A viral-marketing gambit gone terribly wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/c-tweet/2010/07/23/should-coke-execs-be-more-hip-online-porn-references <comment><USER2> Most of the media writeups on this strangely avoid describing it (the linked article points out more details), which makes the controversy baffling if you only read those articles.

For example, one story ([http://www.pamil-visions.net/coca-cola-pulls- facebook-campai...](http://www.pamil-visions.net/coca-cola-pulls-facebook- campaign/217123/)) makes it sound like it was no more than a mildly suggestive ad campaign, and gives examples of "the infamous embarrassing statuses" including "Never heard of it described as cute before.", which make it sound pretty tame, as if a bunch of sensitive moralists were offended by a mildly raunchy ad campaign. No mention of, say, the 2-girls-1-cup reference.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the link to the lady who started it: [http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/child_internet_safety/1003998-Ne...](http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/child_internet_safety/1003998-Need- help-with-a-very-sensitive-complaint-against-a-massive)

While I do agree they probably shouldn't have had that done, the response of the moms in the forum is pretty funny as some of them want to have facebook shut down and get the cops involved.

Also, how do they not realize that their 14 year old installed the program of their own will?

<comment><USER4> That thread is incredibly scary. I get tired of this "for the children" mantra that's used to justify every last pissy tirade of every self-righteous parent on the face of the Earth. If the mother actually cared, she'd have not turned her kid loose on the Internet in the first place (what, you mean random strangers won't raise my kid for me?). Also, let's just ignore the fact that the kid is _14 years old_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> apparently even someone saying they watched porn is offensive. I guess that's true if you think all children should be sheltered from all knowledge of anything they're not allowed to do until they reach the magical age when they are then allowed to know and do all.

Of course, that doesn't prevent them from watching sitcom reruns where sexual activity is constantly alluded to. At least here they must stay up til 6:30 pm to be exposed to it.

<comment><USER6> 2 girls 1 cup is some of the most horrific scat on the net. Have you seen it? It's probably illegal in most countries.

<comment><USER7> I really don't understand what could make it illegal above-and-beyond regular pornography. Sure, it's disgusting, but a lot of things are disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Such is the internet. In its raw uncensored format it can be informative, funny, sad, gross, disgusting, erotic and probably dozens more emotions I cant think of right at the moment. Sure Coke screwed up, and the ad company are obviously idiots to even think of associating with with a food brand, but seriously when are parents going to realise that if a child has access to the internet, at some stage they are going to be exposed to something of an unpleasant nature. 2 girls 1 cup, while pretty disgusting, is only on the inner edge of gross when it comes to the net, so the parents need to be aware that they are probably lucky that the weird and misguided intentions of the ad agency didn't dig deeper into the hideous, sickening bowels of what can be found on the internet.

<comment><USER9> True enough. When I was a kid there was rotten.com, and I never felt threatened by it (unlike, say, stilemedia, which I immediately considered culturally fetid).

The great thing about the internet is that _you_ are in control, and so there's nothing much to fear from nasty pictures - you can always just close the page if you decide you aren't interested. 2girls1cup is a relatively long video, and all the people I know have only watched it for as long as they needed to decide they didn't want to see the rest.

Of course, this has lead to shock values, but I haven't seen many bad examples you couldn't anticipate - maybe just if you're really unlucky on your first visit to /b/, or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who knows, in the end the uberhyped old spice campaign might have lost them customers, whereas the despised Dr Pepper campaign might bring a huge boost of sales.

<comment><USER11> Not that again:

[http://mohrslaws.blogspot.com/2010/07/this-is-why-nobody- tak...](http://mohrslaws.blogspot.com/2010/07/this-is-why-nobody-takes-you- seriously.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, the big mention in here is something about "two girls one cup" and how offensive it supposedly is. I keep asking myself, how gross can it be? I decided I didn't care for it but then curiosity got me. I went to wikipedia to read the description of that video and it is BAD. Really bad. Gross indeed. I can understand why parents got so upset about this. I had not idea about this video and yet it is a famous brand promoting this, even if indirectly. I guess the people that came up with this thought that everybody was already familiar with this video. Not everybody is a fan of Howard Stern. (I did watch some of his shows years ago and found them highly disturbing. Mind you, I was still in my early twenties back then so I'm not that old).</comment>


Mining Cryptocurrency Is Against CenturyLink's Acceptable Use Policy - <AUTHOR> I was reading through CenturyLink's Terms of Service earlier tonight, and stumbled upon their Acceptable Use Policy: http://www.centurylink.com/aboutus/legal/acceptable-use-policy.html
I was quite surprised to read this particular section:
Users will not use the Service (a) by any means or device to avoid payment; (b) to access User's account or CenturyLink Services after User has terminated User's account; (c) on behalf of persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations database at www.spamhaus.org; (d) to engage in phishing activities and (e) for purposes of cryptography or similar computational processing to mine or create units of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin.
Is this becoming a norm for ISP's? Does anyone know why they would have such a policy? <comment><USER2> This has apparently been in their policy since July 20, 2018: [http://web.archive.org/web/20180721081756/http://www.century...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180721081756/http://www.centurylink.com:80/aboutus/legal/acceptable- use-policy.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> > purposes of cryptography

That's rich.</comment>


Ask HN: How many cycles do we get if network order is little endian? - <AUTHOR> Nowadays most of the servers are little endian amd64. I am curious how many cycles do we get if we alter the network order to little endian and how much do we gain in terms of power saving? Please let me know if the question does not make sense. <comment><USER2> I really appreciate that you posted this question. It's interesting to think about.

Part of me wonders how much the switching is done in hardware for larger data centres? I'm curious how much of a power difference that is with dedicated hardware compared to CPU cycles.</comment>


First Impressions with Apollo Client 3 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apollographql.com/first-impressions-with-apollo-client-3-2ae2a069ab2f <comment><USER2> Please move your medium blog to your own blog. I cannot the read the blog without signing in and when I do sign in, it shows paywall.</comment>


Disconnect Desktop VPN failing since upgrade to Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> I saw no support links on the Disconnect website, and can understand why. If anyone from Disconnect is reading this or can forward to Disconnect, I have been consistently unable to use Premium Protection from the desktop app since upgrading to Windows 10. I will toggle that on, and the program will wait indefinitely, never connecting to the VPN. The program is responsive as I can cancel that connection attempt. <comment><AUTHOR> I just rolled back Windows 10 and verified that Disconnect Desktop Premium Protection began working again.</comment>


Amazon RDS Adds Postgres to SLA - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/rds-postgres-sla/

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe _now_ Heroku will cut their hosted PG prices down a bit.</comment>


Oregon Republicans are on the lam to avoid voting on a major climate change bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/6/21/18700741/oregon-republican-walkout-climate-change-bill <comment><USER2> A similar case from the other side a decade+ ago: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Eleven](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Eleven)

> A group of Texas House representatives, dubbed the Killer Ds, had fled the > state for neighboring Oklahoma earlier that same summer for the same reason. > However, the quorum-busting tactic was ineffective as the redistricting plan > was later passed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm right of center, but these state senators are being big babies. Worse, they're fomenting serious political unrest. Go back to work, take your lumps, and strike back according to the laws of the limited war that is democracy. It's still hyperbolic to suggest that the US is on the verge of civil war, but if knuckleheads like this can't behave like adults, that might not hold true for very long.

</comment><comment><USER4> The state party is also endorsing the violent threats of its members, who are allegedly being sheltered by militia members near the Idaho-Oregon border.

<comment><USER5> An armed society is a civil society. Or so we're told.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Garbage people.

<comment><USER7> Would you please stop posting denunciatory rhetoric to HN, regardless of how wrong some people are or how much you dislike them? It's against both the site guidelines and the spirit of this site. Maybe you don't owe Oregon Republicans or anti-vaxxers any better, but you owe this community better if you want to keep posting here.

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

<comment><USER6> Understood. My apologies.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Recent HN startups on one page. Autoupdated - <AUTHOR> http://dyatlovprojects.com/startups

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrote this because HN is updating very frequently and I love to check for new startups and services.. they bring me fresh ideas :)

<comment><USER2> you'd better link it back to HN to see if there are any comments on these pages. Comments are more useful than that idea sometimes.</comment></comment>


Anti-Competitive Effects of Common Ownership [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/csom_sites/finance/Schmalz-031115.pdf <comment><USER2> The thesis is ~ that just having the same inactive institutional investors owning shares in competing companies discourages competition and hurts consumers.

I highly recommend reading the conclusion -- some excerpts/context: "Consolidation in the asset management industry has potentially large anti- competitive effects, even compared to mergers of natural competitors in the product market itself. "

"Consistent with investors' economic incentives and established economic theory, we find that when firms don't have incentives to compete, they don't. Specifically, we use more than 10 years of market-firm-level panel data from the airline industry to show that common ownership has a large and significant positive effect on product prices."

This is fascinating, especially in light of the analysis of "The Network of Global Corporate [Ownership]" [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025995) \-- it explores the graph/structure of ownership among the largest organizations.

<comment><USER3> relevant article?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10009740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10009740)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if this could lead to firms like Vanguard and BlackRock not using their proxy votes. Or perhaps creating a system where index fund investors get to vote based on the shares they indirectly own. E.g. my 1000 shares of VTI means I get 10 votes at Apple shareholder meetings.</comment></comment></comment>


Guide to Startup Ecosystem in Poland - <AUTHOR> https://pilot.co/guides/startup-ecosystem-in-poland?utm_content=buffer5b494&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> 4.5MB PDF with merely 37 pages, hidden not only behind "we'll send you an e-mail with download link" form that wants my e-mail address for no reason, but also requires me to specify my friend's e-mail to spam their inbox, and the link itself is hidden behind _two_ redirectors that track my browser.

To add an insult to injury, in the download page's corner some cretin pops up and plays a sound. Fortunately it's just short "click" sound, but it's still annoying.

The content is very thin, being composed of a list of a few incubators, venture capital investors, Poland-focused crowdfunding sites, and co-working spaces. And this sad landscape is presented as a vibrant, active community.</comment>


Wikipedia editors, locked in battle with PR firm, delete 250 accounts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/wikipedia-editors-locked-in-battle-with-pr-firm-delete-250-accounts/ <comment><USER3> This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock- puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the affected pages naming and shaming the clients.

"This page has been locked by Wikipedia in response to deceptive practices paid for by Engulf and Devour to circumvent our community standards and mislead readers."

If you want this to stop, you have to give the clients a disincentive. That will drive the good clients out and these firms will be left with erectile dysfunction flim-flam as their market.

<comment><USER4> Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources. For example here's one [1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing)

It's not supposed to be retaliation, though, so there's sometimes pushback from Wikipedians somewhat self-consciously worried that mentioning the Wikipedia controversy in the Wikipedia article is biasing towards too-meta an article. Ideally it should only be included if, in some hypothetical universe, a similar controversy not about Wikipedia (e.g. about Britannica payola) would also merit coverage in Wikipedia. But that hypothetical is sometimes difficult to answer.

[1] More or less randomly selected from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies)

<comment><USER5> _Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that happened, cited to third-party sources._

That one gets fun.

I occasionally look at my sisters' Wikipedia pages and laugh at the mistakes which I know about, which I can't fix because what is already there cites third party sources which were wrong, and I don't know of third party sources that have correct information.

If I really cared I could get it fixed. (Just ask my sisters to make an unambiguous statement somewhere that I can quote.) But in the meantime I get a chuckle out of things like Wikipedia thinking that I don't exist...

<comment><USER6> Who is your sister?

<comment><USER7> From the name I would guess Jen and Meg Tilly.

<comment><USER5> That would not be an inaccurate guess.

Other useless trivia is that our grandfather is the T in [http://www.cmtengr.com/](http://www.cmtengr.com/).

<comment><USER7> Smart family.

I think it's hilarious that Wikipedia could get something as simple as the number of siblings wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their list of services [https://www.wiki-pr.com/services/](https://www.wiki- pr.com/services/) looks like a corporate shill's sick mockery of Wikipedia's community standards.

I hope every single one of their spurious sockpuppet accounts get deleted.

<comment><USER9> In addition, here is their leadership team ([https://www.wiki- pr.com/leadership/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/leadership/)):

"DARIUS FISHER

Co-Founder, Chief Operations Officer

Darius co-founded Wiki-PR in 2010 after working alongside a crisis communication consultant in San Francisco. As the crisis unfolded, Darius' clients got libeled online. Darius recognized the importance of presenting his clients fairly, accurately, and professionally on Wikipedia. He has since built Wiki-PR into the largest Wikipedia public relations firm. Darius graduated with a degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University.

JORDAN FRENCH

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Jordan leads Wiki-PR from its headquarters in Austin, Texas. He heads Wiki- PR's Page Management and Crisis Editing teams. Jordan is formerly an attorney and an engineer. Jordan is licensed to practice law in New York and Massachusetts. He earned his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis and his engineering degree from Vanderbilt.

STEVE NEIL

Chief Financial Officer

Prior to joining Wiki-PR, Steve served as the CFO of Diamond Foods, maker of Kettle Brand potato chips and Pop Secret popcorn. Steve has over 30 years experience managing operations, logistics, and finances for publicly traded companies. Steve acquired his bachelors degree from UC Santa Barbara and his MBA from UCLA.

ADAM MASONBRINK

Vice President of Sales

Adam manages sales and business development from Wiki-PR's office in San Francisco, California. Prior to working with Wiki-PR, Adam held senior sales roles at Google, Intuit, and several Bay Area startups. Adam graduated from University of Kansas with a degree in business communications and entrepreneurship."

Hopefully this kind of blatantly unethical behavior follows them around a bit. I don't wish the end of a career upon anybody, but maybe a few doors end up closing for some of these folks that would have otherwise been open.

<comment><USER10> The 50+ year old CFO looks strangely out of place next to the 20/30 something founders.

<comment><USER11> That's a bit sketchy - I'd posit that experience is especially important for a CFO role. Too often are interesting ideas brought down by bad financial management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope, as a Wikipedian since April 2010, that this is the beginning of a thorough change of culture on Wikipedia in the interest of making Wikipedia more of a genuine free online encyclopedia[1] and less of a publicity platform for everyone who doesn't want to pay honest cash money for a paid advertisement. There is currently a proposal discussed among Wikipedians for a tighter policy against paid editing,[2] and as long as the new policy, whatever it ends up being, makes for less promotional content on Wikipedia, I'm all for it.

People who want to help Wikipedia improve as unpaid volunteers have a number of channels for doing that. One thing that would help Wikipedia's goal of better content quality[3] is adding more reliable sources to articles. I try to help that process by compiling source lists in user space that any Wikipedian can use for updating articles.[4] It's a long slog to fight the rot on Wikipedia. Reading Wikipedia takes a sharp eye for propaganda and advertising in disguise.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_policy_proposal)

[3] [https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_...](https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Improve_Content_Quality)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations)

<comment><USER7> I hope that Wikipedia's culture someday acknowledges that money is not the only corrupting influence in a society.

Some of the most egregious examples of biased editing I've seen on Wikipedia were almost certainly not paid for; they were the result of deeply held personal beliefs about politics and religion.

Inaccurate or blatantly false edits of this type are easy to get into Wikipedia articles because politics and religion have thousands of highly biased third party "news" sources, so almost any ridiculous claim can be supported with a citation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would be extremely surprised if (quoting from article) it is only "as many as several hundred" accounts are being used by people paid to edit Wikipedia. I know at least a dozen people who have a wikipedia account just to edit articles to make where they work look good (I suppose it is not their full time job, but it is the only reason they edit wikipedia).

<comment><USER14> Is it unethical for, say, a company's "media guy" to update Wikipedia if his company releases a major new project? "On October 1, 2013, Initech released version 2.0 of its flagship product IniIDE Pro(tm)" I think there's a line to draw between adding some pertinent information to keep the page from being outdated, vs. fighting to keep all negative information off the page.

<comment><USER15> It's fine to add information.

It's not ok to remove negative information.

What about listing a company under the product or category page or placing subtle advertisements on the page? An example would be Nest adding links to their wikipedia to the Thermostat wikipedia page. Is that ethical? Is it legal? Is it against wikipedias Terms of Use?

<comment><USER16> > It's not ok to remove negative information.

Why? The BLP stuff has been clear and firm for years: Anything that is unsourced should be removed quickly, especially if it's BLP.

Obviously, removal of suitably sourced material is a problem so I agree there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Couldn't help but laugh when I saw the Wiki-PR affiliates page: [https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/)

OUR AFFILIATES MAKE BIG MONEY.

<...>

Just leave us your name.

</comment><comment><USER10> >"I'm much more worried about what happens when an unethical outfit manages to start getting major clients and start controlling articles that our average reader assumes are not written by corporate flaks."

Or worse, if Wikipedia's trustworthiness is tarnished beyond repair. I remember when I was in high school 5 or 6 years back Wikipedia was kind of seen as a joke by my peers. Now it's taken as near fact. Although I think skepticism of anything read on the Internet or elsewhere is healthy, I would hate to see it revert to the first state because of greedy "PR" firms.

<comment><USER4> A hope that's admittedly probably wildly optimistic is that Wikipedia could help people get better at critically evaluating sources, since everyone knows you are not "supposed" to take it completely uncritically on the basis of the publisher's authority. If you get some familiarity with it gets reasonably easy to spot which articles have something strange about them. Sometimes it's the writing style, sometimes the tone that clearly sounds like advocacy or PR copy rather than encyclopedia copy, sometimes the absence of or particular choice of references, etc. I tend to also start with strong prior skepticism depending on the area, e.g. articles on present-day companies, but not ones big enough to attract a lot of real editors (unlike Google, Microsoft, etc., which do) are inherently suspect for paid editing, while articles on mathematics, whatever other problems they might have, typically don't ring my "might be a PR shill" warning bell.

Can be useful even outside of Wikipedia! Distinguishing between trade- nonfiction books honestly trying to cover a subject, versus trade-nonfiction books that are thinly veiled ads for a piece of technology (or the author's management/diet/etc. consulting gig), has some similarities.

<comment><USER18> Articles on math and physics might just be plain wrong, though. (Especially the `entropy' article, since every armchair physicist wants to contribute.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Related post previously on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333)

</comment><comment><USER20> Depending upon how far the PR firm goes to circumvent their block, couldn't they be brought up on hacking charges? Could the companies that hire them be found culpable too?

<comment><USER21> _couldn 't they be brought up on hacking charges_

Which ones?

<comment><USER16> They've been told not to edit wikipedia. They're continuing to edit wikipedia.

That seems pretty clearly like accessing a computer system without the owner's permission, which feels like it should be a standard bit of law.

<comment><USER21> "Seems," and, "feels," are not enough.

<comment><USER16> I'd be interested to hear what US lawyers would say, but using a computer without permission is pretty much the definition used worldwide in hacking laws.

[http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and- informat...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information- technology/computer-hacking-and-unauthorized-access-laws.aspx)

> _Hacking is breaking into computer systems, frequently with intentions to > alter or modify existing settings. Sometimes malicious in nature, these > break-ins may cause damage or disruption to computer systems or networks. > People with malevolent intent are often referred to as "crackers"\--as in > "cracking" into computers._

> _" Unauthorized access" entails approaching, trespassing within, > communicating with, storing data in, retrieving data from, or otherwise > intercepting and changing computer resources without consent. These laws > relate to either or both, or any other actions that interfere with > computers, systems, programs or networks._

<comment><USER22> What's "using a computer" though? The trouble with hacking laws as they stand currently is that they are written so broadly that innocuous uses are technically illegal, but where no one prosecutes.

I for one don't want to live in a world where everything is illegal - <USER2> hands power to the executive and has been a major source of abuse both past and present.

Say I tell you "DanBC, you're a jerk, you can't access my website anymore". What happens if you visit my website? Are you "using a computer without permission", assuming I own the server?

What is the level of interaction necessary in order for a user to graduate from legally clear to "throw the book at the hacker"?

<comment><USER23> While I appreciate what you're trying to say, it seems obvious that "viewing" and "editing the content of" a website are quite different concepts. If you've been told to no longer edit the content of my website and you continue to do so, it would be hard to argue against a charge of unauthorized access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These paid editing services are obviously lousy and harmful to Wikipedia and it's great that they've gone.

How well did average wikipedians deal with the editors and their clients? Was anyone turned into a useful editor? Or were more people left frustrated and baffled by the WP process?

</comment><comment><USER24> The main problem here seems to be: Why must every company on earth have its own Wikipedia page?

That said, I can see why e.g. Microsoft, the East India Trading Company and BMW should be recognized in an encyclopedia. And there are examples of products (lines) that could/should be mentioned in a vast online encyclopedia as well (e.g. Windows, BMW 3 series) because they influenced industries/trends/zeitgeist and/or lifes.

But why, for the love of god, should every consultancy, contractor, forrester and his second cousin have an entry on this site?

EDIT: typo

<comment><USER25> Because wikipedia long ago decided that 'notable' had a fairly low bar. There's really no going back now and personally I very much like the abundance of articles, even on relatively minor people/companies/events. The storage/serving costs for these articles is negligible, but the value to our society (and maybe especially future ones) will be enormous.

<comment><USER26> Some language versions have higher requirements for notability. It's hard to set a clear cutoff point for example in sports, entertainment and companies. When does something become wiki-notable? Everyone has their own admins, deletion policies and arbitration mechanisms, which have and will influence content.

Statistics show clearly that some have opted to include as many stubs as possible via the use of bots (for example Swedish wikipedia). Tens of thousands almost worthless stubs (like all US townships and communities) could be machine-added at any time, but most wikis have steered clear of this kind of doping. German wikipedia is quite the opposite in regards to pictures. They don't allow any fair use / citation pictures, which leads to de.wiki articles having considerably less photos than other languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why are we passing this opportunity up?!?!?!

Oh Jesus Christ, common now we're a community of entrepreneurs & hackers, someone just create a new startup that's wikipedia for people.

PeoplePedia.com is taken but here, but I've got [http://www.infopag.es](http://www.infopag.es) so it's perfect for something like InfoPag.es/ChrisNorstrom.

If someone wants to join in reply to this comment. So basically I'm envisioning a wiki for people. However, there's 2 routes I can go down:

a) Anyone can create a page on a person and anyone can edit and add onto or delete content from that page. (lots of growth, but lots of potential for abuse)

b) People must register to create a page on themselves, anyone can edit that page and add onto or delete content but the registered owner must approve the edits.

Which sounds better?

<comment><USER6> Neither. Both sound like recipes for disaster, and impossible to administer. In all seriousness, it's taken close to a decade for Wikipedia to develop policies, guidelines, enforcements and practices to deal with abuses and get decent information into articles about people.

Anyone who thinks it's easy to allow anyone to edit articles about people hasn't tried to do it before, or are just plum crazy!

<comment><USER27> You've only further encouraged me. I'll start work on it this weekend.

<comment><USER6> Best of luck - the greatest inventions were created by those with blind optimism :-) interestingly, it's also how they started Wikipedia...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since these companies (or at WikiPR) are refunding the money when things don't work out they should just hire these PR companies directly via friends and family and watch those accounts that are editing the pages they paid to edit. Once they catch the people, they ban the accounts, revert the changes and then demand their refund. It's a basic honeypot.

<comment><USER29> based on experiences by previous clients, they would not refund the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thought off the top of my head so it's not developed or thought through, but wouldn't Wikipedia do well to find a way of somehow connecting itself in with academia? It might gain better resources to knowledge and people and more credibility as a result. And make it more difficult to "just get access" to editing a page.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why doesn't Wikipedia sue this company and their clients?

</comment><comment><USER32> I've always thought Wikipedia is like the true prophecy of Isaac Asimov (encyclopedia galactica) - but not even old Isaac could have predicted this!!

<comment><USER33> IMO, Wikipedia has more in common with Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ (the fictional book featured in the series of the same title, not the work of fiction in which it featured) than Asimov's _Encyclopedia Galactica_.

<comment><USER32> My point still applies :) Could you imagine PR companies warring to get their 'native content' into the _Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ (the book featured in the series)? Now _that_ would have been prescient.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Python library with Matlab-like functions for creating JavaScript plots - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sendos/javascript_plots_from_python <comment><AUTHOR> This is a library that provides access to Matlab-like plotting functions for easily creating javascript plots from within Python.

No need to deal with HTML, Javascript, or CSS to get some plots with multiple linestyles, colors, markers, and labels. Just plain Python code and a simple plotting syntax. The currently supported Javascript plotting libraries are Flot and NVD3 (which is a wrapper around D3).

One use case for this library is to have Python scripts running automatically and updating websites that serve Javascript plots to visitors.

For example, we used this library to create and update the plots on prespredict.com. During US presidential election seasons, a cron job calls the plotting script daily, which automatically updates the plots on the website with data from the latest polls.

The resulting scripts may not be "Pythonic" enough, but I was aiming for the simplicity of creating plots that Matlab has.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is neat! Have you tried to get it running in a Jupyter notebook?</comment>


After 48 hours we haven't seen any sign people are using Waymo's service - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/waymos-lame-public-driverless-launch-not-driverless-and-barely-public/ <comment><USER2> Autonomous cars are a very difficult problem, more than I think most people anticipate. There's been a lot of tax breaks/money that goes into these programs too, and that's the tragic thing, since that funding should be going to known solutions: public transportation (trains, trams and express buses).

Even if you had a full-autonomous only Interstate where each car could be fully loaded and ride bumper-bumper at over 100kph, it wouldn't even begin reach the carrying capacity of currently existing fully autonomous subways systems like those in Singapore.

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not- so...](https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the- transportation-problem/)

These driverless cars would be great in Europe where they can solve the last leg problems in countries that already have strong public transport infrastructure. In places like America, the existing infrastructure has a long way to go before autonomous cars won't lead to the same gridlock as normal cars .. and an even longer way to go before they're ready for mass consumption.

<comment><USER3> Everywhere and everyone is different, obviously, but I would _love_ to see autonomous electric vehicles become our future. I really don't care for public transportation, I find it uncomfortable in many ways, and I don't see any way that it will ever _not_ be about half the speed of a private point-to-point transport.

So a highway filled with self driving cars zipping along bumper to bumper may not technically be able to carry as much as a fully loaded subway train, but it's so much more _useful_. Take away the casualties and pollution, and it's as close to perfect as we are likely to get.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain to me how it's more useful than a train that carries more people with less energy?

Because, to me, it sounds like you just don't want to be uncomfortable, and that's fine, nobody does, but it doesn't make something more useful.

<comment><USER3> How do I get from my house to the train? Do I have to make transfers? How long will they take? What if I have to carry groceries, or take young children with me, or my elderly grandma?

If I have a car, I load everyone and everything up, and we go. We get to our destination and unload, ta-da! Is this not an order of magnitude more useful than taking a train?

Sometimes I think HN is filled with young people with uncomplicated lives :).

<comment><USER5> >Sometimes I think HN is filled with young people with uncomplicated lives :).

No, if these are big issues for you, you likely live in an American low density area where public transportation is scarce. In large metropolitan areas (which is after all, where most of the world already lives, and will live), getting on and off public transport is usually not a problem.

I have relocated to Tokyo for example about a year ago, and for me, a trip to the grocery store is usually done by foot (same is true for other appliances), and multiple forms of public transport are in walking distance.

<comment><USER3> I live in a city with about 700,000 residents inside the official limits, and 3,000,000 residents in the metro. The nearest bus stop is approximately a quarter mile away.

With all due respect, the number of people who live in cities as dense as Tokyo are the minority, most of us don't.

<comment><USER5> No offense but if you think walking a quarter mile is a hindrance to access public transport then the car culture has done even more damage than I thought.

<comment><USER3> On the contrary, I think a quarter mile is perfectly reasonable for a public transit stop in my city. Sorry to suggest otherwise.

However, when I think about loading up my young children with all of their stuff, loading me up with everything I need, etc, and then dragging that down the street a quarter mile, then waiting for the bus, boarding it, riding to the transit center, transferring, riding another bus to the light rail station, riding that downtown, and then doing it all again the other direction... well, I'm pretty confident in my original point that the car is a hell of a lot more useful. Sure, you can exist with only the public transport option, but I was not asserting otherwise. But a lot of people on HN seem to think that not only is it possible, but that it is the superior choice.

So, no offense taken, in fact I appreciate you affirming my original comment about so many folks on HN commenting from the viewpoint of someone with a young, uncomplicated life :-).

<comment> grey-area Many people with kids do what you describe in cities. It's far better for everyone, and even if it's not the superior choice for an individual (though I'd contend it is when you adjust your lifestyle), it is the superior choice for everyone together as it avoids pollution, traffic gridlock and huge fuel inefficiencies.

As it is those with cars push off these negative externalities onto those who choose not to have them, or can't afford them. So your comfort does have a cost, which you don't pay directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In late September, a Waymo spokeswoman told Ars by email that the Phoenix > service would be fully driverless and open to members of the public—claims I > reported in this article.

> We now know that Waymo One won't be fully driverless; there will be a driver > in the driver's seat.

This reminds me of this famous Radio Yerevan joke:

> Q: Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov from Moscow won a car in a lottery?

> A: In principle yes, but:

> it wasn't Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov but Aleksander Aleksandrovich Aleksandrov;

> he is not from Moscow but from Odessa;

> it was not a car but a bicycle;

> he didn't win it, but it was stolen from him.

Because smart people have invested billions of dollars into this technology and because even smarter people work on this technology the general public must pretend that it's all going according to plan, that everything is damn serious and that the emperor still has his clothes on.

<comment><USER7> The chairman of a local chamber of commerce had to introduce the speaker at the organization's annual black-tie dinner...

"The man who I am about to introduce," he said, "is someone I know you'll enjoy listening to. He is the most gifted businessman in the country. He has made one hundred million dollars in California oil."

The speaker, embarrassed, came to the podium. "Thank you for your kind introduction, Mr. Chairman," he said.

"However, the facts need some clarification. It wasn't oil; it was coal. It wasn't California; it was Pennsylvania. It wasn't one hundred million; it was one hundred thousand. It wasn't me; it was my brother. And he didn't make it; he lost it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "Lane changes appear to be a problem for the cars," Randazzo says in the > video. When trying to move into a crowded lane, a Waymo car seemed to lack a > human driver's ability to anticipate other drivers' actions and squeeze into > an open spot. Instead, the vehicle would turn on its turn signal and wait > for a few seconds for an opening to appear. If one didn't appear, it would > turn the turn signal off and wait for a while before trying again.

This makes sense, because a lot of times merging into a lane is a game of chicken. You've got to make the drivers in that lane believe that you're going to merge anyway and that they'll need to slow down to avoid hitting you.

<comment><USER9> In the video you can actually see the waymo car do that. Faking to move in, then stopping, then faking, ...

<comment><USER10> Classic AI... no sense of continuity

Me: it's really sunny today

AI: I love sunny days

Me: me too, maybe that's why I'm so happy today

AI: why do you think you're so happy today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll be happy when my TM3 can even recognize stoplights and stop signs on autopilot, and the adaptive cruise will stop at an intersection and continue on when it turns green. Next they can work on left and right turns.

But in all seriousness, IMO the biggest challenge to AI driving is not object recognition or modeling instantaneous state, but the full hierarchy of "statefullness" which humans keep effortlessly, but which seems to be almost totally missing from the driving AI.

Understanding the current state, the upcoming state, and the expected transitions in between... are crucial to how I am able to turn left with oncoming traffic, smoothly cruise through a 4-way intersection which happens to be on a curve, zipper merge with entering cars coming off an on ramp into my highway lane during rush hour, change lanes to avoid a bad driver, and not slam on the brakes when a stopped car is in the process of turning left up ahead.

When driving on a two lane undivided road, and a left turn lane appears ahead, suddenly an AI finds itself driving in between two lanes and makes a random choice to veer left or right to try to stay in lane. Without the stateful understanding of how and why this new lane came into existence the AI is clueless. The AI can't solve the problem just by identifying lanes at t=0, or trying to read signs or markings on the road. Us humans know intuitively (or from memory) which lane is for onward travel and which lane is for turning. Any AI driving system built in the next 5-10 years will need an annotated map which tells it which lane to choose.

This all adds up, in my estimation, to a metric fuck-ton if metadata required per mile in order for an AI to operate. It cannot be done "statelessly" (like a human can do it) without an AI at least 5 orders of magnitude "smarter" than what we have today.

</comment><comment><USER12> To me it sounded like they basically just gave people the option of getting out of the NDA if they wanted to start paying for rides. I assume to most of the early riders, it's just not worth it when they can continue just getting free rides.

</comment><comment><USER13> for some people, waymo-like cars are not an optional luxury/curiosity but a necessity (elderly people, disabled). It would be nice if they focused on those groups early, instead of leaving it as an afterthought. The oddities of the cars are not going to be a show-stopper, as long as the cars are safe. Human drivers will learn to adapt their way around the "roomba cars" over time.

<comment><USER14> They did focus on these early though. Literally their first fully autonomous drive on public roads was with a blind individual, explaining how the technology was going to be transformative.

Video: [https://youtu.be/ArYTxDZzQOM](https://youtu.be/ArYTxDZzQOM)

<comment><USER13> that was a promo video, but i have not seen anything specific to disabled people since then

<comment><USER15> They've been working with the guy in the video for over 6 years [1], and he's the former CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, which has aims for "a future where awareness, legislation and technology meet at a crossroads to provide individuals who are blind and visually impaired the same opportunities as their sighted peers" [2].

It sounds like they're taking this seriously.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE)

[2] [http://www.visionbeyondsight.org/About- MissionVision.htm](http://www.visionbeyondsight.org/About-MissionVision.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would think the general climate of fear in the country would make it frightening to launch an ambitious product like this. There's really no hope of a second right now when things go wrong.

Disclosure, I work for Google, but have no connection to Waymo.

I hope the team can keep pushing on; Waymo is one of the most important "moonshots" to the country. It really could save lives. But, one mistake and people won't trust it even though hundreds of automobile accidents happen every day.

<comment><USER13> are other countries interested?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There will _never_ be fully driverless cars until we have true AI.

The only thing we might have are dedicated lanes on interstates for driverless cars, like railroad tracks.

In city driving will never happen without AI.

This is a strong claim, but I'm sticking to it.

<comment><USER18> What is "true AI" in your opinion?

<comment><USER19> Any sufficiently misunderstood computer program is indistinguishable from AI.

<comment><USER20> Then I've been writing true AI all my life!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honestly looks to me like the AI translation problem, always 5 years away from being perfect, still mostly crappy, only good enough to have a rough idea of what is being said and with glaring mistakes.

<comment><USER22> AI translation has gotten _massively_ better in the last 10 years. I can read a foreign news site in Chrome, pop "translate this page", and get a reasonable sense of what the article is about and the factual content it contains. The grammar will be off and some sentences will be non-sequitors, but getting to this point is a massive leap forward compared to 15 years ago.

<comment><USER23> I feel like a lot of AI problems move directly from "this is so terrible that it's completely useless" to "this capability is a fact of life that I no longer think about" without ever passing through a conscious "this doesn't suck so much anymore" stage. Speech recognition and translation both did this. They're far from perfect but they're good enough to get a lot of real-world use, but somehow they still have a reputation for being worthless junk.

<comment><USER20> Biometric authentication and banking fraud detection are two more areas where there has been a step-function improvement in accuracy with little pomp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Of course they're not going to unload hundreds of people onto it all at once. Would you?

Of course safety drivers are going to be there for a while. Was the perception really that they would test a bunch and then just pull all of the drivers immediately after? Why would they take such a risk when they can afford to have the drivers monitoring for a while?

<comment><USER20> Exactly right.

It's almost like the tech press _wants_ Waymo to aggressively pursue a very public failure.

Even one disengagement every 5000 miles without human backup will be perceived as apocalyptic when your fleet drives thousands of trips a day.

<comment><USER25> They've "launched" a "commercial" service, and claimed that their some of their early riders moved to the new service with no NDA.

Where are those social media posts?

Waymo's PR is getting more and more divorced from reality with every announcement.

<comment><USER24> Their announcements do seem to be a certain amount of time ahead of reality. They announced the early rider programme having started at least a few weeks/months before the evidence of it started showing up, and it looks the same this time.

My take on that is that it's okay. They're being cautious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just an anecdote here, but I live in Phoenix, near their service area, and I see these cars all over the place. I'd say I probably see at least one on each journey I take in my own car.

<comment><USER27> Do you see any with actual passengers in them?

<comment><USER20> Driverless passengerless cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "In another incident, a Waymo car was part of a line of cars approaching an intersection where a car crash was blocking the right lane. The human drivers saw the issue far ahead and began shifting to the left lane. The Waymo car continued straight and only began trying to merge left when it was a few car lengths away from the traffic cones"

So the car actually behaved correctly then? It's called a zipper merge.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not as pessimistic. I think Google is taking its time since a bad accident would be a PR disaster. Given how big a deal this is, it makes sense for them to take it slowly, and I don't think we can read much into this in regards to the state of their self-driving tech.

<comment><USER30> I think I agree with this take. Do we really think Waymo cars would be so cautious with merging if a Waymo crash were received with the same level of fanfare and financial repercussions as an ordinary commuter crash? I.e. a $1,000 financial hit and literally nobody cares.

Most of the "mistakes" in the video looked to me more like a hyper-cautious grandmother than an A.I. that fundamentally doesn't know how to drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems they have some 'safety level' constant they can control during their training process, so about half a year ago when they were preparing for public release they decided to change safety level constant from 0.99 to 0.999 and something went wrong, like it's completely unable to do some unsafe actions (unprotected left turns, merges, and other tricky situations). And because of that they need additional training with safety drivers for this kind of situations.

<comment><USER32> _so about half a year ago when they were preparing for public release they decided to change safety level constant from 0.99 to 0.999_

That's my theory as well. Remember, Uber killed a pedestrian earlier this year. Fortunately that didn't result in self-driving cars being banned or regulated out of existence, but they may not a get a third chance, so it makes sense to be even more cautious after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Related question: Is the AI bubble smaller or larger than the dot-com bubble?

[https://i.imgur.com/q7whaio.png](https://i.imgur.com/q7whaio.png)

<comment><USER34> As far as I know, there are no "AI" companies listed on the NASDAQ.

Of course, there are listed companies with significant AI investments. But I'd argue their valuations are driven by their existing/conventional/ad-driven scale, not their AI arms.

Whether or not they're overvalued remains to be seen. The era of cheap money seems (?) to be coming to an end, so it will be an interesting few years.

<comment><USER33> Were "dot-com" companies listed on the NASDAQ back then, or only companies with significant dot-com investments?

<comment><USER35> Wow, this makes me feel old. Tons of .com companies (very common to actually have .com in the company name) were listed on the NASDAQ back then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It feels like many of these problems could be overcome if every car on the road was also autonomous, and every such car communicated with each other in a network of sources to coordinate traffic, signal important information, etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nobody cares that much about the tech, they care about getting from a to b at a reasonable price, at a reasonable speed, in safety.

<comment><USER38> Well without the tech they won't be able to get from a to b at a reasonable price, at a reasonable speed, in safety.

<comment><USER37> Yes, it's called 'drive yourself' or 'take a cab' or 'ride a bus' or 'ride a bike'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are there any US municipalities that already allow fully driverless cars at all?

</comment><comment><USER40> When i think about the rumours i've heard that waymo chief made a 500 millions $ bonus last year... at the time i thought this was because he was the only guy in the world truely capable of transforming the whole industry...

</comment><comment><USER41> Is the problem with driverless cars that humans are, on average, absolutely terrible drivers?

<comment><USER10> No. It's that humans are remarkably adaptive and can convey intention through body language -- even through a "puppet body" like a motor vehicle. Humans can, by and large, adapt to "terrible" drivers -- swerving to avoid the aggro asshats, honking at phone addicts to signalboost green lights, changing lanes to avoid grandpa's leaden brake foot, etc.

Speaking as somebody who owns a classic car, drives carefully to baby said classic and often rides shotgun... I gotta say: most drivers are pretty decent. The people I hear complain about how awful everybody else is... they're either old and drive dangerously slow, or they're super entitled and drive aggressively. Since we're on HN, I'm gonna guess you're of the latter camp. Do the world a favor: take Uber and don't write AI.

<comment><USER41> Wow that'sa lot of assumptions to make about me from single statement.

While it is amusing, doesn't HN encourage people to be civil?

<comment><USER10> You described the average driver as "absolutely terrible." Are you actually offended that I painted you with a similarly broad brush?

<comment><USER41> I'm not offended, I'm bemused that you couldn't resist attacking me while making your point.

And no, talking about the avarage human being's ability to operate a specific machine over the course of their life is not painting any individual with a broad brush.

Also, an individual can be a good driver. People in general may not be. That's not a contradiction or an insult. Heck even a "good" driver can drive badly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The problems that are reported in the article seems simpler than I imagined. Is google really only gathering data via real world tests? If so then something like NVIDIA simulator will completely crush waymo. [https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/09/12/drive- constellation...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/09/12/drive- constellation-open-simulation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd think that simulation is useful for training machine learning algorithms, but in practice, the differences between our best simulations and the real world are such that training on simulations is next to useless.

Google AI blog explains why:

 _Simulating many years of robotic interaction is quite feasible with modern parallel computing, physics simulation, and rendering technology. Moreover, the resulting data comes with automatically-generated annotations, which is particularly important for tasks where success is hard to infer automatically. The challenge with simulated training is that even the best available simulators do not perfectly capture reality. Models trained purely on synthetic data fail to generalize to the real world, as there is a discrepancy between simulated and real environments, in terms of both visual and physical properties. In fact, the more we increase the fidelity of our simulations, the more effort we have to expend in order to build them, both in terms of implementing complex physical phenomena and in terms of creating the content (e.g., objects, backgrounds) to populate these simulations. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that powerful optimization methods based on deep learning are exceptionally proficient at exploiting simulator flaws: the more powerful the machine learning algorithm, the more likely it is to discover how to "cheat" the simulator to succeed in ways that are infeasible in the real world. The question then becomes: how can a robot utilize simulation to enable it to perform useful tasks in the real world?

The difficulty of transferring simulated experience into the real world is often called the "reality gap." The reality gap is a subtle but important discrepancy between reality and simulation that prevents simulated robotic experience from directly enabling effective real-world performance. Visual perception often constitutes the widest part of the reality gap: while simulated images continue to improve in fidelity, the peculiar and pathological regularities of synthetic pictures, and the wide, unpredictable diversity of real-world images, makes bridging the reality gap particularly difficult when the robot must use vision to perceive the world, as is the case for example in many manipulation tasks._

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/10/closing-simulation-to- real...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/10/closing-simulation-to-reality-gap- for.html)

<comment><USER42> The simulator isn't intended to fully replace real world training, the reality gap is a well known issue. However it's obvious that with *just real world training that you will never be able to get sufficient data and fail on easily predictable problems as described in the article. A lot of that post is spent on saying how hard it is to build a good simulation, but what is hard for some companies can be much easier for others.

[https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/12/03/physx-high- fidelity...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/12/03/physx-high-fidelity- open-source/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A crowdsourced list of "buy it for life" products and brands - <AUTHOR> https://www.buyforlifeproducts.com/ <comment><USER2> There is some issue with voting. I tried to vote for Arc'teryx but as I vote / unvote it pushes the count down. If I refresh the page and then vote/unvote, it'll continue to go more negative. I assume there must be an issue with the unvoting code in regards to vote summation.

I really like the concept as I've had some great experiences with both Arc'teryx and Darn Tough Socks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the bug report! Just fixed it :)

<comment><USER2> For sure! Happy to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love BIFL products, but this isn't something you can crowdsource. As soon as it became mildly successful, you'd be in the same cat-and-mouse game as Amazon.

Unfortunately there's no way to trust aggregated, anonymous online reviews. I just go with Consumer Reports or Wirecutter these days.</comment>


Why Venture Capitalists Don't Think for Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/why-angels-and-venture-capitalists-dont-think-for-themselves-2012-09-20

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, some good advice and a practical perspective. It's refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER3> it's dissapointing to think it's important to I have to know somebody as opposed to just being measured against how good an opportunity I have.. however they always say the truth is hard

</comment><comment><USER4> Good article. It's always helpful to get an insider's perspective</comment>


Hello: Macs are about to get interesting again - <AUTHOR> http://cultofmac.com/hello-macs-are-about-to-get-interesting-again/2221 <comment><USER2> I personally think that Macs are eating into the Linux crowd. Haven't you noticed that in the past year or two how the buzz over Ubuntu has dwindled, and now all the "cool" developers run around with macs? I wonder what those official stats are.

<comment><USER3> 10.5 was quite a step backward [edit: from ubuntu] in terms of development environments. I don't think the battle is over yet :-)

<comment><USER4> How so?

<comment><USER3> After citing my confusion as to why OSX doesn't have a decent package manager, doesn't ship with apropos, doesn't come with gcc, etc. to my friend Nick, he stated that 10.5 was quite a bit more fussy. I haven't used 10.4, so I can't be sure what has changed, but it's a fairly grumpy environment (for backend development, at least) compared to Ubuntu.

<comment><USER5> "After citing my confusion as to why OSX doesn't have a decent package manager, doesn't ship with apropos, doesn't come with gcc, etc."

        wrong: macports or fink.
        wrong: apropos apropos: apropos(1) - search the whatis database for strings
        wrong: gcc -v: gcc version 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)

Maybe you could actually TRY things before you make completely false claims that you haven't bothered to test... There is nothing "fussy" about it... I don't even really know what that means. 10.5 ships with xcode just like (pretty much) all the iterations before it. I think 10.0 was the only one to not include it.

<comment><USER6> No, Dani has a point.

Both macports and fink are poor compared to recent linux package managers, which is no surprise since they follow an approach (bsd ports) Apple doesn't use for it's own software. What is really irritating is that macports- installed shared libraries occasionally cause linking problems.

Also it's important to keep in mind although you get XCode when you buy OSX, it requires a separate installation step that's both time consuming and easy to overlook and if you're getting OSX with a new computer you'll probably want to ignore the one that comes with it and download the most recent version from ADC which is clumsy compared to apt, yum, conary, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This dude is a little late. Macs have been interesting since the release of OS X and have been _really_ interesting since OS X 10.3 when things finally started to speed up an stabalize.

</comment><comment><USER8> _"That means that when not rendering 3-D graphics, [Larrabee] can also add a few dozen processing cores to pump up performance in all regards."_

This statement is incredibly naive. Let's not get swept away on a wave of hype.

</comment><comment><USER9> as much as i like macs, this article doesn't really have any information in it. just hoping for new mac designs.

</comment><comment><USER10> I sure hope Apple give him plenty of cash for that blow job.</comment>


David Hume Cancelled - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenational.scot/news/18717667.edinburgh-university-accused-cancelling-scottish-enlightenment-philosopher-david-hume-following-black-life-matter-protests/ <comment><USER2> To judge someone without context is the height of stupidity.

Imagine if we applied this proactively to ourselves:

I am certain that every single one of us are committing something that will feel atrocious to future generations. Should we have no heroes then?

<comment><USER3> there's a difference between "feels atrocious" and "is atrocious". white power doesn't feel atrocious. It IS atrocious.

<comment><USER4> How far do you wish to cancel them all? Where does one draw the line on this? You'd be very busy in your quest wouldn't you?

Let's start with 'cancelling' Yale for the very least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good to me</comment>


Project: Glyph - H3RALD - <AUTHOR> http://www.h3rald.com/glyph/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+RubyInside+(Ruby+Inside) <comment><USER2> <http://sphinx.pocoo.org/>

I find using ReST syntax more intuitive than the one used in H3RALD, and it produces HTML and PDF (actually, LaTeX, which you can then output as PDF) as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> nice! i will look into that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Investments/Savings for Infants - <AUTHOR>

OK - so I'm thinking about christmas presents for my brother, his wife, and their 2 month old.  They have more clothes and diapers then they know what to do with and both make very comfortable livings.<p>I'd like to put away some money for my nephew in some sort of investment vehicle that cannot be touched until he's 18 (or out of college). I was wondering if there were any funds, CDs, ETF's or other investment tools I should be researching. Please, share your thoughts/experiences. <comment><USER2> A 529 is the way to go for this sort of thing...much better than the savings bonds I received as gifts when I was a child.

My son's 529 is with USAA...they have great customer service, free financial advisory services, and their plans have a great performance history (relative to other 529 plans.) Setting up a 529 is also one of the most pain-free financial planning things you can do, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Search for information about 529 plans for college savings, see if that fits your intent.

Otherwise you should be looking at trust funds, I think, if you want to keep the money away from the child/parents by law until a specific point in time or condition.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've actually often thought there is a business idea here - there is no easy way to give kids investment gifts without a bunch of painful dealing with banks.</comment>


Show HN: Termpub – Epubreader for the Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mdom/termpub <comment><AUTHOR> termpub aims to be a full features epub reader for the terminal. It already supports internal and external links, skips to front matter and will display images with an external viewer. Your reading position will be saved and restored.

I probably wouldn't read a novel with it, but I find it really helpful to read a manual while coding. I would be very interested in bug reports, user interface ideas and features requests. And it would be nice to know where the renderer is sufficient and where it does break down.

Hope you like it!</comment>


Node.js Is Chaotic and Insecure - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@caspervonb/73fac4bc5068 <comment><USER2> is-odd? IS-ODD? This is having 500000 downloads?! Omg, some people should never be allowed to code.</comment>


The Intricate Economics of Massive Cruise Ships Are Fascinating - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/the-intricate-economics-of-massive-cruise-ships-is-fasc-1825051121 <comment><AUTHOR> Warning! 90 second infomercial for Dashlane at the end of the video. But the video itself is pretty good.</comment>


Hong Kong Protesters Drop Nazi Term After Western Input - <AUTHOR> https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1482550-20190925.htm <comment><USER2> This screams "mainland china media meddling".

A news website running out of Hong Kong says that protestors won't call the government "nazis" anymore even though they're (LITERALLY) evidently doing some things the Nazi regime did (locking up ethnic minorities to 'purify' the chinese race, stories of organ harvesting, political manipulation, brainwashing your own citizens, the list goes on)

Considering it's a daily occurrence in the western world that some right-wing politician is blasted with "you're a nazi!" rhetoric in popular culture when they're committing nowhere near the level and amount of atrocities the Chinese government is doing.

Edit: Also the fact that China _probably_ doesn't want to be in the middle of their 70th Anniversary showing off their military equipment and power in parades while having parallels being drawn to nazi-ism.

<comment><USER3> RTHK is the government funded state broadcaster in HK, who dropped their World Service feed and replaced it with Chinese State Radio only a year or two back.

Make your own mind up as to whether they are an impartial or balanced source any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> China is a problem, folks.</comment>