Dopamine: An AI platform for designing human behavior - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/meet-the-tech-company-that-wants-to-make-you-even-more-addicted-to-your-phone/ <comment><USER2> The same company sells an api to help make your applications as addicting as possible [1] and a service for users to help control their addiction to applications [2].

This organization is disgusting and is evidence enough that our industry has no sense of ethical responsibility. When massive regulation lands on Silicon Valley and we whine about the impact it has on innovation, remember companies like Dopamine Labs who truly deserved it.

[1] [https://usedopamine.com/](https://usedopamine.com/)

[2] [http://youjustneedspace.com/](http://youjustneedspace.com/)

<comment><USER3> To be fair, all the case studies they list [1] utilized their service to improve users' personal habits -- diet, exercise, etc.

Behavior shaping isn't necessarily morally wrong to use, though companies like Facebook and Google are almost completely incentivized to use them against users.

[1] [http://www.usedopamine.com/assets/pdf/Dopamine%20Labs%20Case...](http://www.usedopamine.com/assets/pdf/Dopamine%20Labs%20Case%20Studies.pdf)

<comment><USER4> "Behavior shaping isn't necessarily morally wrong to use," as long as we are talking about parents shaping their children, or the justice system (re-)shaping criminal offenders. Beyond that border, in my mind this becomes very unethical indeed!

<comment><USER5> Why not people wanting to shape their own behaviour? Nudges to exercise more from _an exercise app I 've installed_ is hardly diabolical.

<comment><USER6> you are correct. there is nothing wrong with giving humans the tools they want/need to be the better versions of themselves.

<comment><USER2> This is _such_ a fine gray line that its impossible to conclusively categorize something as evil vs good.

For example: If I decide I want to exercise more, maybe I would appreciate an app which helps me become addicted to exercise. That might be good for me.

However, what if the app pushes me to exercise too much, and I begin to experience health problems associated with destroying muscles? Or, what if the app is formed on bad exercise science and it suggests routines that are bad for me? Now suddenly the addictions created by the app are working against me; the app isn't being irresponsible by helping me exercise, but it _is_ being irresponsible by modifying my behavior and decision making processes to favor using it.

Similarly, is Instagram "good" for you? Probably not. But, per your comment: "there's nothing wrong with giving humans the tools they want". People might want to be addicted to Instagram; that doesn't mean it is good for them and that Instagram should deliver. People want to be addicted to nicotine and alcohol, so we put regulations around it.

<comment><USER7> The fact that there is a grey zone does not mean that there aren't also black and white zones. It more interesting to think about the grey zones, but it's easier to get things done in the back and white zones.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but I don't think a general purpose API for improving the addictiveness of any application exists in one part of the spectrum. Anyone can use this.

If we look at something like the activity circles on the Apple Watch; that's safe enough in my mind to be pretty well in the white area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Dopamine's founders argue that they reserve the right to deny service to specific companies whose work seems to be off the level...

Just "trust" us. There are obviously many teams working on doing this, but never so audacious. These things are definitely not a value add to society, yet very profitable, like e.g. heroin if that doesn't sound too hyperbolic.

<comment><USER9> A casino is usually more profitable than a hospital too.

It's probably the central problem of capitalism. Monetary systems draw no distinction between wealth creation and wealth extraction, and the second law of thermodynamics guarantees that the latter will always be much easier. When you design chips, cure diseases, or build rockets you are fighting entropy. When you addict, misinform, and con people entropy is on your side.

<comment><USER8> This article made me pretty sad and made me think of this too. I think what an ethical investor needs to do is not deploy capital to any industries that don't add real economic value or wealth or whatever you want to call it. Also, ethical founders should refuse capital from orgs that fund these projects. Basically starve these projects out, but that's sort of idealistic.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately greed often turns people from ethical to not so ethical pretty quickly. Would be nice if the chaps above could create an AI to help with that!

<comment><USER11> We could go to unethical even faster!

An unethical AI has more degrees of movement. It will always beat an ethical AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > While Brown condemned the behavior that's been attributed to Sacca — and > expressed disappointment that Mazzeo found the same troubles at his would-be > new home, Binary Capital — he said that it didn't dissuade him from taking > Lowercase's money.

Yup, people always take a high moral stand.. until there is money involved.

<comment><USER13> pecunia non olet

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if the aims are benevolent, the naming and marketing copy just sound evil to me. They are trying to make it sound like they can turn your app into an addictive drug.

<comment><USER15> Contrarian, not evil, is more of the motto. You don't get anyone to listen if you just talk about an AI SaaS platform for long-term habit formation. It comes off as wonkish. Trust me, we tried ;)

<comment><USER14> Well first of all thank you for your reply and actually getting involved in the thread.

I have to say, I'm not convinced.

Yes of course if you say that your product is similar to a what a drug dealer would offer, then people are going to get interested because of the potential for returns on their money. You're just confirming my suspicion that branding things this way was in order to help get investment. I don't see how you are being contrarian. What is the popular opinion you are rejecting? That addiction is scary/harmful/a terrible thing to inflict on others?

You're in a tricky position now as I personally don't see how you can reverse course on presenting the company this way (after thinking about it for a couple of minutes :) )... but I hope you can figure it out!

<comment><USER7> I think that the thing we're contrarian on is "using software to design peoples behavior is bad," or "Dopamine (the molecule) is first and foremost about Addiction."

Dopamine is about learning, and learning only matter because it changes us. The same brain mechanisms and technologies that make facebook captivating and can be used to make fitness, a good diet, and spending time with people who love you engaging too. When we're done building this tech-stack, it will be possible for people to learn themselves in to whoever they want to be.

Disclaimer - I'm the CEO of Dopamine

<comment><USER16> So what would ensure you keep using that tech for good? What if no clients turn up and you still need to produce value for your investors?

In other words, how would you go about solving the 'just trust us' problem others in this thread have described better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was a great Dilbert comic that said ~ 'If marketing we're only slightly more effective it would be illegal.' I am aware of 1960's era laws against subliminal advertising. Are there any enforcible laws that limit how people are influenced with media and technology?

More questions: If there is a technical definition of illegal influence, what would be the test of legality work? Would would enforce it? Who would be in violation of those laws today? Are any of the archaic laws about advertising/mind control that could be applied to today's tech/media/security firms?

Finally, in a hypothetical scenario where a state actor was able to influence the mentally fragile into turning into mass shooters, how would nations and individuals start to protect themselves against such attacks?

</comment><comment><USER18> Everyone is over hyping this. It's a silly company that drives engagement by inserting short gifs after user actions.

It has an edgy sounding name and just enough marketing buzz to scare you.

This company is not around in 5 years. Good UX > whatever they are selling.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this an accurate framing of your statement then? If we can think of the addictive nature of apps as "brain hacking", you aim to be white hats? Using the same techniques to protect through understanding, instead of attack for personal gain?

You say you only work with certain clients based on their ethics. Can you name some examples of an application for this that has the potential to be profitable? I, and it seems many others here, have a hard time understanding how this science can be used both ethically and profitably.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am just waiting for a lawyer for someone with Internet Addiction ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480687/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480687/)) to sue this company over one of their supported apps.

This is the kind of thing that I fear will prompt a backlash from the people and government and destroy the entire online ads regime that underpins the current Internet.

<comment><USER21> You may not have noticed that their other product is the exact opposite. Maybe that gives them some legal protection? [http://youjustneedspace.com/](http://youjustneedspace.com/)

<comment><USER22> Thats despicable. They sell both the disease and a cure for double the money.

<comment><USER15> Bruh. Did you even look at the price on Space?

<comment><USER16> Bruh. Just adding another app to 'counteract' the effects isn't going to suddenly clear you of ethical issues. It's the equivalent of mcdonalds selling salads...

<comment><USER16> Oh and to add to this, the app seems to literally just be a waiting screen. Everything about it screams cop-out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Before I even got through the first paragraph I was reminded of B.F. Skinner and his book 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity', which I read in high school. So it's pretty funny that they named their AI after him. Dopamine labs may be evil, but at least they're self aware.

<comment><USER15> We love that one! Required reading.

His work on why you, me, everyone on this thread, and every species that's part of the subphylum Vertebrata shaped the course of thinking from contemporary Machine Learning techniques like Q-Learning to us!

Not evil, have done our reading though ;)

<comment><USER24> No offense, but I do not believe you.

I can't, on something like this. Talk is cheap.

<comment><USER15> What on the evil part? Or that we make the whole team read Skinner? It's a thin book.

<comment><USER24> ...really?

Welp, there's another one on the 'never touch with a 10-foot pole' pile. Yikes, your promotional account sounds like a grinning glassy-eyed sociopath. Serious goosebumps.

<comment><USER11> A good sociopath would have been charming.

I think they're very aware of the problems and they would rather be in the good side of the issue.

I think he just doesn't know how to convert this or talk about it in a forum setting well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did you do something nice for a coworker today?

When's the last time you said more than 'hello' to a neighbor?

The only substitute for Social "Media" is a Social Culture. The reason most mature adults are checking their phones all the time is nobody interacts to any significance anymore in the public sphere. When we're in public we are: A. trying to get somewhere else, and frustrated at being impeded by other people, B. Trying to buy something to consume or C. trying to sell something.

The best way to fight the screens and the apps is to provide a better alternative, IRL.

</comment><comment><USER26> This feels like such a pandora's box.

On one hand, it's important we get a better understanding of what makes us tick, on the other hand, I fear what such understanding might enable us to do to each other.

<comment><USER7> Disclosure - CEO of Dopamine

That's the exact same way I feel. There is definitely a end game here where everyone has more autonomy and dignity, and that's the one we're fighting for.

<comment><USER26> How does that endgame look? And how do you intend to get there by further commercializing, thus monopolizing, such knowledge?

It's not like you are doing anything new here, the only new thing here is your approach of being dead honest about what you are doing, kudos to that.

But besides that I don't see how any of what you are doing there results in an endgame of "more autonomy and dignity for everybody", it rather seems to be reinforcing the current trend where such knowledge and practices are sold to anybody who can afford it, leaving those who can't out in the rain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess it's a win-win situation both ways: \- it can make people more addicted to apps to the point where we all fall off cliffs or get run by an app addict while crossing the road using our phones. \- or it can push people to the limit where they get so much addicted to their apps that they actually call for interventions, completely abandon their phone, or seek help; introducing youjustneedspace.com </sarcasm>

<comment><USER15> Thanks! We think so too! Also, you have a close sarcasm tag with no open sarcasm tag. Dude that's bad form.

<comment><USER27> 'Also, you have a close sarcasm tag with no open sarcasm tag' \-- sarcasm does not start by priming people of what to come. Especially those who would take you words seriously and start to relate to your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Greaaaaat... Seriously, does humanity really need this?

<comment><USER15> Yes. See attached.

[https://youtu.be/Qsi08xvhaQ4?t=4m21s](https://youtu.be/Qsi08xvhaQ4?t=4m21s)

<comment><USER11> Ok so I actually watched most of that on crappy internet - and there are many places where there are big issues with the underlying assumptions.

I think around the 14 minute mark or something you made a statement that people need to be aware of the apps they choose.

Prior to that you had argued that (mostly for the first world) behavioral choices are the root of the major causes of morbidity.

Your redeeming speech comes at around the 20 minute mark.

Issues first:

1) you assume people have a choice - and that inherently Discounts the over size impact of bad actors and antagonists.

This point alone, fundamentally changes the constants underpinning the model you tacitly must be running to support your other predictions.

2) people are terrible at making a lot of choices on average. People choosing good apps over bad is similar to hoping people make good life style choices.

Unlikely, and far too path dependent. Unless you are highly informed, educated about skinner/conditioning and tech aware and cynical - you won't succeed.

3) a lot of those behavioral problems have arisen from large firms using old school behavioral influencing to create that situation.

There is no basis for hope that more behavioral tools will solve the problem.

20 minutes onwards though, and you have a much better Wicket - at least up to the point I've watched.

Which is another thing. Very few people are going to watch a 30 minute video of you speaking, especially when we're on a text based forum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So some positive feedback gets an app more attention - I get that, apps than infantilize their users are getting popular. But does it really have to be presented at precise intervals, calculated by a clever algorithm made by neuro-scientist? I doubt the impact will differ when triggered at slightly sanitized random intervals instead.

</comment><comment><USER30> Even though their product borders on pure evil, I have a certain admiration for how they aren't even trying to hide it.

</comment><comment><USER31> The originator of this project discussed in brief on HN a few months back, and I assume is reading this thread.

The reactions here could tell you that this is a really Bad Idea. Working or investing in this is a terrible choice and will forfeit baseline level of consideration you could normally expect from other people.

</comment><comment><USER32> "if a technology like Dopamine can actually encourage retention on apps aimed at self-improvement, that's an inarguably good thing."

No, it absolutely is not. Some of most horrifying abuses in the history of the human race have occurred under the guise of "improving" other people for their own good.

<comment><USER15> The men and women who write your software control the boundary conditions for your experiences there. They control what and how you can think, feel, and believe in that experience. When Twitter doubles the numbers of characters you can tweet, they're making a decision about the quality and size of thoughts people can express - and in turn what depth of dialogue we have there.

Analogously, when someone designs a diet app, they're creating the boundary conditions of a new behavior pattern for users. Their use of Dopamine aligns well with their end user's goals: in the same way that you hold friends close because you know they rub off on you, so too should we think about our software. Having an app on your phone you chose to let close to your mind and behavior - to be a new venue of your thought and future self - is a decision about who you want to become. And if that app can use good design, a good interface, and persuasive tech to help you achieve your health or diet goals: you win.

That's an alignment of what tech wants and what humans want.

<comment><USER16> You can't trust people to make that decision themselves. If you keep an app close because of the skinner-esque variable reward ratio I'd argue that's not a conscious choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Gee, the founders can't have been happy with that title (different than on HN). What can founders do to avoid being represented in a negative light like this by the press, HN? Try to be the first to frame the conversation? Or is all press good press and it doesn't matter?

<comment><USER34> They just got a ton of press, reaching the exact markets they want to hit. Their fax machine is probably ringing off the hook right now.

<comment><USER15> WE HAVE A FAX!!??!?!

<comment><USER13> Have you got any products to trick people into liking your product? Your comments in this thread seem to be having the opposite effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So many accusations about 'evil' here, without any significant evidence. As I see it, this middle-ware is a tool that you can choose to use for evil or good - the tool doesn't get a moral value because of it's use.

There is, of course, an argument that any manipulation of human behaviour is inherently evil, but it's a very weak one - if you manipulate a person to eat well, exercise, donate to charity, call their parents and vote for a [insert a political cause that you believe to be inherently moral], is it still an evil thing to do?

<comment><USER16> Manipulating people into donating to certain charities (churches?) could certainly be an evil thing in my book. And ESPECIALLY VOTING FOR A POLITICAL CAUSE. That is not okay.

Fact is that morals are relative and software companies shouldn't be the arbiters of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If everyone in the US has on average 5 apps on their phone which use your service, and it makes people on average engaged for one extra minute... What would the cost be of all the lost productivity? Does the extra engagement lead to more revenue? How do the 2 compare?

Also, if this is designed to release dopamine or any other neurotransmitters, is there a risk that this will ever be classified as a drug? Or at least be treated legally like a drug?

<comment><USER26> > Also, if this is designed to release dopamine or any other > neurotransmitters, is there a risk that this will ever be classified as a > drug? Or at least be treated legally like a drug?

This whole topic is gonna be huge soon, it's in the same vein as increased use of gambling style "loot boxes" in video games designed to be skinner-boxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Alright, so that guys has the guts to say "It's our job to make sure that everyone gets treated as a human, not as an object.".

</comment><comment><USER38> Ruthless business models like this seem inevitable in a society that values making money far above anything else.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's what TV advertising is all about. Why aren't we complaining about that?

<comment><USER40> Examine your premises.

We are. And have been for a while now.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_arguments_for_the_elimi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_arguments_for_the_elimination_of_television)

<comment><USER39> Flipping out about a company that claims to modify behavior seems a little odd when they most likely consume hours upon hours of behavior modifying TV ads every single week. If behavior modification is the real concern, the majority of the angst should be directed at TV ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The irony of the VC firm backing this venture imploding due to the dopamine- seeking, short-term thinking, failure to contemplate consequences behaviour of _its_ principals is ironically ironic.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hire these guys for TV! I wish them success, all the big players are doing the same thing with more people. Keep on innovating, disrupting. Here is to your next cache hit.

<comment><USER15> I tried to emoji fistbump you here, but HN won't let me.

<comment><USER34> [https://www.google.com/search?q=emoji+fistbump](https://www.google.com/search?q=emoji+fistbump)

Thanks man!

1138 is one of my favorite documentaries about the future. There are a lot of naysayers around here, but only because of the high fidelity mirror you present them with. It is only their own self loathing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This company should be call heroin. And they all should go to jail 30 years for dealing with addictive substances.

</comment><comment><USER42> And then a certain Nobel Prize believes "nudges" will be used for our own good. Ha-ha.

</comment><comment><USER43> Such a terrible name for a company.

</comment><comment><USER44> I guess now I need to take break from Hackernews!

<comment><USER11> after this discussion I realized that there is no more safety, and plan to dump my smart phone for a nokia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is what cigarette companies have been doing for years so why no tech?

I'm wary that this will improve anything at all, but make things more annoying and addictive, as opposed to actually increasing productivity.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hi!

Founder (Brown) here. Appreciate the traffic!

Also, would love to clear up mob misconceptions about:

-Why did we pick lightening-rod branding?

-Why was this the most humanitarian use of a neuroscience MS/PhD?

-What quality of people must we be to do this?

-What is design's ethical imperative that, 100 years ago when most died of infections diseases, that this year the majority of people over 50 will die of strongly behavioral-based diseases? [1]

-How come the Founders of the Push Notification teams aren't part of the cultural dialogue?

-What does Tristan Harris think?!

-What is our pricing model and can your startup get a discount? (YES!)

[1] soundcloud.com/digital-mindfulness/89-the-science-of-addictive-technology- with-ramsay-brown/s-YQzyZ

<comment><USER46> So, if you would love to clear up the misconceptions, actually answer all of the questions you listed? The only one you answered is about discounts for your product.

<comment><USER15> But I'll give you the TL;DR:

Lightening rod: because now we're on HN.

Humanitarian use: see below about 100 years ago vs. today.

Quality of people: that's why Space is free.

What's design's ethical imperative: also, see below about 100 years ago vs. today.

Founders of push notification companies: Ask the CEOs of Leanplum/Marketo/Intercom/Vizurly/Kahuna why they haven't released an antidote for push notifications? Please. Try to get them to talk about it.

Tristan: great friend, mutual supporters

Pricing model: $0.05/MAU for qualifying startups.

xo</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Add 3D gestures to your applications - <AUTHOR> http://threegearsystems.blogspot.com/2012/09/hello-from-3gear-systems.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN! We're a three-person team building 3D gestural user interfaces. We'd love to get your feedback!</comment>


Show HN: Visualization of Dialogues in Game of Thrones Novels - <AUTHOR> http://novels.lol/game-of-thrones/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hola. This is my first post. There's a link to the sources on github, including some observations on the novels and the current state of the parsing logic.

I'll update the README with some more details before long. The code has grown into a bit of a clew. :)

I'd love feedback and ideas for other visualizations or algorithms for the parsing!</comment>


Ask HN: How much detail do you provide in quotes to clients?  - <AUTHOR>

When charging a fixed amount to a client for a project, how much detail do you provide? We've been quoting projects based on estimated hours for each part of the project and including those numbers in the proposal, but I'm wondering if that's best. <comment><USER2> I think that clients vary in their preferences. I would usually have a very granular template (i.e. broken down into little chunks), and I would directly ask the prospect, "What level of detail would you prefer in this quote?" Then I would adjust the quote accordingly, because I think you will find that more detail is not always better for some clients that prefer to pay lump sums, but the opposite will also apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you see any strong patterns in terms of different kinds of clients preferring certain levels of detail?

<comment><USER2> No strong patterns, but some characteristics.

Situations where you're more likely to get by with a block quote: Established trust, where you have high credibility with the prospect, when you have been referred to them from a trusted source, or where they are already a client of yours.

Where you probably will require a more granular quote: If your proposal/quote will be passed on to other people in the company, needs to be approved by a board or higher management, and if the prospect is known to be tight with their money. Also quotes above a certain amount usually need to be granulated, for me this was anything over $5K.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its either hours times rate (which sucks imho, because it creates a perverse incentive for laziness) or you go value billing and have a set of agile steps with dollars and time expectations. Its easier to relate to and easier to bill if you have specific steps, rather than trying to productize a service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know of any good resources for getting started with value billing, especially for web design/development? We mainly build websites for small/medium sized businesses, and I anticipate needing to do a lot of education/selling on a possibly unfamiliar pricing system. I'm aware of this book aimed at consultants: [http://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Ultimate- Consultant-P...](http://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Ultimate-Consultant- Pfeiffer/dp/0470275847) but I'm not sure how well that will apply to my situation.</comment></comment>


Launching Built-In NLP for Messenger and Sunsetting Bot Engine - <AUTHOR> https://wit.ai/blog/2017/07/27/sunsetting-stories <comment><USER2> I think this makes total sense: Bot engines (i.e., GUIs where you devise complex conversation scenarios) don't really work beyond the quick proof-of- concept project. Their quality tend to actually decrease with the amount of effort you put into training and designing the conversations.

The underlying NLP tasks however are crucial. What Wit is doing here is build on their strength on NLP tasks on a message level, and leave the conversation rules to the developer to code as they see fit.</comment>


Show HN: Pgbackup: add an encrypted/off-site/zero-lag backup to your postgres db - <AUTHOR> https://pgbackup.com/?2019 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

This is a long-time side project of mine. After a few earlier (re)launches, I came back to it a couple of weeks ago. I now feel the concept is so simple, can't be long before it takes off ;)

No seriously, a lag-free & encrypted postgres replica as PITR backup that Just Works is something I've never found and has become something of a personal itch.

Very curious about your feedback</comment>


Bereaved anger over Father's Day Jawbone email advert - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36487393 <comment><USER2> My dad just died a few weeks ago.

I've been bombarded with Father's Day emails, for obvious reasons, for the last couple of weeks. They hurt.

I can't see getting all bent out of shape over a normal holiday and companies doing their normal holiday thing.</comment>


MapRejuice - Distributed Client Side Computing (Node Knockout Entry) - <AUTHOR> http://nodeknockout.com/teams/anansi

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your feedback guys. This was our first shot. Next we need to figure out

\- What kind of problems lend themselves well to our framework? Most MapReduce algorithms crunch huge loads of data. Our framework is more useful for long- running computations on freely available data

\- How does the technical side look? I'm thinking node as stateless master servers, hypertable for storage, and RabbitMQ for flexible persistent job queues. The client runner has some bigger problems, like circumventing the same-origin policy (for pulling data e.g. from graph.facebook.com or twitter) and streaming in large data.

\- What to do about confidentiality. All computations will by virtue of the framework be visible to the workers. That may not be ideal in some cases.

\- How to handle worker failure and incorrect results. In our system, workers are unreliable, not trustworthy and slow. That is very different from other implementations ;)

That said, if anyone here runs a lot of MapReduce tasks or is generally interested in the subject, drop us a line at firstname.lastname@example.com or leave us your email address at <http://maprejuice.com>. Next we would like to take a number of real-world tasks and try to calculate the correct results on our "cluster" :)

<comment><USER4> Here's something I tried running (index generation):

        map = function (docID, text) {
          var results = [];
          var words = text.split(' ');
          for(var index in words) {
            results.push({key: words[index], value: docID});
          }

          this.done = true;
          this.results = results;
        }

        reduce = function (word, docIDs) {
          self.postMessage("starting reduce for distributed relevance-sorted index generation");
          var counts = {};
          var results = [];
          for(var index in docIDs) {
            var docID = docIDs[index];
            if(docID in counts) {
              counts[docID]++;
            } else {
              counts[docID] = 1;
              results.push(docID);
            }
          }

          results.sort(function(a, b) {return counts[b] - counts[a];})

          this.done = true;
          this.results = results;
        }

        data = {1: "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog while the slow yellow fox stumbles around the yard", 2: "on the ning nang nong where the cows go bong and the monkeys all say boo", 3: "lions and tigers and bears oh my , i suppose next we'll see monkeys and maybe a fox"}

Didn't seem to work, but maybe I did something wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming you entered it in the format we take it in right now (separated out, etc), it's just very possible that we're hanging on the backend. We aren't able to touch the thing for a week while it's being judged, so we've had to periodically kill off things to keep it alive.

It's not our desire either, but give us time to deal with it and we'll show you some rockin' stuff. ;)

<comment><USER4> The first time it timed out. After I posted that I tried again and it let me create the job and then start it...but then the results were the empty object. This made me think I screwed up my JS, but it's pretty simple and I did test each function individually, so I think it's correct.

Anyway, looking forward to you guys getting the kinks ironed out. Very cool idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, your problem just hasn't run yet, it would seem. We didn't have time to implement running multiple problems at once - currently they enter a queue and wait in line for their turn to get distributed. :(

Glad to know you at least got it in there, though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great tech, but I'm worried it might set a precedent for rogue sites stealing my computing power/CPU cycles anytime I visit them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we're still musing on this, it's certainly a known point. Besides the obvious method of offering an "opt out" extension (like Google does with their ad/tracking stuff), there's the more ethical pieces to consider - e.g, loading on Mobile, where people may be paying for data consumption... we shouldn't be taking their data rates high (or potentially using up their battery in the background) for arbitrary reasons.

As of right now it doesn't even fire on mobile devices for this reason.

tl;dr Good point, we're aware, and there'll be ways to deal with it. Must sleep now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> why pay in eyeballs when you can pay in clock cycles? this could be a way cooler way to monetize a site than ads

<comment><USER7> Exactly! this was one of the thoughts we had. Can you imagine someone like farmville implementing it? Lots of potential revenue.

Would also be great to donate cycles to educational or non-profit teams.

<comment><USER8> Plura Processing does something like that -- offering their distributed computing client for integration into Flash games, and kicking $2.60 back to the developer per month of compute time: <http://www.pluraprocessing.com/games/index.html>

I don't know them personally, so I'm curious how that model is working out for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's another distributed client-side computing framework -> <http://github.com/revis/Really-Cloudy/>

It hasn't been touched since december '09, but it looks neat too.

</comment><comment><USER10> The graph on main page of MapRejuice shows ~300 jobs per minute. What is "a job"? Is it one iteration of "map" or "reduce"? So, if we are to assume you're doing word count - can you count up to 300 words per minute? On 6.5M visitors site?

<comment><USER3> A job is one run of map or reduce on one key.

In the case of word count, during the map phase, that means that 300 input files are analyzed per minute. During the reduce phase that indeed means that only 300 unique word frequencies per minute are computed.

This is a purely academic consideration, though. Currently we don't have any running jobs; the clients are idling. When idling, the clients request a new job every 10 seconds, which is longer than a typical reduce run would take. We're also throttling the load on the server from the workers (workers only spawn 50% of the time on the include script) because we don't want to ruin our hackety-hack server. Latency between the workers and servers and the server and our free couchone instance make up large portions of the running time of smaller jobs.

This was just an experiment. Once (and if) we figure out the problems I mentioned earlier we can start building to scale :)

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the answer.

Did you ever do or would it be possible for you to do a benchmark on relatively large corpus of how fast can you count, say 10 million words? Or 100 million?

I'm really curious about how well does this method work relatively to usual map-reduce on clusters. For comparison: single home PC does about 2.5 million word counts per minute using local files and mergesort instead of network.

This is why I asked - 300 words per minute using using 6.5 million randomly available nodes vs 2.5 million words per minute using one home node - <USER2> looks like a huge waste. Would it be possible to do more fair comparison?

<comment><USER3> Yes, we could benchmark that. Most likely our framework would be orders of magnitude slower. There's a couple of reasons for this:

\- Data transfer is slow. Streaming the data in is not possible on all browsers.

\- There is a very high sunk cost for each single computation, that is multiple times bigger than the time it takes for the average map/reduce function to run. This constant overhead per step is hard to minimize.

\- A single map or reduce computation is further chunked down into multiple iterations of the same function. This is to avoid the "slow script" warning that browser show for long-running tasks. This technique is necessary and further adds overhead to the computation.

As a result our framework might not be well suited for many traditional MapReduce scenarios like word count. More suited tasks are ones that have a lot of overhead even if I ran them on my own cluster. This could be any tasks that involves pulling in data from a third party that is not local to the computation. For example counting word frequencies in all wikipedia pages will be vastly faster on our cluster than it could ever be on a single machine, even if we have only few workers.

We still need to figure many things out. The opportunities here are the availability of idle processing power and the possibility to sandbox computations in browsers. We need to find out exactly what the best way is to exploit those opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has the potential to reach many more computers than *@home.

Great idea, great execution!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're pretty happy with what we've got, but there's still a lot more planned.

You're right about the potential to reach more; this is actually where this idea spawned from. Always thought that *@home had too many barriers (having to download/install/etc). This is fairly automatic, and takes almost no integration effort on anyone's part other than one line of HTML. ;D</comment></comment>


A systems theorist explains what's wrong with standard models of intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/ingenious-david-krakauer

<comment><USER2> The "standard model of intelligence" is that a lot of tasks seem to have correlated (not _identical_ ) performance, and we can call the primary dimension of this relationship a "G factor", and in turn measure this implicitly with tests designed to have the same measures of correlation.

This man has a delightful british accent, which seems to count for something, but his "what is intelligence" snippet is a gigantic strawman. "You can't compare a composer and a mathematician on the same axis, they're doing different things!" No shit, jackass. What you can do, for instance, is study the relationship between measured mean population IQ and GDP, which tells you it's really important to, eg, fight IQ-lowering dietary deficiencies and heavy element poisoning if you care about helping countries develop. It's incredibly powerful as an aggregate measure.

<comment><USER3> > _" You can't compare a composer and a mathematician on the same axis, > they're doing different things!". No shit, jackass._

And this outburst serves what purpose exactly? What he said could be basic and obvious, but science involves laying out the basic and obvious things first all the time. Besides, you'd be surprised how many people believe in IQ as if you CAN measure a composer and a mathematician in the same axis [1].

> _What you can do, for instance, is study the relationship between measured > mean population IQ and GDP, which tells you it 's really important to, eg, > fight IQ-lowering dietary deficiencies and heavy element poisoning if you > care about helping countries develop. It's incredibly powerful as an > aggregate measure._

So, essentially combine 2 dubious and much contested metrics, IQ and GDP, to make decisions. I fail to see how this can be enlightening.

Nor how anyone would need this pseudo-quantification to undertstand that "fighting dietary deficiencies and heavy element poisoning" is important "if you care about helping countries develop". Does anyone without the unique tools of IQ and GDP think that lead poisoning is good for a country?

[1] Not to mention how many have the related misguided notion that "music is math", just because music theory involves some (very basic) math relationships in it (mathematical relationships that you can summarize to a 1st year math student in a day without getting a composer out of him).

<comment><USER4>
      > And this outburst serves what purpose exactly?

Who are you, to preside as an authority to chastise and admonish?

      > Does anyone without the unique tools of IQ and GDP think that lead poisoning is good for a country?

Pretty obvious that nutrition and food are powerful forces for intellect, and the aggregation of powerful intellect at scale is a powerful economy. Regardless of jargon, a well-fed, unpoisoned populace thinks cleary.

<comment><USER3> > _Who are you, to preside as an authority to chastise and admonish?_

I'm a commenter on Hacker News. Who said that only some higher "presiding authority" has the right to "chastise and admonish" rude behavior and name- calling on HN and the internet in general?

> _Pretty obvious that nutrition and food are powerful forces for intellect, > and the aggregation of powerful intellect at scale is a powerful economy. > Regardless of jargon, a well-fed, unpoisoned populace thinks cleary._

Pretty obvious to me that there are far more obvious reasons for wanting a well-fed, non-poisoned populace that to get "a powerful intellect" and a "powerful economy". Basic humanism and compassion for one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Isn't it depressing to see how technology is turning us into perfect > consumers?

I don't know what somebody on the street would consider a 'perfect consumer', but an economist would use that term to describe someone who made strictly rational (i.e. objectively _good_ ) purchasing decisions. Maybe I've been drinking too much kool-aid from the econofountain, but what on Earth is depressing about that?

<comment><USER6> I think you are using words and concepts with multiple definitions like "good", "perfect"(for whose purpose) and "rational". You are swapping definitions at will and it's leading you astray.

Perhaps look at this to temper the econofountain -

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo- eco...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/12/15/is-homo-economicus-a- psychopath/)

<comment><USER5> "Perfect" isn't a loaded word here, it just means maximally rational.

Take 2 bundles of products - A & B. They both cost the same, but bundle A would bring you 2x as much joy/utility/whatever-you-want-to-call-it than bundle B. To choose bundle B would be "less good" for you than choosing bundle A: that's what irrationality is...by definition. Choosing A is the "most good" option: that's what rationality is. Someone who chooses A over B 100% of the time is a "perfect consumer".

<comment><USER7> It doesn't mean that in the original quote.

Substituting a term of art for a common usage is a bug, not a feature.

<comment><USER8> Substituting personal definition for standard definition is the bug here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of great stuff in here, this struck me:

> It is already the case that for many of us when we make a decision about > what book to read or what film to see or what restaurant to eat at, we don't > make a reasoned decision based on personal experience, but on the > recommendations of an app! So that little bit of free will that we got to > exercise in our daily lives has evaporated. So the lake of free will has > become a pond.

<comment><USER10> Which leads to an unsettling thought:

> And culture builds on culture. (...) That cumulative process is what allows > for the civilization that we now live in, but it raises a very interesting > paradox and it's interesting that it's very rarely commented upon.

> Here's the thought experiment: (...) imagine I showed you an Apple II > running World of Warcraft. If you knew anything about computers you'd say, > "Impossible. Impossible!" (...)

> Now, let's think about human beings. Human beings are hardware that's about > 100,000 years old, but we run string theory, Lie algebra. We're running > 21st-century software! (...)

> I happen to be one who believes that the cultural becomes so complicated at > a certain point that it won't run on our brains. _And in fact, you could > argue that the reason why we've generated computational devices is > consciously or unconsciously, we've come to recognize that our endogenous, > organic computing power is not up to the task and we have to recruit > machines to represent culture, because we cannot._ I think there's good > evidence for that.

> I think that that ultimately might be what bounds us; that we'll reach a > point where our memory capacity and inferential power simply cannot > accommodate the latest cultural artifact. At that point what happens? Does > it become independent of us, or does it just stop? It's like evolution > coming to an end.

\---

The whole thing is worth watching really, but that question really hit home for me. Though maybe I'm more optimistic: if we automated away all of the menial -- such as deciding what's for dinner, searching for the next book to read, etc. (unless it's done for pleasure of course) -- and the political -- automate a large portion of how our institutions are run -- all of these things that stifle and fragment our creative energies, so that we could focus all of our brainpower and energy on creative endeavours, how much more could we accomplish?

There's still a cognitive limit, but it seems to me that currently we are mired by so much unnecessary overhead that once we are able to remove it, we'll find that limit is a lot farther away than we expected.

I'd guess that for most of us, well over 50% of our creative energy is instead spent on the unnecessary and menial.

Especially since brains are not Turing machines, and the cost of overhead is not linear (50% overhead might mean more than 50% productivity loss): brains get tired over time, they burn out, they need rest, context switching is hard... that overhead burns you out and is making you less productive even when you're not actively thinking about it (what's for dinner, your personal finances, schedules, meetings, that dentist appointment, am I due for a haricut? did I already book the mechanic? my car is making that weird noise again, oh crap did I miss the new Game of Thrones last night, now I gotta catch up... etc etc etc etc) -- what a relief would it be to automate all of that and only focus on what's fun and what's important!)

<comment><USER11> Thinking along those lines, a major role of modern society is to automate away safety.

It isn't perfect, but I guess there are lots of ways in which it succeeds at it.

<comment><USER10> And security. The biggest problem of course is that this a field ripe with potential for abuse... there's a fine line between a personalized book recommendation service, and a massive, streamlined propaganda machine.

We have the knowhow to build either (very near) futures: one in which we automate all the menial aspects of our day-to-day lives and are left to explore and create... and one in which our desire for convenience is exploited by governments and corporations.

The technical difficulty of achieving either is the same, the only difference between utopia and dystopia in this case is the foundation on top of which it's built:

One is built on openness: open data, neutral networks, open software and standards, all massively available so that anyone with the ingenuity to do so can pitch in and help build this future.

The other is built on a foundation of walled gardens and closed ecosystems: everyone building on top of platforms and technologies that are ultimately controlled by a handful of individuals whose interests we now have to trust align with our own.

<comment><USER12> It wouldn't be propaganda if it gave you want you wanted. But the same systems that can predict what you want will give you what some unnamed face wants the masses to know, and silently reports on people whom it detects aren't complying. It's the same system, what it does depends on who owns it and how transparent their operations are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh! David Krakauer. His observation that intelligence is search is one of the more novel, useful, and insightful I've encountered in decades.

<comment><USER14> I find his thoughts about the potential limits of humanity provocative and really clever. These three parts made great impression on me:

 _> And in fact, you could argue that the reason why we've generated computational devices is consciously or unconsciously, we've come to recognize that our endogenous, organic computing power is not up to the task and we have to recruit machines to represent culture, because we cannot. I think there's good evidence for that._

 _> The atom bomb, for example, forced a crisis. We had an extraordinary power and we didn't really have the moral probity or sophistication to deal with it. We still do not. And that's not making a judgment about whether our actions were right or wrong; it's just that I think thinking reasonably about how to deploy power on that scale is beyond us._

 _> Human beings are hardware that's about 100,000 years old, but we run string theory, Lie algebra. We're running 21st-century software! How is it possible that old, antiquated hardware can continue to run ever newer and more complex cultural software?_

<comment><USER15> Interestingly enough the "mental software" used to handle the crisis of the atom bomb came from mathematics (von Neumann's game theory, in particular the idea of mutually assured destruction) rather than moral philosophy or something which we label as "humanities". I'd probably argue that what von Neumann was doing with MAD was "humanities" but I don't have a good definition of the word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me or does David Krakauer sound A LOT like Joe Armstrong of Erlang fame? ;)

Thanks for this very insightful link. Worth every minute.

</comment><comment><USER17> Re birds, fish, etc --

That's an interesting approach, discarding generality / repurposeability as a requirement.

On the other hand, requiring those would mean that being very very good at, say math and only math, would maybe not actually count as intelligence.

Perhaps there's two related things? Artifacts of fixed / embodied intelligence, like bird's wings and traffic lights. And whatever process produced those artifacts.

Saying that intelligence is solving problems or making problems go away, also implies that there's no such thing as disembodied isolated intelligence. Because being isolated and disembodied means there are no problems to work on.

So you can have a general algorithm (say, fitness-biased random search), that only becomes intelligent when put in the right environment (given a fitness function that matches to a problem).

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a transcript of the videos? I much prefer reading to listening.

<comment><USER19> No, but heres the videos as a playlist on vimeo. Click the couch button to watch them all in a row.

edit: whoops forgot to paste the link!

[https://vimeo.com/couchmode/album/3361299/sort:preset](https://vimeo.com/couchmode/album/3361299/sort:preset)

<comment><USER20> Thank you for this. I was getting pretty annoyed with the scroll down to select video, scroll up to watch video routine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem with "intelligence" tests is that they generally measure deductive ability because this is easy. Make up tricky problems and check if the answers are right.

Actual intelligence is usually and balanced combination of taking things apart, deduction, and putting disparate things together in creative ways. This second attribute is much harder to measure so.... why bother.

To quote Albert E. "Creativity is more important than knowledge."

</comment><comment><USER22> His Hamlet analogy doesn't work for me. Couldn't I change Hamlet's name every other line of his dialogue (this making < 1% changes to the original) and yet by doing tihs _drastically_ change the qualities of the work.

<comment><USER23> The analogy doesn't work at all because DNA is more like a program than a tragedy (yeah, some programs are actually tragic but stay focused, please). Changing only one character in a program can have catastrophic consequences. Biological systems are generally more tolerant because they are highly redundant but still; 1% can easily explain the differences.

I just don't understand why he doesn't pick the obviously better analogy although somewhere else in the interview he shows some computer knowledge. And I don't know why he relates intelligence to DNA when we know that crows can compete with chimps on tool use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> His definition of "stupidity" seems to be the same thing as "willful ignorance".

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily.

Stupidity can arise out of having the wrong model for solving a problem. Say, the theory of humors or of spirits rather than a germ theory of disease. You can collect all sorts of information _consistent with your model_ and still end up no better than, or even worse off, than you were before. E.g., determining that you've got to bleed a patient to death.

 _You lack the appropriate model to solve the problem._

In the case of wilful ignorance, and as illustrated in the examples of continental drift and Mars cananls, or today, global warming, requires not only _having the wrong model_ , but in _rejecting the correct model._

Related, I particularly like his definition of genius.</comment></comment>


What My 7 Year Old Learned From MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) - <AUTHOR> http://www.steve-olson.com/7-things-my-7-year-old-learned-from-mma-mixed-martial-arts/ <comment><USER2> Avoid violence of any type, move to the coast, buy a surfboard. This will teach you balance, make you fit, calm your mind, put a smile on your face.

There is no logical sense in learning a system of violence (defensive or otherwise) to improve your body and mind.

Goal Setting - I'm gonna paddle this board through this beach break like a dolphin

Persistence - Opps, it just dumped me on the beach - try again

Confidence - Cool, I made it to the line up

Nutrition - I eat a Paleolithic hunter/gatherer diet. No carbs, no dairy. Food my body was designed for.

Physical Fitness - Paddle, swim

Frustration Tolerance - Repetition, learning, fun

Focused Attention - All I can think about is this wave

Sportsmanship - It's a big ocean, go for it buddy

Who's the best surfer? the one having the most fun.

And BTW, yes I've done my share of martial arts training. If what you really want is to learn how to kick ass, go here: www.russianmartialart.com

<comment><USER3> and if he gets into a fight that he can't get out of? what will he do? surf? :P

<comment><USER2> I was being more metaphorical than literal.

/me sidesteps long involved off-topic discussion about fighting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The value of martial arts training for parents and for kids is that it distills the value of respect into kids. Everything from "Yes, sir" to thanking your parents after each class.

When it comes to fighting, the thousands of repetitions of self-defense moves should and could help in a situation where you don't have time to think about fighting. For example, one of my fellow classmates was walking down a street in Kingston, Jamaica and a guy grabbed his arm and he quickly and automatically broke the hold and put the guy in what is like a police hold.

<comment><USER5> An even better effect is that it might instill some respect into the parents as well (writing from Canada, in case you have never seen the way hockey parents behave before).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry about yet another HN meta comment but, can we please save article like this for mma.reddit.com

</comment><comment><USER7> "After about a year, he could do over 100 squats and 50 push-ups in near perfect form."

I hope you don't seriously consider push-ups depicted on the picture below to be "near perfect form"...

<comment><USER8> It looks like he's doing a version of "dive bomber pushups" which were popular at the MMA gym I previously trained at.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttk8RdiIHzA>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great, but be wary of your son doing too much muscle building when he is so young. I have heard from several sources that it may stunt growth. Never seen anything conclusive, but I have never looked for anything either.

<comment><USER10> and what are these "sources"?

<comment><USER11> It comes from an assertion that _heavy_ weights can damage a child's growth plates (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyseal_plate>) inside their bones. High rep bodyweight exercises like pushups and squats are not going to cause that. ([http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Growth_Plate_Injuries/d...](http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Growth_Plate_Injuries/default.asp#3))

<comment> a-priori When I did a coaching program for Judo (NCCP Level I, to be exact), I was taught to never allow pre-pubescent children to do strength training. Callisthenics are okay, because the resistence is limited by the child's body weight, but weightlifting of any kind is not. Something about building up too much muscle around the joints, leading to arthritis later on.

EDIT: I just went looking for sources for this, and I cannot find any. Unless someone has better Google-fu than me, take what I said above as an extremely suspect anecdote. It seems that the major risks are that coaches will push children too hard, causing damage to muscles, tendons and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ...How to kick another 7 year olds a$$.

MMA has ruined america. There are more "tough guys" walking around now it seems with everyone so quick to want to fight. Like an advanced civilization taking a step back to more primitive ways. Now instead of team sports and learning that the whole is greater than the parts, we have 7 year olds with muscles and ego. And if you don't like it.. want to fight?

<comment><USER13> Martial arts taught me quite the opposite. Fighting is difficult and dangerous and the outcome is far from certain, regardless of the level of experience. Its not like a Jackie Chan movie. You opponents don't wait in line for you to get around to them and one hit to the head with a hard object can be fatal.

I'd submit to you the opposite. Less TV and more martial arts training would make people much less eager to start a fight.

<comment><USER14> We can observe this as a natural experiment: what are the rates of street crime in Japan vs. the US?

<comment><USER15> Really not a good comparison. a) the culture is so much different - a lot of acting for the good of the group rather than the individual, and b) there really aren't _that_ many people who study martial arts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OnDir - automatically execute shell commands based on your working directory - <AUTHOR> http://swapoff.org/ondir.html

<comment><USER2> I don't see any good use for ondir, because I will use the commands I need when ever I need them, I don't need some command every time I change directory. When I need to run another command at the same time i'll just do the following:

[BigOne@BigOne2 ~]$ cd LolFolder && ls -la</comment>


Python for Teenagers: Learn to Program Like a Superhero - <AUTHOR> https://itbook.store/books/9781484245491 <comment><USER2> Every submit for this site is just an ad for Amazon affiliate linked books (tag=itbook.store-20)

There is no "store". Even the descriptions are ripped from other retailers' pages.</comment>


Show HN: Please comment on my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://easyretirementplanning.ca

<comment><USER2> The website looks nice and well designed. I like the idea and problem you are solving though worry how you actually get it into people's hands.

Some website specific thoughts: 1\. When I think of retirement, the words that I want are more emotional than "easy" - they are "secure, wealthy, long, happy, etc". While it is true that retirement planning is a bit difficult, it really is as easy as paying someone else to worry about it (the 1.5% of assets you quote).

2\. Provide some spacing between vertical elements to give them some room to breath. As the website is very text heavy, the missing space makes the whole front page look even more jam packed.

3\. As you have 2 green buttons, the red "made in canada" banner really stuck out to me as I squinted on the first page. In fact, when I landed on your page it was the first thing I saw. Note - there is nothing wrong with being proud of where you are from or where you made the page, what is wrong with this is two things (a) it's the first thing I noticed on your web page and (b) I am in the US. Which immediately made me think that perhaps your website wouldn't work for me. While this may or may not be true, it's the first thought that went through my head.

3\. The testimonial is in a font and color that was hard for me to read. Also, pushing it so fast on me made me feel like you were trying to sell me on the service too fast. First - tell me what it is that you do and why it's awesome. If I don't leave, then as I scroll down the page give me some indication that it's actually real and that other people think it's awesome.

4\. In the header bar, perhaps change "Tour" to "Benefits"? Sell me the sizzle not the steak.

5\. The green button with the "or xxxxxx or xxxxx" is confusing and gives me too many choices. Have a very strong thing about what the best user flow should be and stick to that. Especially since you link the "or " links on the nav bar as well. If I really really really want to find those, they are at the top of the page. The main hero action should be directed towards making a super convincing argument that has only one answer "yes i'd like to learn more".

6\. In the three text heavy boxes, you are telling me stuff that while nice, I'm not sure actually add anything. If you are telling me it's easy on one hand and then expecting me to know what monte carlo simulations are, it's a bit confusing. If you are selling it on ease, the headings should be more about how it's worry free. Basically let us worry for you.

7\. The 1-4 steps at the bottom seem like a very long list of things for me to do before I get any value from your website. Perhaps it's better to focus on one of those things? Start by doing one really well and then slowly grow over time into the other ones. Otherwise, it's hard to really nail each of the different pieces.

Final thoughts: I like what you are doing and think it could definitely help. Perhaps a mix of smartasset.com and readyforzero.com so that I can tell you all my financial info, tell you when I want to retire, and how much i want to have and you tell me exactly what that takes and how to do it. Then you upsell me on viewing my portfolio later.

Great work and looking forward to seeing how this works!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That is a lot of good input :) I'll get to work.

<comment><USER2> Of course - let me know if you have any questions. Always happy to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The website looks nice. You have a lot of text on the first page however. Maybe a 1 minute video explaining it would work. Show some charts with actual return/projections. Sell the dream. Are you doing DFA fund equivalents via ETFs? Maybe you can talk more about how IFA does it (the 12 step plan). Your pricing is way high as well, but that is just my opinion.

Overall, good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input! I had been thinking about a video, but for now text is far easier to display in a half-decent fashion (design is not my strong suit haha).

What would your thoughts be on pricing? I had been thinking I could sell it on pure savings vs. 1.5% of assets that a fin advisor might charge. I'm open to suggestions.

I'm not doing anything re: DFA equivalents at the moment - I allow the user to select allowable asset classes, and then they pick a target allocation from a list. I have pre-calculated efficient frontiers for all permutations of the allowable asset classes using reverse portfolio optimization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The .ca domain threw me off. Is this retirement planning for Canadians? That would make sense. If it's not I'd invest in another domain.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any comments you had would be appreciated :) I'm a chemical engineer by trade, and this is my first foray into web development.</comment>


Show HN: Access npm commands programmatically from JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Manak/npm-programmatic <comment><USER2> Hello - I looked into the project and code.

Just wondering, are there any usecases for encapsulating the npm command as a nodejs library? :-) Couldnt think of something in particular, but curious to know...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :D</comment></comment>


Track & Watch Apple Store Rankings With PositionApp - <AUTHOR> http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/02/track-watch-app-rankings-with-positionapp/

<comment><USER2> The Saudi Arabia thing is probably a bit misleading. I don't know how many iphones there are there, but in countries without many phones my app jumps around tremendously with very limited sales. We're the number two navigation app in China on days that we sell one app there.</comment>


2 Black Holes May Collide, Destroying Entire Galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/space/more-evidence-for-coming-black-hole-collision.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I feel the title should be updated, even the inclusion of the word "an" in "destroying an entire galaxy" would help.

Most people assume "Galaxy", by itself, to be our own galaxy. It seems clickbaity and fearmongering.</comment>


Releasing the Chromium OS open source project - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/releasing-chromium-os-open-source.html <comment><USER2> Now if only somebody could build a nice image that I could run in VMWare...

<comment><USER3> [http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5170843/chromeos- image-999.9...](http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5170843/chromeos- image-999.999.32309.211410-a1.vmdk.bz2)

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Also relevant: "Hello, open source developers. Would you like to help build an operating system for web users?" [http://blog.chromium.org/2009/11/hello-open- source-developer...](http://blog.chromium.org/2009/11/hello-open-source- developers-would-you.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Warning: The "What is Google Chrome OS?" video embedded there is _astonishingly_ patronizing. I have difficulty believing that there is a single person in the world who both (1) will be interested in the a-year- before-it's-ready open-source release and (2) will not be infuriated by it.

<comment><USER5> I for one thought it was cheeky and funny, and think it would be a nice video to show my non-programmer friends. Perhaps you shouldn't take everything you see on the internet personally?

<comment><USER6> At your Chromium OS launch party, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't believe they're using mandatory access control. It's the most eye- glazing security mechanism ever IMHO.

<comment><USER8> Yeah... What's the implication of that? If someone wants to bother my PC, they either have to log in themselves or get full access to all my private stuff? On one hand, I can have my stuff everywhere, but on the other hand, if all we had were OS's like this, wouldn't we have a world where nobody can do anything online anonymously? Seems like that could be bad... maybe I just misunderstand...</comment></comment>


Tiny Steps Towards Liberating Bootloaders and Modem Firmware of MediaTek Phones - <AUTHOR> https://postmarketos.org/blog/2018/04/14/lowlevel/ <comment><USER2> I bought an MTK phone several years ago, when the MT6589 was the one to have, solely because the full datasheet for that SoC had been leaked and it had a bootloader that was "unlocked by design". SPFlashTool and the BROM pretty much makes them unbrickable. The culture around modding these relatively unbranded, cheap, and featureful devices is interesting --- and the sharing of ostensibly "confidential"[1] leaked datasheets/source/etc. is almost encouraged, unlike a certain fruit company. ;-)

It's a curious contrast to companies like Qualcomm, who will release source code openly but keep their documentation very secret. I guess that's why I'm not too bothered by MTK not releasing source code or complying with GPL --- the source only says _how_ , but they've already leaked the _why_ which I find far more useful for modding, or like this project, eventually fully open- source replacement.

[1] Chinese companies in general have a more collectivist approach to IP. I've heard that the main reason they mark those documents confidential/NDA'd, and yet don't seriously pursue leakers, is that it gains them sales (and "street cred" among the modding scene...) but they can still go after those who use that information to compete against them. There's a good overview at [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

<comment><USER3> Qualcomm only releases source code because the GPL requires them to. If it wasn't for that, there would be absolutely nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The downside to [the MIT] license is that it also allows the vendor to > create a fork of the bootloader without giving the customers the changed > source code, and unfortunately it is common practice for vendors to make use > of this right.

One of the many advantages of the GPL over licenses such as MIT.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full title (HN has a limit of 80 characters):

> postmarketOS Low-Level: Tiny Steps Towards Liberating Bootloaders and > Cellular Modem Firmware of MediaTek Phones

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder this can be used to port a normal Linux userspace to android tv's (which all seem to use mediatek)

<comment><USER6> A lot of Android TVs run MStar (acquired by MediaTek) chipsets.

I've successfully (with some hacks) ported AOSP to one of these devices in the past.

Kernel source, and some associated flashing information can be found here: [https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/kogan-tv-gpl](https://github.com/Benjamin- Dobell/kogan-tv-gpl)

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py is there a donation page? how can I support this work?

<comment><USER7> No donations for the overall project, though some contributors may ask for some here: [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Donate](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Donate)

The best way to support the project, without contributing code/documentation/etc, is to spread the word!

<comment><USER8> What about hardware donations, or a "device wanted" section of the wiki?

e.g. for those with superseded bootable phones gathering dust in a box of old 'junk'.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I have a Xperia E1 ([https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_e1-5966.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_e1-5966.php)) that I would like to donate.

<comment><USER2> Chipset Qualcomm MSM8210 Snapdragon 200

I don't think they're looking for Qualcomms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Funny Photo of PG after VC Panel at 2010 Google I/O - <AUTHOR> http://twitpic.com/1p9paw/full

<comment><USER2> The second from the right is Dick Costolo, the COO at Twitter. I think.

<http://twitter.com/dickc>

</comment><comment><USER3> Just curious, who are the others in the picture?

<comment><USER4> <http://twitpic.com/1p9paw/> Christine Tsai, Dave McClure, PG, Albert Wenger, Dick Costolo, Brad Feld. I wonder if PG turned his ID deliberately.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Open-Sources Haystack - An Indexing Subsystem for Apache Spark - <AUTHOR> https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2020/06/30/hyperspace-indexing-subsystem-apache-spark-now-open-source/ <comment><AUTHOR> At a high-level, Hyperspace offers users the ability to:

\- Build indexes on your data (e.g., CSV, JSON, Parquet).

\- Maintain the indexes through a multi-user concurrency model.

\- Leverage these indexes automatically, within your Spark workloads, without any changes to your application code for query/workload acceleration.

GitHub: [https://github.com/microsoft/hyperspace](https://github.com/microsoft/hyperspace) Spark + AI Summit 2020 presentation: [https://databricks.com/session_na20/hyperspace-an- indexing-s...](https://databricks.com/session_na20/hyperspace-an-indexing- subsystem-for-apache-spark)

</comment><comment><USER2> More descriptive title: "Hyperspace, an indexing subsystem for Apache Spark™, is now open source"</comment>


MaxRewards: Free app to manage credit cards and maximize rewards - <AUTHOR> https://www.maxrewards.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> My co-founder and I are reward/travel hackers, and we were frustrated with the existing tools to manage credit cards and credit card rewards. Apps like Mint lack rewards data and apps like AwardWallet lack spend or credit data. We also couldn't find any app that aggregated reward activity. The closest app was Birch Finance (bought by Even Financial last year, deprecated this year), but they were just estimating rewards. Because of how convoluted reward rules are, they were wrong a lot of the time.

We realized the main reason an app like what we wanted didn't exist was because data aggregators like Plaid and Yodlee do not pull reward data. So we built our own APIs. We're able to pull in spend, reward, credit, deals, and account setting information, and we currently have coverage of 6 issuers (AmEx, Barclays, BoA, Chase, Citi, and Discover). Capital One is coming soon. Those 7 issuers represent about 70% of all major credit cards in circulation.

In addition to aggregating information about all of your cards, MaxRewards also provides best wallet recommendations (i.e. best combination of cards, not just good cards to get) and best card recomendations (i.e. best card to use at a particular merchant).

We've been working on MaxRewards for about a year now, and we recently just released a public beta for iOS and Android. I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback so we can improve our app.</comment>


The WSJ cracked the adblocking code - <AUTHOR> http://www.heuro.net/blog/wjs-cracked-adblocking/ <comment><USER2> This article reads like a "submarine article" for one of the WSJ's articles. Is this a future for journalism - use an article-as-advertisement to promote your articles?

<comment><USER3> Use your article-as-advertisement to promote your advertisement-as-article, then rake in the pageviews from your long series of introspective articles asking _exactly_ where the line between those two things is, neatly anchoring the debate in a way that helps you avoid considering the possibility that the very fact we're debating that encompasses acceptance of the advertising either way, and drawing readers away from the question of whether perhaps the whole site itself fits under one of those categories....</comment></comment>


Fractal Related to the Mandelbrot Set - <AUTHOR> https://pilex1.github.io/Pixi/pixi.html <comment><AUTHOR> I saw it on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/72wrjf/beautiful_frac...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/72wrjf/beautiful_fractal_related_to_the_mandelbrot_set/)

<comment><USER2> Can't quite make out what it is on mobile. It it the Julia sets or some thing else?

<comment><USER3> Looks to me like it's trying to generate some sort of Buddhabrot, or possibly the anti-Buddhabrot from this page:

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

Actually now that I look at it I think it's the combination of the two. Basically, take a grid of points and iterate them through the Mandelbrot function, plotting where they land at each iteration.

(The Buddhabrot discards all trajectories that don't escape. I don't think this one does.)</comment></comment></comment>


The most basic Erlang service ⇒ worker pattern - <AUTHOR> http://zxq9.com/archives/1311 <comment><USER2> It's always a bit frustrating to read people say that FP doesn't really have design patterns. Most of the OOP design patterns usually don't apply, but there are definitely design patterns.

The most universal one in functional programming is modelling mutating state. This is solved by placing the state in some container, and then building functions that take a state, and then return an updated state (maybe with a value). You can then build your program by chaining these state modifiers.

So instead of doing

       stack = [1, 2, 3]
       def pop_stack():
          return stack.pop()

       final_value = pop_stack()
       # stack = [1, 2]

you do

       initial_stack = [3]
       def pop(s):
          return (s[-1], s[:-1])

       popped_value, final_stack = pop(initial_stack)
       # final_stack = [1, 2]
       # initial_stack = [1, 2, 3]

You can then write programs like the following:

       def push(s, val):
          return ((), s + [val])

       def add(s):
          x, s1 = pop(s)
          y, s2 = pop(s1)
          return push(s2, x+y)

This seems sillier in python, but is essential to doing "real work" in immutable languages. Languages like Haskell offer syntactic tools to make the chaining be more natural, in particular.

<comment><USER3> That's a pattern with a functional nature indeed but it's not "a pattern in an FP language". In a (typed) FP language you don't need it to be a "pattern" because it's just a type.

To my mind a "pattern" is a structure you encode into a program where the language you are using doesn't allow you to encode that structure directly using the facilities it provides.

<comment><USER2> I disagree with the sentiment that it's just a type.

I understand that you don't need much plumbing, but you're still following a pattern that you have used elsewhere when working on these.

The beauty is that there's usually exactly one way of doing it (so by definition it is the simplest way). But if you're coming from a language based around mutability and are just in front of an Haskell REPL, I don't think you find this very easily.

In my mind patterns are about agreed-upon architectures for dealing with common issues. Another example that comes to mind in typed FP languages are wrapper types to prevent misuse of values (wrapping user input, unwrapping via "escape" calls).

When you have a problem, usually you'll have one or two canonical solutions come to mind. Those are the patterns for me.

Though given how simple everything usually is, it involves a lot less boilerplate. Choosing the right type is still essential.

<comment><USER3> Right, I don't really disagree with you, I think. It's just that I associate "pattern" with things that are "done by convention". By contrast the state monad is encoded in the language in Haskell rather than just "done by convention".

On the other hand, I would say that your state monad in Python _is_ a pattern, because there's no way of expressing the structure of the state monad in Python.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Betting on an Energy Cornucopia? - <AUTHOR> http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/01/betting-on-an-energy-cornucopia.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if he realizes that "the experts" include a massive cartel that openly fixes prices.</comment>


Guidelines for low-level cryptography software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/veorq/cryptocoding <comment><USER2> It's worrying that for some cases you have to put a lot of effort into "obscuring" code and destroy readability to comply with the rules just because the C's semantics is not obvious and its type system weak and dated.

A good language for cryptography engineering should at least somehow allow the programmer to annotate/type variables containing secret data and functions as constant-time so that the programmer can concentrate on implementing the cryptography logic while the compiler warns on correctness issues or security violations.

<comment><USER3> Yup:

[https://www.cryptol.net/](https://www.cryptol.net/)

[https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dstefan/pubs/cauligi:2017:fact.pdf](https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dstefan/pubs/cauligi:2017:fact.pdf)

There's also program analysis work in this area:

[https://michael-emmi.github.io/papers/conf-uss- AlmeidaBBDE16...](https://michael-emmi.github.io/papers/conf-uss- AlmeidaBBDE16.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I admit I've only ever taken cursory glances at Cryptol, but it's never seemed like a replacement for the sort of low-level programming described in the article. If anything, it goes the opposite way - its Haskell base inherits one of Haskell's flaws, namely that it can be difficult to understand the runtime/performance implications of Haskell code without careful analysis.

Cryptol's README describes it as a sort of standardization/prototyping language.

That said, I don't know these things for sure, and I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER3> It's a higher-level language that generates or compiles to the lower-level forms, including C and hardware languages, so you don't have to worry about that stuff. The expert can specify the algorithm, mathematically verify it, synthesize it to code, another tool like Galois' SAW can verify that, and they usually do a certifying compiler (esp CompCert) at the end. Rockwell-Collins and Galois both use the tools in high-security projects.

I can't remember if it addresses constant-time programming. So, I went looking arount, found the other language, and maybe someone will merge them.

<comment><USER4> Well, it doesn't matter _if_ Cryptol is compiled down to "safe" machine code, like FaCT, right? But that's not something I've seen explicitly stated in the Cryptol docs, so I would not make that assumption myself.

Are SAW or CompCert able to do formal verification around things like ensuring no branching on secrets, ensuring that memory is cleared after use, ...? Or does Cryptol make guarantees about the machine code it generates?

I see that SAW is able to do things like prove that hand-written, optimized code is equivalent to the Cryptol specification, which is certainly very neat - but that does not preclude potential side-channel vulnerabilities in the hand-written, optimized variant. After all, much of the scariness of side- channel attacks is that they're explicitly not targeting the (highly analyzed) mathematics of a construction, but rather its implementation.

<comment><USER3> "Well, it doesn't matter if Cryptol is compiled down to "safe" machine code, like FaCT, right?"

It does. It gets you the correct implementation of crypto. Most failures are implementation errors. From there, before the buzz about constant-time, high- assurance security was just mitigating that stuff by using fixed-size, fixed- timing transmission of messages. As in, they couldn't tell anything about the inside of the black box because all they saw was the same behavior on the outside. Designers sacrificed some performance and plenty of bandwidth to do that. Tightly-coupled designed with no covert channel analysis or mitigation later showed up that leaked all sorts of stuff with them changing coding styles instead of bad architecture. That's when we need stuff like OP article and FaCT.

"Are SAW or CompCert able to do formal verification" (you)

"I can't remember if it addresses constant-time programming. So, I went looking arount, found the other language, and maybe someone will merge them. " (me)

I already answered that. I collected papers like FaCT specifically in case anyone wants to integrate them with Cryptol to address that gap if it exists. Also, other analysis and testing for information-flow security to make sure _it_ is working on top of human review. This is a tiny part of my research given covert channel detection is mostly a solved problem with public, free methods such as Kemmerer's Shared Resource Matrix and Wray's for timing channels that most people just don't apply. Most of my research is on stuff that blocks code injection.

<comment><USER4> Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Cryptol itself doesn't matter. It does seem very useful for its intended purpose (though again this is from an outsider's perspective).

Rather, I meant to say that you do still need to worry about what sort of code Cryptol generates if you want to address the points raised in the original article (e.g. clearing secret memory). That was my original point, anyway: Cryptol doesn't address low-level side-channel problems.

As far as integrating FaCT and Cryptol, couldn't you use Cryptol to build the reference version of a construction, then implement a fast and side-channel- resistant variant in FaCT, then use SAW to prove the two were equivalent? (Maybe not as ideal as combining the two languages, exactly, but workable.)

I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. This stuff isn't my area of expertise, obviously, but I still find it very interesting.

<comment><USER3> Ok, yeah, we're on same page now. Far as Cryptol, I wanted to seeif it could be extended to generate FaCT which generated constant-time code. It would also generate C to check with SAW or other tools for extra checking or situations where side channels didn't matter. Could also be a tool that checked equivalence of the two at source or object code level so any checking of C code applied to FaCT.

That should cover most of the problem areas. I still think C itself or SPARK Ada could be modified to do what FaCT does. Some subset at least. Then, one can eliminate need to build FaCT-based tooling. So, those were the ideas I was brainstorming at least for what applies directly to those languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Some compilers will optimize out operations they deem useless.

A compiler translates a certain language to machine code. If it is optimizing it will use that language's semantics for optimization. That is necessary, otherwise we would be writing almost everything in assembly.

> Know what optimizations your compiler can do, and carefully consider the > effect of each one on security programming patterns. In particular, be > careful of optimizations that can remove code or branches, and code that > prevents errors which "should be impossible" if the rest of the program is > correct.

A priority is to understand the language one is writing in.

> When possible, consider disabling compiler optimizations that can eliminate > or weaken security checks.

A better solution is to use assembly language and thus exactly specify your program's semantics within the program; that compiler flag could be removed by whoever builds the program, or something like link-time optimization.

<comment><USER6> > A priority is to understand the language one is writing in.

That's all well and good but you can't expect a developer to know all the optimisations different compilers will do, especially when it relates to undefined behaviuor.

<comment><USER7> I think the point of the OP is that you shouldn't think about the optimizations a compiler might do, but what the language spec guarantees. If the language spec guarantees that your code behaves the way you want, no correct compiler will break it.

<comment><USER8> The problem arises when the language simply does not provide any guarantees on the sorts side-effects you are interested in, so you can not simply rely on specified behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > On most operating systems memory owned by one process can be reused by > another without being cleared

Isn't this plainly false? I think on all mainstream platforms memory is cleared when it is mapped to process

</comment><comment><USER9> Slightly tangential to the article but still important, it says

"Some compilers infer that they can eliminate checks based on erroneous code elsewhere in the program. For example, [obviously dodgy code snipped]some compilers will decide that ptr == NULL must always be false, since otherwise it would be incorrect to dereference it in call_fn()"

So why does the compiler not report this error, or better still reject the code outright? It seems to turn a compile-time-detected fatal error into a critically dangerous runtime error.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is great for educational purposes, but if you're thinking of implementing your own primitives or cryptosystems please use a vetted out-of-the-box solution like libsodium instead.</comment>


Ask HN: What interesting articles about food have you read recently? - <AUTHOR> Recently meaning in the last six months or so. <comment><USER2> [http://www.foodandnutritionresearch.net/index.php/fnr/articl...](http://www.foodandnutritionresearch.net/index.php/fnr/article/view/31694)

Found it today on /r/science.

A low correlation between animal meat/saturated fat and elevated cholesterol in men was found, but not significant enough to warrant any form of warning.

However, potatoes and cereal/grain carbs are strongly linked to cardiovascular disease.

It isn't the meat in the Western diet that kills... It's the potatoes, sugar, high carbs that will get you. (Plus distilled alcohol.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure that this is what you are looking for, but ... "I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss" [http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions- into-thinking-chocolate-hel...](http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into- thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985) (205 points, 476 days ago, 60 comments)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all those who replied.

I initially only meant articles that are about people's experiences with eating any new dishes (that are not really new, but that they had come across for the first time).

(Like: I tried so-and-so dish at a restaurant or at a friend's place recently, and here is what it had it it, and this is how it tasted. I should have made that clear.)

Anyway, the other kinds of comments posted are also interesting.

<comment><USER4> I write about food:

[http://miceats.blogspot.com/](http://miceats.blogspot.com/)

You should totally check that out. It's brilliant. :-P</comment></comment>


We're Buying More PC Games Than We Can Play - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/were-buying-more-pc-games-than-we-can-play-1493402988

<comment><USER2> The games I tend to play the most, are the games I paid full price for. The simple reason is because I anticipated those games and waited until they came out.

I still browse the Steam sales. But I rarely buy. Steam has pulled off an amazing feat. They get people excited to buy games that, a decade ago, would be sitting in the sad dusty $5 bin at Wal-Mart. These games would get overlooked because they were in that same dusty bin yesterday, for the same $5. They weren't $15 and suddenly were priced $5 for Christmas. No. They were just old games being sold for whatever Wal-Mart could get for them.

But, take those same games and put them next to Skyrim like Steam does, and now you change the perception. Shoppers don't see the sad tired box art of a game from 1997. They just see a $15 game on sale for this limited time only for $5.

<comment><AUTHOR> I strongly disagree here. Majority of the Steam sales are very recent games, and if you are after quality you could play a lot of great stuff for a hundred bucks.

GoG capitalized on the 1997 stuff. The way steam changed my perception is that I stopped pirating - why bother when it will be 5$ in one year time, with me having a healthy backlog. (Note to self - finish XCOM:EW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not games for me, its books. I donated a metric tonne of dead tree to Oxfam just before xmas and I'm now _not_ buying any titles until my 'pile of shame' has reduced.

<comment><USER4> I came here to basically enter the same reply. Though I am perhaps not as bad as you make yourself sound.

It's easier to control myself these days, because I like buying books in book stores and those are disappearing. With the exception of certain titles that I really know I want and am searching for (which I buy on Amazon), almost all the books I buy now come from one used book store. It's the last book store within a half-hour drive from home, and there is no book store within a half- hour drive from work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm so guilty of this, especially games on Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER6> yup....99 games purchased and I only play like 1 or 2 extensively. once a year I might venture out to a different genre that I bought in the steam summer sales of 2012 but I always end up not playing for more than 30 minutes. Never again will they hear from my wallet.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of my steam purchases are ... lets call it copyright amnesty. Even more with gog - so although I have above 300 majority of them is old stuff that I have played back in the day. My backlog is maybe 10-20 games I am interested in. But lately I confine myself to 1 game per steam sale. Top 2.

<comment><USER6> >But lately I confine myself to 1 game per steam sale

I told myself that many many times. but it's really weird how they can make us spend several times more than we need.

It's the idea that you are saving money or getting more value for the money that drives you to spend more money on Steam.

I find it harder and harder to purchase new games because I have so many of it the value of the new one goes down very quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well - it is more - with the gaming industry churning out crap at large, it rarely has something worthwhile to buy. This year was incredibly weak in AAA titles and the majority of small games are below the impulsive buy threshold.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Black Hat hacker claims he can make $15k to $20k an hour - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/black-hat-hacker-describes-how-he-makes-15k-to-20k-an-hour/

<comment><USER2> Making $15k-$20k "in an hour" is not the same as making it "an hour" (equivalent to per hour). This is a mistake often made in evaluating the profitability of a business ideas. For example, our business runs procurement events that culminate in a real-time reverse auction with a specified duration of around 15 minutes. It is not unusual for us to bill $40k for a large event. But what about all the work we do that leads up to that brief event? We can't rationally exclude that in the evaluation of our profitability

Likewise with this blackhat; how long did it take to build their botnet? How many $15k-$20k opportunities present themselves in a year? How much of that figure can be attributed to self-agrandisement; an attribute commonly associated with l33t hackers?

</comment><comment><USER3> Spamming and DDoS...pfft...too much work.

I would have just written a blog post on chrome passwords.

</comment><comment><USER4> Right. I say I can make $100k an hour.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can and does are two very different things.</comment>