Why Yahoo Couldn't Adapt to the Smartphone Era - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-yahoo-couldnt-adapt-to-the-iphone-era <comment><USER3> The reason why Yahoo! has failed so far with their mobile apps is very simple - they try to force users to login. For example the new (supposedly awesome) Flickr app [http://i.imgur.com/i6mjzHZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/i6mjzHZ.jpg) or Tumblr [http://i.imgur.com/QpbDE4r.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QpbDE4r.jpg) \- there's no way to "dip your toe in" without creating a login.

Luke Wroblewski nailed this long ago - "Mobile Signup Forms must Die" [http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1678](http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1678) \- it's not rocket science but if you allow your old school web thinking to define your app UX, you will fail. If you have any clue about mobile audiences you use gradual engagement to allow them to get on board incrementally.

The average mobile user probably has about 30 seconds to give you until the next push notification from WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter or whatever distracts them and their gone. If you waste that time on forcing them through a signup process, don't expect to see uptake.

And failing by login isn't a new thing for Yahoo! For many happy Flickr users (myself included) they killed it for us by forcing Yahoo login onto the site. From [http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and- lost-...](http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the- internet)

> Yahoo's RegID solution turned out to be a nightmare for the existing > community. You could no longer use your existing Flickr login to get to your > photos, you had to use a Yahoo one. If you did not already have a Yahoo > account, you had to create one. And you did not even log in on Flickr's home > page, upon arriving, you were immediately kicked over to a Yahoo login > screen.

...but that's another story. I'm still bitter

<comment><USER4> What social mobile apps _don 't_ require you to login? Twitter does, Facebook does, Google+ does, I can't name a single one that doesn't.

<comment><USER5> I think the point is that you should be allowed to browse without a login. Then, when you want to use any of the social features, you will be asked to create an account.

I've looked at photos on Flickr without having an account on the web, why not with a mobile app too?

<comment><USER6> That's fine, but the claim that "The reason why Yahoo! has failed so far with their mobile apps is very simple - they try to force users to login" doesn't hold up when the most popular app in the world forces uses to log in.

<comment><USER3> > the claim [...] doesn't hold up when the most popular app in the world > forces uses to log in.

Strongly disagree. Facebook (which I assume is what you mean by "the most popular app") was and still is _the_ social network. It's success on mobile has been driven by massive network effects. As such they can force users to jump through hoops which are in Facebook's favour because users want in so badly. That said Facebook doesn't get a free pass on device permissions, which is why they use gradual engagement in Messenger like this: [http://installclub.tumblr.com/post/82319976281/double-opt- in...](http://installclub.tumblr.com/post/82319976281/double-opt-in-to- permissions)

But if you want to attack the leader, or simply grow your mobile user base, you don't get the same luxury or network effects Facebook has. Yahoo! doesn't have anything users want _so_ bad that they'll jump through hoops to get it.

But anyway - another a great example of an app "doing it right" is Airbnb - they let you browse properties without logging in - <USER2> [http://firsttimeux.tumblr.com/post/83588089909/airbnb-ios- ap...](http://firsttimeux.tumblr.com/post/83588089909/airbnb-ios-app-first- time-user-experience-the) for details - this gives people a chance to see what they're getting before going through the pain of signup. This is the model Yahoo! should follow as their apps, like Airbnb, are primarily about the content not the social element

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting how fast the narrative shifted, about one year ago i was reading a long in depth article here on HN on how Marissa Mayer was out to transform Yahoo into a company fit for 2015 and how she was succeeding. Fast forward 1 year later and the articles are mainly about how Yahoo is failing.

What does this tell me? I don't know really, is it hard to transform a company like Yahoo? Probably. Is the media surrounding tech and startup culture way to fast to draw conclusions, for sure.

<comment><USER8> If I remember correctly, a lot of comments on those articles were claiming that those changes wouldn't fix the sinking ship and that it seemed like they were flailing actions with no thought really put into it.

<comment><USER7> Actually you are right. I remeber this also, people seem to have catched on. Although my question is probably more aimed against the media endlessly throwing articles of this cycle out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with Yahoo in my opinion is that is the tail being wagged by the dog (baba), and that Marissa Mayer's hobby is to set cash on fire. Once BABA is separated, and Mayer is 'remixed, a creative CEO may very well be able to turn it around.In my opinion the business is ripe to follow a Berkshire model of using cash flow from the dying business (search engine) to buy a few free cash generating, growing businesses.

<comment><USER10> In my opinion, they need to focus. Cut a bunch of stuff, find a niche they can dominate, and rebuild. Either be a bad-ass server platform, amazing social app, or perhaps apply themselves towards a select group of people (aging seniors or something)-- whatever they think they can do-- but _focus_. It will be painful. But it's their best path forward I think.

<comment><USER9> Makes sense, but the problem is, those niches described are filled by entrenched competitors, or don't really justify the market cap. I feel the best for the company is juicing rev, earnings, and FCF, and they can't do that by trying to get a foothold in saturated markets as the cost is too huge or ramp up time too long.

I am also not proposing they take a VC approach like they have where they pay huge multiples hoping to somehow have the success at selecting winners like yc. I am proposing they buy companies that are generating growing free cash flow at sub 25x levels.

<comment><USER10> My niches were not meant to be a knowledgeable insight, just examples. And you have a good point about buying cash-generating companies (companies that are winning the niche battles). But they really need to focus- and only buy companies that are in that focus. If they are a media company then they are competing with Condé Nast, Youtube, and bloggers everywhere. But if they are, for example, an educational media company, then the scope is clearer and they can muster some leverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yahoo had brilliant mobile talent 2004-2008 - smart engineering and product talent that I remember meeting and they knew what was going on. But Yahoo management from 2007-2011 was terrible - ad execs overpaid with little clue about the tech world or what was happening outside their high castle. The second problem from which Yahoo never recovered was going HTML5. FB went HTML5 and the mobile product was a disaster. But FB quickly recognised that and went native - Yahoo took too long to fix issues like that. And the article is of course spot on about Tumblr - when they needed messaging they bought a blog platform.

<comment><USER12> Could you point me to some material about the problems Yahoo and FB had with HTML5 on mobile? I'm currently in this space and would rather avoid this fate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really want to know why Yahoo did not turn Flickr into the premier website for social media pictures? I think that will tell the whole Yahoo / Smartphone Era story.

<comment><USER14> This article details some of the issues we encountered with Yahoo. [http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and- lost-...](http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the- internet)

I would add though, that Flickr Mobile (which I worked on a little) was considered one of the best mobile websites ever made. However, because a certain executive had managed to get control of all of Yahoo's mobile experiences, we weren't allowed to innovate with mobile too much.

When a native Flickr app was finally released, I was no longer at Flickr. But I heard that it had been developed by a different team at Yahoo, and was a complete surprise to Flickr upon launch. The new app hit the "random" API so hard for their login screen, to the Flickr staff, it looked like a DDOS.

But I think we all missed on the opportunity mobile offered because we were trying to shrink Flickr into a mobile site. Flickr was designed for serendipity and rich experiences. If you were a creative person, looking to participate in a planetary social-cultural conversation, it was incredible.

Meanwhile, Facebook made photos into an accessory for the average person's social life. For creative people and dabblers, Instagram offered the best mobile experience; it worked with the constraints of the platform and even turned those into features.

Something of this dichotomy is still playing out with Twitter and Facebook taking opposite poles. Although it looks like Twitter has finally given up and decided that it's a Kardashian photo delivery system or something.

<comment><USER13> I think that pretty much sums up why Yahoo went to hell and cannot adapt. My sympathies on having to deal with that. I wonder how many business have gone under because of need to "scale and act professionally"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the fundamental issue is culture. They were always organized like a media company, not a tech company. Marissa tried few different tricks like new logo, better UX, yahoo weather app, hired news show hosts, but none of them worked. In the end, they ran out of time proving you can't acquire your way or pivot your way to success.

</comment><comment><USER16> the article proves the author has zero knowledge and is just dozing on the subject when it doesn't contest that yahoo having no mobile effort was not bad product managers/execs decision, but instead goes on agreeing with the point- haired boss idea that it lacked mobile engineers. as of some engineers were born to work exclusively on mobile.

what a load of bs.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Mayer has done a fantastic job in improving the reputation of yahoo. I still have a yahoo mail (that I give when I am affraid of spam). Since she is CEO, the experience has improved a lot. The yahoo news are not too bad, ...

Transforming reputation in good money takes a lot of time. IMHO, the investors should give trust and time to Mayer before expected results. If they fire Mayer, yahoo will be dead and they will lose everything. For me, the main handicap of yahoo is their cupid investors.

<comment><USER18> If they fire Mayer, Yahoo will probably be sold and they'll get something back before the value tanks.

Mayer doesn't need more time. She's a competent middle manager and an excellent researcher promoted beyond the scope of her talents, and she made the classic mistake of misunderstanding the difference between a popular platform and a range of products that users really want.

Now she's out of time and out of ideas.

<comment><USER19> Another view is that Yahoo! began facing stiff competition from a few of the greatest minds in the world before she was brought on and playing catchup is nearly impossible unless missteps are made by those in the market lead.

It's possible that the situation at Yahoo has been too tough to remedy for years and no matter how competent she was she couldn't turn it around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why Microsoft Couldn't Adapt Internet/Smartphone Era?

</comment><comment><USER21> >its engineers were using HTML5, a programming language that ...

<comment><USER22> HTML + CSS is Turing complete

<comment><USER23> Magic the Gathering is Turing complete. That doesn't mean you should refer to it as a programming language.

<comment><USER24> Any link on how Magic the Gathering is Turing complete? The only thing I could find is how to represent a Turing machine with Magic cards.

<comment><USER25> [http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html](http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html)

<comment><USER26> That's not a valid game state. It's like saying chess is Touring complete when played on an infinite board.

<comment><USER27> By this argument, x84_64 assembly isn't Turing complete because it needs finite memory...

Which is technically correct, just not very useful.

<comment><USER28> My Philosophy of Computer Science professor argued that you could prove anything was Turing complete, by suitably "gerrymandering the inputs" of your definition.

What that actually means, I'm not sure. I know how gerrymandered congress is, and they couldn't possibly get enough work done to be Turing complete.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the most accessible, developer-friendly web app tech stack? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> When I got started I found Ruby and Sinatra quite easy to get my head around then added Sass and jQuery. DB wise I prefer plain SQL to ORM. AWS does everything really well and deploying to Elastic Beanstalk is a piece of cake.</comment>


The Heroin Business Is Booming in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-11/the-heroin-business-is-booming-in-america <comment><USER2> Anyone else notice that a common theme in the recent wave of handwringing over heroin and opioid addiction is that the victims we're asked to consider with compassion and understanding are almost always white? The tough on crime drug war rhetoric disappears so easily when the victims are "regular people" who fell prey to the pharma industry, not "junkies".

I'm not saying that we shouldn't treat these people with compassion -- exactly the opposite. The LA Times series in particular is a fantastic piece of reporting. Rather, I'm saying we should consider why the portrayal of this particular drug epidemic is so different than others, and how we can extend the same compassion to others who have also had their lives and families destroyed by drugs. We hear about these people because they're white. Meanwhile, what's happening to the people we don't hear about?

<comment><USER3> I agree with your point 100% BUT there is one point to be made. Prosecute the Pharm Execs, Doctors who broke the law.

There is a smoking gun! Look at West Virginia and the pills that were prescribed. I am talking about 780,000,000 pain meds. In a state of 1.84 million residents, the shipments amount to 433 pain pills for every man, woman and child in West Virginia.

The death toll for this 5 year time between 2007-2012 is 1,728 West Virginians died from overdoses of hydrocodone and oxycodone.

[http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Drug-Wholesalers- Shi...](http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Drug-Wholesalers- Shipped-780M-Pain-Pills-to-West-Virginia-407331135.html)

So you are 100% right about public perception. I live in a large city in PA and my In-laws come to visit from W.Va and I always tell them I see more people high in W.Va then in my Center City neighborhood and they always roll their eyes like I am crazy.

<comment><USER4> It is not going to happen, because they have politicians in their pockets and nobody will investigate that.

<comment><USER3> I sadly also agree with you 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is probably pop psychology but it always struck me that if you legalize marijuana you go a long way to solving the problem. My thoughts are...

1\. It is reportedly a better pain killer in some cases than opioids so it keeps people off of the prescription opioids

2\. It is nowhere near as addictive (possibly not addictive at all)

3\. When people are already criminals (because they smoke weed) I think they are more likely to say "screw it" and try a harder drug. In the vein of, "I'm already doing something I can go to jail for, what's one more thing?" Legalizing keeps people out of the criminal class (increases barrier of entry to it)

I'm actually for legalizing all drugs like several other posters but I don't think society is ready for that.

I got in a argument with a close relative (a retired police officer) and another close relative (a doctor) about this on Easter. There arguments were entirely based on emotion and lot so logical fallacies. And understandably, they have both seen the darkest sides of what drugs can do. But criminalizing doesn't help those people.

<comment><USER6> > if you legalize marijuana you go a long way to solving the problem

Well, Colorado tried that. Recreational weed has been fully legal in Colorado since January 1, 2014. You can walk down any major street in Denver or Boulder and pass multiple outlets selling marijuana. And they've sold lots of it, according to the tax receipts raised.

The result has not been the sudden reversal of opioid addiction that you had hoped for.

In 2015, opioid overdoses in Colorado continued to increase at the same rate as prior to legalization of marijuana. That year, opioid overdoses killed more Coloradans than homicide. [0]

In 2016, the total number of opioid deaths dropped 6%, but the number of heroin overdoses continued to increase. [1]

Personal experience in Portland Oregon suggests that in that city, legal marijuana has not made a dent in the meth and heroin issues that are still affecting the city.

Maybe recreational marijuana laws have helped. Nothing in this data can disprove that maybe more people would have died without it. But it hasn't been a magic bullet. It hasn't yet gone "a long way to" solving the problem of heroin overuse.

[FWIW, I'm in favor of recreational marijuana legalization, but the problems of heroin have different roots and we can't expect legal marijuana to immediately solve those issues.]

[0] [http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/03/colorado-opioid- heroin-...](http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/03/colorado-opioid-heroin- deaths-outnumbered-homicides/)

[1] [http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/07/colorado-opioid- heroin-...](http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/07/colorado-opioid-heroin- deaths/)

<comment><USER5> > The result has not been the sudden reversal of opioid addiction that you had > hoped for.

I didn't say "sudden". I think it would take time.

Addiction doesn't happen overnight. I am open minded and I am not going to ignore research if the research doesn't support my view. But my hunch is, it is too soon or too much damage has already been done and we need to take other steps to reduce usage not just legalization.

Incidentally I thought I saw some research that showed the opposite effect but I can't find the link right now... I'll take a look for it later and see if I can find it.

<comment><USER3> When ANYTHING is used to escape from emotional pain be it heroin, pot or food it is wrong and causes problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The drug war has failed. Legalize all drugs and tax them. Spend the tax money on rehab, schools, and public universities. We are just propping up drug lords in Latin America to feed our insatiable demand for drugs.

<comment><USER8> How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

<comment><USER9> Legalization doesn't fix addiction. It fixes the sub-culture, the underground, the dark layers in society where addicts lurk in order to be able to continue their addiction.

Legalization brings these people into society, by removing the stigma associated with drug use, and makes it less of a problem to be swept under the rug. It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Right now, there is a huge wall between addicts and treatment: that wall is an entirely fictitious legal construct.

<comment><USER10> > It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment > programs.

Who do you expect will fund these treatment programs? I seriously doubt most addicts are equipped to pay for it.

You're talking about a country where a major political party actively works to remove funds from women's healthcare. [0]

I fully agree that these substances should be legalised for the reasons you mentioned, but I think it's laughable to think present-day politicians give a shit about these people. If anything, they'd probably face substantial lobby from police unions concerned legalisation would lead to job cuts.

[0] [http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149.html)

<comment><USER11> You know who cares about these addicts, their families, who are the voting constituents of these politicians. The heroin epidemic is the worst in many traditionally republican states. I think you may find there is more bipartisan support for fixing the heroin problem than there is consensus around hot button topics like abortion.

<comment><USER10> > You know who cares about these addicts, their families, who are the voting > constituents of these politicians.

You're making the assumption that their families have the resources to pay for their treatment. Nearly half of Americans are one pay cheque away from not being able to make ends meet. [0] [1] [2]

Here's a poverty map of America: [http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/05/poverty- map/](http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/05/poverty-map/)

[0] [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-americans-are- despe...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-americans-are-desperately- living-paycheck-to-paycheck-2017-04-04)

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of- savings...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings/)

[2] [http://nypost.com/2016/09/27/why-even-half-the-middle- class-...](http://nypost.com/2016/09/27/why-even-half-the-middle-class-is- living-paycheck-to-paycheck/)

<comment><USER11> I am suggesting people will put political pressure on the government to help pay for treatment as part of the solution. As others here have suggested that if drugs were legalized the tax revenue could fund things like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Russ Roberts' Econtalk podcast had a stunningly good interview with Sam Quinones about the opioid epidemic.

I am fairly libertarian on many things, but this is not a simple case of prohibition run amok. Heroin/opioid addiction is close to a loss of free will, aided by screw ups from big pharma and Government healthcare policies.

Really fascinating, sad, and difficult stuff.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/01/sam_quinones_on.html)

<comment><USER13> I think it's rather generous of you to call them "screw ups" from big pharma.

<comment><USER12> The interview goes into the history of pharma's search for a non-addictive opiate. I assume that started with decent motives, even if not altruistic. The research critically failed a lot of people. Among other things, says Quinones's, it "transformed football into a gateway to heroin addiction..."

The more recent big pharma position of "we never thought to ask why West Virginians are such good customers" deserves scorn, lawsuits, and prison time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I'm crazy but I feel like the US goes on this uppers/downers cycle. Of course I'm probably seeing patterns where there are none, but we had heroin in the seventies, cocaine/crack in the eighties, heroin was back in the 90s, meth in the 00s, heroin in the teens.

<comment><USER15> I'm just pulling ideas out of thin air but I wonder if it connected with how good the economy is doing for the people buying drugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cincinnati was my home town, and its bad. People joke about it but I know at least 3 people on my friendslist that overdosed.

I'm glad the punishment for selling the drug is so high, often even sometimes receiving murder sentences for people that overdose but that isn't going to prevent people from buying / selling

<comment><USER17> One of my good friends was rear ended by someone on heroin this week. Cincinnati police didn't even bother stopping to do a police report. Less than 20 minutes later, he hit a parked car in St. Bernard and was arrested for DUI, Driving under suspension, and no insurance. The guy has a felony charge pending (and an arrest warrant out for him)...and CPD just drove off without even taking a second look.

I don't want to say that CPD has taken a blind eye to it, but, it seems that way.

<comment><USER18> CPD has been like this for as long as I can remember. I'm not sure if Cincinnati is a shit-hole because the police don't care, or the police don't care because the city is a shit-hole. I imagine it's a little bit of both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Millions of Americans got hooked on pain pills during a prescription binge that started in the 1990s and peaked around 2011. As states have tightened monitoring and doctors have reduced dosages, it's become harder for addicts to get prescription painkillers, driving many to get their fix off street drugs.

I feel like the legalization of Marijuana years ago could have saved a lot of folks while helping them manage their pain. The Government found it easier to prosecute and jail people who struggled with chronic pain and mental illness than try to help. Now we have folks at the federal level who have never experienced an enlightened moment in their lives or have a shred of empathy for the sick. All they understand is how to help their friends in the Prison Industry, Law Enforcement and Pharma Industry.

Sad....

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not convinced that straight legalization of everything is the answer. It's clear however that what we're doing now isn't working. Unfortunately to those in favour of it it doesn't need to work. It's just a tool to be "tough on crime" and take a moral probably religious stance for the benefits of donors and constituents.

None of this will really change until those in favour of dismantling what is mostly the mass incarceration of African Americans are willing to exercise sufficient political force to get people elected.

But whatever the case, there are some clear problems that need to be fixed:

1\. End this regime of stigmatizing felons. Stripping them of the right to vote, the scarlet letter "are you a felon?" question on job applications and so on. At some point, having served their time, the stigma should be gone.

2\. End mandatory drug sentencing.

3\. National legalization of recreational cannabis use. The arguments against cannabis are pretty thin. The war on marijuana that began in the 1970s made marijuana harder to get and more expensive such that when crack cocaine came along it and heroin were both more readily accessible and cheaper, which is crazy.

4\. Decriminalize drug possession and start treating it as a medical rather than legal problem.

5\. This is tricky but tackle the over-prescription of opiates in the US. This can easily go wrong as some people really do need opiates. It's clear that overall they're over-prescribed however. A lot of people addicted to prescription drugs or heroin began with a legal prescription.

6\. Raise the bar required for drug trafficking charges. It's ridiculous how low the requirement can be in some jurisdictions. For example, possession of more than 6 grams of pills in Florida IIRC allows a charge of possession with the intent to distribute. That's approximately 60 pills and the actual dosage doesn't matter (60 5mg Oxy pills are treated the same as 60 80mg Oxy pills). This is particularly hypocritical as Florida has essentially legalized the dealing in opiates through loosely-regulated "pain clinics".

7\. This is also difficult but we need to end the plea bargain culture, which usually means overcharging by prosecutors to extract a plea. Judging prosecutors based on conviction rate seems to be at the heart of this problem.

I honestly wonder how many hard drug addicts could be avoided by simply having ready access to cannabis.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a tough problem with no easy answer. Ive 2 friends with heroin problems that I fear may never fully stay clean. I don't think that jail is the right answer though.

<comment><USER22> If jail was structured around rehabilitation of the roots causes that led the individuals into the anti-social behavior that requires their isolation then it would be the proper place for someone who has been overcome by problems like this. Instead jail is punitive hell, meant to further isolate and devastate the individuals it consumes to intimidate the rest of the population.

<comment><USER23> And it's punitive forever. Your employment prospects once you have a felony conviction are severely limited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Legalize and tax/regulate production, purity, etc. Outlaw all marketing.

Invest all profits in the following:

1) Ensuring all children have an attuned attachment figure / parents have free (or even incentivized) training to learn how to attune emotionally.

2) Psychedelic therapy centers to help heal the underlying addiction along with support and integration.

3) Community gardens / organic food production & affordable housing.

<comment><USER25> > Legalize and tax/regulate production, purity, etc. Outlaw all marketing.

Why outlaw marketing? If all drugs are legal and regulated, there should be no issue with advertising them like any other legal and regulated product. The US already allows advertising for pharmaceuticals, it should allow advertising for every other drug.

And why should drug companies have to invest their profits in the programs you describe? No one forces beer companies to invest all of their profits in Alcoholics Anonymous, or MacDonalds to invest in weight loss programs.

Your comment implies that you believe certain drugs would present a societal harm if legalized, and that extraordinary efforts should be taken to mitigate that damage. But if so, why legalize them to begin with?

<comment><USER26> I firmly believe alcohol marketing is a major contributor toward alcohol continuing to be one of the most destructive drugs in our society. It's glamorized in a a savvy and well-funded way that puts an incessant haze in our understanding of it as a a powerful, poisonous, and potentially debilitating substance.

You can find billboards that make bottles of liquor look like royal treasure passed down from the gods. It's ultimately poison in a bottle. This kind of glorification of it hurts people who don't have the ability to enjoy it without consequence (i.e. millions of people in the U.S.).

<comment> rm_-rf_slash On one hand, who can forget this wonderful slice from South Park: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVLB3MtUjo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVLB3MtUjo)

On the other, alcohol use is highly cultural. In Italy, everybody drinks. A glass of wine or two with lunch and dinner is totally normal. Yet I never have seen a sauced Italian.

Compare it to the Brits, who drink like fish. In fact, the ancient Romans repeatedly tried and failed to replace the local binge drinking culture with their own casual Mediterranean cafe culture.

The reason Americans drink too much is simply because American culture values getting sauced. Even responsible adults remember their adolescent years with some fondness and so there isn't much of a cultural impetus to stop drinking or to drink less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I generally hear people saying two things:

1\. "The gov't isn't/wasn't able to competently police big pharma, so addiction will only get worse if we legalize drugs."

2\. "The gov't is policing citizens too much, so addicts' lives will get ruined if we don't legalize drugs."

I'd like everyone to consider the very real possibility that we'll need to fix _both_ problems before we reach a good place.

<comment><USER27> Or you should realize both problems cannot be fixed and we need to choose the option that will do the least harm. Reducing the abusive police state and treating increased numbers of abusers is likely a much better problem than the one we are currently experiencing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think a lot of it comes down to the pharmaceutical companies. Instead of legalizing drugs and getting into some infinite loop of creating new addicts and spending the tax money to rehab & educate them, etc., we need to regulate the pharmaceutical companies. Shocking: In U.S. real estate, service providers (title companies, home inspection companies, etc.) are not allowed to give "kick-backs" to Realtors. But, we have pharmaceutical companies providing HUGE kick-backs to doctors for prescribing their patients meds they don't need.

</comment><comment><USER29> We invaded Afghanistan--the world's largest producer of poppies for heroin and opium--in 2001. Production has also been on the rise since then. An interesting correlation.

<comment><USER30> Opium production was virtually eliminated in Afghanistan before we invaded, by the Taliban, whom we thanked for doing such great work. We also granted Afghanistan $43 million to help farmers no longer profiting off poppy fields through a drought.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on- pop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a- success-us-aides-say.html)

<comment><USER29> Right. Which is exactly what I said. Production has been on the rise since 2001.

<comment><USER30> I wasn't disagreeing, I was embellishing.

<comment><USER29> Ah, I assumed the most pessimistic reading possible. Thanks for adding that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Read the "Red Cocaine" book to understand this war. It's an old book but the players didn't change.

</comment><comment><USER32> "It's one molecule away from heroin" I heard people say about oxycontein(sp?). If marijuana were legal, fewer people would be prescribed oxy, and therefore less gateways to heroin. The real gateway is the bad law of prohibition on marijuana.

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't it possible to create poison genes using CRISPR that are always dominant and will lead to a species extinction?

Why not apply this technology to completely eliminate Opioid plants?

P.S. I am sure there are many reasons why this won't work, but let's think big, okay?

<comment><USER27> Um, you're not thinking big enough, and there is a large number of failures of imagination you are experiencing.

First, opioids are actually really good when you don't abuse them. Just go break your leg and you'll see why.

Second, you are suffering from the sci-fy show "use space age technology yet still have modern problems" thing you see. If you can 'extinct' poppies, I can just as easily use CRISPR to stick those genes in anything else. _It 's not corn, it's my cash crop!_

If you have supertechnology don't fix plants, _fix people_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So is there anything stronger than carfentanil?

<comment><USER35> Not clear. I seem to remember reading of a stronger fentanyl derivative within the last month or so, but can't immediately find the reference.

If you're interested in the status of fentanyl and its derivatives, as well as the directions being explored for their pharmaceutical use, here's a well- written, chemistry-heavy article [1]. Not paywalled.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4137794/pdf/nih...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4137794/pdf/nihms591772.pdf)

<comment><USER34> Interesting that the lethal dosage for rats is 100x higher than monkeys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Maybe i'm an insensitive Mofo, but let the dumbasses OD and educate how dangerous these drugs are. Then maybe the next generation will be smarter.

<comment><USER37> Please make your point civilly and substantively or don't post.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Heroin, LSD, etc. use really doesn't affect me. I don't care if people use it, and don't want the government to waste money fighting it or whatever they do. I don't care if people manufacture it, as long as they follow all the usual regulations for dangerous chemical plants (like, don't have one in an apartment building). Anyone should be able to grow weed wherever they'd grow lettuce or whatever, no danger there. I also don't care if they sell it, as long as they collect sales tax and pay income tax, so that we can pay for welfare and healthcare and such.

Let's have a war on smoking instead. I live in New York, and people think it's perfectly acceptable to light a cigarette while walking down the sidewalk and spew their fumes all over everyone walking behind them. Let's punish that like we'd punish them for punching random people on the sidewalk. Hey, if someone hits me and they're not a trained boxer, I'll probably feel fine a few minutes later, but that cancer smoke builds up over time.

Then we can move on to exhaust-producing vehicles, and so on...

<comment><USER39> I don't recall any incidents of junkies robbing people to buy a pack of Marlboros.

<comment><USER40> Junkies wouldn't need to rob people of as many things if these drugs were cheap as dirt

<comment><USER39> They'd still rob people. Heroin is already very cheap. That's one of the drivers of people moving to it from prescription opiates.

Dropping the price further isn't going to make much difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tellybox – Simple, energy efficient kiosk display for your businesses - <AUTHOR> http://tellybox.me <comment><USER2> I can't really tell what this is, and when I click the tell me more, it only asks me to login. I _think_ it's just a raspberry pi, but maybe it includes some sort of display? Is it internet connected? Is there an app for it that I can update the display? If yes to these questions, I really like the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Need to work on explaining this better on the landing page but wanted to get something out to people as soon as possible.

Basically it's a hosted slides service designed for kiosk screens. I provide the platform and a simple image for the Raspberry Pi so for a very low cost for the hardware (which you buy yourself) you can run slides on a screen.

It's aimed for places like galleries, independent cinemas, cafes and small businesses who want to put up advertising or show times onto a screen without needing to contract out specialists.

You build slideshows and assign them to screens which you can remotely push updates to.

Edit: Just for a bit of context this project has only had about 10 hours of my time from idea to it's current state so it's still in very early days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about some information about the display? Why is your widget better than any other widget? How about a contact us? How about a way to scoop up emails to contact customers when youre ready to launch? How about efficiency info? How about ease of use info?

This site feels 100% complete graphically and 20% complete functionally

<comment><AUTHOR> > How about some information about the display?

The product here is the web application. Not the display.

> Why is your widget better than any other widget?

I'm not sure what you mean by widget.

> How about a contact us?

I'm just doing a soft-launch right now and not prepared to handle support.

> How about a way to scoop up emails to contact customers when youre ready to > launch?

It's already launched?! Just hit the get started button on the landing page.

> How about efficiency info?

Valid point. Heres a link if your looking for the information right away -> [http://raspi.tv/2015/raspberry-pi2-power-and-performance- mea...](http://raspi.tv/2015/raspberry-pi2-power-and-performance-measurement)

> How about ease of use info?

There is a bit more inside the system but I agree that I'm lacking in this available pre-signup.

> This site feels 100% complete graphically and 20% complete functionally.

Check out the inside of the system... It works. It's only had about 10hrs of development from idea to today so I hope to improve things over the coming days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there specifications for the hardware?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently only the Raspberry Pi 3 is supported. I'll look at adding support for other devices over the coming days.

<comment><USER4> I was wondering about the kiosk itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I understand your question in that case. I do mean the kiosk itself.

You might have multiple Raspberry Pis (one for each screen) and then they just connect to tellybox.me to provide them with their slides.

Changes can be pushed to the screen by editing the slides on tellybox.me and hitting the refresh button on the devices page.

<comment><USER4> I think I understand, now that the customer already needs to have kiosk hardware like screens, an enclosure, etc. and the product is software only. Right?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right. If you've got a TV and a Raspberry Pi your ready to go :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Euro English - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English <comment><USER2> And another one: functionalities. It always grates a bit when I hear this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of "features"?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, or just functionality.</comment></comment></comment>


Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2009/10/windows-7-the-review.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

<comment><USER2> _Notepad, by the way, remains crap._ (page 11)

Ah, call me sentimental, but it's good to know that some things are still kept the way they always were.

I agree with the basic statement on page one: Vista is not that bad, Win 7 is Vista take 2, rough edges smoothed off, and the drastic difference is just in perception.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I hope they never "improve" Notepad (either of them: [http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/28/563008....](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/28/563008.aspx)). I think every operating system needs a totally-bare-bones text editor. Because of that, I think Notepad does exactly what it's meant to do, and "improving" Notepad would change that.

WordPad, on the other hand... They can keep Ribboning the shit out of that for all I care.

<comment><USER4> Well, support for unix-style line ends would not hurt...

<comment><USER5> Legacy software prevents this from happening.

<comment><USER4> I would like to ask you: How? Microsoft managed to support Unicode in Notepad, starting in Windows 2000; the heuristic used when detecting character sets is fragile and has potential to break what used to work (mostly opening readmes anyway). How would support for Unix style line ending break legacy software?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see in-depth coverage of technology in this Web 2.0 world of content- free publishing. I think only Ars could pull off a 15-page review of an OS.

I'll now read this through, even though I haven't used Windows for over 4 years.

<comment><USER7> And for the reader's convenience, they make 'single page mode' click through to a subscription page.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, that's supposed to have a "Premier" badge on it so you're not totally ambushed with the subscription page. I'm not sure where it went, though. I'll go find it!

 __EDIT __

Aaaand there's some text there now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My problem with Vista has always been the lack of a compelling feature that would drive me to upgrade. If Microsoft is claiming that Vista (or 7) is a solution, I'm still left asking "To what problem?" For new hardware, I would stick with 7. It would work well on new systems with the memory to run it (even though I might not be into the new UI). But for my existing systems, I don't see a compelling reason to spend the money to make the change.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not finding myself sympathizing with the reviewer. Perhaps I value different things, but I find e.g. relentless bright white in the UI tiring for the eyes, so when the reviewer comments on e.g. battleship grey used in the Mouse control panel widget, I'm rather glad it's there - anything dimmer than glaring white is better.

Windows 7 appearance is remarkably _uncustomizable_ compared to Windows 2000 / XP in classic mode, at least with the tools provided in the OS. I normally use a light blue background for my Window area, and that was respected in 2000, XP etc. for e.g. Windows Explorer, but that's all gone now in Win 7 (and also Win Vista I believe, but I never ran it long enough to find out). As a result, any extended bout of file management leaves me with tired eyes.

The alternative is to fiddle with the monitor brightness, contrast and gamma, but that affects whole system color reproduction. I _want_ bright whites, but in their place, photos and the like, not as a default background colour.

I have many, many other annoyances with Windows 7, but they are largely niggly little things. I've made a list, and I'll write them up eventually.

<comment><USER11> You can still modify the window client area in Vista but I'm not sure about Windows 7. In any case, I look forward to your list.

<comment><USER10> You can modify the window client area colour, but relatively few applications respect it. Even Firefox running under Win7 switches to white text backgrounds in text entry areas like this very comment box; with theming disabled (and only when theming is disabled), it respects the user's choice of background colour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> article hits one of my biggest gripes with computer UI design in general: the ubiquity of the yes/no option. programs are no longer a stack of cards people. the options presented to the end user should be a list of the actions available to them (with most common at the top) with a small blurb in non-tech speak about what each option does.

<comment><USER13> I dont understand exactly what you're getting at here, could you elaborate?

Also, could you give an example when the Yes/No option doesn't work and when the added complexity of presenting several actions is justified?

<comment><USER2> It's not that Yes/No dialogs "doesn't work" at all, it's just that they don't work as well.

Yes/No options are easy to get confused over as soon as there's a negative in the question. A question like "Do you want to cancel the delete" with "Yes" and "No" options is easy to get wrong - is that"Yes, delete" or "Yes, cancel". You can work it out if you try, but there will be an avoidable percentage of errors using it.

Two buttons with "delete" and "cancel delete" on them is better.

In both cases you are "presenting several actions", they're just better labelled in the second case, so there's no added complexity to the user. To the coder, maybe, but making good UI's is what coders are paid to do.

<comment><USER14> Write verbs on buttons. It's really as simple as that, but every OS I know has a problem with doing just that. Even OS X is lacking in that respect (they try, but miss too much).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "But if you hated Vista's UI, you're going to hate Windows 7's. Worse, in fact, because 7 forces you to use the new Start menu and taskbar, with no possibility of reverting to the old behaviour."

Does this seem incredibly bull-headed to anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER16> Great review. I agree with Peter's claim about the lack of attention to detail, but Windows 7 is still, as he calls it, a "fantastic OS".

At least the Install Font dialog from Windows 3.1 is gone. :)</comment>


Best architecture for building a web service - <AUTHOR> http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-architecture-for-building-a-web-service/opinions/rest

<comment><USER2> Its a silly question but the site slant.co has an interesting concept. Sort of a Quora for long running arguments. I've been browsing some of the other questions and its interesting to see how it works.

<comment> T-R Hey - I'm the back-end engineer for Slant.

Thanks kindly! We're just getting started, so any feedback you might have would be tremendously appreciated.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Network solutions fraud - <AUTHOR> Network solutions (https://www.networksolutions.com/) recently issued an unauthorized credit card withdrawals for almost $1000, while any automatic renewal has been explicitly disabled.<p>Possible a result of being hacked or just a cynical straightforward fraud. <comment><USER2> That's quite the accusation for one of the oldest domain registrars.

They are a horrible registrar, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't claim it was either fraud or hacking. Most likely a technical error.

</comment><comment><USER3> Claim chargeback with your CC company.</comment>


Show HN: Taxipy – open-source Uber alternative - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/nkloga/taxipy-frontend <comment><USER2> Hi everyone,

I'm a project manager who wants to get hands-on experience in software development, I've finished a Bootcamp and here is my final project - taxi app (Uber/Bolt web-based clone): video demo - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49NEiPnsUKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49NEiPnsUKg) git front - [https://bitbucket.org/nkloga/taxipy- frontend](https://bitbucket.org/nkloga/taxipy-frontend) and backend [https://bitbucket.org/nkloga/taxipy- backend](https://bitbucket.org/nkloga/taxipy-backend)

I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions!

<comment><USER3> Which bootcamp did you attend?

<comment><USER2> [https://sdacademy.dev/](https://sdacademy.dev/) It is a Polish organization arranging bootcamps around Europe, relatively cheap, 2KEUR for 9 months course. I took a java course, the focus was on basic concepts, data structures, patterns, functional programming, databases and spring framework, javascript - angular part I've studied on my own</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ripple button effects for the web - <AUTHOR> http://holloway.github.io/ripple/

<comment><USER2> For reference, here's a demo of google's buttons implemented in polymer: [http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- elements/dem...](http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- elements/demo.html#paper-button)

Note that google's appear to have a soft gradient and respond to the length of time for which the button is pressed. IMO this creates a less-jarring effect.

<comment><USER3> You are right, this is a better demo in my opinion though

[http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- ripple/demo....](http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- ripple/demo.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Woof. This reminds me of 2003 for some reason...</comment>


A Fun Developer Interview Question - <AUTHOR> http://www.dangoldin.com/2011/01/08/fun-developer-interview-question/

<comment><USER2> I've done quite a bit of work with dictionaries going as far back as 8-bit machines with tight memory constraints. Bear with me here as it will get interesting.

A Bloom filter is a great data structure but probably not the best choice for this problem. It's not as memory efficient as you think.

Here's why: Think of a Bloom filter as a collection of hash values where each individual hash value is expanded by 44%. The cost of maintaining the same false positive rate of an explicit log2(n) hash is to use 1.44log2(n) bits (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter> for more detail.) So, if you want a false positive rate of 1 in 64k you could store a 16-bit hash in an array or a 23-bit hash in a Bloom filter. That's a significant tax to pay when memory is tight.

In this case it's better to keep a bit array of explicit hashes than to use a Bloom filter.

An array of hashes gives you some options to make it smaller:

1\. Sort the array by hash value and store only the differences using a delta coding scheme. The downside is you have to search the entire array (or maintain some indexes into it) to look up a single word.

2\. Break the array up into sub-arrays where each sub-array is chosen so the first N bits of the hash are the same (and discarded.) Each sub-array uses a smaller hash value and can still be binary searched.

Of course, strip prefixes and suffixes from the words so the number of hashes that must be stored is reduced.

1.5 bytes per word is easy and with some work you can approach one byte per word with a low error rate.

If you're allowed to do off-line preprocessing on the word list you can do better.

Look up the history of Doug McIlroy's Unix spell checker. He got 75,000 words to fit in about 52k (going from memory here and my copy of Bentley's "Programming Pearls" is at home.) McIlroy traded away random access and had a fairly high error rate to get that much compression. Essentially, what he did was to create a large 1-bit Bloom filter and delta-encoded the differences between set bits (similar to option #1 above.)

If you want to maintain fast random access for individual words you can do this with a Directed Acyclic Word Graph (DAWG). A simple DAWG with fixed node sizes and no stemming of any kind will get two bytes per word on English. Add variable node sizes, stemming and a few other tricks and you can have fast lookup with a near-zero error rate at a cost of about one byte per word.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great response - thanks for the info and I will definitely read up a bit more on it.

Just comes to show that there are almost always better solutions than you can think of!

<comment><USER2> > Just comes to show that there are almost > always better solutions than you > can think of!

It's true. One of the characteristics I always looked for when interviewing programmers was whether they were open to other ways of doing things or whether they fixated on the first solution that presented itself. The best programmers are always looking for a better way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems to me that this is a classic case of "guess the answer I'm looking for". The interviewer is obviously impressed with the concept of a Bloom filter, and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with Bloom filters, but that kind of thinking in an interview is dangerous. What if the interviewee disagrees with your views, and has strong arguments to use a completely different approach? Would you accept them, would you at least aknowledge them as valid, or would you stick with your solution as 'the only right way to do it'?

<comment><USER4> I agree. I can only assume that the article is an example of one possible line of solution.

Given the performance characteristics of human typing speed I would use a disc-based database. Simple to implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to mention that I do hear the disc based solution quite a bit and it's definitely a valid response given the problem description. But I would still say "let's say you don't have any disk space, how would you go about the problem?" while still acknowledging that the answer was valid.

<comment><USER5> So at all times, you continue to lead them to the answer you want by continuing to add restrictions until you get there. And if they don't understand your favorite new concept immediately, they aren't judged worthy?

This isn't good interview technique.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm being defensive now but I think that's a pretty extreme view. Every answer is part of the interview process and it's not about the final destination. The more answers that people have the bigger the conversation and the more I can understand how someone thinks which is what you want to get out of an interview.

The fact that someone does quickly grasp the concept is a plus - why do you think it's the wrong approach? I definitely adapt my approach as I do more interviews so any feedback helps.

<comment><USER6> First of all, let me say this is a significantly better question than many I've seen. However, It disturbs me when someone is interviewing me and they are looking for a particular answer and they consider everything else wrong. Even when I find more efficient answers, if it's not theirs, it's wrong.

Think about it like those little kid riddles: "A man is found dead with a noose around his neck and a puddle of water at his feet. How is it he was killed?" Put on a stool and the stool was removed? Then add the restriction "There are no stools." He was lifted with the rope? "The rope was tied to a bar on the ceiling and couldn't be raised higher." Raised in the air by some strong people and then let hang? "No one raised him from the air." You can make guesses all day long and I can make up excuses about why you're wrong until you finally guess what I wanted you to guess -- that he was standing on a block of ice.

More specific to your question: when I read it the first thing that came to mind was just to have an array of booleans and for each word in the table set H(word) to true and then when looking up a word check if H(word) is true. I don't know what bloom filters are, so I'm not saying this answer is better than them -- but after I suggest that instead of imposing some other restriction, ask me to think about what is wrong with my answer. Talk to me about the false-positives/false-negatives [or lack thereof]. Talk to me about what hash function I could use. Or about why I picked that way. Or what problems could happen if the hash function wasn't perfectly uniform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair points but I don't expect people to get to the Bloom filter on their own - I view as more of a process that both of us are driving towards. I also enjoy hearing new solutions - there's always room for discussion and I will try to dig deeper into answers if I sense something is wrong.

At the end I do like to get to the Bloom filter piece though in order to see what the response is as well as talk about something that is new to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If your interview question's success or failure is highly correlated with the person's ability to apply a fairly esoteric data structure it's probably a bad question.

The person who has never come across Bloom filters before has a huge disadvantage in your question, and the person who has seen them before has a huge advantage. I'd guess that as soon as a candidate says "Bloom filter" before you do in an interview, it's an instant "hire" for you, but this is a bad sign since you will get lots of false negatives and false positives.

False negatives will be good devs who never needed a Bloom filter (there are many) and false positives will be green devs that have read the wikipedia article on Bloom filters just before the interview out of dumb luck, or had a question where that data structure was introduced in the way you're introducing it, etc.

<comment><USER8> So you're saying this interview question is a probabilistic (with the potential for false positives) tool for detecting membership in the set of people who are equipped to understand the concept? Sounds like a Bloom Filter to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd probably just keep a hash of each of the words in the first list rather than all the actual words. Simple & easy to understand for whoever has to deal w/ the code after me.

I'm not 100% convinced that "ability to understand bloom filters after 5 minutes of explanation on them" correlates very highly with what I tend to look for when making a hire. Then again, hiring is such a crap shoot anyways. Mostly you just want to get someone talking about programming for a while and try to determine if they know their shit or not. The exact topic is close to irrelevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> You pretty much nailed it on the head there with the "get someone talking about programming" piece but I try to start with one problem and dig deeper into it rather than having many questions as if going down a checklist.

That's why you also have more than one person do the interview so you can get multiple perspectives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My personal favorite solution to this problem is to use a trie.

When asked to reduce the memory usage, you can recognize that the trie is actually a DFA and apply a DFA-minimization algorithm. There are several other interesting approaches here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie#Compressing_tries>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually pretty neat - no one has really suggested this approach yet.

I don't think that this will work as memory keeps on decreasing - is there a way to make a trie probabilistic?

<comment><USER10> Instead of being probabilistically wrong, you can save memory by removing some branches of the trie and becoming deterministically wrong.

You could remove the largest branches that correspond to the fewest words. Alternatively, you could remove the branches that correspond to the least queried words if you know something a priori about the query pattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The responses here are amazing. No wonder hiring is so broken for developers. Someone actually comes up with a good question and he's practically attacked for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's an ongoing process to come up with the question and if I can get better at interviewing it helps me as well.

I usually ask what people think of the question after the interview and the responses tend to be pretty positive (although it may be due to the fact that they are interviewing). It's a great feeling exposing a new concept to a developer though and seeing them get excited about it - those are the exact people you want to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The way I see it, you wrote an article to tell us you know about bloom filter and your interviewee doesn't.

</comment><comment> alok-g Here is a similar interesting problem that I was once posed. Not sure how common or rare is this:

You get a stream of words (using functions like getFirst(), getNext(), boolNoneRemaining(), etc.). Once you reach the end of this stream, you have to output a random word uniformly chosen from this list.

The first answer is of course to store the entire list and maintain the size of this list. The moment it finishes, you multiply the size by a random number ...

Then comes the twist. What if there isn't enough memory to hold the whole list?

The thing that stuck me first is that someone posing this problem by itself meant that there was probably a solution to this, which I could then think of and program shortly.

Now frankly, when I interview, this is usually the last question on my list. Most candidates do not reach this far. Believe it or not, some half of the applicants are not able to draw a finite state machine that could identify if given binary number is odd or even (when its input stream is bits with LSB the last...).</comment>


Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo completes 2nd powered flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/tech/innovation/branson-spaceshiptwo-test/index.html <comment><USER2> Good for them, but man it's been a long time. SS1 won the X-Prize almost exactly 9 years ago, and apparently took about 3 years to get there. I know a revenue version is going to have more details to attend to, but that's still a long time for approximately the same system.

My understanding from the "industry" is that most of the delay was in scaling the hybrid engine up. Which I can imagine, as it's the largest operational hybrid ever made--though a smallish motor as far as conventional liquid or solid rocketry goes.

I wonder if they regret pioneering in this particular area. If it works eventually (and looks like they finally got it going) it may work out okay, but they'd probably have been flying years ago with a liquid system. As is they may just barely beat XCOR (which has next to no money in comparison) into revenue flight.

Personally I don't doubt that the hybrid approach was a poor idea (if for no other reason than casting and reloading giant rubber grains seems cumbersome in comparison to re-filling with kerosene), but we'll soon have a hybrid rocketplane (SS2) and a liquid rocketplane (Lynx) flying side-by-side, so I guess we'll see. Though Virgin's money and press may tilt the playing field.

<comment><USER3> I think it comes down to safety. Supposedly the hybrid is a safer rocket motor than a conventional liquid engine. I understand their concern. They already have 600 tickets sold at $250k a piece and if on launch number 40 the rocket goes BOOM, which liquid rockets are prone to do, it could be a disaster. I think eventually it's a given that one of the rocket motors _will_ explode. Hopefully when the hybrid one goes, say from a air pocket in the solid fuel, it won't be a fatal disaster.

That all being said - space is dangerous. I hope people are prepared for all that entails.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, They might as well close the company when a disaster happens. I wouldn't risk my life for 3 minutes of weightlessness. A week or two in space is another story.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I don't like the idea of going to space for a quick trip very much. Rockets are incredibly powerful, and hence dangerous, machines. Never mind all the inherent dangers of the environment. It's just not enough pay off for me.

One could always take a lift on the vomit comet if they want to feel weightless: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_gravity_aircraft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_gravity_aircraft)

A trip to the ISS though? Holy cow I'd risk my life to go there. 300km orbit for a few weeks? It's just too much to pass up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am looking forward to this being available. I consider it one of the bell weathers of the private space flight 'business.' A healthy source of revenue for private access to space will change the market dynamics on what gets built, a small niche revenue will not. Either way, we get a data point.

<comment><USER6> The thing that would concern me is that once the novelty wears off, and there's no place in particular to "go" in space, a healthy revenue source might be difficult.

<comment><USER7> I've seen an analysis which said that the revenue source isn't going to space and back, but going really fast between 2 points on earth. The analysis basically said that with mail delivery you pay up to 5 times as much for the fastest delivery tier as you do fo the second fastest and that there are about 10% as many deliveries at the fastest tier as at the second fastest. So if you could use space ship 2 for an even faster tier and could get 10% of the current fastest market for 5x the price, then there should be enough mail to pay for up to 1 flight per day across the country.

<comment><USER8> > 1 flight per day across the country

Don't we already have same-day delivery? So the next tier would have to be quicker delivery than that, which would necessitate more than one flight a day. Is it still economically viable in that case?

Does this same economy math apply to passenger transport? Or could one flight per day of mail to the other side of the world be worth it?

<comment><USER9> Or, this means that the same-day delivery radius is much greater ... as well as the subsequent tiers below that, regarding express shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" designed to carry up to six passengers on what will be suborbital flights at first."_

Unless I am mistaken, I don't think there are plans on ever getting SpaceShipTwo orbital; Mach 1.43 is an order of magnitude away from what you need for LEO. I am guessing they mean that in the future Virgin Galactic will orbit something else.

<comment><USER11> SpaceShipThree was* planned for orbit. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipThree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipThree)

Edit: * was planned for orbit.

<comment><USER12> from your link;

 _" As of 2008, the company has scaled back those plans and articulated a design that would be a point-to-point vehicle traveling outside the atmosphere."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Current space-hops just can't be anything more than a tourist attraction. Looking at the design it seems the ship is unable to do atmospheric entry from orbit and is a dead end as far as research is concerned.

<comment><USER13> At a worldwide market size of $1.4 trillion ([http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/global/global- tourism.html](http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/global/global-tourism.html)), "just a tourist attraction" is not a bad place to be at all.

<comment><USER12> If the Skylon manages to get built to spec and gets ~30 people into orbit for $10 million per launch, then an eighth of the worldwide tourist budget could launch a million people a year. Though, presumably if you were launching that many people, the cost would actually be a fair bit less.</comment></comment></comment>


Where do start to learn Cyber Security? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
I'm a web engineer working mostly with Rails/Phoenix/Node and React. I want to learn more about security to be able to 1. build more secure applications, and 2. help client secure their existing apps.
What are good resources for this? <comment><USER2> The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: [http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/Hacked%20Team/FileServer/File...](http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/Hacked%20Team/FileServer/FileServer/OLD%20Fileserver/books/SICUREZZA/Wiley%20-%20The%20Web%20Application%20Hackers%20Handbook=%20Discovering%20and%20Exploiting%20Security%20Flaws%20-%202008.pdf)

Matasano used to mail it to all their potential candidates and told them to read chapters N throgh M.

Unfortunately I've forgotten the values of N and M, so just read the whole thing. It's worth the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. become a sys admin (DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP, Python, Linux etc) 2\. download Kali 3\. play. break. experiment. 4\. visit the Null Byte website 5\. apply intuition 6\. ready.</comment>


NoSQL: The Dawn of Polyglot Persistence - <AUTHOR> http://codemonkeyism.com/nosql-polyglott-persistence/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+stephansblog+%28Code+Monkeyism+|+Stephans+Bhttp://codemonkeyism.com/nosql-polyglott-persistence/

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060001>

Found using SearchYC: <http://searchyc.com/polyglot>

It would've been found by this idea: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215></comment>


Richard Branson reveals "world's best complaint letter" - <AUTHOR> http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/business-news/business/richard-branson-reveals-worlds-best-complaint-letter-about-virgin-atlantic/5878.article <comment><USER2> This is quite old. It is funny though. I read it to myself in Michael Caine's voice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Better with photos.

[http://www.jialat.com/2009/01/27/world-funniest-complaint- le...](http://www.jialat.com/2009/01/27/world-funniest-complaint-letter/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the funniest thing I've read all month.</comment>


Facebook's Zuckerberg Is Now Richer Than The Google Guys - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/luisakroll/2011/06/28/facebooks-zuckerberg-is-now-richer-than-the-google-guys/

<comment><USER2> but the Google guys invented a search engine that changed the world through the web and easier access to information (to both technical and non-technical people), unlocking it's potential and opening new path's. When people say that Facebook changed the world and made it a better place, they don't remember/know how it was like before Google (and Gnome 1.4).

ps.: i don't want to take credit off Facebook(c) or any other search engine (for example, Altavista worked for me and a lot more people) but it's also the result of a lot of hard work and marketing

</comment><comment><USER3> richer in terms of the stock they own based on crazy valuations.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I understand this article correctly, I think it's pretty crazy how an investment of less than $7 million has caused FB's valuation to go up 20billion.

<comment><USER5> It hasn't. You've just read an appallingly naive extrapolation in lieu of an actual valuation. I'd expect better of Forbes, frankly.

The only news here that isn't useless conjecture is that GSVC bought 225k shares @ $29.28.

<comment><USER6> Go Bayesian. Update your expectation based on Forbes's long term performance, not their financy sounding name

Forbes is the People Magazine of the business world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, he is paper rich.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's it! Eureka! What all this silly pundits fail to do and realize is that the valuation for these companies isn't, and shouldn't be calculated with, simple math!

If I purchase 1% of a company for $1,000,000 the simple math valuation (according to my opinion and what I paid) is a company valuation of $100,000,000. Except, people are paying PREMIUMS for these stocks. A premium is an amount above and beyond the actual value of the item. What's the premium value? We don't know?! The media and pundits need to stop using simple math and shouting about it. But they won't, because PR teams are behind it and it makes headlines!

</comment><comment><USER9> I would argue that regardless of who is dubbed 'richer', google and those who made it are still worth way more. Zuckerburg is a one trick pony, with nothing but facebook to keep him afloat. And now that google has started attacking that, I'm sure that a good share of their market is going to be lost;

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2966-wizards-of-bullshit- how-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2966-wizards-of-bullshit-how-forbes- turned-65-million-into-20-billion)

</comment><comment><USER11> So long as the Google guys maintain their % ownership of Google, one way or another they will become the richest men in the world.

Buying GOOG.

</comment><comment><USER12> >A Forbes contributor, David Martin, penned an interesting piece on how the social networking site's users are aging, and how it's generally losing its cool.

>For now, though, it certainly hasn't lost its lustre in the eyes of investors.

These statements are not at odds with one another. Old people, generally speaking, have more money to spend and they spend it less judiciously; consequently it makes sense for Facebook to target old people.

</comment><comment><USER13> not for much longer.

</comment><comment><USER14> I honestly don't care

</comment><comment><USER15> And still a cunt.</comment>


Microsoft's new mantra: CEO Satya Nadella on 'intelligent cloud' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-intelligent-cloud-build-2017-2017-5 <comment><USER2> I'm amazed that they can say "your data always with you", and mean " your data trapped behind our proprietary apps"</comment>


Turing-NLG: A 17B-parameter language model - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/turing-nlg-a-17-billion-parameter-language-model-by-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> People are vastly underestimating the changes that are about to come from NLP. The basic ideas of how to get language models working are just about in place. Transformer networks, and recent innovations like GPT-2, googles reformer model, etc are precursors to the real machine learning boom. Machine learning as we have known it, has been stuck as an optimization tool, and used for computer vision here and there. NLP, and with it, the ability to create, synthesize, and understand content, will change the internet.

More than that, I think NLP will unlock new ways of interacting with computers. Computers will be able to handle the ambiguity of human language, transcending their rigid "only do exactly what you tell them" models of the world.

Edit:

Adding this to give more technical context. I think most people don't know where the line is currently between what possible, and what's not, but also what we are on the cusp of. And we are on the cusp of a lot.

A quick explanation of one area is here:

Basically, transformer models are the best for NLP. They use something called attention based mechanisms, which allows the model to draw correlations between pieces of text/tokens that are far apart. The issue is that this is an O(n^2) operation. So the model is bounded by the context window, which is currently mostly at 512 tokens, and is thus, bounded in how much it can understand. Recent innovations, and further study, will broaden the context window, and thus unlock better reading comprehension and context understanding. For instance, the ability to answer a question using a piece of text is mostly stuck at just finding one paragraph. The future will see models that can find multiple different paragraphs, understand how they relate, pull the relevant information, and synthesize it. This sounds like a minor step forwards, but its important. This will unlock better conversational abilities, but also, better ways to understand how different pieces of textual information relate. The scattershot of information across the internet can go away. Computers can better understand context to act on human intention through language, unlocking the ability to handle ambiguity. This will change the internet.

Again to empathize, these models only started showing up in 2017! The progress has been rapid.

<comment><USER3> _Computers will be able to handle the ambiguity of human language, transcending their rigid "only do exactly what you tell them" models of the world._

So, are reasonable examples now of these models allowing semantic context? So, far, what I have seen is generated text where the lack of _understanding_ takes three paragraphs to become obvious rather than one.

Human language is this marvelous framework involving symbols associating with other symbols as well as to well-known and vaguely-guessed facts about the world.

Human relations are very robust and, for example, two people can have a longish conversations where at the end, they realize they're talking about two different people (or different days or events). But in those circumstances, they can correct and adjust. "Solid" understanding is there but it's under a lot of layers of social cues and protocols and multiple meanings.

<comment><USER4> > So, are reasonable examples now of these models allowing semantic context?

This is about where I am stuck. I'll start believing that we truly are on the cusp of a revolution as soon as I see Google Translate reliably knowing when to translate "home" into French as "domicile", "foyer", something those lines, or as "accueil."

Right now it seems to very frequently choose "accueil", which is generally wrong, except when you're talking about websites and software user interfaces. That it's biased so strongly toward that error speaks volumes about how critical semantics are to sorting out natural language, and also about how bad current NLP systems are at dealing with semantics.

<comment><USER3> Syntax and semantics were developed for human language, yet it's much easier to puzzle the difference in a computer language than in human language. With syntax and semantics so wrapped together, however, it kind of seems like you can go a long way with just capturing syntax, rhythm, word choice and etc. Which is to say the semantic side can be even worse than it seems, ie, nonexistent.

<comment><USER5> A long way for what though? The unicorn story is neat, but I don't have a giant unmet demand for rambling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the team members from Project Turing. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER7> How close do you think the technology is to answering -this- question?

<comment><USER8> 1) How close do you think the technology is to answering -this- question?

Four days!

2) How long in years?

Three years!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been bearish on AGI, but GPT2 surprised me with the lucidity of its samples.

My take from the past few years is that we're 99% done with the visual cortex - convolutional nets can be trained to perform any visual task a human can in <100ms. Now I'm mostly convinced that GPT2 has solved the language cortex, and can babble as well as we will ever need it to. We just need a prefrontal cortex (symbolic processing / RL / whatever your pet theory is) to drive the components, which is a problem we have not even started to solve. I am 90% sure it is a different class of problem and we won't knock it out of the park in 5 years like the visual/language cortexes, but we can hope.

edit: it's possible cognition follows from language, which would be convenient. is GPT2 smarter than a dog? I don't think so but I could be wrong ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER10> I have been bearish on AGI, but GPT2 surprised me with the lucidity of both paths. I still maintain my support for the basic metric of the GPT-I. However, I have a number of requirements on how my proposal is to be funded to resolve concerns. First, I strongly believe that academic research should be the method of choice (that is, if we are to figure out how to make AGI possible), and I advocate funding to support results from the central bank community. Second, given that the GPT can be articulated in mathematical terms, this should be reflected in funding policy. A very serious concern is that if funding of GPT is disincentivized, investors may react similarly to the way they reacted to AGI. This is

<comment><USER11> You generated this with GPT, right?

<comment><USER10> Yes.

<comment><USER12> While Markov chains sound like a schizophrenic, this sounds like a banker on coke. Pretty impressive progress, i guess.

<comment><USER10> That's because of the word "bearish". It can sound like just about anything. For example, prompted by your comment, it sounds like a human interest journalist. (Journalism and fanfic, in particular HPMOR, seem to have comprised a large part of its training corpus; it composes Harry Potter porn at the slightest provocation; "Hermione moaned", say.)

While Markov chains sound like a schizophrenic, this sounds like a spacial disjointed notebook, as if somebody was trying to write in two places at the same time. "Today is Monday, it's Saturday night, I forgot to write to my dad and he only leaves the house for a couple of hours."

Yet, sometimes Markov chains turn out to be the most beautiful art form. His wife Jennifer Neil, whom he met at a barbecue and has been married to since 1998, attributes this creative process to the constant ups and downs in his old job.

"His numbers are just insane," says Jennifer Neil. "I don't know where he keeps them, but they're very mind boggling."

Somewhat disconnected from the actual

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always been interested in techniques to try to minimize parameters or alternate approaches to learning. Meanwhile, state of the art is over here just finding clever ways to make everything bigger. I have a feeling we're going to end up with a very different landscape in 5-10 years, much like the automotive industry never started mass producing inline 12s and instead moved to turbos and superchargers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can uderstand announcing this without code, but without a demo so anyone can try it in different scenarios?

<comment><USER6> If you want access, please send an email to [turing_ AT _microsoft _DOT_ com]. Remove underscores and spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> B = Billion, not Byte. For second I was like, WTF?

<comment><USER16> I thought I am the only one. There is no trigger to deep learning.

But the article is fascinating nevertheless. Not sure is alphago breakthrough.

<comment><USER17> not at all comparable. it's just a scaled up GPT2, no new ideas deep learning wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All these language generation models, in short, base their next word solely on the previous words, right? I'd expect that these generators can be conditioned on e.g. some fact (like in first order logic etc) to express something I want. This is roughly the inverse of for example Natural Language Understanding.

Does anything like this exist?

<comment> gchq-7703 I'm fairly sure that these models don't work solely on the previous word, but instead are able to remember some level of information from history.

Otherwise, you'd reach a word like 'and' and couldn't possibly follow it with a logical statement that follows on from the previous part.

<comment><USER18> This is why I said 'words', multiple :-).

My point being that these generation models should be conditioned on something more than just word history, like something they want/are instructed to express.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This does GPT-2 X 10. For anyone wondering what GPT-2 is doing look at this baffling subreddit and marvel at how one GPT-2 model trained for $70k spits out better comedy than everybody on the payroll of Netflix combined.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/)

<comment><USER20> It's definitely better than the original using Markov chains. It fits very well this use case, and in my opinion only this use case.

GPT2 is still very random and quite stupid.

You start it with your love for your girlfriend as a context, she becomes a cam girl into hard core anal two paragraphs later. You start with religion, "Muslims must be exterminated". You start with software and you get a description of non existent hardware with instructions about how to setup a VPN in the middle. You start with news, and you can read than China supports the Islamic state.

That's cool because it has more context than Markov chains which usually have only 3 words of context, but it's still a long way to go before I trust anything generated by this kind of algorithm.

<comment><USER21> This stuff is pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/f1pypf/so...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/f1pypf/socialists_why_do_you_think_capitalism_is/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I expect we'll see some very interesting, very big models following it. I didn't dig too far into the code but the library looks very easy to use and will open up a lot of doors for people who have a few or a few thousand GPUs.

<comment><USER23> I must be missing it, where did you find a link to the code?

<comment><USER22> The code for the distributed training library, not the model - [https://github.com/microsoft/DeepSpeed/](https://github.com/microsoft/DeepSpeed/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22291417)

</comment><comment><USER25> At what stage of throwing compute & data at the problem, diminishing return sets in?

</comment><comment><USER26> What GPU do I need to train it? Titan Mega RTX with 240GB of RAM?

<comment><USER27> A DGX-2 will do just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If your model has 17 billion parameters, you missed some.

</comment><comment><USER29> How long until the language models stabilize enough that we can bake them into a low-cost, low-power chip for edge uses?

<comment><USER30> I think this is largely unnecessary, can't things like TPUs handle the inference?

<comment><USER31> Putting all your speech/text onto cloud machines runs counter to e2e encrypted messaging.

<comment><USER30> I think you can get hardware like a TPU for consumer products?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Those summaries look impressive, although a bit repepetive

<comment><USER33> What they don't tell you is that these summaries are always hand picked from a few that were generated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite possible but that also means that there is an opportunity to implement some sort of RL to choose the best possible summary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> unfortunately they abstained from participation in more popular SQuAD and Glue benchmarks..

<comment><USER35> Those are question-answering and language-understanding benchmarks respectively, neither of which has been suitable for language generation mode evaluation since GPT-1 was roundly beating by BERT. GPT-2 didn't evaluate on them either.</comment></comment>


To truck, barter and exchange? On the nature of Valve's social economies - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/to-truck-barter-and-exchange-on-the-nature-of-valves-social-economies/ <comment><USER2> The phenomenon discussed in the article (the surprising lack of any de-facto currency arising in TF2's barter economy) is very interesting, because the economy in Diablo 2 _did_ develop its own currency around a single item -- the Stone of Jordan (SoJ).

D2's economy was very similar in that it was almost purely barter-based and players had limited inventory space to store their items. SoJs occupied the smallest possible amount of space in the inventory (1 square). They also had high intrinsic value, as they were not only powerful items but also ingredients in two important crafting recipes.

Interestingly, SoJs lost their currency status once their intrinsic value depreciated [1]. A new mechanic, runes, was introduced, and they became the new currency. However, to my knowledge no single rune type rose to dominate the others and claim true currency status, so the current market is a bit more muddled.

[1] <http://www.diablowiki.com/The_Stone_of_Jordan>

<comment><USER3> TF2 does have somewhat de-facto items serving as currency, although none of them offer any specific gameplay advantage. They are:

* buds (limited apple Earbuds given for a short period of time): These are worth roughly 2 bill's + some keys, or 24 keys.

* bill's (Bill's Hat, also given for a short period of time for those that preoredered left 4 dead 2) worth around 8 - 10 keys

* keys worth around 2.44 to 2.55 metal

* metal

Everything else is measured around these 4 items. All these prices seem to come from a single source. The "TF2 Spreadsheet", a google docs spreadsheet, created by "the powers that be" which seem to have defined these prices somehow.

It is not a perfect system though, because what generally happens is the values are used as a starting point for a sale. Whoever's selling wants more, declaring that the spreadsheet prices are only a reference, and they know their item sells for more. Whoever's buying usually ridicules the seller saying that the particular item will never sell for the spreadsheet price, which is already outdated.

How trades are made with this system, I don't understand. For those not wanting to deal with all the chaos, there's <http://www.tf2wh.com/>, which seems to have a rigid credit currency set. Of course it helps that most of the trades are done by bots, so no human interaction is required.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What practical modern programming languages should I try to pick up? - <AUTHOR> I know this is a boring question, but I am ready to add another language to the resume and would like to know what people think are the most practical and interesting of the up and coming programming languages.
I don't have any requirements other than that it be a language that you feel is swiftly approaching broader acceptance in the software community. Also Go, Rust, and Scala are already on my short list, but I would love to hear which of them people think I should start with. I am not super interested in javascript or anything built on it but am open to having my mind changed.
Thanks for humoring me. <comment><USER2> Scala! Great language, huge ecosystem, good tooling, many platforms supported.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clojure?

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point, which is that I really should get around to learning lisp, as the only functional language I am fluent in is Ocaml. Anyway what stands out about Clojure to you?

<comment><USER3> practical and fun; based on rock solid jvm; has access to Java ecosystem so you don't need to rewrite the whole "standard library"

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks added to my list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>