The reference D compiler is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Good news indeed.

Switched to D 4 years ago, and have never looked back. I wager that you can sit down a C++/Java/C# veteran, and say write some D code. Here's the manual, have fun. They will with in a few hours be comfortable with the language, and be fairly competent D programmer. Very little FUD surrounding the switching to yet another language with D.

D's only issue is that it does not have general adoption, which I'm willing to assert is only because it's not on the forefront of the cool kids language of the week. Which is a good thing. New does not always Mean, improved. D has a historical nod to languages of the past, and is trying to improve the on strengths of C/C++ and smooth out the rough edges, and adopt more modern programming concepts. Especially with trying to be ABI compatible, it's a passing of the torch from the old guard to the new.

Regardless of your thoughts on D; My opinion is I'm sold on D, It's here to stay. In 10 years D will still be in use, where as the fad languages will just be foot notes in Computer Science history as nice experiments that brought in new idea's but were just too out there in the fringes limiting themselves to the "thing/fad" of that language.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of languages that get popular have to have a thing. Like a thing they do well, and hopefully change the world a little...

Python had math and has lots more maths now. R also has math and started to kill Python, but now Python has Tensorflow and PyTorch. Scala has Spark. Java has Tomcat, and everything that followed, which is probably 20% of the world's mass by volume. Go has Docker Ruby has/had a railroad or something? JS has well, f... I don't know where to start here.

Does D have a thing?

<comment><USER4> > Does D have a thing?

Probably its most useful feature is rather subtle. It's very easy to express diverse ideas in code in D without having to resort to contortions. It's something people realize after having worked with D for a while.

It is not the result of having feature X (you can always find feature X in other languages or a way to make X work), it's the combination of various X's.

For example, some algorithms express naturally in a functional manner, some imperative, some OOP, etc. It isn't necessary to buy into a manner for the whole program, just use the manner that fits the particular part of the program.

You might like to use FP here and there, but don't want to deal with monads. You can use OOP for the AST, but don't want to box integers into an OOP class. You like dynamic typing for one type, but it's a bad fit for another. You can garbage collect for a quick prototype or a seldom used part of the code, and carefully manage memory for the release or the hot spots. (The Warp preprocessor I wrote did that. [https://github.com/facebookarchive/warp](https://github.com/facebookarchive/warp))

There's a lot less time hammering square pegs into round holes.

I've seen more than enough presentations on "How To Do Technique X In Language Y" and everyone says how clever that is but the contortions are just too awful to contemplate.

The flip side is that D won't be satisfying to a purist adherent of any of those paradigms.

<comment><USER5> I really like how purity in D is so... _practical_. I like that a for loop is totally allowed in pure code as long as it modifies no data outside the pure block. One of the most annoying things in Haskell was to translate some algorithm that looks very natural in a for loop into some other sort of combination of map or reduce or something even more complicated.

(Yes, I know Haskell can also fake for loops more cleanly with monads, but they still feel awkward and unnatural.)

<comment><USER6> My recollection from the last time I worked with D was that pure could be more complicated and strict than expected when using standard libraries functions, e.g. using trigonometry sets hardware global state, thus impure. I don't remember if there was a good workaround to convey intent of purity despite that.

<comment><USER7> In D "pure" means "referentially transparent".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Walter, thank you so much for finally doing this! I am so happy that Symantec finally listened. It must have been really frustrating to have to wait so long for this to happen. I have really been enjoying D and I love all the innovation in it. I'm really looking forward to seeing the reference compiler packaged for free operating systems.

Thanks again, this news makes me very happy!

<comment><USER4> You're welcome! It makes me happy, too. I've wanted to do this for a very long time.

<comment><USER8> In addition to your great work, Walter, Symantec really needs extra acknowledgement for the effort on their side in releasing their right to claim in order to make this happen.

It seems we haven't had a lot of good things to say lately about Symantec and I hope this gives them something positive to celebrate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, since I'm slightly psychotic about these things, this is a kind of huge to me. Part of the reason I never learned D was because the compiler was partly proprietary.

Now I have no excuse to avoid learning the language, and that should be fun.

<comment><USER10> There have been fully open source compiler for D for a long time: LDC and GDC.

<comment><USER11> Yup, but to be fair, they sometimes lack quite a bit behind dmd.

<comment><USER12> Just to clarify:

LDC master is on 2.073.2 right now (the latest DMD release), with a 2.072.2-based release imminent, and work towards 2.074.0 (currently in beta) already underway.

GDC is sadly a different story, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And best of all, it's the Boost license!

Here it is:

[https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/6680](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/6680)

<comment><USER13> Why is this a good thing? I'm not familiar with the Boost license.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is the least encumbering, very permissive and very well regarded in both oss and corporate circles. Really a good choice to stick with it.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't make it good. That makes it bad. It doesn't protect the rights of users. It's really important that developer tools are GPL, as that prevents vendor lock-in and EEE tactics.

<comment><USER15> How is preventing me from making a closed sourced derivative of dmd in any way protecting my rights as a a user of the source?

<comment><USER16> A two-edged sword in my opinion. GPL always protects the end-user so they can get the source, but it infringes on the creator trying to make closed source software. So as a user I like GPL, but when programming I tend to mostly avoid it. Mine mine mine! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good to hear the news, and congrats to all involved.

Since I see some comments in this thread, asking what D can be used for, or why people should use D, I'm putting below, an Ask HN thread that I had started some months ago. It got some interesting replies:

Ask HN: What are you using D (language) for?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193828)

<comment><USER18> Too late to the party to add my answer to your AskHN, but here we go: I use D at Netflix for machine learning backend.

<comment><USER4> Please consider adding to [http://dlang.org/orgs- using-d.html](http://dlang.org/orgs-using-d.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting change! Before, people had a choice between the proprietary Digital Mars D (dmd) compiler, or the GCC-based GDC compiler. And apparently, since the last time I looked, also the "LDC" compiler that used the already- open dmd frontend but replaced the proprietary backend with LLVM.

I wonder how releasing the dmd backend as Open Source will change the balance between the various compilers, and what people will favor going forward?

<comment><USER4> Each of dmd/gdc/ldc has their individual strengths and styles. It's an embarrassment of riches.

<comment><USER19> > Each of dmd/gdc/ldc has their individual strengths and styles.

I'd be really interested to hear a comparison of those from someone experienced with D and its community.

<comment><USER20> Professional D coder here.

\- DMD is by far the D compiler with the shortest compile time. It's actually so fast that it comes with a utility, 'rdmd', which compiles-then-execute a D program. Say goodbye to shell/perl/python scripts, now you can have compile- time checks without an explicit/slow compilation step. We use it for automation tasks.

\- GDC is the compiler of choice when it comes to supporting multiple targets and cross-compilation. It closely follows GCC and G++ command line conventions, meaning that using a single properly written Makefile it's easy to target x86/x86_64/arm, GNU/Linux (or Windows, but the mingw support has been in statis for years). Debian comes with pre-compiled arm-targetting GDC compiler. gdb, gcov, and operf work well. The generated code is fast (more than LDC), we use it for heavy computation tasks.

<comment><USER21> How good is D for:

-iOS? -Android? -Windows?

<comment><USER22> iOS: Experimental [https://wiki.dlang.org/LDC#iOS_.28iPhone_OS.29](https://wiki.dlang.org/LDC#iOS_.28iPhone_OS.29)

Android: Experimental [https://wiki.dlang.org/Build_LDC_for_Android](https://wiki.dlang.org/Build_LDC_for_Android)

Windows: Works. Here is the Visual Studio Integration [https://github.com/dlang/visuald](https://github.com/dlang/visuald)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please don't get me wrong, as I don't want to start a flame here, but why do they call D a "systems programming language" when it uses a GC? Or is it optional? I'm just reading through the docs. They do have a command line option to disable the GC but anyway...this GC thing is, imho, a no-go when it comes to systems programming. It reminds me of Go that started as a "systems programming language" too but later switched to a more realistic "networking stack".

Regards,

<comment><USER24> Why does gc disqualify a language as a system's language?

P.S. I think of a system's language as one that runs directly on the machine, e.g. Swift, C, go. They operate at the "system" level.

<comment><USER23> Could one write a driver in D?

<comment><USER22> Here is someone writing a kernel in D: [https://github.com/Vild/PowerNex](https://github.com/Vild/PowerNex)

<comment><USER20> Another kernel written in D: [https://github.com/xomboverlord/xomb/tree/unborn](https://github.com/xomboverlord/xomb/tree/unborn)

<comment><USER25> Ah, the memories...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was something that always rubbed me the wrong way about the language, and it was an impediment for adoption for me (for D, but also Shen and a few others). In this era, there is no excuse for a closed source reference compiler (I could care less if it's not a reference compiler, I just won't use it). I'm surprised it took this long to do this, it seems like D has lost most of its relevance by now...relevance it could have kept with a little more adoption. I wonder if it can recover.

<comment><USER22> D is easier than Rust and safer than C++. That is a valuable point IMHO.

<comment><USER26> I agree it is valuable.

But I still think there are better alternatives now. Depending on your priorities and constraints, OCaml, Go, F#, Scala, and Swift all fit the same description (easier than Rust, safer than C++) and they're in the same realm for performance (slower than C, C++, Rust, etc., but not by much). D could have been there if they had a decade or so with a bigger community.

<comment><USER22> D certainly has made a few mistakes and having a non-free backend in dmd was one of them. I doubt this could have been avoided though. It was just technical debt, which Symantec now graciously payed off. I have great respect for the Rust people, because it seems they do everything right so far.

I am a sucker for language discussions, so let me explain what my problems are with your suggestions.

Ocaml: No support for parallelism, community is even smaller than D, do they have a package manager, yet?

Go: I like generics/templates. If I throw away type safety, I might as well use Python.

F#: I use Linux. The .NET ecosystem is not strong here.

Scala: I don't like the JVM. Also, the Scala compiler is slow.

Swift: Solid ideas, but held back by Object-C compatibility. I don't build iOS apps, so why bother.

<comment><USER27> yes, ocaml has opam as a package manager now. the community has also grown quite a bit recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something I always thought was cool about dlang was that you can talk to the creator of the programming language on the forums. I don't write much D code as of now, but I always visit the forums everyday for the focused technical discussions. Anyways, congrats on the big news!

</comment><comment><USER29> Whats special about D? why should i learn it?

<comment><USER30> Also, how does D compare to Rust?

(If I'm going to learn a new system programming language, which one should I pick?)

<comment><USER31> D has been around longer, has powerful compile-time metaprogramming tools, and has a very fast compiler. However, it has a garbage collector, and is not entirely memory-safe by default (though is beginning to optionally incorporate some ideas from Rust [edit: or not], maybe making that easier once you put in the work). It seems to follow C or C++ in what sorts of things it makes language-level features.

Rust is newer (though being used in some big projects like Firefox/Servo, Visual Studio Code's search functionality now uses it by default, etc), has (afaiu) a more powerful type system, and is entirely memory-safe by default. However, this makes it somewhat harder to learn at first, and it also has a relatively slow compiler. It follows ML-style languages a bit more, with things like pattern matching and sum types built into the language.

Personally, I prefer Rust, because it feels like a stronger foundation with the ML-like type system and no GC. YMMV though, depending on what is important to you.

<comment><USER4> D's memory safe notions are very different from Rust's.

<comment><USER32> Could you be more specific? It doesn't seem like there's much room in the conventional definition of memory safety (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_safety) ) for variation, other than, I suppose, putting conditions on when/which things are actually guaranteed.

<comment><USER4> [https://wiki.dlang.org/DIP25](https://wiki.dlang.org/DIP25)

[https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/DIP1000.md](https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/DIP1000.md)

<comment><USER32> Hm, I'm not sure I understand how that's answering my question. Neither of those seem to even define what the "memory safety" notion means for D so I can't compare. And, looking into it further, none of the links from [https://dlang.org/spec/memory-safe-d.html](https://dlang.org/spec/memory- safe-d.html) define (or compare) what D means by "memory safety"/if it differs to the conventional definition.

I guess your original comment was maybe meaning _how_ D enforces (the "normal" definition of) memory safety differs to Rust? In any case, I read over both of those, and, to me, they both seem to essentially be a slightly less general version of Rust's scheme (possibly independently invented), rather than something very different. I'm interested to hear how you think they specifically differ to Rust.

<comment><USER4> Memory safety in D is the usual definition - making memory corruption impossible.

There's no notion of "borrowing" in D nor any notion of "only one mutable access at a time".

<comment><USER32> By not having borrowing, do you mean the compiler doesn't stop one from mutating something that has a dependent scoped pointer pointing into it? How does D avoid dangling pointers for that?

<comment><USER33> It has a GC, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That is excellent news :)

Congratulations Walter, now let's see D take over the world.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DslPaayoB30&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DslPaayoB30&feature=youtu.be&t=102)

<comment><USER34> Hehe. You've got my vote. Oh wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anybody worked on performance critical stuff in D? How good is its GC?

<comment><USER36> I think it's common to avoid the GC in performance critical sections of your code. D's version of BLAS is faster[1] and avoids the GC completely.

[1] [http://blog.mir.dlang.io/glas/benchmark/openblas/2016/09/23/...](http://blog.mir.dlang.io/glas/benchmark/openblas/2016/09/23/glas- gemm-benchmark.html)

<comment><USER37> consistently beating OpenBLAS and having performance comparable with MKL is seriously impressive. I'm wondering how that is possible. I assume it's using the same algorithms as other implementations, so the credit goes to the compiler (and to the language to some extent). But the D compiler just uses LLVM for the back end, so is this because LDC produces really good LLVM IR, or is LLVM really good at generating assembly? Either way I'm really impressed they can beat hand-tuned assembly, I'd love to see a comparison between the resulting assembly for Mir GLAS and OpenBLAS.

<comment><USER12> LDC dev here. All the credit for this goes to Ilya Yaroshenko for the expertly crafted implementation and the LLVM developers for efficient low-level code generation (inlining, register allocation and so on, and in some places auto- vectorization). LDC only needs to make sure not to "mess up" things too much.

D does play a significant role in this achievement, though – D's very powerful yet easy to use features for generics and introspection make it possible to finely tune the code for different parameters (sizes/dimensions/…) while still being easy to understand and modify.

<comment><USER37> That's helpful, thanks!

I definitely appreciate the power of generics, especially when you can to generics over values instead of just types. But I'm having trouble seeing the value of the compile-time introspection, for the most part it doesn't seem to give you much more power than generics do. Could you give me an example of the "killer feature" introspection gives over generics? Bonus points if you can compare it to Rust-style generics with traits and specialization.

<comment><USER38> Many things, although introspection works glove in hand with generics. Below os a non-exhaustive list.

You can 'Write once - automate everywhere' all the boilerplate. See [https://github.com/kaleidicassociates/excel-d/](https://github.com/kaleidicassociates/excel-d/) , for an example of automating the interaction between D and Excel. I am in the process of doing something similar for OpenCL and CUDA and will be presenting it at Dconf.

You can make at compile time (additional) fast paths by checking to see if a type (or symbol or whatever else) provides a fast primitive to accelerate your algorithm. e.g. if Foo implements fastfoo use that otherwise fallback to a general algorithm.

See also Andrei Alexandrescu's 2016(15?) talk (IIRC the relevant section is about half way through [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDK91E3VKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oDK91E3VKs)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Amazing! D has really been exciting me for the past couple of years. It has great potential.

Hopefully a fully FOSS compiler will bring it right into the mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there support for BigFloat in D/phobos or any auxiliary library? I was playing around with D sequences and wrote a D program that calculates a Fibonacci sequence (iterative) with overflow detection that upgrades reals to BigInts. I wanted to also use Binet's formula which requires sqrt(5) but it only works up to n=96 or so due to floating point precision loss.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thanks a lot! I am also consistently amazed at the performance of the forum like any other day even though the story is on top of HN.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is great news. I was using LDC because the DMD backend was proprietary. Thank you Walter, Andrei and whoever made this possible.

<comment><USER12> We LDC developers of course hope that you will continue to use LDC for all your non-x86 and high-performance needs. ;)

<comment><USER40> It produces smaller binaries and it has fast compilation times. So yes, I will continue using it on x86 as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> No matter what people say about the applicability of Dlang, Dlang has a very bright future in science. GIS, compilers, math environments will benefit by translating to D instead of C++. D is my language of choice for this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's really surprising that to this day, there are languages in use which have its reference implementation closed source. All the possible optimizations and collaboration possible when it's open is invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER44> Has there been any new books out there to learn D? I have one that still references the Collection Wars (Phobos vs Native). Once I saw that, I put the book back on the shelf and stuck with Java.

<comment><USER4> [https://wiki.dlang.org/Books](https://wiki.dlang.org/Books)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is big. Heard from mmany people that this avoids adoption.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is anyone else surprised that it wasn't before?

</comment><comment><USER47> I wanted to play around with D using the DMD compiler but it's unfortunate I have to install VS2013 and the Windows SDK to work with 64-bit support in Windows. I've installed VS in the past and found it to be a bloated piece of software I'm not willing to do again.

</comment><comment><USER48> what is it like to 'bootstrap' D? I know in many languages you can forego the standard library and 'bootstrap' yourself on small platforms (C being the main example).

</comment><comment><USER49> Off topic question; are you related to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Chirac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Chirac) ?

</comment><comment><USER50> Tremendous effort. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is an awesome news!

</comment><comment><USER52> Please get rid of GC :(

I want to have smart pointers instead

<comment><USER22> No problem, just add the @nogc annotation to your main function.

        int main(string[] args) @nogc { ... }

<comment><USER31> I haven't used D much- how much of an impact does that have when using the standard library or other libraries? Is there a good way to use things that assume a GC even when it's disabled?

<comment><USER53> There are many parts of the std lib that assume GC usage. When you mark a function as @nogc, DMD does a compile-time check and will not compile your program if there's a GC call. Applying this to main means that your entire program will by necessity be GC free.

<comment><USER31> Right, I understand that it effectively eliminates GC usage, I'm just wondering how much of an impact that has on what tools you have. In the extreme, I can imagine it degenerating into basically writing C, for example.

<comment><USER53> You have access to all of std.range and std.algorithm, most of std.datetime, many functions in std.string and std.digest, and others scattered throughout the std lib. The main thing you'll want to look at is std.experimental.allocator, which has tons of tools for manual memory allocation.

Most of the community packages out there use the GC. Some though are transitioning to a std.experimental.allocator interface, like this containers library [https://github.com/economicmodeling/containers](https://github.com/economicmodeling/containers)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sounds from Mars? Why Curiosity has no microphone. - <AUTHOR> http://curiositywatch.com/sounds-from-mars-why-curiosity-has-no-microphone/ <comment><USER2> A quote from the linked article: "Also, they would have a lower pitch than on Earth because Mars's atmosphere mainly consists of carbon dioxide."

Please don't make stuff up. The efficient propagation of sound depends on atmospheric pressure, nothing else. A specific gas, compared to another, wouldn't change sound propagation efficiency as a function of wavelength.</comment>


Ask HN: Is .app TLD coming anytime soon? - <AUTHOR>

We all know that ICAAN has recently opened up possibilities for new TLDs, especially with non-Roman based languages.<p>Any idea on whether .app is planned or in the works? <comment><USER2> I think the process for creating TLDs is multi-year, so it'll be a while.</comment>


Tell HN: Paypal APIs are Down - <AUTHOR> http://developer.paypal-portal.com/t5/Live-Site-Status/Live-Site-874-3-Update-Website-Payments-and-API-s-are/ba-p/146548 <comment> brown9-2 Remember when Google had an outage with App Engine a few weeks ago and afterwards, once it was resolved, they published a lengthy and detailed technical post-mortem on what wrong and how they were planning to fix it to prevent the same type of problem in the future?

Paypal is a service that people pay for too. Where is their post-mortem?

</comment><comment><USER2> Terrible that they didn't notify us via email or something. I saw a bunch of declines come through and customer complaints before I had to search the web to find out what was happening.

<comment><USER3> The Authorize.net downtime a few weeks ago was just as bad if not worse. They didn't even send an update+apology after things came back up. Terrible customer service.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for posting this. After today's incident I was 100% certain I was going to switch to Authorize.net. Why did both companies not send out notification emails!? Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

<comment><USER5> Auth.net did have a twitter account where they were keeping everyone posted on the progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not just the APIs -- _ALL OF PAYPAL_ has been down intermittently all morning, especially authentication.

From about 10:40 to 11:40 they went as far as turning paypal.com into a static page with just this on it:

      We're sprucing things up right now, but we should be done by 11:20 AM PDT.

      Want the details? Checkout the PayPal Announcement Board.
      http://announcements.paypal.com/us/

</comment><comment><USER7> Seeing a few PayPal checkout failures in our log. Wonder how many didnt even make it to the blog. Authorize and PayPal outages all in a few weeks. Bad for business!

Blog says they are currently experiencing 10s delays on the API. Blog took like 20 seconds to come up for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739856>

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, probably better to link directly to paypal's dev communication than a techcrunch post on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> reddit down as well or just me?

<comment><USER10> It seems to be having issues, yeah. Spottiness.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2020? - <AUTHOR> It's interesting to get a pulse of opinions on this topic over the years.
Previous discussions:
* 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236487
* 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286939
I wonder how the sentiment / environment has changed around startups since the last two posts.
It's a great time to start this discussion again since YC just announced their annual "Work At A Startup" event: https://www.workatastartup.com <comment><USER2> In many ways late stage startups seem to have been hit especially hard by COVID.

Anyone have a pulse on what sentiment around the earlier stages is like?</comment>


Yobi3D – Free 3D Model Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.yobi3d.com/ <comment><USER2> This is really handy. If the creator is on here: would it be possible to add more filters to the search? For example looking for models with (or without) bones, animations, textures, etc. defined?

<comment><AUTHOR> The original author shared this on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2gjq1s/3d_model_sea...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2gjq1s/3d_model_search_engine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is cool, hat tilt to creator(s).

Suggestion; I use 3D models almost everyday for mechanical engineering projects and here is a challenge that, perhaps the Yobi3D creators could address:

When I work on an engineering project, I source parts from all sorts of different suppliers depending on price, reputation and previous relationships.

In order to quote well on a project we generally model as much as possible in 3D beforehand. However, this can get expensive as a huge chunk of my time is taken up finding 3D files of supplier's components (generally hidden on some obscure part of their website) and converting those files to a format we can use.

Would it not be possible to scrape (I don't know the terminology - I'm not a codey person) the web and find any kind of 3D files distributed freely on supplier's websites, download these files to a central repository, automatically convert them into a range of usable formats, auto generate an image (like, it appears, Yobi3D has done) and auto generate some meta-data (if none exists) from the page/site the 3D file was found on?

I could then go on a site like Yobi3D, search a supplier's name or a particular product's name, and have the file well presented, easily found, in a format I can use, on a robust and reliable website.

I'd pay good money for this service if it was done well and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER4> > download these files to a central repository, automatically convert them > into a range of usable formats, auto generate an image (like, it appears, > Yobi3D has done) and auto generate some meta-data (if none exists) from the > page/site the 3D file was found on?

[https://Clara.io](https://Clara.io) has the central repository, automatic conversion, image generation, WebGL preview and search capability already. Just no automatic scraping nor automatic-meta data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, but some minor quibbles:

1\. The site doesn't load at all when NoScript is active,

2\. Once NoScript is deactivated and search results are displayed the middle mouse button to open something in a new tab doesn't work,

3\. It uses the latest scourge of the internet: web icon fonts.

My point: the site leans too heavily on JavaScript to the detriment of its usability.

</comment><comment><USER6> Searching for "thrust bearing" came back with mostly teddy bears...

</comment><comment><USER7> It's actually quite cool. I searched for "musical instrument", "sewing machine" and "computer keyboard" and they all came back with good results.

</comment><comment><USER4> We have one too -- [http://Clara.io/library](http://Clara.io/library) We should figure out a way to sync up. :)

<comment> alok-g Nice! How do I search by license? Tags public/gallery does not seem to be it as some marked public say "All Rights Reserved" for License. Are the others available for purchase?

<comment><USER4> Good suggestion. We do not yet have search by license, but I added it to our roadmap yesterday as it is a simple matter to add. Nothing right now can be purchased, it is free or not downloadable, but in the future it will be purchasable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neato. How about an option for global pitch, local roll on the objects? I can't stand the way it's implemented now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems handy and has quite a collection, though I question the information retrieval algorithm.

Search for "pixel".</comment>


Uses This: Bram Moolenaar - <AUTHOR> https://usesthis.com/interviews/bram.moolenaar/ <comment><USER2> The creator of Vim doesn't know why Ubuntu fails to restart sometimes. That tells you a lot of why people prefer MBP for work and/or Windows.

It is a shame because I think a solid third work OS is very much needed.

<comment><USER3> My Fedora and FreeBSD laptops have been solid workhorses for years - I'm on my third MBP at work and I loathe the thing. It's hard to say how much of that is the new keyboard and all the corporate spyware it's saddled with, but it has been decidedly less stable for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I don't use the top and far left parts much to avoid having to turn my head > all the time.

I find this to be a big issue even on smaller screens. 16x9 is great if your using your computer consumption but I find it non-desirable for production. I think I would prefer to go back to a 4x3 screen for production because I generally like my apps to fill the whole screen and I do a lot of my work in the terminal.

<comment><USER5> What people who use less than 1% of production want tends to have little effect, except when they are willing to pay the difference in cost for volume and niche production runs.

I.e., affordable equipment with 16:9 displays rides free on the entertainment train. If enough people were willing to pay a few $hundred more to get 4:3, somebody would make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Odd, they forgot to mention his use of emacs.

/me ducks and runs for cover...</comment>


Bosch is finally making Lidar sensors for autonomous cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/02/bosch-lidar-sensors-autonomous-vehicles/ <comment><USER3> One of my buddies recently told me he's joining Bosh to work in their self- driving unit. I was asking "what self driving unit?". Apparently, he's on the team building Lidars.

Bosch is focusing both on mass producing better and/or cheaper hardware components that self-driving cars need. They also have a smaller team to build self-driving cars, dogfooding/prototyping newer components.

Them entering this industry shows that they - unsurprisingly - <USER2> large demand.

<comment><USER4> Bosch is tier 1 supplier of components and parts to OEMs like VW, Daimler etc. they are already making Radar and camera sensors and systems. Every component supplier is into self driving development as they provide these Algos along with their sensors and systems. Their competitors in this space include DELPHI, continental, autoliv etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know how far along Luminar[1] is with their affordable lidar?

[1] [https://www.luminartech.com](https://www.luminartech.com)</comment>


Chrome updated to temporarily remove the autoplay policy for the Web Audio API - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=840866#c103 <comment><USER2> I think sites should simply have to ask for audio permissions like they already do for camera, location or microphone.

The browser trying to figure out if I intended to play audio is way too error prone versus me just asking.

I work on an audiobook player as a developer have been fighting this junk on iOS for years, it's nothing but trouble. If I could just secure a permission to play audio worry free it'd make my life so much easier. Right now we need to ensure that all our audio is triggered by a click event, and if it gets too many steps away from the click event itself, everything breaks. It's literally defined and limited how we can abstract our code.

<comment><USER3> More granular permissions would be great. I would love to have a whitelist for audio, video, any sort of animation, etc.

<comment><USER4> When I click the upvote button in Hacker News, and the upvote button disappears, would that be considered an animation?

<comment><USER5> No because there is nothing like -WebKit-transition on it.

<comment><USER6> Then people would go back to doing their animations with JS at the cost of more CPU usage, worse frame rate and worse battery life.

Finding out whether JS is currently animating an element is about as hard as solving the halting problem.

<comment><USER7> JS timers and element modifications could be rate limited. Far far far cry from the halting problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Currently they're saying:

> The policy will be re-applied to the Web Audio API in Chrome 70 (October). > Developers should update their code based on the recommendations at: > [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay- > policy-changes#webaudio)

This is wrong and really needs to be reconsidered. Nearly all of the examples of broken webpages on that thread are write-and-forget games, which will never be updated; this plan would break them permanently, just to save a little engineering effort in Chrome.

The solution is simple: display a permissions request, like there currently is for camera, location and microphone. That's how it should've worked in the first place.

<comment><USER9> A permissions request isn't a good solution. Instead of having to deal with auto-playing video on every other site you visit, you'd now have to deal with a permissions prompt constantly popping up.

IMO the best solution is to just mute the autoplaying media until the user interacts with the page. Completely transparent to sites, and doesn't burden the user with unnecessary pop-ups.

<comment><USER10> Permission request is not necessary a pop-up prompt. It can be implemented as an additional state of the sound playing icon in the tab's title for example, and I am sure that good designers can invent something better.

<comment><USER11> They already show an inline notification on the address bar when a page is trying to open a popup. They could've done the same for audio

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was a really awful change. Not only did it break lots of existing sites, it broke lots of sites _that weren 't even trying to autoplay_.

Basically the new policy triggered based on how you set up your AudioContext, regardless of whether you played any sounds. Most sites doing anything interesting with WebAudio just set up their context at init time (until now there was no reason not to), so as a result almost every WebAudio demo out there got broken. I was looking through back issues of Web Audio Weekly and in Chrome it was a wasteland - nothing worked, autoplay or not.

I know the Chrome team works hard, but sometimes it's hard to believe that they feel the responsibility of stewardship they have over the web. Breaking existing content with no benefit to user experience should be considered a showstopper bug, not something you just delay until "after developers have time to update their code".

<comment><USER13> I live a quiet life and want my browser to be quiet too. I don't fully understand the API changes behind this decision but from what I have read this is a huge win.

The real problem is the unethical use of APIs to increase advertisement related KPIs.

<comment><USER14> Not that many people are really advocating for autoplay. They just want a way to enable audio on specific sites. The Chrome changes take control away from the user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's pretty ridiculous that Chrome has a whitelist. This should be enough of a red flag something isn't right.

<comment><USER16> Yes this worries me. Especially with the market share. Surely a large web gatekeeper like Chrome would be in violation of anti trust regulation?

<comment><USER17> What's your legal theory behind an antitrust violation?

If it were the case, why wouldn't we have already been down this road with SSL certificates? If I want to open the jrockway CA with a policy of "I will literally sign any CSR with no verification", I can't, because no major browser vendor will add me to their certificate whitelists. That's not an antitrust violation.

<comment><USER16> The legal basis is that google operate the largest video delivery site. If they fail to whitelist smaller organisations then they are operating anti competitively.

The CA situation is a different model. To be honest the whole trustworthy CA thing is a joke as we've found out recently. The model is broken. Look at Symantec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whew, that's a relief - until October when the same policy will be applied in Chromium 70?

As many are pointing out in the issue thread, I hope they figure out a solution that doesn't break countless existing sites, apps and experiments (including their own, such as [https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com](https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com)) using the Web Audio API.

I'm also not happy about the whitelist, and suspicious of the new Media Engagement Index.

</comment><comment><USER19> Somehow no one comments that Chrome team rolled this out in the first place, and only then went and started asking for examples of broken sites. Even though their own websited like "Chrome Experiments" are broken by it. Even though it would take QA a total of few hours to come up with dozens of broken sites.

<comment><USER20> These WebAudio autoplay problems were reported to Google last year:

[https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/993517176798638080](https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/993517176798638080)

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=765667](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=765667)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is the easiest/best way to completely disable any auto-play for videos until I click on them? When I want to watch a video I'm happy to click on it to watch.

<comment><USER22> Write your own browser

<comment><USER23> Firefox has a setting for disabling autoplay, even for gifs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Chrome needs to ditch this whitelisted exception for 'the top 1000 sites'. This is a barrier to every new video platform that wants to compete with YouTube or Facebook.

<comment><USER25> It appears to be a little more complex than that; this[0] blog post (from September 2017, but linked in as the official recommendation) provides some broader context, and also talks about a "Media Engagement Index" heuristic to determine whether or not to play audio. This doesn't appear to take something like Alexa rank into account. The requested behavior is very similar to the actual (recalled) behavior. Per [0], Chrome allows muted (by JS) videos to play, and then allows audio to play on first interaction (but must be done by JS.) This is subtly different from the proposed behavior, which asks for this unmuting to be automated by the browser.

[0]: [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay- policy-changes)

<comment><USER24> It's more complex, but only the top 1000 sites by MEI is still a hurdle. In addition, the non-whitelist path requires at least 20 interactions before it is considered. That's ridiculous; it should be 3-5 max.

<comment><USER14> It's not only the top 1,000. It was over 1,000 when it first launched and they said they will expand the list over time.

<comment><USER26> That's really irrelevant. Your youtube competitor may never get in that list if users don't get autoplay on your site. Sure you can train your browser. Until you switch machines. Or use a public machine. Or use a different profile. Or use incognito mode.

They're providing a fast lane for the current popular sites and everyone else gets a slow lane. It's kind of hard to get out of the slow lane when you're forced to go slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I actually agree with the motivations if not the outcome.

Here's a maybe dumb suggestion. Make make a new API. Sites using the old API will get a blocking dialog. Sites using the new API will get the desired behavior. That way old content is still accessible.

Maybe `new AudioContext2()` or `new AudioContext({version: 2})` or `new AudioContext({optIntoNewBehavior: true})` where old behavior pops up a modal dialog?

Just throwing out ideas.

<comment><USER27> I may be misunderstanding your comment, but what exactly is the benefit? Advertising websites can just switch to the new API to achieve autoplay audio, meanwhile all old sites will have a poor user experience as they will require additional browser UI and popups to use.

<comment><USER26> The new API doesn't autoplay. The old API did. Changing the old API is what's breaking everything. So, if the old API blocks the page that page is still accessible. Click "Ok" and it's unblocked. If the page is using the new API then it doesn't get blocked but it also doesn't autoplay

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is terrible. Chrome responded to a major breaking change by simply... delaying it? The exact same problems will be faced come October.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why listen to developers? They (and their bosses) created such a hostile environment for users in the first place, if they'd done the right thing then this wouldn't need to be baked into the browser at all.

Listen to users, they need protection from developers.

<comment><USER14> Cross-posting my comment from Ars Technica:

So here's how weird and user-unfriendly this is. If you link straight to a page, it will be muted. [Autoplaying sound - unless you're in Chrome 66] [http://dryad.technology/gametitle](http://dryad.technology/gametitle) But! If you go to [http://dryad.technology](http://dryad.technology) first and then click "Game Title", it plays sound. If you control-click it to open it in a new tab, it also plays sound. But if you drag the link "Game Title" to the tab bar to open a new tab, it doesn't. This honestly doesn't look like a fully- baked feature.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what's the latest on startups in the education space? - <AUTHOR>

I know we must have quite a few folks on here that deal with the education space, or have sometime recently in the past.
I'm hoping  to get a better understanding of the kind of challenges they've had to go through and whether they ultimately found out if they could be successful in that specific industry. I'm more specifically interested in K12.
Have you found it hard to breach into the system and provide a valuable service to schools while still being paid for it? Is the space as entrenched as they say, sometimes comparing it to the health space, or is it as straightforward as catering to businesses? Were you successful, or did you eventually decide to move to greener pastures?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> There's actually several seed accelerators that cater to precisely this problem ImagineK12 (endorsed by pg) in SF and Startl in New York.</comment>


Girls, 13, given contraceptive implants at school (UK) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9065998/Girls-13-given-contraceptive-implants-at-school.html

<comment><AUTHOR> It would seem that nasa also has a plan for implantable pills. [http://gizmodo.com/5882725/the-miraculous-nasa- breakthrough-...](http://gizmodo.com/5882725/the-miraculous-nasa-breakthrough- that-could-save-millions-of-lives)</comment>


IHOP Becomes IHOb, the International House of  Burgers - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/06/11/618844977/ihop-becomes-ihob-the-international-house-of-burgers <comment><USER2> As a temporary marketing campaign, this is brilliant.

Everyone says they care about the IHOP brand, and "threatening" is has brought out a viral storm of news stories and discussions. Everyone claims to care about IHOP, but how many people actually eat there anymore?

This reminds me of when Radio Shack decided to call themselves "The Shack," or when Toys'R'Us closed down, or Sears began to disappear from the American landscape. Each big change triggered a wave of nostalgia, but it was too late, the brands were on the way out, and nothing was going to save them.

In this case, though, IHOP is alive and well, and suggesting that the brand might change could make people who haven't set foot in an IHOP in years think about going back, just to revisit the experience.

Actually having a value proposition to offer, in this case upmarket(?) burgers, means IHOP won't just be banking on nostalgia, but really trying to woo consumers. Of course, if the burgers aren't any good, this will be a debacle. There's a saying on Madison Avenue, "nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising."

<comment><USER3> >Everyone claims to care about IHOP, but how many people actually eat there anymore?

At least around where I live (Houston), I hardly ever am able to eat at an IHOP because it's always packed at breakfast time. I imagine it's a ghost town for dinner.

>Of course, if the burgers aren't any good, this will be a debacle.

Yeah. It's hard to build a loyal breakfast following, but in my experience they are doing fine there. Lunch and dinner is a whole different ball game- there is way more selection (but I guess you could say there's more people looking for food too.) All I can say is that these better be some dang good burgers for all this commotion. Especially if I can't grab a beer with my burger.

<comment><USER4> Similar in Dallas area. It is very accommodating to families with very young children, something that's otherwise hard to find for parents who don't want to feel like they're inconveniencing other patrons.

<comment> core-questions Yup. You want to take kids out politely, you gotta go to the madhouse places full of other folks doing the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a financial perspective this makes sense to me. With "pancakes" in the name you're practically guiding customers to your $7 entree. Change the name to "burgers" and you're prompting the $12 entree instead, with a potential 70% improvement in revenue.

<comment><USER6> It's just a short-term marketing stunt to promote their burgers, they'll be back to IHOP soon enough. I'm surprised this got so much traction with people I follow on Twitter. A successful stunt, certainly.

<comment><USER7> I had to block it on twitter. So freaking obvious what it is yet everyone is eating it up.

<comment><USER8> What's worse is this is a link to NPR, on the front page of HN. There are no sanctuaries.

<comment><USER9> "Native advertising"

<comment><USER7> Oddly enough you don't have to even pay for this kind of content as long as you can make it go viral enough. Media outlets LOVE jumping on popular topics. None of the articles ever contain anything of substance either. Always a couple twitter posts and a rehash of what people said along with a line or two from a pr or some other outlet.

<comment><USER9> It used to be that these kinds of things came from the Associated Press (AP) does that play a role anymore? We are considering doing a press release (PR) and I have little understanding of the entire process.

<comment><USER7> Depends on the publication. PRnewswire is probably a good starting point. I've been more on the pr receiving side and most of my prs come from there or via direct access to a companies pr distribution list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If they would have went with IHOd they could just flip their "p" into a "d" and save millions on rebranding those signs! Then if it fails they can add an "L" later and pivot into the crypto-currency space.

<comment><USER10> With "b" also it's a vertical flip.

<comment><USER11> But it requires reversing back and front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The CNN Money article including quotes from the CEO indicates that it's temporary and that a few locations may change signage temporarily but most will remain as they've always been.

[http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/11/investing/ihob-ihop- burgers-...](http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/11/investing/ihob-ihop-burgers-name- change/index.html)

<comment><USER5> > "We are definitely going to be IHOP," Darren Rebelez, president of IHOP, > told CNNMoney. "But we want to convey that we are taking our burgers as > seriously as our pancakes."

> An IHOP in Hollywood is getting new IHOb signs, and some others might get > the treatment.

> But Rebelez said the vast majority of the nearly 1,800 other locations will > still go by IHOP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like ihob.com was transfered (or at least the whois updated) yesterday... the owner is going to make a tidy profit if this name change is permanent.

<comment><USER14> I heard that @IHOB was created and verified by twitter a number of years ago. Perhaps they had been planning a burger release for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was going to call this the dumbest marketing stunt I've ever seen, but then I saw the Domino's one.

</comment><comment><USER16> Too bad they don't have ihob.com…

<comment><USER17> It looks like the current owner has put up an ihop-looking logo and has listed the site for $50,000

<comment><USER9> Smart domain squater!

<comment><USER18> Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but that is the literally the worst thing the ihob.com domain owner can do and will no doubt give IHob an edge if/when they file a UDRP complaint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When they're done with their publicity grab they can continue as IHOB -- International Hall Of Bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER20> this world gets shittier every day

<comment><USER21> If this is what keeps you up at night, you live a blessed life.

<comment><USER22> To be fair, passing off a blatant advertising PR stunt as 'news' further blurs the line between actual news/facts, opinions, and bullshit for people who have a hard time determining which is which.</comment></comment></comment>


This company IPO'ed, doubled its value and broke the $1B mark on a single Friday - <AUTHOR> http://www.geektime.com/2014/03/02/this-israeli-company-managed-to-ipo-double-its-valuation-and-cross-the-1b-mark-and-that-was-just-on-friday/

<comment><USER2> That's incredible. It's the third time an Israeli company break the $1B mark in less than 6 months, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER3> You say that like it's a hard thing.</comment>


The Development of the C Language (Dennis Ritchie) - <AUTHOR> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html

<comment><USER2> Was interesting reading the reasoning behind the funky & vs. == precedence rules. I.e. the requirement of parentheses when writing:

      if ((a&mask) == b)</comment>


The Mind at Work: Guido van Rossum on how Python makes thinking in code easier - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/-the-mind-at-work--guido-van-rossum-on-how-python-makes-thinking <comment><USER2> We recently picked up python, mostly by accident. We had some really shorty formatted XML. We're talking no-schema because nodes of the same type contain different elements. No consistency. Some nodes used differently from each other depending on the purpose and three different model-trees dropped into one giant mess, not at random but at datapoint entry but without the time stamp.

C# just couldn't handle it, none of the libraries we tried could and when we wrote our own it was just hopelessly inefficient. Enter python and everything was as simple as telling python which element value/text/whatever they decided to store the data in and you'd get it. 200 lines of code later and a 5 second runtime we had our data in neatly store objects in a couple of dictionaries.

At that time we could have dumped it onto our SQL cluster and let C# take over, but the programmer in charge decided to just go at it with python. Mostly for the heck of it. A few weeks later he had replaced a major SSIS service and multiple C# services with some relatively simple python that cut the total runtime from 30 minutes to 5.

I'd never written a line of python before this, but reading the code, I understood everything to the point where I'd feel comfortable maintaining/expanding it, with very minuscule help from the documentation (and google).

I don't personally have that much love for dynamic types, and I'm not sure how we would use it, if we needed to run it outside our environment, but the experience perfectly highlights how python won and repeatedly continues to win our hearts.</comment>


WSDownloader – WhatsApp Status Downloader - <AUTHOR> What if you could save/download whatsapp status media from your friends in a friendlier way instead of digging through your file manager to find it?
https://goo.gl/lQ1Ayl Contributions and integration of other social media statuses are not welcomed, they are highly needed. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://goo.gl/lQ1Ayl](https://goo.gl/lQ1Ayl) or [http://github.com/RbkGh/WSDownloader](http://github.com/RbkGh/WSDownloader)</comment>


Running Go CLI Programs in the Browser - Bella-Xiang https://www.arp242.net/wasm-cli.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently in the process of porting my 2048 Solver - a few things I've observed:

\- Threading isn't currently supported so don't expect great performance from code leveraging go routines.

\- CPU heavy code tanks rendering so definitely consider wrapping your WASM logic inside a web worker.

\- You may need to pause execution to allow any JS event handlers you've defined to fire.</comment>


Facebook Sponsors Let's Encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://letsencrypt.org//2015/12/03/facebook-sponsorship.html <comment><AUTHOR> As one of the companies that is most successful in their focus on making money of user data: what could be the reason they are doing this ?</comment>


Is Google penalty for duplicated content a myth? - <AUTHOR> So far, I thought you will receive a penalty for duplicated content, but I ran into a MOZ article this week and actually it suggests the following:
You won't receive penalties from Google for the duplicated content, but it can affect your traffic, because Google may consider a duplication as the origin (for example if the site has a higher DA or more traffic) and in this case, this duplication will be shown in the search results as well. This would also mean that Google has an algorithm to choose the origin of non-handled duplications and 301 redirects or canonical URLs only help this algorithm to find the right source.
What do you think about this topic? If this is true, what kind of parameters should matter for this algorithm?
The article can be found here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content <comment><USER2> Duplicate content is not an automatic algorithmic penalty in Google's ranking algorithms BUT it can cause issues which can impact on your SEO performance (e.g. impacts on crawl budget/content quality signals/identifying canonical URL from a set of duplicate documents etc.).

I suggest reading this as it was very useful for me -->

[https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/](https://www.hobo- web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/)

I hope this was of help.

</comment><comment><USER3> To some extent any effective web search engine has to have a duplicate filter. This was even true of a search engine I built for an academic library that had 80 web sites.

For a number of reasons, content gets duplicated across web pages, even if people are disciplined. Since the query (x) document ranking is going to be the same for identical documents, these will rank out the same and form a "plug" of identical results that displace other results.

What exactly Google does, I don't know. I know if they didn't do anything about dupes, Google would be so bad you wouldn't use it.</comment>


Harvard Researchers Use Quantum Computer to Fold Proteins - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/14/4723560/harvard-researchers-use-d-wave.html <comment><USER2> "SOURCE D-Wave Systems Inc."

"ya da, ya da ... presented results of the largest protein folding problem solved to date using a quantum computer..." but such if computers have minute processor power, the "largest" would also be small right? Sounds like an epsilon-delta proof somehow...

Grr... Wake me up when quantum computers have processing of conventional CPUs: "our pseudo-miraculo-tron has been used in simulations which fold proteins, split atoms and fly rockets to the moon, approaching nearly the processing power of the seventies scientific calculators which once were used in such efforts..."

<comment><USER3> Exactly. They didn't seem to mention its performance... If this problem has been tackled by traditional CPUs (like we do with F@H), then how did the quantum computer compare?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems>

</comment><comment><USER5> Link to the article mentioned: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00571></comment>


American Air's $1 Price Target at Evercore Implies 92% Collapse - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/american-air-stock-price-target-falls-to-just-a-buck-at-evercore <comment><USER2> I have no particular opinion on what the share price "should be", but apparently the analyst (MD) making this prediction is ranked here: [https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/duane- pfennigwerth](https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/duane-pfennigwerth)

I quite like this idea of ranking people based on their prior predictions! Again, no idea about any of the specific subject matter or the people covering it, but certainly an interesting site.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting idea. I just looked at the top 25 analysts, 23/25 are specialized in the tech sector - maybe something of a "rising tide lifts all boats" effect there at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These bailouts need to be punitive to investors or behavior doesn't change. We need these bailouts to keep people employed and to maintain the infrastructure/service, but if you take a government bailout, it should be automatic chapter 11, automatic equity wipeout, and government $'s should look like DIP financing...or something like that... watch balance sheets become more conservative in industries that need a bailout every ten years

<comment><USER5> An argument can be made that you risk losing the talent to lead these companies to much more economically viable industries. I'm not sure I completely subscribe to the argument, but I think to some degree corporate welfare is as necessary as general welfare to help give a leg up to industries that are necessary but would otherwise have a harder time being successful.

Hot take, I know. That said, I do agree with your premise and think a disproportionately high government stake in a bailed out company makes a ton of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMO: transportation bailouts should be focused on essential everyday services (e.g. public transit, which is currently hemorrhaging money) and not for a mode whose purpose is to facilitate business trips and vacations

<comment><USER7> > a travel mode used for vacations and élites

Normal line workers everywhere have to travel for business and don't have any choice about it. These people aren't travelling for fun and aren't elite by any stretch of the imagination.

<comment><USER8> If you have to travel for business, the business should be paying for it, not taxpayers.

<comment><USER7> Should we make all roads toll roads as well? Or how about society works together to support basic infrastructure like roads and air routes.

<comment><USER9> What is the problem with making all roads toll roads? If anything, the unseen costs of driving due to lack of tolls causes significant issues such as traffic, road wear and tear (resulting in pollution), and mid allocation of the public's resources into infrastructure for private vehicles rather than public transportation.

Government is already reading license plates, might as well attach it to a billing system and charge people accordingly. Want to travel during high demand hours? Pay more. Watch businesses and people adjust their habits automatically to better use the shared resource.

And if the concern is that poorer people get shafted, then give them a certain amount of cash or credits for road usage.

<comment><USER8> Tolls were once difficult to enforce — collection infrastructure was expensive and slowed down traffic. Modern technology offers new ways forward, at the price of destroying privacy.

Or you could just impose a gasoline tax as a proxy for travel (oh hey that's exactly what they did.)

<comment><USER10> It seems better to just tax something instead of setting up toll infrastructure

<comment><USER8> It really depends.

The free market is only efficient when transaction costs are low. For many forms of travel, the cost of monitoring such travel makes tracking far too expensive. Even just understanding a toll scheme has its own cost; you don't want to be too worried about misestimating the cost of every drive down to the grocery store.

For long-distance interstate travel, however, toll roads make a lot of sense. This is particularly the case where trucks are involved. You charge proportionally to axle weight, so the companies doing the shipping pay for the damage they are doing to the roads.

In other congested areas, tolls can serve as an effective form of rationing, particularly over bridges or through tunnels. This encourages more efficient resource usage, e.g. by making carpooling more worthwhile. This also makes more sense for city centers with congestion-charge fees. The alternative rationing scheme here, "sitting in traffic", is a very bad way to pay for things and imposes its own very high transaction costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ~$29 on January 1st, 2020. A $1 target is pretty brutal. Though, for airlines, bankruptcy isn't all "bad". It invalidates their labor contracts, and allows them to renegotiate in an environment where they have a lot more leverage.

<comment><USER12> Awesome, another industry that was paying living wages will now stop doing that. Minimum wage aircraft mechanics and pilots. I guess flight attendants are already there.

<comment><USER8> According to Glassdoor, American Airlines flight attendants paid hourly average $30/hr, and $38,500 when salaried.

(Their pilots average ~$167,000 a year. The mechanics make ~$70,500. Reviews say the health insurance is pretty good, there is a modest 401(k) match, and of course you get to fly free on standby).

Please bring only meaningful in-depth critiques to HN, and leave the fact-free axe-grinding elsewhere.

<comment><USER11> _" paid hourly average $30/hr"_

I wouldn't make a direct comparison of that with other jobs. There are many work hours they aren't paid for, or are paid at a lower rate.

Oversimplified, but they are paid nothing or almost nothing for waiting around for late flights, security, etc. Full pay for "block hours" where the plane has pushed back, less for pre/post flight work. And lower seniority f/a folks can have a harder time getting hours at all, and they are well below average pay. Seniority is everything.

It's not a bad job considering the fairly low qualifications, but it's not really $30/hour. New flight attendants generally end the year around $20k gross. And that's at the majors.

<comment><USER8> Maybe not! However, our poster upthread said that he guessed flight attendants were _already at minimum wage_ it would need to take literally half their time before we're even to the $15/hr level that was pitched as a "living wage" in New York City, their hub city with the most expensive cost of living. (Other AA hubs: Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, LA, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Washington, DC/Arlington. Some of these are cheaper than others.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was thinking the other day about how American companies have continually gorged themselves on debt even after so many crises have been made so much worse by unhealthy balance sheets. I guess the taxpayer has always got their back. These are state owned enterprises in sheep's clothing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is one analyst's opinion news? The market still thinks their stock is worth $10.

<comment><USER15> Good question.

Here's two reasons why this particular one report is making the rounds:

1) It's unexpected. Sell-side analysts inherently have a conflict of interest as the parent company's bread and butter is investment banking/M&A advisory deals. They try not to issue "sell" reports since who wants to do business with a bank that is pessimistic about their future.

2) It's shocking. I don't think I have ever seen a bank issue a $1 price target on any (non-penny/non-fraud) stock. The last time I saw this was by a short seller (betting against Peleton). For a stock that's trading at $10+, saying this is akin to telling management, "we will probably never see you again so it's fine for us to say our goodbyes with working with you ever again."

So what's in it for Evercore (the investment bank here)? If Evercore is correct, they just got some good PR in the investing community as the first ones to "call it" once the dust settles (and maybe fame under the "Financial Troubles (2020-)" section of American Airlines wiki page).

Another related question though would be why the stock market jumps around in response to these "news" items if you trust that there is no new information that equity analysts get that isn't otherwise publicly accessible. Seems like people think that's bullshit though, or, they believe the analysts are smarter than them in terms of processing this public information. Regardless, whenever Goldman issues some report on a FAANG stock, expect some pretty big vol...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Airlines have always been a pretty crap business to be in. Older (hilariously formatted but still good) thoughts here: [https://www.mcgill.ca/iasl/files/iasl/ASPL614-Airline- Financ...](https://www.mcgill.ca/iasl/files/iasl/ASPL614-Airline-Financial- Woes.pdf)

<comment><USER17> This is fantastic. Lots of insight into the industry. Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Buying a debt-laden airline and trimming the fat + increasing yield while getting leverage on partners and expanding logistic capacity sounds like the ultimate Amazon move right now. Probably not AA, but I don't know... Southwest?

<comment><USER19> I'd be disappointed if it was Southwest, I always have a great experience with them. Wouldn't surprise me if they went with a budget airline and used the extra capacity that people don't fill with overpriced baggage to ship Prime products. It sounds like a nightmare to coordinate but I'm sure they could do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory joke: How do you make a million dollars in the airline business? Well, you see, you _start_ with a _billion_ dollars...

(real talk, who actually buys these stocks? they keep going so very bankrupt...)

<comment><USER20> The last time I bought AAL I profited heavily after they announced bankruptcy. They were pink sheet eventually and went from 17 cents to 12 dollars in a matter of a few years.

If that happens again with most airlines I personally will put as much in as I can and wait for a merger after a bailout

Edit to be fair I profited heavily based on an original buy that was 70 dollars total

<comment><USER21> Which airline stocks are you eyeing for?

<comment><USER20> United, American airlines and delta. Maybe Southwest and JetBlue, I wouldn't be all that surprised if they get bought up when the dust settles.

These are my picks because they may go bankrupt but they will get a bailout or cash infusion like always. They are not going to cease to exist.

<comment><USER21> At what price target are you going to buy them? And will they still be available in traditional brokers: vanguard/Fido/schwab when they tank all the way to 50cents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The fed bailed out the fucking junk bond market, but we'll see lots of legit companies go bankrupt in the next few years as this plays out.

Politicians have confused the shutdown. It was intended to reduce the likelihood of overwhelming the hospitals, but it seems it's been interpreted as protecting people from getting infected. That was never going to happen, but nobody wants to talk about it.

<comment><USER23> What do you mean? Hospitalizations are a function within the funnel. As more people get infected, more people get hospitalized. So, by protecting people from getting infected, you're protecting from hospitalization. Idk what you're trying to get at.

<comment><USER24> Flattening the curve doesn't reduce the total number of infections over the entire period of the pandemic. It just reduces the rate at which people get infected so that resources can be manageable [1]. This does reduce the total number of deaths, however, as more resources are available to help the infected.

1\. [https://www.wired.com/story/the-promising-math-behind- flatte...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-promising-math-behind-flattening- the-curve/)

<comment><USER23> I see what you mean now. I think the sense of urgency placed by politicians is in the right place- some understand that hospitalizations at time t (now) need to be controlled, and they've simplified the language to seem as if they are concerned about infections at this very instance for the sake of brevity.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that reducing infections RIGHT NOW directly leads to reducing hospitalizations, so I can't blame politicians for mixing up the language.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hurricane Irene Tracking Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/projects/hurricanes/index.html

<comment><USER2> There are additional interesting map details at Google's crisis map:

<http://crisislanding.appspot.com/></comment>


Ask HN: How to implement caching for dynamic user data in sites like HN, Reddit? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys. Need some thoughts on how can implement caching for sites like HN, Reddit etc which have a lot of dynamic user metadata (eg. liked comments)?
Earlier on, when I only had the user name ("Hi User Alpha") on the navbar, my plan was to send the entire HTML which looks the same to both logged in and non logged in users. Then to use Javascript to add the user info which I could get from the browser cookies.
However, Now I am looking to add more features like comments with likes and tags (with voting for tags), and I am confused as to how can I cache any of it. How do sites like HN, Reddit etc cache such dynamic user data? <comment><USER2> Why would you start by caching it?

What are you storing the data in currently? If relational, I'd advise starting with simple relational tables (post_comments, user_comment_likes, etc). Render the HTML for logged in users based on querying that, and see how far you can get.

The source code for historical versions of both reddit and HN is available, so you could check that to see what they do. But caching probably won't be necessary for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the scale. With few users, you'd better query database directly. With enough users (when it makes sense to introduce complexity), I would adopt Change Data Capture pattern. A small process reads/follows database logs (journal) and when a new post or comment is added, updates the cache asynchronously.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you asking how they cache pages when logged in users have per-user data? You can use edge-side includes, or use a separate AJAX request to retrieve the user-specific data.</comment>


Emails expose close ties between Hillary and accused war criminal Henry Kissinger - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2016/01/12/emails_expose_close_ties_between_hillary_clinton_and_accused_war_criminal_henry_kissinger/ <comment><USER2> There is no story here. A small percentage of the text is devoted to a tiny amount of correspondence that proves nothing, and the rest of it is criticism of Kissinger (which is obviously not new).

The "ties" are basically the bare minimum you'd expect between Kissinger and any Secretary of State. They seemed to communicate impersonally and only every few years, and they also seemed to see each other in impersonal ways.</comment>


Paul Kedrosky: If You're So Dumb, Why Aren't You Rich? - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/24/if_youre_so_dum.html <comment><AUTHOR> Presented as a corollary to the Why Smart People Have Dumb Ideas essay <http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Another possible interpretation would be that being rich makes you dumb... (I hope not)

</comment><comment><USER3> Investigate the correlation between being smart AND evil and being rich.</comment>


Startups and the Stockdale Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/2005/01/startups_and_th.html <comment><USER2> That article is awesome. I've always has trouble articulating my belief in the power of positive thinking without sounding like a hippie.

<comment><USER3> '... the power of positive thinking ...'

Not so much the power of 'positive thinking' as accepting the 'reality of the situation' and making sure you can get beyond it. Another example of this type of 'conscious acceptance of a situation' can be found in the phrase ... 'there is no land-rover' ~ http://tinyurl.com/35xy9m

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read "Good to Great", it's an awesome book for mature companies, but not really relevant for startups. Though never mentioned, I can sort of see Google fitting the profile of an up-and-coming "great company" according to the author's definition (one that will beat the market over the long term).

<comment><AUTHOR> The prequel "Built to Last", however, is great for startups. He studied "visionary companies" in that one (including HP, IBM, Merck, 3M, etc.), and includes a lot about *how* a visionary company starts. I heard echoes of Built to Last in Woz's presentation at the startup school, so it's not just old- economy companies that it applies to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've heard that story before, but never thought about how it could be applied to startups. Interesting.</comment>


Facebook is impersonating users without their consent - <AUTHOR> http://bureauofminds.com/post/41028512430/facebook-is-impersonating-people-without-their

<comment><USER2> This article is disingenuous. Facebook is putting related sponsored content next to a 'like' in the feed and it is labeled as such. The complaint here boils down to that an unsophisticated viewer might think that sponsored content was what was originally liked when it was actually not. They say this is "impersonating a user". That seems way over the top.

<comment><USER3> You're facts are correct and this isn't officially "impersonating a user." However, there is a very fine line that Facebook is crossing.

Specifically, these sponsored posts are displayed in a way that causes confusion to the viewing user and, I am confident, this confusion is intentional on Facebook's part. As an apt web user with quite a bit of experience with Facebook and the web in general, I still get confused by these posts. I tend to assume they are posted by the friends that "liked" the brand and only in clearly questionable cases, such as when the post is about a bank, do I look close enough to realise it is sponsored content.

Intentionally causing confusion like this is shady, even if legal, and this "feature" of Facebook warrants as much attention as it is getting.

Ironically, this article is applying the same style of subtle confusion that it attacks (claiming that Facebook impersonates users when the author knows that's not technically accurate). But I must commend this article for providing the information in a simplified, easy-to-comprehend manner that is accessible by the average Facebook user. In fact, I may go share it right now...

<comment><USER4> > I am confident, this confusion is intentional on Facebook's part.

How can you be so confident about someone's _intent_?

I disagree with your assessment but didn't downvote your comment because I want to understand.

<comment><USER5> He can feel confident because Facebook has a history of misleading users or oversharing data and this isn't a court room, rather the internet, and there is little consequence if he's wrong.

I'm not 100% confident that Facebook's intention was to mislead but the simple fact that these posts aren't being shown to the user(s) that they are being linked to is pretty damning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By now, everyone should know that anything you post or do, at all, on Facebook is probably going to become public at some point. That is how Facebook makes its money. If you value your privacy then simply don't use Facebook. I stopped about 2 years ago and quite frankly I haven't missed it for a moment.

If you do want to use Facebook then accept that your data is not your own, no matter what they say and quit complaining about it.

<comment><USER7> You and I may know that, as may the rest of the HN community, but it shouldn't stop us from trying to protect our friends and family who use Facebook unawares to these practices.

I know I don't want my mother thinking I liked a post about "2 Girls 1 Cup" – and my recourse shouldn't be to completely delete my Facebook account.

<comment> grey-area Given Facebook's behaviour and CEO, your recourse _should_ be to completely delete your account. Facebook will not change their deceptive and manipulative behaviour because they need to do these things to make money, in fact they need to do a lot more of this sort of thing to justify their current stock price. If you stay on FB your likes, comments, images from your life, and your name will be used to endorse third party advertising without your explicit consent, and sometimes that's going to be products you don't agree with, particularly if you 'like' a magazine or similar which has many advertisers. The FB terms allow this, and they have shown what they think of user privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is nothing new. Any facebook user has likely seen tons of these on their feed and so it's only somewhat logical to assume that, for your friends, you might come up in a similar fashion.

In fact, isn't this completely related? <http://mashable.com/2013/01/03/facebook-settlement-email/>. I think what the OP is referring to is exactly what Facebook calls a "Sponsored Story".

I don't think that this is Facebook "impersonating me without my consent". Perhaps it is Facebook "using me to advertise products without my consent". Either way, if I like "Spotify" on Facebook and then some of their posts come up on my friends' feeds because "So and So likes Spotify" then I understand that it is a form of advertising and I'm not going to throw a fit over it.

It's wrong if Facebook says that I like something which I don't. However, that isn't what they're doing at all.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the OP is specifically referring to "Sponsored Stories" – the concern and alarm is raised because the user has no way of knowing what stories are being attached to their name, or even that its happening at all.

As for your later point, your assumption that all users know these posts are advertisement and that users understand their friend didn't really like a post about 2 Girls 1 Cup – is patently false based on OP's own personal experience. His mother saw a Sponsored Story by VICE about "Penis Waffles" that had his name attached to it. When she saw the post, it looked to her as if he had liked the story/post and urged him to take it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No, it just says that you "like" something. The tense works both in the past and present. Facebook never says that you liked something that you did not.

<comment><USER10> This article is rather low on substance, but it links to [0], which has been here before (can't find any discussion, though), and claimed exactly the opposite, namely that Facebook said you liked something you never liked.

[0] [http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people- liking-s...](http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-stuff- on-facebook)

<comment><USER11> Maybe the guy despised corporate bullshit, but entered a Discover-sponsored sweepstakes or something similar that had a like requirement.

Or, he had to like Discover's page to be able to post comments there bashing their corporate bullshit.

There are a number of explanations, and deeming Facebook to be faking likes based on "I don't think my dead friend would've liked this page" is a little tenuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a Facebook hater but I don't have the time to keep up with all of their questionable tactics so I recently unliked everything and removed my profile and cover photos which I know understand are public. I also removed everything from my profile descriptions. Gaining my trust they are not.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hate when people say things like "without users consent" as if those users didn't accept the TOS which I'm sure gives Facebook the ability to repost your likes.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. And they clearly say in there that ToS are subject to change so only an idiot wouldn't re-review them weekly. I make it a habit as part of my routine.

<comment><USER15> Well it's a shitty routine to have. Not being able to assume good faith is what's destroying trust in the services we use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What facebook is doing here is similar to back when the bigger search engines got in hot water for mixing ads into search results in various shady ways (recall Paid Inclusion programs about 10 years ago, see <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/07/64092> ). It did not benefit the user and generally created confusion and a poor user experience, driving many users to try Google for the first time (Google never had Paid Inclusion that I can recall).

</comment><comment><USER17> It's true that Facebook doesn't post anything that you haven't previously liked, however, I believe, in many cases people do think that somebody have explicitly liked that particular sponsored post rather than the page behind it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wait, did this guy really just expose dozens of his friends' private newsfeed posts to the public while criticizing Facebook?!

</comment><comment><USER19> This has been happening for quite sometime. I believe those pages are sponsoring these advertisements, and essentially are showing that your friends had previously liked them.

Nothing new.

<comment><USER7> You've unfortunately missed the point. The "Johnny Wonny" user never 'liked' the article/post about 2 Girls 1 Cup. He merely like the VICE page. Facebook is now deciding to show the post to all his friends with his name attached, without any mention to Johnny in any form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How can anyone defend this behavior by Facebook? They purposely don't show the advertisement it to the person they are impersonating. And yes, they are impersonating me if they post something on my behalf merely because I liked something.

</comment><comment><USER21> When you're logged into Jonny Wonny and you're scrolling down your News Feed, how come a post from VICE is there (3:19 & 3:16)? You had to like VICE in order for it to appear in News Feed. So your whole argument is false.

A friend could have liked a brand years ago and it could just be showing in your News Feed now, it doesn't have to show based on when they liked it.

<comment><USER7> The point the OP is trying to make is not the liking of VICE – the "Johnny Wonny" account legitimately liked VICE, but did not like the POST that VICE chose to "sponsor" and show to other users as if he had liked it. It becomes disingenuous when Facebook doesn't inform the user that they are posting a specific article/post on the users behalf, to all his friends.

<comment><USER21> It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that the person liked just the brand, and that the brand is just advertising a post below the like. I would think it would say "Johnny Wonny liked VICE's post" if the user liked the post.

<comment><USER7> Correct, but this isn't obvious to everyone. This UI design seems purposefully chosen by Facebook to look as if the user has liked the post as well as the brand page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> hn-miw-i If anyone is reading this, and they use facebook, get the hell off there. Delete your account today. They will always take take take. The most egregious of these kind of rights violations 4 years ago is today's standard practice. They will only get worse and drag the rest of the web down to their new lows. "Do be evil" is the motto of Zuckbergs ilk.

</comment><comment><USER22> See my reaction to Condon's story here: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/faceboo...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/facebook- is-recycling-your-likes-to-promote-stories-youve-never-seen-to-all-your- friends) As he suggests, "The only way to prevent re-posted content is to unlike everything." And as Facebook continues to abuse the Like function, or to allow (or at least be unable to prevent) third-parties from abusing it, many users may find themselves doing just that, or ditching Facebook altogether.

</comment><comment><USER23> I had some issue just reading the text on the page after clicking the video. Once the video had opened for me the scrollbar on the site disappeared. It reappeared on reloading the page but incredibly annoying and confusing behavior.

Nothing to really say about the video etc.

Relevant C&H comic: <http://www.explosm.net/comics/2398/>

</comment><comment><USER24> I like how Google+ makes +1-ing and sharing that you +1'd something two separate operations. Sometimes you want people that have already found the content to discover that you liked it too, and sometimes you want to share something you like with your friends. It's nice that _I_ get to decide.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would say 'liking' a page is consent to have 'Friend likes this page' appear in your friends' news feeds. It doesn't state that they liked that particular post.

Annoying or not, I always thought it was reasonably clear that the post was coming from the page, not from the friend.

</comment><comment><USER26> How is this even a problem, when you can turn it off? It's under the following link: [https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&section=social...](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&section=social&view)

</comment><comment><USER27> I posted this as a reply to jxi below, but you can easily opt out of this in your facebook settings (though its a bit shady imo that this behavior is enabled by default)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this a form of spoofing? If so isn't this a crime according to Carmen Ortiz.

</comment><comment><USER29> What's wrong with the page? It wouldn't scroll.

<comment><USER30> It's a clone of the ever-so-intuitive Mac OS interface. That's why it took me a while to figure out how to scroll, too, and why it looks kinda bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The question is: can I opt out of this, or am I obliged to deal with this as long as I'm a Facebook user. I personally find this is pretty bad. I don't want my friends seeing my past likes from several years ago and seeing me endorse something stupid that I liked before (on the front page). Do I need to go through my likes and curate it all the time? It's different if it's just on my profile because having it in the news feed suggests that I liked this thing recently.

I think I'm seriously 1 step closer to just closing my Facebook account. Also, look at all those nasty ads on the right side. I use ad blocker so I don't see any of those, but looking at his video, that is definitely noisy.

<comment><USER27> Yes - you can opt out of this - to do so, go to your settings, then click on 'ads' in the sidebar on the left and select 'edit' on the ads & friends section - there you can set "Pair my social actions with ads for" to "no one".

<comment><USER32> Are you sure that's what that's for? When I go to that setting (which I'd already set to "no one" in an earlier privacy audit), the example it shows of what it controls is very different from the "related post" issue that's being complained about here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> GUYS! We thought up a new way of how to describe why Facebook is bad, we'll make it seem like this hasn't been happening since "Likes" came into existence and watch people revolt!

If you're butthurt about your privacy and think big brother is spying on you, don't fucking use Facebook.

<comment><USER33> Also, why does this have 96 upvotes? Shame on you HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not sure if this article is about this, it doesn't sound like it, but a lot of web apps provide their development team with the ability to impersonate users as it's a great way to debug issues a user may be seeing.

<comment><USER35> It is not about this.</comment></comment>


Akerlof and Schiller on the limits of markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/29/this-kardashian-headline-shows-why-two-nobel-winners-say-the-economy-is-broken/?tid=sm_fb <comment><USER2> Good HN discussion of a review of the book: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330280)

</comment><comment><USER3> "I did a Google N-grams search [how often a word appears in books] for wantability. The term enjoyed some popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, then exponentially decayed. After the Reagan-Thatcher revolution the term was gone."

Sorry to steer off topic, but how much can we trust google N-gram researches? Are they accepted in scientific papers? Just a curiosity of mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here you have a discussion:

[http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/2469/should-...](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/2469/should- we-allow-google-ngrams-to-be-presented-as-statistical-evidence-without-qu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The way they introduce the positions of Akerlof and Schiller seems to indicate that markets are not irrational, but insufficiently informed.

<comment><USER5> We are not rational agents but agents of bounded, imperfect rationality. Even if all the information is out there, our bounded natures invite the ideas in this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shiller, not Schiller.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really click-baity title from the Post, which ironically enough, seems to be the point the article is trying to argue. It's mostly about the morality of free markets and it's strengths/weaknesses.

<comment><USER8> Yes, beyond lame. Changed.

But an interesting article.</comment></comment>