If You Want to Raise Prices, Tell a Better Story - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/07/want_to_raise_prices_tell_a_be.html

<comment><USER2> Isn't this just The J. Peterman story re-told? [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1677-j-peterman-selling- stori...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1677-j-peterman-selling-stories-not- just-products)

Yes, putting nice, long-form copy around regular objects will get them to sell better. I'm pretty sure this phenomenon has been around for a long, long time.

The big thing is a) you can't lie (like some of those stories do) and b) coming up with a consistent voice and narrative is actually quite difficult.

(Disclaimer: I used to be the CTO of J. Peterman)

<comment><USER3> _coming up with a consistent voice and narrative is actually quite difficult._

Yep, especially so for a startup who is still figuring out their place in the world. This is something that we constantly struggle with, and there's no solution other than putting in the effort to keep rebuilding your narrative as your audience changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First off, there's no control in this experiment. You'd need to find out how much they sell for on ebay _without_ the story. Otherwise, the entire factor of 27 could simply be from listing it on ebay.

Second, it's iffy whether this advice generalizes to other types of products. It's obvious when it comes to art and antiques. It's less obvious when it comes to technology products.

But to some extent, while this article doesn't provide good evidence, the "story" concept can arguably be applied to many other consumer products. Most consumer products are purchased at least in part for status, regardless of the buyer's conscious intent.

For example: A tech savvy person buying a laptop may actually need the laptop, but anything they buy over the bare necessities is likely driven largely by the perceived status boost obtained thereby, not by the extra convenience those features will afford. The reason it feels good to imagine having lots of computing power at your finger tips is not that you are conceiving of that convenience, but that your status-increasing hardware is perceiving that in that fantasy, you have higher status than you do now. You are imagining being the kind of fancy schmancy person who has a computer with that much power. Whether you realize that consciously is irrelevant.

The telltale sign of this is that after purchasing the laptop, the thrill of those features dies off rapidly. That's not just that you're getting used to the convenience; that would take longer. Rather, your status seeking instinct has assimilated the high speed computer into "status quo" and has turned its avarice to other status symbols.

So in that sense, "stories" attached to consumer products can increase their value. There's a reason that Steve Jobs liked to mention that the Titanium PowerBook was made of the same alloy used in space shuttles, for example.

What I wonder is whether businesses are as susceptible to that kind of pressure. My gut tells me "no", but perhaps the people making the buying decisions will still want to bring high status talismans back to their "tribe".

<comment><USER5> No, stories like that are used in B2B marketing. Sometimes you take a very well perfoming testimonial, and craft it into a story and blast your list with it. Instant sales boost, and the degradation of your list is minimal, especially if you can pound in some kind of novel insight as well.

<comment><USER4> So if you want to help your business succeed, some great low-hanging fruit would be to teach your employees how to counteract status biases when making decisions.

<comment><USER5> Some even better low hanging fruit would be to teach it to yourself first, because I doubt you can. Great marketing is incredibly seductive, and it invokes psychological principles which you simply can't get rid of. So your only path out would be to resign yourself from ever buying anything, and retreating to a heremit lifestyle. Not a feasible option in my opinion.

Let me tell you a story. About a year ago, I started getting into online marketing in preparation of starting a business. Fair game, right? Split testing, Keywords, the whole google-fu. But the most important aspect of online marketing isn't ninja-SEO, or conversion secrets out of Japanese dojos. It's copywriting. And copywriting is like all other writing. You improve by practice, and you improve by studying the masters. So I set out to find some masterfully crafted ad copy.

Now through my previous study, I stumbled over the ads of John Carlton. One of them, "Testosterone" caught my attention. It was one of his best converting, it was older, and I was incredibly far removed from his target market. After all, he was trying to sell body building supplements, and if there's a thing I don't do, then it's bodybuilding. I mean look at me, I'm skinny as a twig. I look at gyms from the outside, and that's that. So I thought, perfect, I'll start with that one.

So I started chewing my way through this 5 page ad, this machine gun feed of bullet points. I was trying to reverse engineer what he did. I get exited by it. This is good. I like this. I...I want to buy it? What the hell? That moment, I knew Carlton had me. I'm wary of ads. I toss most of them without reading further than 3 lines, the words BS written all over my face. But there, he got me.

So you think you're dealing with low hanging fruit there?

<comment><USER4> Eradicating status bias effects is almost certainly not possible. But there are effective and simple techniques for reducing your susceptibility to them.

Minimizing the amount of marketing literature you expose yourself to is a good start. In fact, that's a good way to reduce your exposure to many of the weapons in marketers' vast arsenal. Exposure to marketing materials should be limited only to what is necessary to evaluate what objective benefits are offered with a product or service, and what it costs.

One technique is to read those minimum necessary materials, take notes on the actual objective costs and benefits, omitting all marketing buzz, and then walk away from it until any excitement from what you read fades. Later, you can review those notes with a clearer head. Or better yet, hand them off to someone else to evaluate, who hasn't been exposed to the propaganda.

It's also a good idea to read Robert Cialdini's _Influence_ , and then reread it periodically. It's an excellent (but far from complete) run-through of some of the most common tools used by marketers, and techniques for resisting them.

<comment><USER6> One problem with minimizing exposure to marketing materials is that it lowers your resistance to them :)

I don't have TV, and when I go to somewhere that does have, it's very easy for me to become mesmerized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wrapping unwanted objects in fabricated stories, however colorful, is not an ideal way to use stories to raise prices or facilitate sales. It's also hardly helpful for startups looking to build products people want (as opposed to peddle junk nobody would normally want).

Let me suggest a more inspirational example of leveraging stories in sales:

[http://thisisstory.com/](http://thisisstory.com/)

And the founder's TEDx talk:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbnWY- swsK0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbnWY-swsK0)

This company uses stories to sell without relying on outlandish fiction. They have interesting blends of off- and on- line operations, merchandising and branding angles, and opportunities to introduce products for companies or conduct marketing research for potential new products.

<comment><USER8> Sorry for being crass, but this is naive. Your ability to process between the value of a product and the perceived value of a story is blurred at best and zero at worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes sense when there is, in fact, a story to tell. Depending on the item, I think that the story can be simplified by concentrating on the BENEFITS of the item. For example this is the description of a watch for sale in a daily deal I just received on email:

Lancaster XXXX Quartz movement Case diameter: 43mm Mineral crystal protects watch Stainless-steel case; black dial Water-resistant to 165 feet (50 M)

Rewrite, with story:

When you hit the street, do it with style and confidence. The Lancaster XXXX features a big face, steel case (unapologetic rhyme there), and a quartz movement that is more reliable than your cell phone service! Oh yeah, and if that unassuming pothole is deeper than you thought, this watch will survive a dip in the water.

So you get the general idea, there is a story in the benefits. After all, how many people buying a $10 watch really care or know what a quartz movement or mineral crystal are?

<comment><USER10> >a quartz movement that is more reliable than your cell phone service

Is this talking about being able to make a call, or the time reported by a phone? The former is a non-sequitur and the latter is a lie. This would not make me very impressed with the seller.

<comment><USER9> I would bet my ten dollar watch that you are a developer and not a marketer. I suppose that you might point out that geckos can't really talk, and Flo will not answer your questions about car insurance :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This story is interesting when the increased price is within the wallet size of the addressable market. A good example of that is coffee - I can buy a $1 cup of crap or I can buy a $6 venti-bs-caramel-late from Starbucks.

Wow, you've convinced me to make a 6x price purchase based on narrative, but in real terms its still six bucks and I have the money in my pocket.

What seems to be missing is that you can't increase the price point of your product via better narrative without also considering what the market is able/willing to pay for it.

With WP Engine we took the concept of commodity hosting (~$10-$15/m) and decided we wanted to offer a non-comoditized product with amazing narrative for $49/m. We ultimately changed that to $29/m _(which is still 2-3x)_ because the size of the addressable market prepared to pay $59/m for that size account was slim. We make more money from selling at $29/m than we would at $59/m, and have a much healthier GPM than $10/m hosting.

(I ask the same of the $20 toaster and the $400 toaster in the OP's example.)

To suggest that we could keep on raising prices based on better and better narrative would be false.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's an argument that a lot of branding is simply an attempt to "de- commoditize" a product and thereby justify a far higher margin due to its perceived uniqueness. This seems like a particular case of that strategy.

It's not necessarily a sham, either: if the story you're telling convinces the right customers that this is the right product for them, it may be providing real value over the root product.

</comment><comment><USER13> Given that they put the author's byline in the description, the odds that the price jumps because it was written by someone established seems likely.

<comment><USER14> The article says:

> Next, Walker asked some unknown writers to each write a short story that > contained one of the objects.

so no, the price jump isn't because of stories written _by someone established_. But I do think it likely that buyers thought of themselves as buying _a piece of writing_ more than _an old pair of nail scissors_ (or whatever). What was sold was the object _plus a printed copy of the story_.

To my mind, this largely invalidates these experiments as evidence that things are valued more when accompanied by stories. (They probably are, but this isn't good evidence.) Perhaps what it actually shows is that a short piece of writing is valued more when accompanied by an appropriate artefact. Perhaps what it shows is that you can often find someone to buy a short piece of writing for a few tens of dollars. Perhaps what it shows is that anything unusual and new will attract some attention -- in small quantities.

I'm reminded of the "Million Dollar Homepage" from back in 2005, recently featured on HN. It was a clever idea; the creator found enough takers to make his million dollars; but subsequent attempts at recreating the phenomenon weren't so successful. No doubt it's possible to make a few thousand dollars a year out of selling tchotchkes with stories. That doesn't tell you anything about whether you can make much more from a larger-scale tchotchke-selling business by attaching stories to everything. Maybe you can, maybe not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article reminds me of something Christensen described in the Innovator's Dilemma (or maybe it was in Solution). He spoke of thinking about your product in the terms of what its job is. What are your users using it for, how can you improve your product at doing this job, and how can you make more people aware of your product's capability in doing that job?

</comment><comment><USER16> Putting it on eBay also exposes it to a larger and more liquid marketplace.

<comment><USER17>
        When Walker put the objects, along with their accompanying
        stories, up for sale on eBay...the value of the objects
        rose 2,700%...A miniature jar of mayonnaise he had
        purchased for less than a dollar sold for $51.00. A cracked
        ceramic horse head purchased for $1.29 sold for $46.00.

A larger, more liquid marketplace doesn't account for a miniature jar of mayo selling for $51.

<comment><USER16> It's more likely you'll encounter miniature jar of mayo enthusiasts on eBay than it is that a bunch of them will by chance be at your garage sale.

This would account for at least part of the difference. The other part can be accounted for by saying Barack O'Bama autographed the jar.

Also factor in shipping costs, which usually justify an increased price of around $10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Actually, the provenance adds way more than 1000% or whatever. That 1000% is the provenance discounted by the chance that it's totally made up and, therefore, outright fraud.

Look at this story: [1]

"As Van de Hoeven recalled, they were sitting in her sun-flooded living room, making small talk about how Zodiac could have been a great movie, had it not been so slavishly devoted to '70s period detail. When Tarantino noticed the figurine on the mantle, he jumped up from the sectional couch."

That didn't happen. If it had, the figuring could be worth a lot more than $50.

$50 - the new price - is in a lemon market of fake stories.

If they really want to test the price of a story, why not do it in a way that isn't fraud?

Why don't they start with real stories about objects that have actually been verified, in a printed book for example from which they can quote, and then simply do the experiment by not mentioning this true story in some cases and mentioning it in others?

This would decrease the "fraud discount" SIGNIFICENTLY since in the cases where you DO mention the story, you can also mention the references that actually back it up. There's no real chance you're just inventing it. For example, if a distinctive custom object was photographed with Obama, you can link to the photograph while "telling the story".

In the version where you don't tell the story, but only describe the object, you don't link the photographic proof either.

That way you can really tell how much value the story adds, instaed of how much value discounted by the chance (which is in this case the reality) that it's just being made up.

[1] EDIT: for the source I followed their link "The project was so successful (and so interesting) that they have now repeated it 5 times and put all the results up on the web. It is also a book." which links to [http://significantobjects.com/about/](http://significantobjects.com/about/) \- I'm quoting from the first picture I followed on the right sidebar, since I wanted to see what these stories sounded like.

<comment><USER19> I didn't find that story. But [http://significantobjects.com/about/](http://significantobjects.com/about/) states that care was taken to avoid the appearance that the story was real. And other stories are obviously fake. E.g. [http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/18/miniature- pitcher-j...](http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/18/miniature-pitcher-joe- meno-story/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Largely depends on the product itself. As already mentioned, art and antiques are different from technology. But the author certainly has a point here. That's why luxury brands can ask much higher prizes compared to non-luxury brands that don't have anything to do with production cost.

But one way of looking at prices was somehow missed that is really important in the production industry, at least from my point of view. Profit is prize minus cost. This goes somewhat in the direction of the targeting a market and engineering the product accordingly. But by regarding the actual selling prize of a product as given instead of the actual production cost changes a lot. And your not done by just engineering a product to a certain prize, if the market changes you have to improve your cost base.

And the more your product is a commodity, the more important this part of prizing gets as it is harder to boost prizes in this case. Something a lot of companies have a hard time to understand, at least that's my experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> My interpretation is the story helps find the end user's need. It isn't just, "Go Bla Bla Bla to everyone" Rather, it's find the story that appeals to the one person you want to pay up.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's exactly what ad companies have been doing for years. Ad sells the product using a story or generating one in your head.</comment>


Why I don't use Gnome Shell - <AUTHOR> http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/52807.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why these rants end up listing trivialities. Who cares whether it's called Activities, Menu, foobar or is a hamburger icon? It's what it does that matters, and what it does is pretty neat. Definitely better than Windows 10 attempt at the same thing.

That said, I don't use Gnome3 either. I use the task bar, AFAICT there is no way to have one in Gnome3 so it's a non-starter for me. Given they have a mostly empty bar at the top, I am buggered if I know why they don't provide some taskbar widget. It's worst reason I guess - religious objections.

The other thing I that causes me to curse it very time I use it its insane desire to maximise everything. Maximised everything is exactly what you need on a 6" phone, but gnome3 doesn't work well there. It clearly targeted at desktops. I use a 43" 4K screen. I paid for those pixels - and I want to put every one of them to good use. Maximising a single web page is _not_ a good use.

Which means unlike a conventional window manager which remembers and respects where I put things, I have to reposition everything every fucking time I reboot. And if a window is hidden I can't just click on the task bar, either I have to move to top left corner then click or press a key.

This isn't "getting out of the way". This is shoving the designers idea of good work flow down my throat. If their goal was to get of out of the way of a "power user" (an archaic term, but it accurately described most Linux users) this is vision of an ideal work flow would be the default and they provide the tools to change it.

But those tools are completely absent. That arrogant omission is, gnome3 devs, why half the Linux world view you as mad control freaks.

<comment><USER3> Gnome-shell extensions recover a lot of the functionality that was removed from the defaults. Eg,

\- For a taskbar: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/)

\- An applications menu: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications- menu/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/)

Agree with all your opinions otherwise.

<comment><USER2> > For a taskbar

Thanks, my google foo failed me. So it was there all along.

If they've provided some way for me to say what a window's size and position should be rather than having their "everything shall be maximised" shoved down my throat it's worth trying again.

When I use Gnome3 now I am struck by how well everything works, albeit for their definition of works. Random things tend to break under other WM's from time to time which is irritating. From what I can tell this is because they depend on gnome's applets to fill in the bits they don't have time to do, but gnome is a moving target.

Random breakage is probably going to get worse as the move to Wayland accelerates. Sigh. We do live in interesting times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think GNOME 3 is the best desktop environment out there. I didn't like it when it came out, but over the years I changed my mind. I feel very constrained whenever I use Windows or OS X for a short time.

For example, I don't think I ever clicked on Activities. You just hit the "Windows" key and type what you want. That is faster than any clicking.

<comment><USER5> Windows can do that too. On macOS cmd+space brings up spotlight. I don't see your point. In fact I feel the total opposite.

<comment><USER6> You can use it as a nice calculator too. say, search for '1m in inch', or simple calculations like '2+5*23' etc.

Can windows do that? I don't know

<comment><USER7> Spotlight on macOS has been able to do both of those for a while. Windows, however, you'll still be crossing your fingers hoping the query "device manager" brings up Device Manager, not a web search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope I don't come off as too insulting, but I don't see anything noteworthy about this rant that's worth sharing. It's not particularly insightful, nor notably well-written (the author rambles, but that's typical for rants like these). Not to mention that he contradicts himself when he mentions how Windows is rearranging all the menus from where they used to be, but concludes by saying that gnome shell is the _only_ desktop forcing him to change.

The author's opinion has been shared countless times, as has its refutations. There's nothing new or interesting here.

<comment><USER9> It's a fair comment.

Actually, I mostly use that blog as a place to post comments from online discussions elsewhere, often as much for my own later reference as anything else. I am taken aback to find that a friend has linked to it on HN and it's attracted so much discussion!

If I had meant it to be widely-read, it would have been rather different and submitted for professional publication -- probably on the Register.

The only point of yours that I'd disagree with is that I contradict myself inasmuch as Win10 is different from earlier versions. Yes, it is; but it is not _completely_ different. It retains many major UI elements, such as the taskbar, which function very much as they did before. There is something called a Start Menu again, but this works significantly differently from in earlier versions -- but then, it has been substantially reworked in previous revisions of Windows, as well.

I don't generally use Windows much and have not done for many years. However, sometimes paid office jobs require me to, and I like to keep my hand in. As I'm used to launching apps with a search command in both OS X and Unity, I simply did so in Win8. I was not discommoded by the disappearance of the Start Menu. However, having one back again that's only superficially like the old one actually requires rather more adjustment, I have found.

Win10 is quite similar to Win8.1 except that the Start Screen has been reframed as a menu, and the Charms bar has gone. Win8.1 was of course very similar to Win8. Win8 was different to Win7, but not massively; and so on.

GNOME 3 is _very_ unlike GNOME 2. There is little commonality in the UI. I'd say GNOME 2 bore a closer resemblance to KDE, Xfce and LXDE than it does to GNOME 3.

Of course, new versions of major Linux desktops have often prompted people to fork and continue the previous version. KDE 3 begat Trinity, GNOME Classic Mode begat Consort, and so on. Generally, these forks have languished -- remained obscure or died.

The fact that GNOME 3 begot both Cinnamon and Maté, and that both of these have proved, relatively speaking, very popular and successful and seem to be in relatively rapid, active development speaks volumes, I think.

Some years ago, I published an article about the factionation that GNOME 3 had caused: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsof...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/)

At that time, I saw it as a very negative thing: a loss of, er, unity.

Now, I see it as more positive. GNOME 3 did re-enliven things and has brought us more diversity and innovation.

Just possibly inadvertently. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Used to use Gnome Shell. Left it for XFCE for two reasons... somewhat randomly occurring fallback to LLVM pipe mode where software rendering is used instead of graphic card acceleraion. (I had to put in some sleep in launch script to prevent it, but wasn't perfect either.)

Anther one is its behavior of treating IPv6 address as IPv4, so for example if I type in IPv6 address in network setting, it tells me it's an invalid address. Previously entered IPv6 address would be converted to some random IPv4 address...

</comment><comment><USER11> It's true you need a few extensions to make gnome shell usable, of which "dash to dock" is the most essential: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to- dock/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/)

With these, I enjoy gnome very much. It's simple, vsynced, works well and looks very nice.

<comment><USER12> Vsynced?

<comment><USER13> Likely yet another "tearing" complaint, that i am starting to suspect has more to do with nvidia proprietary drivers than anything else...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the author unaware that you don't need to click activities, you can just mouse to the top left corner of the screen? This is Linux, it doesn't have to say activities if you don't want it to. You can get themes with OS logos and such, if you want.

<comment><USER9> Honestly, yes, I was unaware of that.

But also being honest, I dislike hot-corner activation, which Unity also does. Screen edges are much bigger and easier to hit, as per Fitt's Law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually agree with him on many topics.

Also Gnome has extensions, but actually most time a Extension feature is actually used as an excuse for not shipping features.

<comment><USER13> And various people with a strong voice within Gnome development would love to extensions dead and buried, as they mess up the UX and brand of Gnome...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gnome user here from 15 years, after trying practically all available desktops. Currently in Cinnamon.

</comment><comment><USER17> >OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a primary launch mechanism; it's not a selling point of GNOME 3.

This is just false; "app searching" as a "primary launch mechanism" works perfectly well in GNOME 3.

Perhaps you should ask you money back.

<comment><USER18> > > OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a > primary launch mechanism; it's not a selling point of GNOME 3.

> This is just false; "app searching" as a "primary launch mechanism" works > perfectly well in GNOME 3.

I think your parent's point which you quote was not that GNOME 3 doesn't do this, but rather that it's not _unique_ in doing it—which is why it's not a selling point. (Just as, for example, one wouldn't mention, say, multi-tasking as a selling point of a modern OS, even though it is surely crucial.)

<comment><USER17> Ah, Thanks. I didn't read carefully enough.

To comment more on the article: In my opinion, Unity wastes a ridiculous amount of screenspace showing that fancy iconbar.

<comment><USER9> That's fair enough.

I set it to autohide on smaller screens, such as sub-14" notebooks. I do miss the old "dodge windows" config option, though -- that was very handy. A sort of auto-autohide that only triggered when you needed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I added a comment on LiveJournal, but it apparently got marked as spam. [1] Reposting here:

Like most software, GNOME 3 requires a bit of learning before you can use it most effectively, but it's actually a really easy learning curve because GNOME is designed to be intuitive.

The biggest thing I'd recommend is learning the keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the Super (aka Windows) key will open the Activities overview. Pressing the Super key and then typing the name of an app then Enter will launch that app (I never use the mouse to launch an app). Super + Tab switches between running apps. There are a few more here: [https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome- help/stable/shell-keyboar...](https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome- help/stable/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en). It's actually shorter and easier to remember than the man page of even a simple command line tool like "ls"—and you probably have dozens of command line tools memorized, including complex tools like find, sed, and curl.

This may sound preachy, but life is a lot better when you stop worrying about customization. Learn how the software works and adapt yourself to it. Think of how many places you have to do this in the real world: bicycles, cars, election ballots, transit systems, and grocery stores all have "UI"s that can be counterintuitive or slow, which you don't have much control over. But you don't complain because you can't change their UIs. GNOME is far easier to use than any of these, but because other desktops offer more customization, users can feel like GNOME is lacking. But if you accept that GNOME is not really intended to be heavily customized and just try to get used to the vanilla experience, you may actually be really happy using it.

Caveat: if there's something that makes your workflow 3x faster, definitely spend a few minutes setting that up. But things like the position of the app title vs the position of the clock are not worth splitting hairs over. The GNOME team actually cares deeply abut usability and although some design decisions may seem quirky, every feature is scrutinized through the lens of ease-of-use. GNOME's UI Design Principles talk more about this and are a good, short read: [https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/design- principles.htm...](https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/design- principles.html.en)

[1] LiveJournal gave me the following message after posting:

Your anonymous comment has been added. According to this journal's settings, it was marked as spam.

It gave a similar message when I tried authenticating with Google. Not sure what's up with this.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for that. JOOI, I was not notified of any such comment. I did get and unscreen a single comment, but it's a different (anonymous) one – visible there now.

You should be able to sign-in to LJ to comment using any OpenID. In fact OpenID itself actually originated as an LJ-affiliated project by one of LJ's developers.

I _do_ learn to adapt to the provided UI on many devices and OSes /where I don't have a choice./ But on Linux, I _do_ have a choice, so why should I spend the effort adapt to something that doesn't work the way I'm used to or in a way that I like, when I could just switch environments to something that I find more comfortable?

When I worked at Red Hat, I switched from GNOME 3 to Xfce. Yes, it's old fashioned, but I can, with some effort, set it up to work much like Windows with a vertical taskbar – a layout I find convenient and flexible.

As I said in the blogpost, on Windows I use a vertical taskbar on the left screen edge. On Mac OS X, I move the Dock there. On Unity, well, that's just where it is and it's hard to move, but I don't want to, so I'm fine with that. On GNOME 3, I get that too, but in a limited, rather inflexible and unhelpful, form.

The primary question is: is there a benefit to me in switching and re-adapting to working in a system that's significantly unlike any of the others that I use? And the answer, _for me_, is no. I don't get enough reward to justify it, so I don't adapt - I switch to a desktop that works in something approximating the way I like.

Although I've used Windows since v2.01 in 1989, I switched away from it at the turn of the century. Now, OS X and Unity give me a fairly consistent desktop. With tweaking, Windows and Xfce give something very broadly comparable. GNOME Shell is left as something of an odd-man-out.

But that's just me. I am very happy to see its increasing polish and that it's winning people back.</comment></comment>


5.25″ floppy drives of the early 1980's - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20191001-00/?p=102946 <comment><USER2> > IBM PC floppy disks were originally single-sided, with a capacity of 160KB.

Those were fancy assed double density. The original 5.25" SSSD drives like the Northstar held about 70K

<comment><USER3> 90K actually. <grin>

35 tracks, 10 sectors per track, 256 bytes per sector = 89,600.

I thought I was so superior, with 90K of floppy, compared to those peasants who had to use primitive stuff like paper tape or cassettes. Now I consider a micro SD card with 64 gig as mere run-of-the-mill. Times change.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Signata – A Personal Cryptocurrency Vault Service That Uses Yubikeys - timothy-quinn https://signata.net <comment> timothy-quinn Hi HN, co-founder of Signata here.

We're running in a closed Beta at the moment until we iron out any major bugs remaining, but you can fill out a form to request access if you're interested: [https://forms.gle/iqP2Bh7ABGuzRaPf8](https://forms.gle/iqP2Bh7ABGuzRaPf8)

We've also only published the Windows desktop app at the moment - we have the Mac app built and tested but we're just dealing with the Apple notarization process first before we can release that :)

You can read more about the launch here too: [https://medium.com/@congruent_tim/announcing-signata- cd86001...](https://medium.com/@congruent_tim/announcing-signata-cd86001dd846)</comment>


Wojka – Self-employment for students and the unemployed - <AUTHOR> http://wojka.com/landing/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

It would be great it the community can give us some feedback regarding our product, our website, and anything else that comes to your mind.

Thanks, Einthusan</comment>


Show HN: Simple JavaScript Weather Plugin with JQuery Dependencies Removed - <AUTHOR> https://a12k.io/reallysimpleweather <comment><AUTHOR> I was working on a project and found a plugin that was perfect. Unfortunately my project didn't use jQuery and the plugin was built on jQuery. I didn't want to add another dependency. I noticed the plugin was licensed under MIT, so I thought I would fork it and refactor it to remove jQuery dependencies, which I did. Thought I would share.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think the demo would be more readable when you would use JSON.stringify(data, undefined, 4) a put it in PRE element, with flat structure in plaintext it's indented randomly depending on the name of attribute which is kida kard to read, with JSON you see what belongs where, not to mention the rendering code would be much simpler, like this:

reallySimpleWeather.weather({location: 'Bend, OR', woeid: '', unit: 'f', success: function(w) { console.log(document.getElementById('weather').innerHTML = JSON.stringify(w, undefined, 4))} }); document.getElementById('weather').style.whiteSpace='pre';

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm using the jquery simpleweather for a chrome extension at the moment. This looks like a direct replacement. I'm using jquery elsewhere in the extension, but as long as this works the same I see no reason not to switch, one fewer thing to worry about breaking my extension in the future.

<comment><USER4> If it ain't broke...

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, I did change it to be a drop in replacement. Fewer dependencies is always good, especially in the plugin itself.

To test this, I went through all the examples on the original project with jQuery and dropped in the new file and changed the original call and all the demos work great with those two minor changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see any reason why jquery should have been in the original library in the first place and you can still use jquery on the front end with this, so really a good improvement. kudos!

</comment><comment><USER6> I like it... will have to look and play around with it. Any chance it could be hooked up to utilize the WeatherUnderground API?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's too late to edit my own post so I'll just reply again. I went ahead and started work on the Weather Underground API. It generally works so far, and will automatically use the WU API if a WU API key is provided.

Work in progress:

[https://github.com/a12k/reallySimpleWeather/tree/wundergroun...](https://github.com/a12k/reallySimpleWeather/tree/wunderground- api)</comment></comment>


Measuring how deadly our daily activities are - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/whats-most-likely-to-kill-you-measuring-how-deadly-our-daily-activities-are-72505 <comment><USER2> What if Shark attacks are so low, because people pay attention to the risk? Just like airplane travel is safe because of all the regulations, not just out of itself?

And I dislike measuring the micromorts per population, it should be divided by those people actually going swimming/surfing, just like riding x miles with a motorcycle increases your risk of dying by y micromorts, going swimming for a hours should be increasing your mms by b.

<comment><USER3> Can any statisticians comment why total population is taken into account when only a portion actually participates in said activities?

<comment><USER4> I think it's so that you can more easily compare things apples to apples.

<comment><USER5> I think it's just hard to estimate. How many visits-to-the-beach go into that shark attack number? It'd be useful to know the per-visit risk for the same reason it'd be useful to know the per-mile risk for driving, but is harder to estimate:

"It's important to be aware, however, that being based on population-level data, the micromort is not a measure of your personal risk. For example, the risk calculation for fatal shark attacks is based on the average risk across the whole population.

So it effectively estimates a risk based on the assumption that all Australians swim in the deep ocean a similar number of times per year. But if you live in Alice Springs, you would not expect your risk of being killed by a shark to be the same as for a surfer who lives on the coast. Similarly, if you only wade in water up to your knees and don't swim in deep water, your personal risks would be different."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > you would divide the number of people who have died due to a shark attack > each year (on average three to four each year based on recent data) by the > population of Australia

This method is meaningless, as it assumes the risk of dying by shark attack is constant regardless of your behavior (e.g., daily swim in chummed waters vs never entering the water).

The wikipedia article does a better job of micromort-per-unit-of-exposure.

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

e.g., Travelling 17 miles (27 km) by walking (accident) = 1 micromort

But it still doesn't account for differing risk levels, like walking on an indoor track vs walking in city traffic.

And it doesn't include shark attacks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Approximately half a million people died of malaria in 2015, and that was after a long trend of decreasing deaths (it used to be much worse)[1]. That's _deaths_ from malaria, not cases of malaria. If we naively assume everyone on Earth has equal odds of dying from malaria, that means sharing our planet with mosquitoes carried a risk of 59.2 micromorts for every human on Earth in 2015. It's probably gone down slightly since then, but it's still a lot worse than sharks or skydiving.

Obviously, your real risk is lower in most places, but dramatically higher if you live in sub-Saharan Africa.

[1][http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/](http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/)

<comment><USER8> That's very high for the overall population, but I'm guessing the actual number is close to 0 for say Americans who never left the country (we don't have malaria deaths contracted from inside the states, do we?). If you are someone that surfs 4-5 times/week during the season, I guarantee the odds of you dying from a shark are much higher than dying of malaria.

<comment><USER9> >> Now approximately 1,500 malaria cases and five deaths are reported in the United States annually, mostly in returned travelers.

[https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/fsp/cdc_malaria_do...](https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/fsp/cdc_malaria_domestic_unit.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" Interestingly, kangaroos (approximately 0.1 micromorts) pose a risk of death that is similar to that posed by sharks, but our cute national emblem does not evoke quite the same fear in us."_

The fear of running into Kangaroos is real. Hitting an 80kg buck at 70km/hr looks like this:

\- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5037959035](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5037959035)

\- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5037959047](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5037959047)

\- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5038593608](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5038593608)

\- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5147428118](https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5147428118)

<comment><USER11> It strikes me as likely that crashing a car into a kangaroo is not considered a kangaroo-related death.

<comment><USER10> _" crashing a car into a kangaroo is not considered a kangaroo-related death"_

Roo ran into me. Ran up an embankment. I've been in other situations where the kangaroos (multiple) are window level travelling along roads at speed. Chance of kangaroo-related death is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with a "unit" of risk like this is that probabilities don't simply sum like this.

Assuming the probability of dying in each activity is independent, planning to do a 7000-micromort activity A and then (after appropriate recovery time) an 8000-micromort activity B is not an overall activity with 15000 micromorts of risk. (The math is close enough when talking about single-digit micromorts, but it doesn't work in general.)

Pr(dying when doing A followed by B) = Pr({doing A and dying} or {doing A and surviving and then doing B and dying}) = Pr(doing A and dying) + PR(doing A and surviving and then doing B and dying) = 7000 / 1000000 + (1 - 7000 / 1000000) * 8000 / 1000000 = 14944 / 1000000

The larger the risks or the longer the series of events, the less accurate the assumption of linearity. This also doesn't take into account the fact that dying in extreme activities is _not_ independent; by failing to die in A, you've demonstrated some small amount of survival fitness.

<comment><USER12> If the micromort was sold as an expected number of deaths, then I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. (My major problem is that you can't die more than once, so probability seems to be more of a concern than expected number.) The article calls it "a one-in-a-million chance of dying", though.

For example, playing Russian Roulette once is about 166667 micromorts. Playing it 6 times is 1 mort of risk, but the probability of dying after 6 plays is not 1. (It's 1 - (5/6) __6, or about 2 /3.)

<comment><USER13> Welcome to the world of bayesian statistics.

Frequentist approach like this micromort unit ignores conditional probability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some of these measurements don't make sense because they (a) lack a unit of time (b) fail to measure alternatives.

> sitting on a chair (due to the likelihood of falling off it) increases your > risk of death by approximately 1.3 micromorts.

Is this per day? Per hour? Per year? How does this compare to laying down? Standing up? Walking around?

<comment><USER15> That part confused me. It is suggesting that flying around the world is safer than sitting in a chair to watch tv.

1 micromort for 10K km of air travel, and 1.3 micromorts for sitting in a chair in your own home.

Considering all the standing, sitting, stairs, ramps, overheads, etc. we do while traveling, this must be referring ONLY the the flying portion of flying... very misleading.

<comment><USER16> The silliness is even clearer in the finale, the part about "every day you get out of bed...". You're virtually certain to die if you don't get out of bed for enough days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favorite stat about micromorts is that motorcycle travel and canoe travel pose the same risk when measured by distance. That is, one mile of motorcycling has the same risk of death as one mile of canoeing.

<comment><USER18> I don't remember the exact numbers anymore, but in Australia at least the statistics suggest that if you: Don't ride under the influence, Don't ride without a license, Ride with a helment, and Don't ride an unregistered bike,

Then you have decreased your risk by more than 50%. So using the articles methods, you will be exposed to less than 200 micromorts.

Servicing your motorcyle and having taken a motorcycle saftey course just once also increases your liklihood of survival.

Another key part of the dangers are where you ride, being more likely to die in the CBD than anywhere else, and likely related, just under 50% of accidents are caused by other motorists than the rider. Many riders seem to think it's skewed much more toward cars being at fault, it's useful to know that's not the case.

A final tidbit I recall is that the biggest risk group is 40-60 year old, returning riders. Not younger new riders as you might have expected.

The interesting part of all of that though is knowing such broad stats can not truly reveal your personal risk factor, and that there is a lot you can do to help your cause.

<comment><USER19> There are other factors too. The less powerful your bike, the safer you are. That one is actually a pretty significant factor.

I was interested in riding a motorcycle once, but I found that even if I assumed I was at the safest end of the spectrum, my risk was still many times that of driving. And the comparison is not apt because many of the risk factors I mitigate on a motorcycle I also mitigate in a car, for e.g., by being a careful driver, minimizing the amount of driving I do, driving slowly, and never driving drunk. So it's not like the motorcycle has become safer relative to the car. It's just that both skew less risky for me.

So I decided I would not do it. Maybe when I'm older and other risk factors are more pressing.

<comment><USER8> I probably put in about 100k miles on motorcycles over the years and never had an accident/incident. I do not agree that a less powerful bike makes you safer (I only rode sports bikes btw). The slower bikes (250cc or so) generally had much worse brakes and couldn't accelerate if needed. I found 600cc bikes were the easiest to control and "safest." That of course is only true if you are going the same speed as the counterpart (which is difficult especially if you're riding a 1000cc).

<comment><USER19> > I probably put in about 100k miles on motorcycles over the years and never > had an accident/incident.

Cool!

> I do not agree that a less powerful bike makes you safer (I only rode sports > bikes btw).

You don't need to agree. It's a statistical fact that power and danger are associated. May not be causal. Probably isn't, in fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dr David Spiegelhalter runs the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge.

He has some good stuff on this for more everyday activities like drinking beer, being 5kg overweight for a day and smoking a cigarette and things.

[https://understandinguncertainty.org/microlives](https://understandinguncertainty.org/microlives)

</comment><comment><USER21> Their skydiving estimate and comparison shows some faults with this approach. If 10 people die a year from x. But those 10 people were people pushing the limits of skydiving by doing something unusual or intentionally chumming waters to swim with sharks the numbers are really all wrong

</comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone else really fascinated by how this article exposes how human beings are simultaneously irrational and yet, also completely rational when it comes to fear?

Humans as a whole are irrational when it comes to fear because their fear is almost never proportional to the actual risk. We're afraid of the one-in-a- million occurrences, but not the one-in-one-hundred. We don't (yet should) fear the mundane and the superficial. Humans always strive to be rational, so why are we so irrational when it comes to fear?

And yet, arguably this is also simultaneously a perfectly rational reaction to fear. Think about it. If humans were hard-wired to be completely rational when it comes to fear, i.e. our fears are proportional to the risks involved, we would be unable to function in our daily lives. We'd be paralyzed by fear from the moment we wake up. We wouldn't drive cars, or step into bathtubs, or eat fatty hamburgers. The explanation as to why humans are afraid of shark attacks, but not driving can be as simple as this: it allows us to exist.

<comment><USER9> >> We wouldn't drive cars, or step into bathtubs, or eat fatty hamburgers.

Is it really rational to do those things? I put a non-slip mat in my tub, eat less meat, and generally avoid driving if at all possible. I'm certainly not unable to function nor continually paralyzed with fear, but my risks of death from some very common causes are greatly reduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would have been interesting if they had compared the risk of all these activities to the risk of a fatality by an act of terrorism.

<comment><USER24> They could make units of "kilo-terrors" and "mega-terrors", units of a thousand times the risk of dying in a terror attack and a million times the risk respectively.

<comment><USER13> I suspect maybe 0.1 micromort of you live in the US, less in France and Germany, negligible elsewhere.

Higher in Middle East, but I lack precise enough death data for those countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The risk of skydiving into a shark's mouth are extremely low. Ironically, if you were assaulted by a skydiving shark, you would probably die of a heart attack.

</comment><comment><USER13> The most fun thing is that such risks are generally additive. Not being tied to number of participating in a given activity makes it a bit better for this purpose.

That said, instead of frequentist approach a bayesian one would be more relevant. This would allow including fuzzy participation data like never, once per year, once per week, daily etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> Really, anytime we move faster than we can walk and are on the ground (car, bus, bike, etc.) we're likely to be involved in an accident that may kill us.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the end they all die from obesity and booze anyway. Modern life is all about self-inflicted harm.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if Morty from Rick and Morty got his name from micromorts.</comment>


Map of battles fought since 2500 B.C - <AUTHOR> http://battles.nodegoat.net/viewer.p/23/385/scenario/3/geo/fullscreen <comment><USER2> The data being from Wikidata, another way to read the density of battles on the map as the amount of historical information we have about every region of the world (at least, the information available on Wikipedia)

Unfortunately, large parts of the history of countries like Morocco was lost, and of what was written a very small portion is actually on Wikipedia. (in contrast with Europe, the US, etc. who have more contributors)

<comment><USER3> and even that data is highly unreliable, for instance if you zoom on post-war Europe (after 1952) one of dots is antic Battle of Bedriacum (which happened in year 56, but BC)

<comment><USER4> This is true. Especially for the data we got through dbpedia, even though we tried to clean this somewhat. See our blog post on this: [http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography- of...](http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography-of-violence)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed that there was a battle from the 20th century in the eastern Bay Area, and was confused about what it could be. It turns out that it was the Port Chicago disaster ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster)).

It was during wartime, and a lot of people died, but it really wasn't a battle. It was an accident that involved a lot of munitions. The only opponent in that "battle" was unsafe working conditions.

They don't have the explosion of the munitions ship in Halifax in 1916 listed as a battle, which was a very similar situation, so I'd say there are some issues with the source data.

It's a very interesting map though. They have a lot of stuff on there.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! There is indeed some noise and messy data as well as some questionable categorisations, all taken from wikipedia/dbpedia/wikidata. See this blogpost ( [http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography- of...](http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography-of-violence) ) for a full description of how we got the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The creator's definition of a "battle" is very different than how most people would define them. A just one example: this site considers the 1980 siege at the Iranian Embassy in London as a battle, which I doubt most people would agree with.

<comment><USER7> And 2008 UEFA Cup Final Riots in Manchester. "Battles" in Europe post 1946 was definitely the first thing I noticed that looked odd.

There also seems to be a surprising lack of battles across the eastern steppes by the Mongols.

Definitely could use some more information of how they decided what a battle is - or the data source at least

<comment><USER8> Right. It's ridiculous that the most violent and dominating empire in the history of mankind is not included here.

<comment><USER9> I thought the UK was rather well represented actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got a bit of a headache when I saw that B.C.E dates are displayed on the slider like: 12-01--4. Four years before the Common Era, aka "-4"... hah! It seems ISO 8601 actually tries to solve this problem:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Years)

<comment><USER11> I really like the Holocene Calendar. It adds ten thousand to any given anno domini, and thus moves the start of the calendar to 12016 years ago from today. For anything that happened before that, we're nearly guaranteed to not have very certain dates, so it's very uncommon to need to use BHE (before holocene era) with the holocene calendar. 4 B.C.E is 9997 HE, 753 B.C.E. is 9248 HE (Holocene era). For AD add 10.000, for BC subtract from 10.001, as it has a year zero. And even the dates for the construction of Gobeklitepe can be expressed in positive years.

<comment><USER12> I like the _idea_ of the Holocene Calendar, but there were already archaeological sites known to be older than twelve thousand years when it was devised. As archaeologists find older developed structures and dating methods get more precise, negative HC dates get pretty likely.

<comment><USER11> Unless we didn't take the big bang as the first year, negative dates will exist. From an archaeological stance, 12.000 or maybe 15.000 years would be better, but 10.000 has an advantage: for anni domini we stay in the same _millennium_ , i.e. 2016 becomes 12016, which is easier to parse at a glance than 14016.

I really wonder which +12.000 yrs old sites you're referring to (no rhetoric intended, I'm really curious).

<comment><USER12> Clovis culture sites, for one.

I'd pondered just making it CE + _twenty_ thousand years.

<comment><USER11> That's equally viable, just like any multiple of ten, but I think that ten thousand is easier to parse, and that we won't find enough BHE events to use twenty thousand. Though my guesses and thoughts are uninformed here, and I'm mostly interested in middle-eastern and european antichity, not archaeology and geology.

<comment><USER12> That's fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating map!

I just got done reading "1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed" by Eric Cline. Fascinating look at civilization in ancient times. While I'd heard of many of the empires/kingdoms mentioned, it was always hard to think of them as "real" before I read this book. The book explores how the different cultures of the times interacted, and how their downfall may have been brought about because of their inter-reliance.

On amazon, not an affiliate link: [http://amzn.com/0691168385](http://amzn.com/0691168385)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a nice visualisation and use of a slider but does expose the limitations of DBpedia as a source

The idea that a "battle" has been fought on British soil in the last 10 years raised my eyebrows, but I'm reassured to learn it was actually an apolitical riot involving a couple of hundred unarmed civilian football fans and no casualties. That gets more emphasis than many military offensives to seize cities during WWII or the English Civil War.

</comment><comment><USER15> Man, this map is hard to use. It's extremely difficult to position the move cursor so that it turns into the pointer to actually see something.

</comment><comment><USER16> Perusing this map led me to read about the Dai Hong Incident[1] and at the end of the wikipedia incident there is this nice little paragraph:

> The North Korean press (KCNA) released an uncommon statement, stressing the > successful American-North Korean collaboration during the incident.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_Hong_Dan_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_Hong_Dan_incident)

<comment><USER17> There is hope in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some of the dates are incorrectly interpreted.

For example "Armada of 1779" is interpreted as a battle in October 2011.

Especially when you look at battles between 2000 and 2015 you'll see some which actually happened a few hundred years ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> I could've told you from countless games of Risk that Europe was the place where it all goes to shit and I didn't need oodles of data.

</comment><comment><USER4> All the data plus the categorisations came from dbpedia & wikidata. See this blogpost ( [http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography- of...](http://nodegoat.net/blog.s/14/a-wikidatadbpedia-geography-of-violence) ) for a full description of how we got the data. You also find there the CSV files that we generated and used for this visualisation.

The numbers reflect what has been entered into wikipedia and has been harvested by dbpedia plus data that has been entered into wikidata. So, we assume there will be a western/eurocentric overrepresentation in this dataset.

</comment><comment><USER20> This one is listed as 1963 but should be 1863:

[http://dbpedia.org/page/Morgan's_Raid](http://dbpedia.org/page/Morgan's_Raid)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a way to limit this to battles that had at least 50+ people in them and maybe 20 casualties? Most of the ones I looked at didn't even seem liked an armed conflict.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's too bad the data is "off" because the map is quite stunning.

To call friendly fire incidents, riots and explosions and such "battles" seems a little suspect. A "battle" should involve one or more belligerents of significant force (i.e., > 100) in an organized campaign. Smaller battles are routinely called "skirmishes" and shouldn't really even be recorded in this sense. Unorganized violence is simply unrest or rioting. And accidents are exactly that.

Also, I highly doubt China is a relative haven for peace given their history and population. There's clearly a lack of data there (or rather, they don't bother recording all of the other things that the creator has decided to add as "battles").

I question the overall motives of this. It's almost as if the creator wants the west to seem more violent than the rest of the planet. I don't think that's the reality. We're all just as bad.

</comment><comment><USER23> The map has a dot in the center of Alaska (64N 153W), which refers to a battle on Kiska Island. The event linked to has the correct coordinates(51N 177E), but the map has differing ones, and no apparent way to edit it. Similarly, the battle at the top of the state appears to be misplaced.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wonder if there's any pattern when you cross-reference it with this map of the world's religions? [http://williame.github.io/map_of_worlds_religions/](http://williame.github.io/map_of_worlds_religions/)

<comment><USER25> Compared to some other studies of religion-inspired battles, especially those related to the islamic conquest of the middle east, northern Africa and parts of Europe the map seems to be rather sparse. An example of such a study is the one done by one Bill Warner which tells of '548 battles that Islam fought... [which] doesn't include battles [in] Africa, India, Afghanistan and other locations' [1].

Given that the map includes football brawls as 'battles' and that this is only one example of a specific group of battles, the only possible conclusion can be that it needs to be fed with more data.

[1] [http://cspipublishing.com/statistical/charts/Islam- BattlesDa...](http://cspipublishing.com/statistical/charts/Islam- BattlesDate.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As many others have noted: 1.) The dataset implies that Europe is the most contentious area when it is more likely we just have the best historical records in Wikipedia 2.) The data set is dirty 3.) Because of (1) these are only going to be battles that Europe has found significant. The former Aztec Empire for example is evidently either the most peaceful in History or we just don't know a lot about all the tribes it has massacred in the format that Wikipedia likes.

At the very least he "every" in the title should be dropped. I'd suggest "Historically Significant Battles from a Western Perspective on Wikipedia"

</comment><comment><USER27> Do you have any information written up on how you render so many points via the google maps API? I have built a similar tool[1] and struggled with performance and had to limit the amount of data points displayed at any one time.

Also, have you looked at Freebase[2]? This is what I used as the data source for mountains.io. They appear to have a decent amount of data for battles[3].

[1] [https://www.mountains.io/](https://www.mountains.io/)

[2] [https://www.freebase.com](https://www.freebase.com)

[3] [http://tinyurl.com/gr62x4u](http://tinyurl.com/gr62x4u)

<comment><USER28> One way of solving this issue is serving pre-rendered image tiles rather than overlaying each data point separately: [http://blog.cartodb.com/the- versatility-of-retreiving-and-re...](http://blog.cartodb.com/the-versatility- of-retreiving-and-rendering-geospatial/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The battle of Lipany is listed twice. So is the battle of Kolín. So is battle on the Marchfield.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lipany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lipany) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolín](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolín) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_on_the_Marchfeld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_on_the_Marchfeld)

</comment><comment><USER30> What surprised me was the number of battles fought in Europe. It appeared to be the most violent place on the map. Is this because of a bias in the collection of the data, or is this representative of Human history?

<comment><USER31> There is listed just one "battle" in the Americas for all of time through 1500, the Tikal-Calamakul wars. This is a poor representation even of the wars we know occurred, let alone all the stuff we don't know happened due to the lack of writing systems.

This data set appears to not be a particularly well-curated dataset, and it looks to my (non-expert) eyes to have an intrinsically high bias towards high detail of some key Western European conflicts even beyond the general bias imparted by the fact that histories of Europe tend to be the most well-curated and accessible if you're an English speaker.

<comment><USER32> I agree. Here's a list of battles which took place in New Mexico (where I used to live) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_Mexico) . The 1540 Battle of Hawikku, which is in the time period you mentioned, is missing, as are the other NM battles until the mid-1800s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a really awesome tool. I took both sliders left until there was one dot. I then slowly slid the right slider which made an animation of battles fought. It really wakes you up to just how much fighting our world has seen. The amount of issues from 1900 till 2016 is so much more than I ever realized.

Edit - after reading another comment I realized some of these might not be much of a battle.

<comment><USER34> These are just the battles within recorded history, too.

In school, I remember being confused why the neanderthals died out. The teachers kept saying it was because they were bad at using tools. Oh?

It wasn't till later that I realized they were probably brutally murdered.

<comment><USER35> Axe is a tool ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Might be a small data problem. This battle is showing up in downtown Toronto

[http://dbpedia.org/page/Battle_of_Hiep_Hoa](http://dbpedia.org/page/Battle_of_Hiep_Hoa)

I was surprised to see one there in the after 1946 category. Nice job overall though. It's always incredible to see visualizations like this.

<comment><USER37> Same with the below, which is showing up in Western Australia for some reason:

[http://dbpedia.org/page/Shell_House_massacre](http://dbpedia.org/page/Shell_House_massacre)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder when was the last date in history, if ever, when there wasn't a single war being fought anywhere on the Globe?

</comment><comment><USER39> Wikipedia lists 16 battles of Adrianople (Edirne, Turkey) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Adrianople_(disambig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Adrianople_\(disambiguation\)) but this map shows only three.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've heard a lot about the Middle East being a place of unrest for so long in the history, yet looking on this map it seems pretty quiet (compared to others)! This means that either too many quarrels in there went undocumented, or things got exaggerated!

<comment><USER41> You can pretty much throw out any certainty of events before the British Empire invaded an area of the world. After that the recorded history will both have the same bias and consistency. Before that history will have been recorded (or not) and possibly lost by civilizations that did not win the game of Civilization (infinite): Real Life.

What is recorded as happening in Europe, that dense painting of many 'small' battles that consumed whole cities/towns/etc, can be assumed to have happened generally /everywhere/ anyone would actually want to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't think its too accurate. I put in a date range for the last couple of decades, and it says there was a battle in northern England for the 2008 euros. Hardly what anyone would call a battle...

</comment><comment><USER43> Neat visualisation (look at France for the range 1914-18 and see the range of the trenches) but I found it really difficult to focus on the dots with a mouse pointer. Could they be made to scale with zoom level?

</comment><comment><USER44> excellent, but please please please just invert the colors on the slider (so that the chosen range is a contrast to the background). it's an easy fix but would have saved me 30 seconds of confusion.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Never mind the fact that data before 500 BC is highly unreliable because we just don't have enough information about what happened in every corner of the world back then.

</comment><comment><USER11> It wants to force me to use cookies, it shows a black screen with a message telling me to allow its cookies. Why?

</comment><comment><USER46> It's not very accurate. Spots in Australia are misplaced.

</comment><comment><USER47> Violent conflict seems to follow our species where ever we go.

</comment><comment><USER48> Africa, and Asia are missing quite a few data points...

</comment><comment><USER49> You can see now - how peaceful is Russia.

</comment><comment><USER50> Cool idea</comment>


Apple Introduces The New iPhone 5C At $99 for 16GB, $199 for 32GB - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/iphone-5c-will-cost-99-for-16gb-199-for-32gb-on-2-year-contract/

<comment><USER2> "On contract" \- these prices are meaningless without that context.</comment>


Show HN: Live Stellar Lumens Donation Platform (XLM) - <AUTHOR> http://xlm.party <comment><AUTHOR> Developer hacks:

\- Supports testnet accounts by appending `?testnet=true`

\- You can generate a fake stream of donations by appending `?generate_donations=true`</comment>


Crellvm: Verified Credible Compilation for LLVM - <AUTHOR> http://sf.snu.ac.kr/crellvm/ <comment><USER2> "no previous systematic approaches including random testing have found any bugs in the mem2reg and gvn passes"

Uh? This is demonstrably false. A quick trip to llvm bugzilla will show you that. Zhengdong Su's C fuzzing has found basically endless bugs in GVN (and we fuzz NewGVN as well), and many bugs in GVN are well known at this point.

We just told him to not waste his time on GVN because they aren't sanely fixable without rearchitecting (hence, NewGVN).

Things like this frustrate me because a simple question on the llvm dev mailing list would have also elicited the correct answer.

(and yes, i already emailed the paper authors about this after i wrote this comment :P)

<comment><USER3> For information, links to all the bugs that we reported so far (in GCC/LLVM/CompCert/ICC and Scala) can be found at [http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~su/emi- project/](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~su/emi-project/): 728 in Clang/LLVM (~250 were miscompilations); 783 in GCC.

(Also refer to [http://helloqirun.github.io/projects/spe/spe.html](http://helloqirun.github.io/projects/spe/spe.html) for additional bugs reported so far in Rust and Rust bindgen.)</comment></comment>


George Holtz codes 11 hours straight live stream [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hlb8YX2-W8 <comment><USER2> Sorry to be holy-wary, but that was outrageous: just watched random pieces of that video until found one where he actually codes, basically vim Python editing.

So I opened somewhere around this moment: [https://youtu.be/7Hlb8YX2-W8?t=17039](https://youtu.be/7Hlb8YX2-W8?t=17039)

And, first, he copy-pastes some code, and then spends about a minute figuring if he got tabs converted to spaces, including googling a vim command.

Then he proceeds to make a loop over some collection next to the loop over an adjacent collection. And he makes that stupid mistake of renaming a variable of the loop, but no renaming in the body.

Man, if that's how professional vim users work, this piece of video will be the only proof I will ever need to prevent zealots from even wasting IDE users time to try vim.

<comment><USER3> >> Man, if that's how professional vim users work, this piece of video will be the only proof I will ever need to prevent zealots from even wasting IDE users time to try vim.

I'm a zealot, and it's a waste of _my_ time to try and convince someone to use vim. If someone is trying to sell you on using vim, remind them of the code they should be writing instead of flapping their lips at you. The "you gotta use vim!" folks are usually half-adept hacks. They don't quite understand it as fully as they feel they should, so instead they try to get good vibes by convincing you to make the same decisions they did.

disclaimer: 20-year vi/vim user - could care less whether anyone else uses it or not.

<comment><USER2> You know, someone's wrong on the Internet :-D

Also, George Hotz is a famous hacker, maybe not Carmack or Linus, but definitely somewhere on that scale. Even that video shows an interesting work.

Also, I used `zealot` in the sense of advertisement, not normal passion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool. Maybe it's my age but I am slightly out of the loop when it comes to dev's livestreaming. Didn't realize it was a thing.

For some reason, it's reminding me of SOLE (self organized learning environment) classrooms being tried out in the UK. Put a BIG problem on the board. Get a couple kids to sit in front of a SINGLE large screen and work it out. Provide internet access. And the teacher just hangs in the background not teaching, but observing/guiding/keeping things on track. This is taking it to another level with the number of people watching/learning/contributing etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Typo in title. "Holtz" should be "Hotz"

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm concerned he got to about hour 10 until considering datasets (=video) with validated camera calibration information.

I think the video ended before he applied any of it, though..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Op of the thread here. Could some who has the authorization to change the title of the post please change "Holtz" to "Hotz". If you are reading this apologize "Hotz".

</comment><comment><USER7> Can someone correct the title with 'George Hotz'? Right now, the spelling is wrong and kind of misleading.

</comment><comment><USER8> So much keyboard trial and error, hit and miss;) Chaotic minds are the most creative!

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know who this guy is, what he was doing, and why he was livestreaming it?

<comment><USER10> He's a young hacker who apparently hacked the iphone and Play Station 3, but now has founded a self driving car system designed for older cars.

Pretty interesting character, this is a [1] good interview about him and his ideas.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdYbwY9vPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdYbwY9vPU)

<comment><USER11> I read his article on jailbreaking the first iPhone. It was awesome.He soldered one connector on an ic and held it high, to make the jailbreak happen. A very thorough article.

Guy is awesome.</comment></comment></comment>


Journalists and Trump voters live in separate online bubbles, MIT analysis shows - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/story/journalists-and-trump-voters-live-in-separate-online-bubbles-mit-analysis-shows <comment><USER2> The article is actually called

      Clinton and Trump supporters really don't listen to each other on Twitter

However, even then the article says and the data shows:

      Hillary Clinton supporters in this user group are not as cohesive as Trump supporters and they interact more frequently with users who follow both or neither candidate.

As opposed to:

      This large cluster of Trump supporters on Twitter have little mutual follower overlap with other users and are a remarkably cohesive group.</comment>


Again No Sign of Aliens - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/19/aliens_where_are_they/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder some years ago there was a lot of talk about "Bible Code" even a book about it. Somehow people found all kinds of secret messages telling things about current day events by reading bible in different ways.

Now here there's 1PB of signal data, that's a lot more than in the Bible. Why can't anybody find similar interesting things in it?</comment>


Autothysis SSD drives impede unauthorised access - <AUTHOR> http://securedrives.co.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=73_75

<comment><USER2> I have not (yet?) evaluated this device. I do however have a couple of initial comments.

Only the (TI) security processor itself had a FIPS 140-2 Level 3 crypto engine. However this device _as a whole_ has no certifications I am aware of, FIPS, CESG or anywhere else (let's leave aside for a moment the flaws of the certification processes). Given its claims, the threat model and what it tries to do, that is actually surprising. It should be aiming for 140-2 Level 4, with claims like that. There are not a lot of 140-2 Level 4 devices around at all…

They say "flipped". _Do_ they mean "zeroized"?

There are a few pitfalls with disk encryption. They mention AES-256-CBC. That is not a wide-block mode. So how are the IVs defined? Do they use an encrypted salt-sector IV? A plain one? Is any diffuser used? Is there any integrity protection?

I do not see that this provides a meaningful level of security which is even comparable to, say, (the late) TrueCrypt.

<comment><USER3> I'm far from being a hardware expert, but I thought it was curious that they used CBC rather than something like XTS. Is there a reason that CBC is more appropriate when used at the hardware (as opposed to filesystem) level, or is this simply just a rather suspect choice?

<comment><USER2> Probably it was already in the microcontroller they're using. XTS was only FIPS-approved in 2010, iirc. Plenty of other things use CBC, and XTS also has plenty of pitfalls for the unwary who think it works magic (particularly when it comes to the adaptive ciphertext observation/modification class of attacks, in the absence of integrity protection).

Speaking of magic, I've just realised one big potential problem that's been bugging me about this, which finally leaped out at me.

Destruct is controlled via SMS? That is to say, unless they've been _unbelievably_ careful about shielding and optoelectronic coupling (and from the photos, they haven't) there's almost certainly a GSM transceiver, inside the security boundary, near the data paths.

Oops.

Those familiar with EMSEC will know why this could present a Big Problem™. My first port of call, attacking one of these, rather than stealing it, would probably be to sit in the car park with a femtocell and a directional antenna, and make sure the device gets _really loud_ GSM reception. And see what crosstalk gets modulated back. :)

(If you don't think this is a realistic attack for you, why are you in the market for Mission Impossible gadgets anyway? Use TrueCrypt or dm-crypt or DiskCryptor or something. At least you can analyse how they work more easily.)

Similarly, if it's made by, or spiked by, a malicious actor, it's got scope to go kleptographic on your ass and covertly transmit your data. Need to be careful about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Use a GSM yammer to prevent self-destruction by SMS.

2\. Steal the laptop and get out of the range of the token quickly to prevent self-destruction via the token. I could not find how drive and token communicate but you can probably jam it, too, for example Bluetooth.

3\. Keep the battery charged to prevent self-destruction by low battery level and set up a femto cell - without connection to the real GSM net, of course - to prevent self-destruction by GSM starvation and SMS.

Now you should at least have all the time you need.

<comment><USER5> They also sell devices called Data Security Protocol Switches (DSPS) which completely prevent your method from working.

"A Signal Proximity (SP) option means that any registered AutothysisDSP computer hard drive that leaves the vicinity of the DSPS signal will automatically self-destruct. This protects against theft and someone walking out the room with a computer. Likewise if a jamming of the DSPS signal is tried in an attempt to thwart the security protocol the registered DSPS hard drives will self-destroy."

<comment><USER6> Ok, now I wonder: couldn't you harass people using this technology by jamming the DSPS signal until they give up on it and choose something else? I bet that these hard drives are costly enough so that it becomes a problem fast.

<comment><USER7> The people who use these devices fall under two broad categories: those who operate within the law and those who operate outside of it. In the former case, any jamming can be solved by a call to the FCC to the effect of: "Someone has been operating a jammer near our office. We think it might be a van parked nearby with the license plate 123456." In the latter case, any jamming could mean that the authorities have caught on to them and that they should start destroying all physical evidence. The drive would serve as a canary, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this offer more security than hardware encryption e.g. in latest Intel and Samsung drives? These drives can transparently encrypt all the content with 256-bit AES; the password is ATA password.

They lost me at "Firstly the encryption key is flipped". What does this mean?

<comment><USER9> I always wonder why this kind of drive-internal encryption comes up in serious discussions. To me it makes no sense whatsoever: I have no way of checking if the drive actually encrypts the data, I don't know what happens to my password, where is it stored, who else gets access to it (or my data), etc.

How can anyone consider this "transparent" encryption to be secure?

<comment><USER10> And that is before you consider back doors and the like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't really see the usage scenario. If you want to transmit data securely between A and B, use public key cryptography and the internet [1]. If you want to protect data at rest, use full disk encryption. If you want protect the data on a running PC against theft, then you also have to consider all the data in the RAM (caches etc.). And if you, somehow, can prevent the attackers from getting that, then you can again use full disk encryption.

[1] If you are really paranoid and don't want to connect the devices to the internet, or if you don't have an internet connection at the target location, send a messenger with a random symmetric key first. If he/she arrives safely, send the hard drive with full disc encryption using the symmetric key next. Via any means. You can even FedEx it.

<comment><USER12> Your Fedex scenario wouldn't work if both the disk or key were compromised mid-transit. You might not know that someone sneaked a glance at the key or if they managed to clone the drive, but if they're sniffing all your mail then you've just given them the keys and the data.

<comment><USER11> That's why I was writing about a "messenger" specifically. I was thinking about someone you can trust, if need be, yourself. If this messenger assures you the key wasn't spied upon, you can use the key. If you can't even get a courier with a sealed envelope to the location, then you probably won't get any encrypted or otherwise protected data in there, anyway.

This level of security is ridiculous for almost everyone, of course. But we are talking about a self destructing SSD, which you want to send via courier to initiate the destruct, as an alternative. So I think this is a fair comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course, if the drive uses internal full disk encryption, all you have to do to fully destroy the data (or at least make it inaccessible for a long, long time) is get rid of 16 bytes of AES key. I doubt there is no way to securely implement this without dramatic explosions...

</comment><comment><USER14> I've enjoyed the idea of self-destructing data for awhile now, but it always leads to the possibility of DoS attacks against my own data.

This smartphone app and token, how do they communicate with the drive? Does it use cryptographic signatures to make sure that it's actually my phone talking to the device and not someone else, or just a passcode?

Does the drive send out an alert if it receives more than X SMS messages, where X is configurable? What's to stop someone from sending random texts to it until it self destructs? Simply the that they don't know the phone number?

How long does the battery last?

<comment><USER15> _but it always leads to the possibility of DoS attacks against my own data._

It depends on the nature of the data you want to store: there is some data which you would be _concerned_ with letting others get access to but whose _existence_ is more important, and other data where you absolutely must not let others get access to, even if it means that _no one_ (including you) can. This drive is designed for the latter case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone have any insights on how the actual physical destruction takes place? I would assume it is a chemical triggered by a shorted fuse?

A quick glance at the laws in California make it a felony to simply have in your possession "any sealed device containing dry ice or other chemically reactive material that is assembled for the purpose of causing an explosion." The definitions for other types of destructive devices are specific to scale, but this part is not.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps not an explosion within the meaning of applicable California statutes.

Looking at the pix that show chip fragmentation, I don't see evidence of reactive chemistry. No melted edges, no deposition of combustion products, no missing material that would suggest propulsive transport incident to a micro explosion caused by detonation of a tiny blob of, for example, lead styphnate or some other primer-like compound.

Exploding wires are an old technology, and don't involve "...chemically reactive material...". Think old-fashioned fuses, but with faster dynamics.

Maybe they have an on-board supercap that they dump into a buried trace, producing a brief high temperature copper plasma and a shock wave that breaks the chip?

Interesting technology, would like to know how they do the physical destruction.

<comment><USER2> Very nearly. Overcurrent spike to Vcc. Simple and obvious. (How'd they get a patent? GCHQ already certified drives that do this, from Stonewood? They use the Eclypt 600 series for their own TOP SECRET data.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to know if the self-destruct mechanism still functions at very low temperatures. Given that one known attack on data in RAM is to flash freeze it (Cold Boot Attack) it is natural to think about lowering the device temperature to the point where chemical reactions wouldn't and mechanical devices would jam.

<comment><USER2> That probably won't work on its own, but as part of a nutritious breakfast...

First thing I'd try: LN₂ over the case entry sensors followed by that fun expandy foam stuff.

It probably wouldn't work first time, but next try I'd know where to short/aim. Or shortcut that with X/gamma so I have a drill point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The obvious thing to get around the "fragmentation" would be to leave the chip on the PCB and cut the traces. Then connect your own wires or an upside-down socket from above. Anything I'm missing?

<comment><USER20> That it physically destroys the chips if you open the case? Or (optionally) if you unplug the SATA cable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Huge problem with these schemes:

If my data is valuable, I have two fears: (1) theft, (2) loss. If my drive is built to self-destruct, it decreases fear #1 but increase fear #2. What do I do then? Back up my data elsewhere? But that defeats the purpose of the high security drive. Do I get more than one high security drive? That still puts a lot of trust in the design -- if there were a systemic flaw that caused them all to fail or self-destruct at once I'd be out my data.

<comment><USER12> Presumably the use case would be you want to transfer secret information from a secure location via an insecure channel to another secure location (e.g. in a diplomatic bag perhaps?).

This is for people who care more about knowing that the data was transferred securely than whether it goes through at all. There would likely be a master (backed up) copy on an internal air-gapped machine.

<comment><USER22> Or when data is temporarily removed / copied from the highest security locations.

E.g. I was part of maintenance on a defence system once that in itself wasn't very important, but it was kept in an air-gapped concrete bunker with a faraday cage deep inside the office building. Offices outside were used for top secret data during processing, but when people were done working on something, storage would happen in the "bunker".

I'd imagine drives like these would be popular for the offices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let me secure that drive for you by connecting my M2M module and having FULL REMOTE ACCESS TO IT ......

</comment><comment><USER24> This is really cool. I wonder if you could make a simple DIY solution using small amounts of explosive?

<comment><USER25> Might not be the best think to take with you when you board a plane.

<comment><USER26> Do they check the internals of a laptop's hard drive nowadays? :-)

<comment><USER27> chemical scans probably will detect it.

<comment><USER28> Chemical scans would probably be pretty hard-pressed to detect thermite, which is after all just aluminium and iron oxide powder. Even the magnesium starter is non-sniffable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmmmm, a security measure that can't be verified without breaking the device

</comment><comment><USER29> So basically a solenoid held open by a battery?</comment>


Google+ Statistics On Overdrive - <AUTHOR> http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/statistics

<comment><USER2> How random is this sampling? The second highest country on the list is India (kind of understandable). The third highest is _Sri Lanka_. I'm not sure how it got that high. Also, UK rates below Paraguay and Nepal.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's random in the sense that we let our crawlers just start at an arbitrary profile and stopped until we have about a million. Pretty random, thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Random graph walking can be random, but it is not always. The following paper on random walks on graphs as a tool for derandomizing probability algorithms gives insight on this, as well as the probability of a random walk on a RANDOM graph being a random sampling: <http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~nati/PAPERS/expander_survey.pdf>

Wikipedia's page on random walks is also pretty insightful: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The data set must not be very accurate. Belgium in the top 10 list of countries with Germany missing?

<comment><USER5> You're complaining about Belgium when _Nepal_ is on the top 10 list?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Users "looking" for love by gender: Men - 94.09%

How surprising.

<comment><USER7> Obtained like that it's not that interesting... A more interesting number would have been 'looking for love' but weighted on the size of the gender group.

That results in: 2.3% of Men looking for love and 0.37% of Women. These are very little numbers.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ~1% of gender answered "Other?" Awesome.

<comment><USER9> People who think they're making some kind of statement by refusing to state their gender.

<comment><USER10> Not necessarily. There are a number of legitimate ways that someone's online gender can be ambiguous.

For instance one person in my circles is male, has a long-established female online identity, and has stated a gender of "other".

For a different example, how about someone who is trans, has had hormones, but has not yet had the operation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Which one of you is on the north pole?

<comment><USER12> [http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/profiles/1020130743965167653...](http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/profiles/102013074396516765392)

This guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 3 people in Massachusetts and I'm not included anywhere. They need to spin up another cube.</comment>