5520), we have to value what they actually are: potential. We have to discount the risk. That value, is about $60, so all 22 are worth $1320.

I like the optimism though. :)

And you're right it's not a great payoff overall. ~$3000 isn't a great ROI for the effort that went into the launch. There were other channels as well beyond HN and TC, but I wanted to keep the story focused on these two.

We've been testing more channels since and there's lot of data there as well and so, so much more to learn. Looking forward to your post!

<comment><USER6> I figured your LTV was probably much higher given what you're doing. That 4x CAC thing is really intended for consumer companies I think.

The reason this methodology matters is that when you have a marketer trying to figure out how to deploy a substantial amount of capital against business goals they've got to break it down by channel. And this common misconception is one of the most painful hurdles to get over with startup management teams who tend to be spending adverse even when the marketer finds a channel she wants to exploit the hell out of.

Marketing, as a function, deals in potential. If I can spend $1 to get you $10 of potential, and you (being sales or self-service conversion funnel) close 20% of that then we are a fucking awesome company :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What front page do your customers read? Unless all you're doing is selling to Silicon Valley, neither TechCrunch nor Hacker News are necessarily going to be the answer.

<comment><USER8> I've gotten LiberWriter on the front page here a few times, and the number of new customers was astounding:

Absolutely zero.

The typical LW customer is not at all tech-savvy, which is pretty much the polar opposite of your average HN user. I get _far_ more mileage out of hitting forums where writers actually congregate.

Not to complain, mind you, I posted to talk about aspects of LiberWriter that I found interesting that might be worthwhile for others, not to troll for business.

<comment><USER9> It would be great if you could distill:

"Most authors say that more than 80% of their eBook sales are via Amazon."

down to one metric. 'most' can be manipulated to be almost any value... just ask cats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went with a TC article for the specific reason of getting an HN post out of it.

This led to waiting an extra week or two to launch, was generally a hassle, etc. And our article hit in the afternoon on the west coast, vs. at a reasonable hour on the east coast.

In the future I'd probably just post directly to HN. Getting to pick the _time_ of the HN post is probably worth more than the incremental value of TC. TC might be worthwhile for funding announcements, but I'd never use it for a product announcement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Given that the two links pointed to completely different pages it's hard to draw any conclusion. It's well known that landing page has a significant impact on conversion, so even if the same audience from TC was split across both links (front page vs blog article) the conversion would likely be significantly different.

It also varies highly depending on the time of day and business of both. Hit either on a busy news day and you'll get wiped out. The time of day also has a huge impact on whether the audience is primarily European / East Cost (US) / West Coast (US) which depending on the nature of your startup can make a huge difference.

While the article makes interesting reading I wouldn't recommend trying to apply the findings to your own startup.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its not surprising to see that TC visitors are more engaged - after all, for you to get to the company from TC you need to click on the article, 'parse' the text and only then click on the right link. many times, simply reading about the company is enough for you to decide not to visit.

Therefore in your calculations, I think you are undervaluing the $ value of TC awareness, since many people that dont visit your site DO read/glimpse over the article/title and are aware of your existance.

</comment><comment><USER12> I suspect I might be old fashioned but I'd take actual leads and conversions over paying 20 cents each for random hits any day. By such a measure, it seems TC won hands down. But as several other people are saying, both would be better ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> None of them will bring substantial traffic, users or virality (but HN brings you slightly more, if you are doing good ~20-30K visits while TC hits you ~5-10K).

If you are raising money or raised already and prepare the next round being on TC is a must. Not only once, better several times. Consider also Mashable, maybe not the same brand but you will get much more traffic and virality than with TC.

Regarding hiring devs HN is of course better.

To get on HN on the front page is much easier than with TC.

</comment><comment><USER14> Depends on who you are trying to reach. If you want to reach developers and the "entrepreneurial market" then Hacker News drives more traffic (and if the product / audience fit is good will convert better too). If you want to reach business buyers and investors, then Techcrunch converts better (and drives better engaging traffic). So... who is your customer / user?

</comment><comment><USER15> What you post on HN matters a great deal: when we had a general start-up related article hit the front page we got traffic but few leads (like in OP's example).

But when we launched an interesting feature and hit the front page -- with the story's title obviously aimed at our target market of app publishers -- we got massive amount of leads as well.

<comment><USER16> I've experienced the same thing, off of 1,300 visits for an off topic article we got about 7 leads. When we posted something clearly targeting our market our conversion rate jumped to around 10%

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you don't list your pricing most TC "leads" are just going to be people interested in what your pricing model is for a variety of reasons, not actual leads. One qualified lead in your segment probably represents much higher CLV than all those TC and HN leads combined. If you're actually looking to generate sales look elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER16> I write for a startup and have been on HN front page a few times, most visits from HN in a day was around 1300 for an article about Facebooks Social Graph: [http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/how-facebooks- graph-s...](http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/how-facebooks-graph-search- will-affect-google-technology-and-privacy)

This article misses an important benifit of getting large amounts of traffic: Google starts to recognize you through author rank and links as a qualified source of information.

Ever since my articles have been on HN, search traffic has steadily grown. This could be because of something else, but the common connection is large amounts of traffic from you guys.

</comment><comment><USER18> It really depends on your goals. You can't compare conversion rates of a link to the homepage with a link to a blog post. Bounce rate on blog posts is always higher and the ppv is usually never over 1.5.

However when comparing HN to TC you should not just look at the raw numbers but also at what comes with it. On HN if you're selling something on target, you'll get lots of advice and and feedback, Something you're unluckly to get on TC. TC gives you credibility, it's a logo to put on your website's "Featured on" box and it helps you selling your product and doing fundraising.

</comment><comment><USER19> It all depends on the market you are selling to. Nothing else. I have launched things on HN and it all boils down to if the market wants it. For example, my last project (marketing bits) has had a very high HN acceptance _and_ adoption. Would it enjoy such success in TC? I don't think so because it is not the target market.

</comment><comment><USER20> They both suck. No targeting, all fluffy early adopters, causing a high churn rate and lack of potential user insight. I have a solution, the site is live, with 5,000+ users, 2,500+ companies, but I need another PHP developer to make it more scalable.

Hit me up! @TheNickFrost on Twitter :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Getting upvoted on HN seems like a bit of luck. I've seen really bad posts get upvotes, and some better ones get nothing.

So just posting on HN is not a launch strategy unless you know people who will upvote your submission.

</comment><comment><USER22> TechCrunch will get you money. HN will get you respect and/or advice.

</comment><comment><USER23> Minor nitpick: 2nd and 3rd graphs say TN instead of TC

I always wonder how much of this data is skewed (engagement especially) by the amount of apps that are built on top of HN.

<comment><USER24> Another nitpick: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_gra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graphs#Truncated_graph)

Especially "Conversions by source".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> @Author: More important question you should ask is How to get in the front page of HN? I never completely got the mystery behind it, can anyone jump in and explain?

<comment> mkr-hn Velocity

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Neither. Build up a mailing list of prospects while you build and keep them updated on your progress. On launch day, spread the news among the mailing list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Worth noting, we actually did that as well. I believe we got 7-8 conversions on launch day from the ML.

Built from ~6 months of email capture on the landing page + 4 months of active customer discovery interviews.

<comment><USER20> I suggest we chat about my community of targeted early adopters, that will make TechCrunch and HN user acquisition, a thing of the past. Seriously.

@TheNickFrost

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Get NYT to sponsor you, <http://www.nytimes.com/timespace/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Why not both? It's not exactly hard to submit something to two different websites.

</comment><comment><USER25> HN Hands Down any day if you're looking for developer traffic.</comment>


How do I find unused functions in my PHP project? - <AUTHOR> http://www.andreybutov.com/2011/08/20/how-do-i-find-unused-functions-in-my-php-project/

<comment><USER2> Naturally, thanks to the nature of dynamic programming, it won't find gems like:

      $a = 'awesome';
      $func = $a . 'Func';
      $func();

so if you're using this on a project that was written by someone else, then don't just blindly delete everything. But this should be expected.</comment>


Speed reading promises are too good to be true - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160114163035.htm <comment><USER3> Bummer. I played with Spritz (a centered-text speed reading API) at a hackathon a while back, and was pretty impressed. It seemed that I could read with real comprehension at around 400WPH and "skim" at about 1000. A big part of your pitch was "moving from word to word takes most of the time while reading," and I thought they had research to support that.

It's still a fun thing to try if you haven't done it yet. The article points out what is pretty clearly the biggest problem with these speed readers - going back to re-read is a big UX challenge. My little hackathon app used a "back ten words" button (may have been what Spritz recommended?), but I also thought having the actual paragraphs scrolling above the Spritz text as you read would be a more useful way of solving this problem. If you get lost, skim the paragraphs around what you're reading, and press / click a word you want to start speedreading from again. In more dense material where you need to flip back a page or two, you might need some sort of zoom out functionality as well.

If nothing else, these technologies will hopefully find a use in wearables and other tiny-screen devices.

<comment><USER4> Yes, tech assisted speed reading should actually work while retaining comprehension, as your eyes don't move.

<comment><USER5> The review article here suggests that language processing steps are the bottleneck, not we movement. So the reasearch suggests that current approach to using tech (rapid serial display of words) introduces a speed-comprehension trade off.

Perhaps a better approach would be to develop deep learning systems that sort of translate cumbersome writing into linguistic structures that our brains can more easily/quickly digest?

<comment><USER6> Those systems already exist, they're usually called editors. Sadly, they seem to be used less and less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever this topic arises, I remember:

"I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia." \-- Woody Allen

It's quite old too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Link to the actual paper: [http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4.full?ijkey=0GSjhNaccRK...](http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4.full?ijkey=0GSjhNaccRKTY&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi)

I took on speed reading in college after realizing I needed to study and learn faster or I would fail miserably. The book I picked up seemed like a lot of common sense steps the first one being to inhibiting subvocalization, the internal voice we are used to hear while reading since we where taught to read out loud. The idea here being that our mind can process information much faster than the speed of speech.

The paper cites several studies that suggest inhibiting subvocalization reduces comprehension. However it takes the result of these studies as fact when they might be flawed. An example in their chapter about the role of phonology:

> First, consider a study in which skilled readers were asked to indicate > (with a button press) whether briefly presented words were members of a > certain category (e.g., foods; Van Orden, 1987). The people in this study > incorrectly responded "yes" to a word that was not a member of the category > (e.g., meet for the category food) about 19% of the time if that word was a > homophone of a true member of the category: In this example, meet is > pronounced the same as meat, which is a food. Incorrect "yes" responses to > non-homophone words—for example, melt—occurred only 3% of the time.

I looked a the Van Order paper ([http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03197716](http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03197716)) since it shows the highest reading comprehension failure rate (19%). They came up with that number from an experiment studing just 5 male and 5 female undergraduate students (see Experiment 1, page 3)

I think citing this study altogether as a basis of one of their main conclusions (eliminating subvocalization lowers comprehension) is flawed: The study didn't compare regular undergraduates with speed readers (people skilled at comprehending without subvocalizing), it just concluded no subvocalization could lower comprehension by 19%.

<comment><USER9> I can't imagine that it's possible for me to inhibit subvocalization. It seems intrinsic to the way I read.

<comment><USER8> I initially thought the same and found it was really hard to shake it off. It took me several weeks of frustratingly sticking up with the exercises until I was able to do it.

But I still tend to fall back into it when I'm reading something hard to understand, specially when reading english which is not my native language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've never quite seen the point of speed reading. When I read, it's either to look up some information I need, or for entertainment. In the former case, it's much more efficient to just look for the particular information and avoid reading most of the text at all. In the latter case, speed reading would make the entertainment run out faster.

<comment><USER11> I'm currently (finally!) reading _2001_. I was half a page from the end of a chapter when my train was seconds from stopping where I wanted to get off. Thanks to speed reading, I could finish the chapter and put the book down in my bag before leaving the train!

<comment><USER12> Every other commuter I see seems to solve this problem by reading while they're walking, head down, oblivious to their surroundings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a nice article that summarizes what we know about speed reading (2015) [http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading- red...](http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/)

</comment><comment><USER14> If I'm looking to process a reading queue, I'll do a lot of skimming, most writing contains lots of fluff and very little substance. I look for the main idea and some supporting context, think about them briefly, make some conclusions, and move on.

Only if the text is exceptionally well-written will I slow it down and really dig into what the writer was trying to convey. It's like a conversation. Some are really worth paying attention to and experiencing, most unfortunately are not, just perform your social duty and then go find something more interesting to do.

<comment><USER15> Bingo. As the saying goes, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time." (attr. Pascal)

Saying more with fewer words takes work, and not everyone does it, or can do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading used to be supremely difficult. A piece used to be read aloud - <USER2> several personal practice sessions to gain familiarity with the text.

In the 4th century being able to read silently was notably strange.

We've refactored the process quite a bit since then:

Splitting individual words. Introducing capitals to highlight paragraph boundaries and proper names. Punctuation to speed up parsing. Inter-paragraph spacing and semantic and syntactic conventions to improve concept parsing. Etc., etc.

I see no reason to believe we are done yet. :-)

<comment><USER17> > In the 4th century being able to read silently was notably strange.

I've seen it argued that this is actually a myth, popularized by Nietzsche. See e.g. [http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?topic=reading- silentl...](http://hour25.heroesx.chs.harvard.edu/?topic=reading-silently)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If your intent is to memorize every factoid and point made in the text, then speed reading won't be effective.

However, if you naturally skim articles really quickly looking for information that will be of interest to you, then in a sense you are already speed reading.

</comment><comment><USER19> i've been doing it for a while, and well to me it worked. I didnt follow an official course just used tips around the internet. I was able to read a huge work related projected, and make the decision to go into it for our company or not. By speed reading i found the problems in the project a 500 page doc. And those where tackled by contract makers. later so it depends if you can do it or not, but dont put money in it

</comment><comment><USER20> Rapid serial visual presentation. I've had good results with RSVP speed reader software.

</comment><comment><USER21> On its own, you're not going to magically be able to reduce your reading time by 95% and still maintain the level of retention you get by a slow word-for- word read from a few weeks with an app/course. As the article states, there's more to reading than just swallowing a word more quickly. But the techniques enable you to change the way you consume information by eliminating the bottleneck and associated procrastination of staring down a 1000+ page book and the weeks it will take to get through it.

I'm a huge advocate of speed reading, personally[1]. However, I think the points made in the article have a lot of merit.

Speed reading should be seen as a tool for consuming information, but you have to adjust the way you learn accordingly[2]. I can read, cover to cover, a 1000 page book in a few hours. My strategy for learning from a large book is to read it more than once (often three to four times) to treat the first read as a 30,000 ft view. I don't do included exercises, and I also limit my note- taking. My second read is with pen and paper in hand. I break for exercises and notes, but otherwise continue to read just as rapidly. If I struggled with the concepts, I'll repeat the process.

Years ago, that book would have taken several sessions to complete _the first read_ and the second read would only be over particular sections. I'd be done after weeks, rather than a weekend, which also negatively affected my retention. Reading from day 1 is built upon and by day 19, it's foggy. When I can do that in an afternoon, it's fresh on my mind. And at worst, with several reads, I'm still getting through the material in half the time it would have previously taken me and with solid retention[3].

It's also not something you become good at over night. After I took the course, I could read twice as fast, but not twice as effectively. It requires a lot of practice. When I sit down to read something, I have a goal of learning whatever it is I'm trying to learn, but I have a second goal of consuming that material more effectively. The first few years, I focused on reducing my time spent on the first read. As the years have gone by, I've adjusted my note-taking and methods for retention. I read a 500+ page book (often equivalent text in PDF) nearly every weekend. I pick things I am using today and grab books that build on that.

[1] I took a multi-week course that focused on the typical "eye movement" techniques along with skim/scan techniques. That course started, for me personally, a rapid change in my ability to consume information from text and I still believe it was one of the most important classes I've ever taken. I _greatly prefer_ book reading over courses these days because I can completely control my pace from _very rapid_ to _word-for-word_.

[2] I'm speaking purely of technical reading. I do not speed read fiction and my personal experience is that speed-reading fiction is awful. I stick with audio books for that.

[3] I do not have data to back this up. I've been reading large, technical programming books for 18 years, and some of that added speed is that I have a relative understanding of the work before I begin. I know _how_ to read a programming book to maximize my retention and I read programming text to become better at what I do, which is something I've learned how to do from years of practice.

[Edit: Added a note clarifying fiction vs technical]

<comment><USER22> So this 1000 page book you can read in a few hours are technical or fiction books? What about the 500 page book over a weekend? Both sound extremely impressive. What type of technical books are these? Any technical/programming book I read usually has a lot of exercises to do, or is just non-trivial and requires more time from me. For example I can't imagine it being possible to speed-read something like 'Introduction to Algorithms', or anything technical really.

<comment><USER23> I call bullshit. What he describes would be a _major_ accomplishment worthy of publication in the most prestigious scientific journals but of course it's simply not true.

He _may delude_ himself into believing he's actually getting anything out of the books he's speed reading but I bet if put to the test, his performance in terms of comprehension would be abysmal.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure what else I can write to convince you -- I've detailed how I "read" so quickly in a few comments on this topic. It's true but I don't think it's all that unusual (your comment is making me think it may be which I'll try to keep from going to my head).

I used to work in Infrastructure in the early 2000s and a coworker and I had a running contest on how many certifications we could amass (my company had a library of reading materials). It was my coworker who pushed me to take a speed reading course. We'd each read 600+ page books covering the material around 3 times (maybe 4, but later reads are not complete reads) over a week while testing each other at work. Both of our pass rates were perfect[1] (Novell CNE, CNA, MCNE, A+, Security+ -- do those still exist? -- and a myriad of other certifications of dubious worth) -- failing meant we had to pay out of pocket, so we passed.

The "first read" is a skim/scan, very superficial read, and it's easy to get through a large book this way, especially if it's material I'm already comfortable with. The 1000 page books are technical books (points I made elsewhere) that aren't all wall to wall content, lots of diagrams, code, etc. I read a book more than once if I want to learn the content (the first read is partly to weed out a book that has no value to me).

At the end of the day, it's the equivalent time it takes to _learn_ the material that matters. After a 2 hour "read" (skim/scan/speed-read) of a 1,000 page book, I'm nowhere _near_ where I'd be if I had read the entire thing, slowly, word-for-word while taking notes and doing exercises. If I feel the book is worth it, I'll read it again, then read parts of it carefully, to the point where I've likely read the book 3-4 times with notes and exercises included. I'm at "equivalent to reading it slowly" by the end of the second read. But that's a _low_ bar for a book of that size. Considering that same exercise would have taken me a month to complete the _first_ read. How much of Chapter 4-6 will I remember on day 30 of multi-evening broken-up reading sessions reading it "slowly"? How likely am I to be burned out by then? By doing it this way, much more of it is fresh in my mind and (most important to me), I'm more likely to devote the time to learning the material knowing it will take a week, not a month+, to get what I want out of the book. After finishing a C++ book recently, I was writing in the language. I'm nowhere _near_ proficient, having only two books and a 10-year gap in my C++ code experience, but "the old way" I would have been more likely to let it sit on the shelf half-read, never completing it. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to write more than a "Hello, World" program without having it pulled up along- side my IDE, constantly referring to bits I hadn't read in over a week.

[1] Pass rates, not scores. There were some tests I squeaked by one question over passing. I scored perfectly on more than a few, though, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That was a quick read.

</comment><comment><USER25> I speed read that and I agree with what it says.

</comment><comment><USER26> TL;DR: Speed reading is just like reading a short summary, and you won't understand the whole text.

<comment><USER27> I've seen a few speed reading lessons selling on that angle. It's a good way to sift through stuff that doesn't come with a summary. Just slow down once you find the good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Straw man? I've never heard it claimed that speed reading can give the same level of understanding as normal reading. Just that it's a way to quickly get a sense or gist of a work.

<comment><USER29> I've definitely seen promos for seminars that claim to "double your speed" and at the same time "increase your comprehension," so I'd say that speed reading being on par with normal reading is at least a real claim made sometimes and a perception that probably exists among many.

<comment><USER21> The course I took promised both, so the problems the article has with speed reading courses are completely fair IMO. They're ridiculous and on par with claiming a pill will make you lose hundreds of pounds without any effort or work.

I've way more than doubled my reading speed from when I took a course 18 years ago. My retention is dramatically higher, as well. The main reason for the increased retention, however, had less to do with the course than a change in the way I consume information from books. If the technical book is worth reading, I read it at least twice. "Read" includes skimming/scanning techniques that I've gotten very good at over 18 years. Thinking "well, I can read 90% faster with these techniques" will result in retention that is _very_ low if you change nothing else. The first read is rapid and haphazard (sometimes just to figure out if it's worth using the book as a source of information). The second read will be honed for specific information (and third and fourth).

That serves two points in favor of retention. By being able to get through a massive text in a weekend with multiple reads (versus a single read over a few weeks), that information hasn't become foggy from multiple long breaks/distractions--it's fresh. My second read is cover-to-cover, but focused with note-taking and doing exercises. Subsequent reads are surgically focused on areas where I am weak and are done more slowly.

Before, my learning was single-pass (with some section/chapter review). Because of the reduced time/effort it takes me read, I can do so in a multi- pass manner with careful focus on learning the material rather than on the _act of reading_.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is switching careers from IT to legal crazy enough to be worth it? - <AUTHOR>

After 20 or so years in IT (operations mostly) and routinely observing the embarrassing state of legal affairs around anything IT-related, "a friend of mine" has been visited by a thought to switch gears to legal field to apply some technical expertise to the world of yellow notepads. Ignoring the problem of at least 4 years of education required to qualify for a legal clerk job, do you think this is something that can make this world a better place or merely a fancy attempt to cope with mid-life crisis? In a more constructive mode, how do you think the hacker approach can improve the existing legal system? <comment><USER2> You don't need to have a legal background to help firms with their IT problems. Just go out and do it. If you get an education in the legal field then you'll be doing legal related work. It is like saying dentists need help with IT, therefore I will go to dental school.

But anyway, the legal field really needs some help. Six years ago I was a clerk at an average law office. I went into the store room to get a pen or something, and pulled open a drawer of dictaphones. I asked one of the attorneys what the deal was, and he was like, if you want to make it as a lawyer you need to learn how to use one. They'd dictate out their letters, and then place it in a little plastic bag with a note and drop it off with a paralegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the best lawyers I ever worked with had in a previous life done things like program a Z-80 embedded system that measured valve wear for a nuclear power plant in California. It really made a difference that he could understand a lot of what we were doing.

That said, I'm pretty sure he made his career switch earlier than you did and he hated normal big law firm life (I first got to know him when he was a startups corporate council and jack of all trades). I'd want to find out how big the clued in competition is per jeffepp's observation.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I went to Law School at Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago-Kent School of Law) there were many, many students who had backgrounds in IT, engineering, etc..

As far as making the world a better place -- I am all for ya trying, but the legal profession is pretty set in its ways.

Constructively, one way to improve the legal system is to get rid of legalese and replace with clear and concise language.

<comment><USER5> Nice idea, but legalize is really a programming language that predates even COBOL. If you deviate seriously, you may get exceptions and loose your case. I think a better legal language would be even less understandable.

For those of you who question my assertion, try reading the original PL/I standard which was an executable (by humans) programming language specification. There were only a few people in the world who could read it. It was precise though.</comment></comment>


Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls(1) - <AUTHOR> https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs <comment><USER2> The article doesn't mention "ls -1" at all, which has served me quite well in various more or less complex scripts over the years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or how about making a file name out of one complete line from 'ls -l'?</comment>


Best netbook to run Ubuntu? - <AUTHOR>

I have been using a Mac for a long time and love it - but I really want to buy a netbook a.) to get more work done traveling on planes, since my mac pro is 17 inches of awesome b.) to get familiar with other flavors of linux.. i.e. ubuntu. Sadly I remember a time when Dell was pushing Ubuntu on their computers, but I guess times have changed. Any recommendations on which netbook brand / model you have had success running Ubuntu on? <comment><USER2> I think you'll find that ubuntu will have plenty of driver support and will work on almost any piece of hardware. If you want to get more familiar with other distro's I'd recommend virtualizing them first (vmware, virtualbox, etc).

If you're interested in a machine tailored to ubuntu, a quick search brings me here: <http://www.system76.com/index.php?cPath=28>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thank you for the link!</comment></comment>


How One Goldman Sachs Trader Made More Than $100M - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-one-goldman-sachs-trader-made-more-than-100-million-1476869402 <comment><USER3> Like the article says, it's very hard to distinguish between market making and prop trading. Especially in illiquid stuff like corporate bonds, the MM needs to hold positions for extended durations, so they have a valid excuse to not be closed down entirely by Volcker.

The real reason they make all that money is flow. The guy on a desk like that knows what customers are calling, what they're concerned about, roughly how easy it is to get rid of stuff, and so on. It's not surprising he has a good idea of what's going to happen, and he's in a good position to take advantage.

Surprised their VAR (which is a crap way to measure risk) is not even halved in relation to before the crisis. People were definitely chucking it about back then, and the mood these days is like a morgue.

<comment><USER4> Market making is inherently prop trading - the firm's capital is at risk - unless trades are paired or hedged immediately. For thinly traded stuff that may take a while to unload, it is just prop trading.

I personally think Banks should be incredibly boring utilities. But that ship sailed a long time ago.

Lots of great stuff was thrown out the window in January. My winning bet for the year was to start buying EWC (ishares Canada) during the market lows.

You say "and the mood these days is like a morgue". Please elaborate.

<comment><USER5> If you prevent banks from doing the riskier forms of market making, then that responsibility will move to firms that don't have access to customer deposits.

Because their capital base is less stable, they will be more prone to stop making markets precisely when you need them most. That will probably make extreme volatility events like flash crashes much more likely.

This is already happening today to some extent:

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-07/flash- cra...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-07/flash-crashes-and- insider-trading)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-03/people- ar...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-03/people-are-worried- about-bond-market-liquidity)

'In the new system, the market makers are computers, and when things get hairy they just stop buying pounds and walk away with their computer hands in their computer pockets, whistling a jaunty tune out of their computer speakers.'

<comment><USER6> Volatility can be highly valuable in the long term to keep markets honest. Without that there is a tendency to add leverage until something far more significant breaks down.

<comment><USER5> Generally not this sort of volatility though: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash)

<comment><USER6> _The S &P 500 erased all losses within a week, but selling soon took over again and the indices reached lower depths within two weeks._

So, arguably the rebound is what was odd not the dip. There is a bias when looking at stock markets that says up is good and down is bad. However, accuracy is vastly i more important for the overall economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> @dang - the profits were for the firm, so the title is clickbaitish.

Suggested alternative: "How One Goldman Sachs Trader Made His Firm More Than $100m"

<comment><USER8> "The gains were the work of Tom Malafronte, a managing director on the bank's high-yield-bond desk in New York."

A "Managing Director" so I'm pretty certain that he didn't do it himself, his team(s) did. Frankly annoyed by this recurrent praise for management people, at this level such a guy never dips a toe in the trenches.

<comment><USER9> MD on a major bank trading floor is very much a hands on job. Probably supervising between 2 & 20 junior traders, ultimately tesponsible for their positions, and setting strategy. An IT MD in a bank would have headcount in the 100s.

<comment><USER10> What's their bonus like?

<comment><USER9> I know a trading Director for a rates desk who got GBP2.2M EOY 2007. MD would be more.

<comment><USER11> not too much for fix income sector

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The market making exemption of the Volcker Rule is based on RENTD - <USER2> Expected Near Term Demand. So Goldman has to prove that this was the case for the high yield bonds. Proving this could be quite tricky though - because they have to factor in a whole lot of parameters (market maturity, depth, liquidity, product holding periods, macro-economic outlook and the trading desk's estimation of client demand). But I'm sure Goldman has models to track each of these. So all in all, this is quite a windfall

<comment><USER4> Yeah - given the size and market environment during the trade, I'd imagine there were many people looking over trader shoulders to keep everything legit. Someone is going to have a nice Xmas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Short version: banker provides liquidity to the markets and buys up junk bonds from panicked sellers at 40 cents on the dollar. Banker then sells the bonds for more money as the panic dissipates. Some people wonder if important banks like GS should still be making volatile bets like this.

<comment><USER14> GS has about 90 bln in total equity and nearly a trillion dollars in total assets.

100m sounds high but 100m is a rounding error especially if spread across 100s or even 1000s of trades.

<comment><USER15> Note that they _made_ $100 million. I did not see a value at risk, gross notional or netted, presented.

<comment><USER16> TFA says billions bought and sold before fading out to ads.

I guess making 5% returns isn't such a big deal when you are playing with billions of other people's money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The genius of this guy's trade was not buying cheap and selling dear, but his ability to convince his boss (and boss's boss) to allow him to buy so many bonds (well beyond the amount almost all of his peer's risk limits would dictate).

</comment><comment><USER18> Related discussion by Matt Levine: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-19/bond- trad...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-19/bond-trades-and- merger-codenames)

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this that amazing if he bought billions of dollars worth of bonds? Serious question

</comment><comment><USER20> For anyone who can't ready this article, search for 'Tom Malafronte' from your mobile and read the full 'AMP' version. Thanks Google!

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://archive.is/rIBZT](http://archive.is/rIBZT)

For anyone that wants to avoid the paywall.

</comment><comment><USER22> Did he make 100 m in profits for the company or did he earn 100 m for himself from GS as renumeration?

<comment><USER23> He'll likely get something in the ballpark of 5-10% as bonus. That's the typical rate at a desk where he's primarily making money from flow.

<comment><USER24> So he make 5-10M Bonus? Is this a lot in Investment Banks? ( Absolutely no idea about their payscale. )

<comment><USER10> Question.. if employees at a bank are making these kind of salaries, why doesn't everyone do it?

<comment><USER25> You need access to capital and balance sheet, brokers who help you, salesmen who wine and dine your clients to bring trades in the door, and a lot of other artifacts of the trading floor. It's tough to buy a billion dollars of bond notional below fair value if you can't afford it and there's nobody to sell it to you.

There are huge advantages that the institutions have built for themselves.

Not only that, but these guys are often some of the quickest, toughest, most perceptive people you will ever meet.

<comment><USER11> the fund is not big issue,i suppose,because they may borrow from the cheap source to leverage the trade. the insider info should be the key to their successes, and exploited by the big invest firm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How to get around the WSJ paywall:

\- Copy the URL

\- Paste the URL into the Facebook textbox where you would create a post

\- Click on the preview, so the referrer url is Facebook

Could probably make a Chrome extension for this...

<comment><USER27> Or stop posting them to HN?

Seriously, would we tolerate any other subscription required site? Why does WSJ get a pass?

<comment><USER28> I know this has been done to death, but...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

 _Are paywalls ok?_

 _It 's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds._

 _In comments, it 's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic._</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need a low-code back end for my app. What should I use? - <AUTHOR> Needs:
The app is for a real estate company. They have a list of 100-200 homes for sale. I need a low-code solution that provides a user dashboard + api. The user dashboard is for the agent to go in and add quickly add listing + images. The api is for the mobile app to fetch the listings.
I've been looking at cms solutions like contentful.com but they seem geared towards blog publishing. The API is complex and cumbersome to use too. <comment><USER2> Did you find a solution.

I created this open source project that could be useful for what you're trying to do:

[https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder](https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder)

</comment><comment><USER3> You could easily use a Google Sheet for that. They provide an API and feed, embed options, and there are services like sheet2site.com (never used, not affiliated)

<comment><USER4> Downside to this is you fall under Google's terms of service. They could cut you off at any time and leave you without a backend. That being said, I've ran my little Google Chrome extension I've made last year using Sheets API without issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rails or Laravel. There's a massive ecosystem of libraries and the frameworks are designed to reduce the amount of code needed.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could try Craft CMS. It has a UI layer for configuring your content and is much more flexible then the likes of Wordpress.

It's got a nice publishing experience which makes it easy for clients and it has a GraphQL API built in so that you can send content to a mobile app. It's not free but it's a great CMS that isn't focused solely on blog publishing.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.sanity.io/](https://www.sanity.io/) is another good CMS

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd recommend checking out Firebase. The Firebase console might give you everything you need, or you could just build a really thin dashboard yourself on top of Firebase auth.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you like the idea behind contenful I'd encourage you to take a look at prismic.io as well. I found it much easier than contentful.

</comment><comment><USER10> We've been using Outsystms with a lot of positive feedback from devs and users. Not sure how the licensing model would work in your situation.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd give Airtable a try!

[https://airtable.com/](https://airtable.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Airtable API apparently is throttled, the don't recommend using it as a backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> WordPress has an API and dashboard.

</comment><comment><USER13> So they aren't using the MLS?

</comment><comment><USER14> try strapi.io

</comment><comment><USER15> Django all the way

</comment><comment><USER16> Another vouch for Sanity here.</comment>


Where is Steve's money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/12/09/apple.jobs.unclaimed.property/index.html?iref=obnetwork

<comment><USER2> I blogged about this in 2002. Larry Ellison, Andy Hertzfeld, and other notables also had monies due to them (and may still).</comment>


The end of an era - Windows 3.x - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7707016.stm

<comment><USER2> I'm suprised that the only killed it off now, I didn't realise people used it in embedded systems.

Does this mean that it becomes vaporware now?

<comment><USER3> Abandonware, I think you mean.

<comment><USER2> Yup, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, totally didn't realize you could still buy that old horse. Them were the days, mmmhmmm.</comment>


The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html <comment><USER2> "Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously."

Prescient to the point of being creepy.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. My personal fabe is: "But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward, and allayed the panic with well-chosen words. It confessed that the Mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair."

If only IVR systems were so candid!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this story. (In fact, I even wrote and recorded a song based on it, from the perspective of Kuno).

I find the societal obsession with ideas fascinating. Especially this bit:

> _In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in which > lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated, "No ideas here," and > hid Greece behind a metal blind._

To think that the Earth could inspire nothing is just... sad.

<comment><USER5> I really wonder what kind of ideas they are talking about. It is never really said.

<comment><USER6> I think the idea (no pun intended) is that they don't know themselves. There are certainly parallels with the modern web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An audiobook version is available for free here: [https://librivox.org/the- machine-stops-by-e-m-forster/](https://librivox.org/the-machine-stops-by-e-m- forster/)

(librivox is a volunteer/non-professional project, so don't expect shakespearean acting, but it's good enough)

</comment><comment><USER8> A classic. Some of the ideas presented here were literally a hundred years ahead of their time.

</comment><comment><USER9> See: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20machine%20stops&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20machine%20stops&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) (the many "The Machine Stops" entries on HN)

</comment><comment><USER10> For anyone to whom the name E.M.Forster does not ring a bell,[1] he's more well known for "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India".

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._Forster)

</comment><comment><USER11> First ran into this via Atul Gawande, who was recommended it by Oliver Sacks[1]

"I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/oliver- sacks](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/oliver-sacks)

</comment><comment><USER12> The BBC did a TV adaptation of this story in 1966 as part of its _Out of the Unknown_ series.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060643/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060643/)

The series was recently released on DVD:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-7-Disc-DVD-Terence- Morgan/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-7-Disc-DVD-Terence- Morgan/dp/B00KF9LPBO)

<comment><USER13> Nice! There was a BBC4 Radio version as well, but it doesn't seem to be available on the iPlayer ;(

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of my favourite short stories. Impossibly visionary and also quite terrifying. There was a decent black and white British television adaptation that might still be somewhere on Youtube.

</comment><comment><USER15> That was so far ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER16> This was one of a series of stories re-published by Penguin for their 80th anniversary, as part of a series of shorts priced at 80p each. The Forster book had two stories (can't recall what the second one was, I've only read "the machine stops" so far).

[http://www.littleblackclassics.com](http://www.littleblackclassics.com)

<comment><USER17> _A Celestial Omnibus_ : [http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/the-machine- stops/97801411959...](http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/the-machine- stops/9780141195988/)</comment></comment>