Julian Assange Appears in Court for U.S. Extradition Hearing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/europe/julian-assange-us-extradition.html <comment><USER2> Keep in mind all the crimes by US officials that Assange revealed. In my view many of those crimes committed by officials are treason, yet all have been swept under the rug.

<comment><USER3> Which of his crimes looks like treason? He didn't hack anything, his only "crime" is providing a publishing outlet.

(And yes, Assange is highly biased and anti-American, which is not good, but publishing leaks shouldn't be a crime.)

<comment><USER4> It's funny to label someone anti-american, when all they've done is expose america's crimes and ways of manipulating the rest of the world. Makes you think what does being pro-america mean.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Assange tried to help the American people learn about dishonesty and fraud committed by elected officials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this confirms that jumping bail was the right course of action.

Sweden didn't produce a single evidence of the crime, and US extradition hearings are happening behind closed doors.

how isn't this exactly what prompted him to ask for asylum, which the UK magistrate called paranoia at the time?

<comment><USER6> It's not behind closed doors. The article says some journalists were allowed in and what Assange said in the hearing is reported in the article.

<comment><USER5> cool. hopefully we will have a transcript somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some notes:

\- This hearing is simply an early opportunity for Assange to volunteer to surrender to America. Which of course he didn't.

\- It won't be until June that a substantial extradition hearing will start.

\- He's still got his sentence to serve in the UK.

\- The maximum US sentence for the alleged crimes is five years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Assange has found himself as political currency for the British government. I imagine his extradition will be "expedited" with a little nudge from Jeremy Hunt.

Very saddening.

<comment><USER9> Well I think he found himself as political currency for the Ecuadorean government and Rafael Correa first. The suspension of Assange's Ecuadorian citizenship was a card played by Correa's successor President Moreno. Correa has continued to support Assange and has excoriated President Moreno for this action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing that the state moves so quickly when someone operates against its interests.

<comment><USER11> The right to a speedy trial is a provision that safeguards individual liberty, not proof of the crushing might of the state.

<comment><USER12> Yes, everyone who has had their life saving seized by civil asset forfeiture has had their trials move at an equally speedy pace!

<comment><USER13> I don't even understand what point you're trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess this news gives Assange a valid reason for his bail-jumping. He was suspected of raping in Sweden. That was what he was bail-jumping for. But the real reason is the threat of his extradition to US for... what? revealing the war crime of the US? That shall never be a crime. War crime shall not be hidden. US shall be punished for obstructing the information of war crime.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't he have been safer in Sweden than in the UK? If I were to bet on who were more likely to suck up to the Americans of the two, my money would be on the Brits.

<comment><USER16> Neither one is a particularly safe space if you're worried about the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_and_Muhammad_al- Zery)

> Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Alzery were two Egyptian asylum-seekers who were > deported to Egypt from Sweden on December 18, 2001, apparently following a > request from the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The forced > repatriation was criticized because of the danger of torture and ill > treatment, and because the deportation decision was executed the same day > without notifying the lawyers of the asylum seekers. The deportation was > carried out by American and Egyptian personnel on Swedish ground, with > Swedish servicemen apparently as passive onlookers.

<comment><USER15> Swedish policy has changed since 2001. I wonder if there are any more recent examples. But that was on par for the course for Sweden. Back during the Cold War, Sweden sent a lot of Latvians and Lithuanians back on request by the USSR.

Sweden was desperately defending its status as a neutral country, and did not want to appear to take any sides. But the previous Swedish government decided to recognise Palestine as a state, which strongly suggest they are done with that now.

All that besides, the US did not request his extradition until Trump became President. So he could have gone to Sweden, done his interview in the case, probably been let off with a fine, and then go on his merry way.

<comment><USER16> > All that besides, the US did not request his extradition until Trump became > President. So he could have gone to Sweden, done his interview in the case, > probably been let off with a fine, and then go on his merry way.

Assange had no way of knowing that. The Trump admin's extradition request was sealed (we only knew of its existence in advance because it accidentally leaked in another case's court filings).

That said, fleeing _to_ the UK is a bit of a "out of the frying pan, into the fire" situation.

<comment><USER15> I was merely arguing that the recent turn of events has _not_ proven, Assange's theory about the consequences of being extradited to Sweden, nor that it was the right thing to jump bail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not much actual news being made here. The same question about the alleged offense remain unchanged as far as if you feel that trying to help someone break into something is something that would be legally protected.

Nobody seems to have done or said anything new.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Around two dozen activists gathered outside the court to protest against his > potential extradition, waving signs that read "Free Julian Assange" and "Is > this all just about shutting us all up?" as they demanded his release.

That's not a very impressive show-up. I had hoped he would get more support than a few dozen people.

<comment><USER4> It's not like this has been getting much traction in the media anyway

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am not surprised that USG has cooked up a tenuous conspiracy charge with which to try and stretch its jurisdiction ever further.

But I am amazed at how many people _in this community_ have accepted the government's narrative at face value. It rests not merely on the notoriously bad CFAA, but also on a theory that chatting during a criminal act is itself concrete furtherance of a conspiracy.

USG's reasoning can be straightforwardly applied to persecute _any_ journalist that interviews a whistleblowing source, as the source is breaking the law by leaking information to the journalist and the journalist is encouraging that crime. This is chilling.

</comment><comment><USER11> At this point, I believe the best outcome by far is if Assange is extradited to Sweden.

<comment><USER20> except he might thence be extradited to the US after facing the Swedish charges

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is sad that they are sending this journalist to jail

<comment><USER22> Julian Assange is not a journalist.

<comment><USER23> You are incorrect, he is a journalist.

[https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/smear-1-he-is-not-a- journ...](https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/smear-1-he-is-not-a- journalist-9ea4c6fa72fc)

<comment><USER24> Then so are the entire stuff of National Enquirer, and to a much greater degree at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if the current political reputation of USA and Trump will play into Assange dodging extradition.

<comment><USER25> That doesn't really bear on the independence of the US courts which would be the main issue, and they have recently proved themselves quite independent of an often opposed to the will of the president and political interference.

<comment><USER26> He will argue that the prosecution itself is political. That US courts might take a dim view of a political prosecution seems neither here nor there- if the underlying prosecution were shown to be political, then I can't see the UK courts allowing the extradition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't really care which way this goes. Assange is a despicable person: he has been a pompous ideologue; he was accused of rape in Sweden; he acted as a "useful idiot" (at best) for the Russians; and he finally irritated the Ecuadoreans enough that they kicked him out of their embassy, which is why he is facing extradition. I'm not eager to punish him, but I wouldn't object to him spending some time in prison.

<comment><USER28> > he was accused of rape in Sweden

Tell me how being accused of rape makes you a despicable person.

I could accuse you of rape in this moment. Would you instantly become a despicable person?

<comment><USER27> I found the Swedish accusations credible at the time, at least enough that he should have stood trial. Maybe they were false, and he would have been acquitted after some time in court and jail, but he dodged the trial instead.

Even if you weren't convinced by the accusations, there are plenty of other reasons to find Assange despicable, some of which I listed.</comment></comment></comment>


What are the best acquisitions of all time? - <AUTHOR> https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/acquired-top-ten-the-best-acquisitions-of-all-time <comment><USER2> This is so good!

The "Dark Horse" in spot two is quite the outlier

As for number 1, I think they got the GOAT right. IG has proven to be a ridiculously good acquisition…not just in economic value, but also in how quickly the platform grew, given the team size of 13 when it was acquired

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's get that DoubleClick episode out! Gotta hear that story. Interesting that y'all went with absolute dollar amount! Did not think that Instagram would have made that sort of money!

</comment><comment><USER4> Still not sure about Marvel making the list over Pixar, I get the numbers, but there is something intangible that feels like it is getting overlooked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can't wait to listen!</comment>


Google-Backed SCVNGR Takes On Foursquare, Looks To Boost Fun With 'Challenges' - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/google-backed-scvngr-takes-on-foursquare-looks-to-boost-fun-with-challenges/

<comment><USER2> looks like SCVNGR might keep me interested longer than checking in did.</comment>


Ask HN: wireless Internet? - old-gregg

I've been itching to try a 3G wireless card for a while. When my contract with T-Mobile expires I'm finally can switch to a carrier who offers good wireless access. Sprint, Verizon and AT&G all advertise as super fast, but just like with anything else there're some losers and some winners.
Which 3G service in NYC area do you guys use? How's your impressions? Also, the hardware needs to be easily compatible with Macs. Thanks.
P.S. Of course I'm googling, but asking for something here always brings unexpected new perspective on just about anything. <comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they have WiMax in NY yet, but they should soon That's what I'd hold out for.</comment>


Airharp app for Leap Motion controller - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/12/04/airharp-for-the-leap-motion/

<comment><USER2> Very cool stuff. I like that he does a 10-finger demo near the end of the video. However, the harp gets very noisy at that point :-).

I wonder if you can do something simple with just the iPad camera, with the iPad laying on a table. One could imagine that this wouldn't be that hard, since your ceiling is mostly one color (white/beige). All you would need to detect is the color and shape of your hand.

Then, you could blend this "air-harp" gestural expression (dominant hand) with a more physical interaction (taps and swipes) on the iPad surface itself (w/ your non-dominant hand).</comment>


Don't keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/dont-keep-cell-phones-next-to-your-body-california-health-department-warns/ <comment><USER2> If you discovered a mechanism by which it was possible for a cell phone to cause cancer, you'd win a Nobel Prize in physics.

Not "you discovered that they did, in fact, cause cancer"; just discovering a way that it is physically possible for them to do so.

This dates back to Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect: it's easy to show (and the only thing consistent with all of 20th century physics!) that light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Any radio signal from a cell phone isn't. End of discussion.

Unless you are being actually cooked by a microwave, your cell phone does not and cannot cause cancer.

"Radiation" is a scary word for non experts, but the California Health Department should know better.

<comment><USER3> >End of discussion.

Science is not a static. Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept that it may be wrong is as harmful to our advancement as those who refused to acknowledge that the earth isn't flat (they also used their limited understanding to justify their position).

To reuse your opening statement, you'd also win a Nobel Prize if you could conclusively prove that "your cell phone cannot cause cancer" and "any radio signal from a cell phone [doesn't]."

<comment><USER4> > Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept > that it may be wrong is as harmful

You are missing the primary thrust of the argument. They are saying: "This goes against known science -- proving otherwise would be a massive scientific discovery which would require reconceptualizing a century of work. This is highly unlikely".

Assuming the commenter is operating with robust scientific understanding [1], then there isn't any dogmatic belief here.

[1] I haven't researched this cellphone cancer thing personally so I can't strongly argue that point one way or another. However, my cursory understanding is that there isn't strong evidence for it.

<comment><USER5> I looked up "Dogma": Prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group.

Seems to be exactly what a lot of folks here are trying to do - "non-ionizing radiation cannot cause cancer, period."

<comment><USER4> It's called "strong opinions weakly held".

There are good scientific reasons to think cellphones don't cause cancer. However, if enough compelling evidence was found otherwise, then it would be important to update our understanding accordingly.

<comment><USER6> The wording "X causes Y" is slippery. Saying "X increases the probability of Y", is another thing. Thinking about smoke, with "smoke causes cancer" I expect every smoker to have cancer. It isn't so. If the effect of X on the probability that Y occurs is too much small, maybe it's just that we haven't enough statistical data (yet) to see it. Then, even if the effect could be statistically seen, telco companies could always say that it's safer than driving a car… Or a new business for body-cellphones shields could be made… Or, more likely, some people will pay more attention at to where they put their cellphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping this article published new findings from a medical study, or at least some evidence. Nope. I think their lawyers are just freaking out preemptively just in case anyone finds an effect and a cause.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The cellphone manufacturers want you to keep a minimum distance away from your body and you should find out what that distance is,"

Couldn't be more vague, what a useless recommendation.

<comment><USER9> > ...you should find out what that distance is

And just how are we supposed to do that? Do double blind testing with ourselves in every group? Wait until we have a tumor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Joel Moskowitz is a psychology professor.

NIH has a whole page dedicated to this [https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...](https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet)

<comment><USER11> Really don't understand how or why people trust the government. It's one thing not to buy into FUD. It's another thing to say the government having a page on the Internet is some conclusive thing.

<comment><USER12> The government is made from people, just like businesses are. Who do you trust, Verisign?

And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?

<comment><USER11> The government is paid to say things by lobbyists and currently denies global warming. A year ago global warming was a national security threat.

I don't trust Verisign. But I rely on companies that have their profits at stake when they conduct business. Which is not the case for government, which gets its revenue by coercion and spends it haphazardly, spasmodically with abandon.

Trusting entities that aren't your closest relatives and friends is naive and careless.

> And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?

Every news outlet that got clicks on the subject. The Worry Industry, broadly. Why do you think people took the time to report on it? Altruism? Boredom? You think techcrunch.com is a hobby? Every day these people go to work and identify click bait so they can keep their jobs. Many people make money from this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about wifi-only mode? Is Bluetooth fine? Those'd also affect tablets, laptops, and maybe eink readers, among other things. Gaming handhelds.

Been kicking around going wifi-only anyway, with a crappy burner on a prepaid plan in the car for emergencies.

<comment><USER8> Also, don't keep smartwatches next to your body!

<comment><USER5> Yeah I'm wondering about that one. I guess the Apple watch with LTE has a lower power chip than usual such that it is ok to wear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Okay, so we've had maybe a good ten or fifteen years or so of a significant portion of the American population carrying cell phones very close to their bodies for several hours a day. If this were a significant cause of cancer, wouldn't we have more concrete evidence of it by this point? If not now, then when?

<comment><USER15> Any tinfoil hat expert can claim the recent trends of increase in (fill in illness here) is a direct result of cell phone use.

The problem is no direct correlation can be found that proves this because we live in a world of so many rapid changes and the effects get lost by a host of other factors.

So is there proof of damage? Sure.

Can we isolate it to be from cell phone use? No.

Can we be sure that it is not? No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Will they also recommend to opt out of millimeter wave scanners? If we're going to talk about risks of one type of nonionizing radiation, why not that one too?

<comment><USER17> This one seems far more relevant, being higher frequency than cell phones. Not a big fan of government-imposed radiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well this is vague...

"Keep cellphones away form body, but we won't tell you how far away or what the consequences might be"

<comment><USER19> That's because there are none, other than a little heating.

It's not ionizing radiation, so it can't give you cancer. See Einstein's Nobel-prize winning paper from 1905.

<comment><USER20> Hi, I'm a scientist. I have a PhD in Biophysics, and I've studied a lot of biology and radiation.

The statement that non-ionizing radiation can't give you cancer is effectively false. It is based on applying the mechanisms by which ionizing radiation causes cancer. While non-ionizing radiation does not cause double strand breaks and other mutations that can lead to cancer, you cannot use that assertion to claim that non-ionizing radiation does not cause cancer. It could certainly cause cancer by other means- for example, through induction of heat shock proteins as a response to cellular heating. To my knowledge, nobody has demonstrated this convincingly, although, given the fact that heat shock protein activation can lead to cancer (or cause existing pre-tumors to start growing faster), you can see that we immediately have plausible mechanisms to study, if there is indication that cancer is occurring.

Another way of putting this: if people found strong epidemiological evidence that cell phones caused brain cancer in humans (they haven't, yet), the nature of that mechanism would be subjected to intense scrutiny.

Everything I've stated above is completely mainstream science; nothing I said is controversial. Your mention of the Einstein paper is really a canard- it bears no direct relationship to the biology of the situation.

<comment><USER19> Hi, I'm a physicist. Our community doesn't agree with your community on this issue.

Oh, and you did notice that I mentioned heating, I hope. As you know, the standard for cellphone radiation is already calibrated to prevent significant heating.

<comment><USER21> Here's some evidence re: non-ionizing radiation and tumors:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell- phone-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell-phone- radiation-study-reignites-cancer-questions/)

> The fact that scientists were able to expose animals to nonionizing > radiation (like that emitted by cell phones) and those animals went on to > develop tumors but that exposure did not significantly raise the animals' > body temperatures was "important" to release, Bucher says.

Actual site: [https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/](https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/)

<comment><USER20> My one comment as a biologist is that the biology community calls the rats they used in that study (Sprague Dawley) should be called "cancer rats", because they seem predisposed to getting cancer no matter what you give them. It's not clear to me whether this is humor, or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The CDHP recommends not keeping your phone in your pocket

Good luck with that!

<comment><USER18> A faraday bag might be a decent solution, they're expensive to buy, but cheap to DIY.

<comment><USER23> Keep your phone in a Faraday's pocket/bag? How do you receive calls then?

<comment><USER24> You don't, that's the beauty of it. But you can make a call when you need it.

<comment><USER23> Why can't we replace airplane mode with farady mode?

<comment><USER24> Actually that's a good point, you don't really need a Faraday bag because airplane mode should have the same effect.

I say should, because I keep hearing about how phones don't really turn the radios off when you put them in airplane mode. But at least you don't get phone calls in airplane mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When people try to convince me my cellphone is giving me cancer, I ask them to prove to me that using a cellphone for fifteen minutes is worse than going outside in the sun for fifteen minutes (sunlight is objectively more likely to give you cancer).

Cellphones communicate via microwaves, which is just electromagnetic radiation (EMR) of a lower-energy (per photon) wavelength than visible light. Yes, the UV component of sunlight can give you cancer because it's just barely high enough energy to be ionizing. Visible light won't do that, and microwaves are safer still.

Oh, thermal burns can cause cancer too you say, and we use microwave ovens to cook things! Yes. My phone has never cooked me though. A 3.7V, 3700mAh cell phone battery contains about 10 Wh of energy. A typical microwave oven uses around 1000W, so it would drain a cell-phone battery completely in around 36 seconds. Try putting a kilogram of something that's mostly water in a microwave oven for just 36 seconds. It's barely going to warm up. I wouldn't be worried about my cellphone cooking me even if it lasted just 36 seconds on a charge, but mine lasts for many _hours_.

Can I prove that your phone isn't giving you cancer? No. That's not how science works. I can't prove the theories of gravity or relativity either. When I admit this, some people pounce on that as if this lack of proof is something that _must_ be acted upon. Well, I can't prove a meteor won't crash through your roof and kill you tonight, or that a mega-eruption won't end civilization tomorrow, or that a parasite from some half-cooked beef you ate last week won't spontaneously mutate into a chest-burster like in "Alien". What are you going to do about those smart guy?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is this the same department that requires the carcinogen label on every product under the sun? I'm probably being pithy, but that alone pushes me to ignore their recommendations. Never mind the dodgy physics...

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone here looked at these studies? In what way are cell phones supposed to be dangerous? Do the studies say that they raised mice with smart phones in their cage and they got cancer or something?

<comment><USER28> This one suggests so: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055...](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

Released as a partial report last year; a quick search didn't find if it had been completed yet or not.

<comment><USER29> There are a lot of bad studies with meaningless conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Selfie stick.

</comment><comment><USER31> California also requires bottles of water to say that they cause cancer, so... yawn.

<comment><USER32> Practically everything has a Prop 65 warning to the point where it's meaningless and everyone I know ignores it.

[0] [https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general- info/proposition...](https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general- info/proposition-65-plain-language)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So does non-ionizing radiation cause health issues or not? I get called a conspiracy nut for worrying about ELF radiation even though there are studies showing some correlation with health issues.

<comment><USER34> Non-ionizing radiation does not cause health issues.

The definition of non-ionizing radiation is:

Non-ionizing (or non-ionising) radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an atom or molecule.[1] Instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, the electromagnetic radiation has sufficient energy only for excitation, the movement of an electron to a higher energy state.

<comment><USER5> How can you be so sure if e.g. everything we eat both prevents and causes cancer [1]? Do we have proof that exciting electrons won't do anything on a higher level like enzyme production, or one of the many metabolic pathways?

1: [https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both- causes-a...](https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-and- prevents-cancer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> reminds me of [http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning- labe...](http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning-labels-on- products-a-cause-for-concern/comment-page-1/)

i purchased an OBDII reader and it had a "this cable contains PVC and may cause cancer" warning label on it. i thought wtf? after some research the cause was clear: California.

</comment><comment><USER36> What about if I don't have a cell phone but I'm standing between a cell tower and someone talking on their phone?

<comment><USER5> Radiation intensity declines so quickly with distance to the source that it's a no-brainer if you are 1-2m from a normally functioning phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://www.sitesazan.net/](https://www.sitesazan.net/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, I guess humans are going extinct then.

</comment><comment><USER39> What about bluetooth headphones?

<comment><USER40> Bluetooth radiation is considerably less powerful than cell network or WiFi signals. Most headphones belong to Bluetooth Class 2 which limits the maximum output power to 2,5 mW (4 dBm). 2.5 mW is pretty safe even in a close contact with the body.

Saying that, I would still recommend to minimize the exposure. The less 2-10 GHz radiation you get, the better your health is.

<comment><USER41> Look at the graph in [http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf...](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf.pdf)

You can see that the worst frequency range is 30 to 300 MHz meaning that range has the lowest acceptable power levels that are considered safe.

The entire short article is quite good.

<comment><USER42> But the article explains that is only for Thermal effects, and that there is no correlation with cancer risk.

And that any power level below 7 Watt (eg any mobile phone) is completely exempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> what about apple watch? people wear that on the wrist all day long.</comment>


Show HN: Browser Retro Pixel Mmorpg - <AUTHOR> https://data.mo.ee/index2.html?hackernews=3 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Developer here, the game works on all platforms. Feel free to ask questions here or drop me an email - support at mo dot ee</comment>


Vultr: Digital Ocean alternative - <AUTHOR> http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7080583 <comment><USER2> typical bait-and-switch they advertise $2.5 plan, but they've been sold out for ever.

I was considering vultr, but not after scamming me with bait-and-switch

[https://www.google.com/search?q=vultr+sold+out+server&ie=utf...](https://www.google.com/search?q=vultr+sold+out+server&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

</comment><comment><USER3> referral link and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229127)

maybe you should reevaluate your behavior here?

</comment><comment><USER4> DO gives some great merchandise tho! :D</comment>


Gmailaholics - <AUTHOR> http://gmailaholics.com/ <comment><USER2> This is likely a matter of personal preference, but I strongly dislike having to sit through a video on a landing page. Thus, I visited the site, read the five bullet points, and left again having no idea what they were trying to get me to do. It wasn't until I opened the page one more time while writing this comment that I realized that the bullet points were clickable. I'm not a UX designer, but I didn't feel that this setup would have a good, uh, conversion rate? Is that the phrase?

Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER3> Their ripping on Gmail isn't funny, and a little odd, seeing as how they're making a Gmail 3rd party plugin thing.

I don't think I'd trust them to XSS Gmail for me.</comment>


Cognitive Rigidity: The psychology of Hong Kongs out-of-control protest movement - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3031424/how-flames-hong-kongs-out-control-protests-are-being-fanned-rigid <comment><USER2> if youre gonna astroturf at least use a name thats a little less obvious</comment>


Gas dips SUV sales rise - <AUTHOR> http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/cars/story.html?id=1d0c1056-ec87-4a1f-becf-c0bea2675102 <comment><USER2> Even if gas prices have come down, the difficulty of obtaining credit and the recession are likely to keep SUV and truck sales much lower than they were a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unsurprising. I wouldn't feel safe with a normal sized car in many places with so many large vehicles driven by barely experienced drivers (teenagers and soccer-parents.)</comment>


3 years of my gamedev journey in gifs - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/NnEmN

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. I quit my job as a postdoctoral researcher 3 years ago and have since been working full-time on my first PC game. It's called Moonman and is a mix between Spelunky and Terraria. I've written all the code (60k LOC of C++) and done 99% of the artwork.

I'm now seeking crowdfunding so I can spend one more year on Moonman and finish the game! [http://kck.st/1DElnw3](http://kck.st/1DElnw3)

I'm happy to answer any questions about the game or my 3 year journey to Kickstarter. :)</comment>


Product manager responsibilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.leaninberlin.de/2019/03/product-manager-responsibilities.html <comment><USER2> Speaking from startup perspective.

While there are a hand full of exceptions. IMHO the dedicated role of a product manager is exceptionally counter productive.

Unless they are a founder they tend to lack technical expertise of capable enginners and enginnering managers as well as have a disconnect from the core drivers of what can make the buisness sucessful.

Maybe I have just had bad luck but in my 12 years of experiance with 6+ startups it's either the founders or buisness competent technical leaders who have driven a company and its products to suceed. "Formal" product managers I have come to associate with elements that kill startups... things like kingdom building, playing politics, information withholding, setting timelines and expectations without any real clue what it really takes.

We need buisness competent enginners, systems to feed feedback from sales and customer service to product enginner teams and engineering leaders who can communicate with other departments and understand buisness goals that they must build towards.

What is not needed a role who does not know sales, customer service, marketing ,or enginnering who puts systems in place to seperated thoes units for their own personal benafit.

<comment><USER3> At the end of the day, engineers need to know what they should build. Customer feedback, usage analytics, and all the other signals about what people might like need to get collected and distilled into actual feature ideas. And those feature ideas need to get broken down into development projects that can test the underlying assumptions and hypotheses.

In other words, product management work needs to get done, one way or another.

Saying you don't need product people, you just need engineers who can do product work, is like saying you don't need engineers, you just need designers and salespeople who can code.

Sure, you could ask engineers to do all the product management. But then they'd just be PMs, except with engineering titles.

All that said, it sounds like you've worked with some pretty bad PMs in the past. And a bad PM can certainly be worse than no PM - kinda like how a bad engineer can make their entire team less productive.

<comment><USER4> This is common-sense, intuitive, and practical advice.

It's also wrong.

The piece you're missing? _The technical definition of the problem changes as we engage with solving it_

So there's no "collected and distilled". This is not a grocery shopping trip. Instead there's heavy user interaction, playing, and coming to grips with both the tech and user and how they live and work together. You can't capture that in a stack of printouts or Word docs.

There are two problems with project/product management in tech. First, value discovery is a completely different activity than value delivery optimization, although they use mostly the same tools and skills. You can't tell from the outside which is which -- and we train most all of our management skills around optimization. Second, the intuitive way we humans have of solving problems, where we break them into pieces, "componentize", then optimize -- it's the wrong way of looking at it. Our natural intuitions lead us astray. (It's not a manager thing. Tons of great technical folks have taken a shot at managing and made these same mistakes)

Disclaimer: wrote a book on how this works at the team level. Currently working on one about the program and product management level. [https://leanpub.com/info-ops](https://leanpub.com/info-ops)

It took me many years of watching this fail over and over again before it finally clicked what was going on. The PM _skills_ are desperately needed. It's the framing of the work that begins to take us down a dark path.

<comment><USER5> I dont understand your point,

The comment above says, that to have a good product we need someone that understands the users. And if we want someone to be good at something he has to do that most of his time. So we need PM.

I don't think your answer is relevant, also because project management and product management are complete different disciplines

<comment><USER4> Apologies. I did a poor job of explaining myself. I completely agree that they are different disciplines. Yikes.

I'll try one more time. I guess if this were easy to explain it wouldn't be done so poorly everywhere.

By looking at the Product Manager's role in terms of componentizing responsibilities, duties, and skills -- which both the original author and the commenter did -- there is an underlying assumption that is false. That assumption is that these things you're supposed to understand and manage are discrete items. There's a factory metaphor, whether either author realizes that or not. Ideas come in from the users, bug system, and other places. The Product Manager assembles and works these ideas, identifying a MVP, breaking them down into smaller features, and so forth.

Perhaps this could be restated as such: _There is a discrete set of information and processing that must be done to translate external stimulus into items ready for work_ (And yes, I think everybody agrees that this information changes over time, but the assumption is that you fix it in place at least long enough to go through a release cycle)

This assumption is not true. Yes, there is a discrete set of ideas that need processing, and the result looks the same -- but not only does the information change as time moves on, the developers concept of the world the user lives in changes the more they intimately interact. Now in a small team you join the team at the hip with some users and it works out. As you scale up, however, that's not an option, and it's much easier for a developer working as a Product Manager to spot where the world changed than a person trained only in management. (A developer who has no product experience in this particular startup would the same problem, by the way. You're looking to identify business model impedance mistmatches, places where we were coding for one universe we thought existed when in fact we were mistaken.)

That's not something you can somehow document or think your way out of, since so much of "the universe we thought existed" exists as invisible, implied assumptions. All you can do as an external manager is manage those things you can identify and record. When you're doing value discovery, the most important value ideas you'll find start subconsciously and then become visible.

We have this same problem in project management -- conflation of what I can see, record, and optimize with what the actual work is. In both cases, the underlying assumption of physicality and how we deal with physical problems comes into conflict with fluid, fluffy, and ephemeral way that humans actually think about and work through problems. This is not a problem in a ton of other areas where there actually is physicality, like hardware-only product development, where the cycle times are long. (Or at least not in the same way). But it is when you're doing traditional software-heavy product management.

Hope that helps. It was on-topic. It's just a difficult thing to write about in a simple way. Thanks for the feedback.

ADD: One of the things that makes this so difficult is the amount of invisible and many times unacknowledged work that happens. So you could ask a successful founder/Product Manager what their job and responsibilities were, and you'd get a list just like the one provided. Go out and try to execute on that list, though, and you'd screw it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> waiting for an engineer to jump in here and tell everyone how useless PMs are.

<comment><USER7> Maybe because there are so many incompetent PMs? The PM working I'm working with does not know the product feature set (except for the very basics), does not have any vision or goals, does not have a systematic approach to talking to collecting feedback from customers. What's on our backlog changes dramatically and when project ends we basically start with a new product backlog. When customers have questions on basic stuff he has to defer to engineering.

Any competent hire can be useful, but hiring good PMs is maybe even harder than good engineers. So people bitch.

<comment><USER5> Yes it is exactly true, the issue right now in the field of product management, is most PM are in fact PO (product owner) they manage the sprint. But these people have the title of product manager.

Product manager is required job in any company that wants to grow and deliver best products. But these people are very hard to find and very expensive, so instead we hire PO and give them the title of PM and ask them to do what the CEO is asking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm truly surprised at how many negative sentiments there are in this thread about the role of Product Managers. Clearly there are some PMs who are more effective/competent than others, but for many companies, the role is crucial for success.

As some have already mentioned, the PM is often the person who is kind of a "utility tool" within the departments. PMs have to be able to communicate effectively amongst each team, and translate each departments needs into positive action.

I have also noticed that a lot of answers here are saying that all you need is a competent engineering lead instead of a PM. I don't agree with this at all. Engineers are critical to the success of a product, there is no doubt about that. But they also are generally more of a hard-skills player in the development of the process. PMs often have to be able to translate the work of hard-skill colleagues into understandable insights for other stakeholders. Some may see this as frivolous, but you'd be surprised at how many times I've seen an engineer deliver a report in a way that was impossible to understand, and far from relatable.

While this post could literally be pages long, I am going sum up the final point here: PMs do the work that allows engineers and members of other departments to focus on their core responsibilities. Engineers don't always have the time to determine customer needs, assess market competition, develop sales strategy, move information through departments, or the many other tasks that are necessary to create a top-tier product. So before jumping to conclusions about Product Management responsibilities, be sure to do your homework and see what the best PMs have done to take their businesses into greener pastures.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seriously one of the most overrated jobs in tech...speaking from experience.

<comment><USER10> Where were you a product manager (assuming you're willing to share) and why did you feel the position was not particularly useful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been a product manager for a decade now, both in established firms and startups. From my experience, startups need to have the founder and engineering leader in lockstep, and the experience to productize the vision. PM role in a startup is more about wearing multiple hats. If you do not have a solid engineering leader and right engineering experience to build the product, PM job is simply not worth staying.

In contrast, PM leadership role becomes crucial in an established product, or even a startup entering into the growth trajectory.

PM responsibilities vary wildly. Being able to sell, build relationship, be at the right place at the right time etc. decides your success more than your inbound skills like product requirements, planning etc.

<comment><USER12> Very true. Right now, I'm helping a Startup on a massive growth curve with multiple products, new market category, new geographies, et al.

There are a bunch of Product Managers, while a few good engineering leaders are leading the tech team.

My role is basically to groom the PMs to mostly talking to customers, say NO to the engineers' cool feature they want to build if they are not yet validated with customers, say NO to the C-Suite including the CEO of all their fancy cool business ideas they want to execute. Continue with mini- experiments, and build a process to do such repeatedly and rinse them well. Reduce the release cycle and hopefully automate pretty much everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are good PMs and those pretending/forced to be, just like not all "hackers" are LinusT. In product minded startups, at least one founder has got to be a good early stage PM. Most calls in the beginning are gut calls but good PMs/founders will quickly get in a state where data begins to take over gut increasingly. Although the best PMs also have the best guts and know when to trust one over the other.

</comment><comment><USER14> Having a Product Manager and a BA is a toxic place to be, the Product Manager is often too far removed from the questions the engineers will ask</comment>


Launch HN: VoiceOps (YC W17) – Data analysis for sales calls - <AUTHOR> I'm Daria, a co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps (https://voiceops.com/). We built a product that analyzes sales calls and provides actionable tips to close more deals.
We transcribe, parse, then analyze calls for what behavior is most successful (e.g. how many probing questions to ask on a call, the value of describing benefits vs. features, when to time an upsell or close attempt, etc.). Once we understand what works, we help managers scale that out, improving performance across their entire team.
Currently, sales managers spend 10-20 hrs/week listening to the call recordings of their reps and then guessing at how to provide feedback. The process is slow, lacks consistency, isn't based on data, and often fails to motivate or change behavior.
Every other part of the sales stack (email especially) is already data driven. With sales reps spending most of their time on the phone, it should be the most important activity to optimize.
The prototype was built and first clients closed while I was living in a van and Ethan was sleeping on a kitchen floor in the Mission. Between our three co-founders we've spent nearly a decade building sales and support tools for companies like LinkedIn, Gusto, Coinbase, and General Assembly. Even there we saw this lack of data become problematic and expensive.
Take a peek - we'd love to hear your feedback! <comment><USER2> Hello there, congrats for the launch!

I have a question regarding your back-end: What speech-to-text service are you using to transcribe calls?

I'm guessing that it is powered by one of the major players in the field (Nuance, Google's Speech API, etc) and I would like to know which one you ended up selecting.

I'm developing a service myself (on an unrelated field) that uses speech to text as one of its cornerstones, and I'm still trying to decide which service to use, so your experiences while selecting one may be of use.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure they use manual transcriptionists according to LinkedIn employees

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Curious about how you deal with the legality of recording calls. The required verbal notice that people get when they call in for support doesn't seem to be an issue, because the caller can see the benefit back to them (improved support, documenting poor service, etc).

In this case, though, I don't see that the person being sold to would feel like a recording provided any benefit to them. I could see it perhaps even reducing the likelihood of a sale.

Curious where your internal conversations landed on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our clients (for the most part) already use call recording tools like RingCentral, 8x8, or a recording function within their preferred VOIP tool.

As call data becomes more accessible it will become more valuable, and my guess is we'll see more companies adopt call recording for their inside sales teams.

Regarding legality, some of these call tools have the option of 1-sided recording, meaning they're only recording what the sales rep is saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you balance what is effective for closing deals versus what is sustainable for the employees? Are you tracking any satisfaction from the employees and how it changes through this process or in response to the variables in the calls?

Taylorism has never been great for employees and it would be fantastic to see a company step up into this role positively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good question - the way we help managers coach reps isn't giving them the data to say, "you should be making 75 percent more calls in a day." We show managers and reps what the highest performers are saying and when they're saying it, and then visualize week-over-week trends.

Sales reps are thrilled to have this data - it's helping them understand their own call behavior and adjust accordingly, which has a very tight feedback loop for teams with transactional sales (or any high velocity sales cycles).

As a sales rep, if I can see that the person at the top of the leaderboard is asking 8 probing questions per call and hardly ever highlighting product features, and I'm only asking 2 probing questions and talk extensively about features, that's extremely valuable and actionable information.

We aren't tracking rep/agent satisfaction quantitatively, but anecdotally we're seeing highly positive feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare with other companies in the space like Chorus, Gong, and other YC companies like People.ai or VOIQ?

Congrats on the launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest difference is single call vs. trend data.

We're focused on not just looking at how to dissect a single call (chorus, gong), but how to make sense of a larger dataset of calls. That let's us understand multi-day/week trends and how to best optimize call behavior across an entire team.

As I understand it, People.ai is looking at metadata (call length, percentage of time spent talking vs. listening, etc.).

<comment><USER7> Hey Daria, thank you for the shoutout! We do a bit more than just voice metadata tracking. To use a baseball/Moneyball analogy, while voice is the first/entry thing you do in sales, just like catching the ball, People.ai works across all sales activity channels, such as email, calendar, phone, conference systems and even Slack to optimize individual sales rep and team behavior.

While voice analytics tools can help produce the best catchers, we are focused on making every rep a 5 tool player.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you do some type of machine learning or actually manually process calls and offer feedback? Is each agent call transcribed?

<comment><AUTHOR> The current process on most sales teams is managers listening to 2 or 3 call recordings per rep per week (out of hundreds) and basing feedback on that, so having data across dozens and hundreds of calls is a huge win for them. We can transcribe every agent call, but typically don't have to. It's a combination of both ML and human QA'ing when necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reach out to me, I'd like to test it on 100 person sales floor. I have years of recordings.

<comment><AUTHOR> if I guessed correctly who you are just reached out to you :) If not, please shoot me a note email@example.com or lmk what the best way to get in touch would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) selling high-speed LTE plans and smartphones to folks, mostly via phone. Would this be an effective for a small (~15-person) call center?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes absolutely! Please shoot me a note at email@example.com and I'll send over some more info.

<comment><USER10> Thx!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> interesting,it must be very valuable if voice recognition applied and accurate, it could be huge market value.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of those ideas I wish I'd had

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you :)</comment></comment>


Millennials Are Fine Without Fabric Softener; P&G Looks to Fix That - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/fabric-softener-sales-are-losing-their-bounce-1481889602?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> This is an interesting read about the subject [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water)

I live in a city with hard water and I feel a difference when I do or don't wash with a softener. Without it clothes are somewhat stiff. Washing with water at room temperature helps and no softener is required. I add it only when washing with hot water.

Anyway I'm not buying anything special. Believe it or not, vinagar works as softener. I'm using the cheapest white vinagar (nearly transparent) in the supermarket. Clothes don't have any smell and it's less than a Euro per months of usage. My mother has been using it forever and me too for many years now.

Very important: don't mix it with soap. Use it only if your washing machine has separate compartments for liquid soap and liquid softener. If it's one of those washing machine where you put soap powder and softener powder directly on clothes (I've seen them when I was little and in the USA), no vinegar in there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm older than millennial and don't understand any need or benefit from this product category.

The article suggests that the use of these products will extend the life of your clothes. This is a remarkable claim and it is striking they provide absolutely no evidence for it.

<comment><USER4> I have the same problem with hair conditioner, I've been using it for years and my (long) hair is gotten worse and worse, got tangled and really hard to cumb the next day after washing. I then read an article about hair conditioner and how it becomes a layer of silicon over your hair which first makes it nice and soft but starts to stick together, etc.

I was sceptical but really tired of that problem, so it was either cutting off the long hair or trying something else, so I stopped using hair conditioner. In the beginning it got worse, but after a couple of weeks it got better, mich better. I was able to go for days without washing my hair and still had no problems to comb it, and it was still shiny and all. I never looked back and still had long hair for a couple mor years.

Perhaps it's just not for my hair, but advertising on the telly during my teenager years said that you have to use it, so I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All these scented detergents and fabric softeners would cause my back to break out into pimples. I read a tip on reddit to switch to All Free Clear detergent which finally eliminated my problem. So good luck P&G as they will probably just add to the labels "naturally scented".

<comment><USER6> If I approach the laundry detergent aisle at a store my skin begins to itch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm in this demographic. When I was a teenager and living with my parents, we used liquid fabric softener, but when I went to college and had to deal with a shared laundromat, I pared down my laundry products to make it more convenient: a medium-sized bottle of liquid detergent, and a box of dryer sheets impregnated with fabric softeners.

Now that I'm living on my own, I switched to a giant box of powdered detergent, which I prefer, but would have been more inconvenient to handle in college. I still use the same kind and brand of dryer sheets, and I'm not convinced I'm missing anything.

<comment><USER8> Dryer sheets seems to help with static buildup in clothes, but apart from that it seems it's less effective than the liquid softener versions

<comment><USER9> I roll up some aluminum foil to combat static. Reusable and cheap.

<comment><USER8> On the dryer? Or after you take them out?

<comment><USER9> In the dryer. The tumbling around makes it a nice smooth ball of aluminum. Bonus: my cat likes to play with them as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't use any P&G products. Mostly because the abundance of phthalates in their products literally causes me to stop breathing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Along a similar line, does anyone under the age of 50 use Borax [1]? I assume people must have found it useful for laundry at some point in time, but I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how or why to use it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Mule_Team_Borax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Mule_Team_Borax)

<comment><USER3> I use Borax and find it helpful. My water supply doesn't have chlorine in it. The boron reduces problems with mildew. It also allegedly softens the water, but I use baking soda as my primary water softener.

I also have successfully used Borax solution in cleaning of porous surfaces to eradicate mildew problems in areas that bleach doesn't work to eliminate long term.

<comment><USER12> Can second this. I use it in all my laundry in SF - drastically reduces mildew. I also dissolve it into the hot water I used in my carpet shampooer. I have an allergy to mold, and borax has proven to be extremely effective in reducing mold to tolerable levels.

I'm a millennial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesnt alot of research show millenials are exceptionally poor, I wonder how much of not using it is just saving money.

<comment><USER14> I can't speak for everyone, but I just don't feel like using it. I can't notice a difference. Not worth it.

<comment><USER15> I'm older than a millenial and I don't ever use it unless its really dry and staticy. When I was in St. Louis I'd use it in the winter. I generate maybe 2 sparks all winter in Seattle no matter how hard I try and shock people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another problem they might face: As an adult, I've never used shampoo. I can see that shampoo/conditioner might provide interesting outcomes for people with long hair carefully maintained for aesthetic reasons. For me though, its like fabric softener, a product category from which I will never purchase.

<comment><USER17> How do you clean your hair?

<comment><USER18> If you have a buzz cut (or some other very short hairstyle, as it sounds like the OP does), you might as well just use the same soap you use for your face. It will work fine.

<comment><USER19> You use soap on your face? I use water. My face turns to parchment when using soap

<comment><USER20> I saw no hard soap for long time. All soap I use is creamy soft soap. I remember that I had same problem with regular soap when I was young. Modern soap causes a very little harm to face, if any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> thats because fabric softener is a scam. clothing doesnt need oil added to it. its gross.

if downy didnt make their product with copious fragrances and dyes it would just be like a bottle of crisco.

<comment><USER22> Much like virtually everything in the personal care category. Shampoo is a scam. Conditioner is a scam. Lotions and washes and creams are scams. Antibacterial xyz is a scam.

Hot water and plain soap work wonders all by themselves.

<comment><USER23> Heh, right now it's 10F and my hands are bloody and busted open from getting extremely dry and chapped after a few hours in the cold. Lotion would absolutely help right now...if I happened to own any! Alas, I am a tech nerd!

Likewise, this time of year I'm reminded by nature to buy a bottle of really good quality moisturizing shampoo. My experience has also suggested any conditioner you can buy at Walmart is a scam, but for certain heads and certain climates, spending more on the good stuff makes the difference between your hair being anemic or healthy. I switch to nice shampoo every winter and year after year the difference is night and day within a week or two.

Fabric softener on the other hand...what a waste!

<comment><USER24> Olive oil works well as a lotion as long as your skin isn't naturally super greasy.

A bottle of the most expensive olive oil is still cheaper per fluid oz. than a bottle of lotion.

<comment><USER25> Ill give the edge to coco butter derivatives over olive oil.

[https://www.amazon.com/Palmers-Cocoa-Butter-Soothing- Itchy/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Palmers-Cocoa-Butter-Soothing- Itchy/dp/B000FVCNEK/) [https://www.amazon.com/Palmers-Cocoa-Butter-Formula- Therapy/...](https://www.amazon.com/Palmers-Cocoa-Butter-Formula- Therapy/dp/B001KYU1H2) [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002A4D5YM/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002A4D5YM/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How good are your testers test? - <AUTHOR>

I am working in a company which every people has his job definition. While I develop my application, I expect testers to test application in a daily basis. But generally they do test the application just before release dates. When I tell this situation at scrum meetings they got it personal.
This situation effects me because I am needed to work at releases till late night. Otherwise I would work less.
What would/did you do in similar situations? <comment><USER2> Why not cover as much as you can with automated tests to minimise the amount of work required by your testers. This will allow them to concentrate on the important things and not test every function of your app every day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's not an excuse bu I am expected to develop very fast and I am the only developer in project.</comment></comment>


Coveting possessions is unhealthy. - <AUTHOR> http://jackcheng.tumblr.com/post/200367929/coveting-possessions-is-unhealthy-heres-how-i <comment><USER2> "I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it. " --Steven Wright

<comment><USER3> That reminds me of a joke of how a mathematicians catches a lion.

"You see, I go and find the lion and I put a fence around myself. Then I define the area near me to be the outside."

A obvious exploit of jordan curve theorem; tee hee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome, I'd like to take one of my Lamborghinis for a spin.

Oh, wait, I can't, because I don't actually own any.

Paul Graham's Stuff essay (<http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html>) makes the case for not worrying about possessions far better than this hilariously bad analogy.

<comment><USER5> If their market was as liquid as, say, shares of Berkshire Hathaway (current price: 121,000 dollars) then you could easily buy one in the morning, sell it in the afternoon and likely lose only the transaction cost.

<comment><USER6> Unless you crash it.

<comment><USER7> crash what?

BRK.A is a terrible liquidity example.

<comment><USER6> Crash a Lamborghini.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've started trying to enforce conservation of clothing. If I acquire a free shirt, or have the "need" to buy something like a jacket, I will eject an older jacket from my inventory. It's a nice way to try to combat the endowment effect.

I've known for about a year that I was going to move November 2010, so that made me take a hard look at my possessions and what I had, and caused me to get rid of a lot. I've just moved with a suitcase and a few boxes, plus some boxes of books and camping stuff. Other than some electronics, I haven't taken any of my clothes out of the boxes, and I haven't needed them yet. I'm thinking about chucking them.

<comment><USER9> My rule of thumb is that I look at if I've used it within the past month (with the exception of seasonal use things like camping equipment or winter clothes) and if I haven't, it goes.

<comment><USER10> If you don't normally wear them, remember to keep the emergency suit (although in a weird sort of way you could call that seasonal).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You look at things differently when you consider that for most of us, stuff costs us our liberty.

<comment><USER12> Bullshit, possessions allow you to have more liberty, because they allow you to do more in shorter time than you would otherwise be able to.

What ends us costing you your liberty is being stuff you can't afford with no plan to be able to buy it later. "because I am worth it" cost you your freedom

<comment><USER13> I suspect Arun was referring not to the efficient use of "stuff" but rather the irrational desire to own/control stuff rather than simply make use of it in the supply chain. It would be absurd to hand launder one's everyday clothing instead of making use of a washing machine. However, it might not be rational to own one's own washing machine when a laundromat or laundry service (fluff n' fold, etc.) could be used instead. Many people irrationally desire to own stuff and might opt for a washer in their homes when it would actually increase their net happiness level to just go to the laundromat or pay someone to do the wash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> blogspam, source is <http://www.metafilter.com/65284/Collect-em-all#1862024>

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a great analogy if for no other reason than that it frees your mind to think about more important things than stuff.

If we keep at hand only what we regularly need, and put the rest 'in storage', we'll probably be able to spend a lot more time doing the things we actually want to get done.

Take advantage of the division of labor and let someone else curate your stuff for you. Go do something interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can we not criticize the analogy this time, guys?

</comment><comment><USER17> Wanting something for nothing is unhealthy. Wanting something and earning it is rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's got to be a happy medium here. I don't want to be owned by my stuff, but I also think that anyone who says that material things can't make you happy hasn't owned a Mustang GT or a Fender Stratocaster.

If you don't have either of those things, then I think you're right to covet them. :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> I like the style, just not the execution.

Nothing wrong with having stuff...nothing wrong with wanting it.

I'll live frugally when I'm dead.

</comment><comment><USER20> Resenting other people's possessions is worse.</comment>


Guide to Healing Your Gut - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/630czc/guide_to_healing_your_gut/ <comment><USER2> I have an almost life-ruining case of intestinal issues and I've researched and tried pretty much everything on that list over the years, sadly to little avail.

I don't like the conviction with which people recommend detailed protocols. They often have inadequate warnings (quercetin for example has not been tested for safety in higher doses + prolonged use) and fail to realize that most people are different. Plus it makes it incredibly hard to isolate what's working for you and what isn't.

I much prefer discussing items individually rather than as part of a protocol, except in cases when items are directly linked (e.g. Calcium homeostasis is linked to Vitamin D, Magnesium, Calcium, Vitamin K2 and Vitamin A).</comment>


Ask HN: Today – Who offers the simplest & hosted Website Creator? - <AUTHOR> A friend needs a simple 3 page or single-scroll site for his construction consulting biz.
I have 0 time to help him.
He is a total newbie...but can figure things out
( as he's a great home builder )..but im advising him to MVP something in 1 day to just test things.
What's hot out there now.. that can allow him ( either via "live-editing" or a "Wizard" to quickly throw something up?
p.s. he will need a custom Domain to use on site as well.
thanks <comment><USER2> When it comes to choosing a website creator, I'm leaning towards Wix or Weebly since they are very flexible. But if you want the cheapest option, go for Weebly. Here is a great review on it - [http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders- reviews/wee...](http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders- reviews/weebly-review/) . In comparison to other website builders, I personally believe that Weebly is one of the most user-friendly website builders available on the market nowadays.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> test 123</comment>


Apple tablet launch: live coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/27/apple-tablet-launch-live-coverage <comment><USER2> I'm wondering whether there is provision for wireless keyboard and mouse. Last week, a friend was asking whether they might substitute this for the Macbook they are considering purchasing. Their overall computer use is pretty light and Internet focused: Email, browsing, some light document editing (which Google Docs or similar could handle). Having the form factor of a tablet, without having to make two purchases, would be of use to them.

(My personal reaction to this approach was not entirely positive (e.g. guaranteed access to data and security of same?), but I take their point.)

P.S. Or wired input accessories. Wireless just seems more intuitively in line with the design and form factor.

Also, this was before the stronger rumors circulated about it hosting the iPhone version of their OS, although I was speculating/suspecting about just how locked up it would be. And without Flash (Gruber, et al.), its "general" browsing and online document editing potential will be limited.

<comment><USER3> My guess? No.

If the tablet supports keyboards, people will think of it as half a laptop. The keyboard will be denigrated as an unofficially-required-but-not-included peripheral. Everyone will get stuck on the usability annoyances of lugging around a tablet with separated keyboard and 'how do you prop up the screen'. (Chance of integrated kick-stand is around 0)

Further, devs will get keyboards and write software that assumes people have them too, exacerbating the above.

A pen is iffy. I don't think Apple wants anyone thinking of the tablet as another-pen-based-mistake. Not while finger-on-iPod is such a smashing UI success. But the upside to a stylus is pretty huge (maybe they'll attempt to re-brand it as something else; a 'brush' perhaps).

But I think physical keyboards are right out.

<comment><USER4> I think Apple may allow kayboards and mice but not right away. They might very well wait two or three years to first "educate" everyone about how tablets are supposed to work.

Just an example: I don't think it would harm the iPhone now if Apple started to sell pens. It would have hurt the iPhone when it started.

<comment><USER3> On the contrary, I think the longer the platform goes without kb/m, the less relevant they become. At this point, with so many people so used to touch* and typing emails on their iphones about as quickly as they did on their blackberry, how many people in Apple's market would choose the hassle of a BT chiclet keyboard?

(*the most common usability complaint I hear RE: Android, is apps that don't expose functionality through on-screen UI, iphone-style, but via the 'menu' button)

As for pens, Apple may be content to let third parties handle that. User expectations don't get confused, but much of their power can still be harnessed.

<comment><USER3> For the record, I literally /facepalm'd when I saw the keyboard/dock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Naïve question: is there a live video stream of the event?

<comment><USER6> There hasn't been in years. Usually a stream comes up within an hour after the event ends.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a promotional opportunity for Justin.tv.

<comment><USER8> It'd be a great opportunity for anyone doing video. I think the real reason that they don't stream live is that the video quality usually isn't that great. By releasing the videos later they can provide higher quality and give it a more polished feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given Apple's track record I'm sure this will be a wonderful device but I think pricing is going to be a big problem for them. I would expect an iPhone 2G style price drop by summer if the price tag is over $800 as rumored.

<comment><USER10> The price issue, I think, is key. No one has mentioned, as far as I know, that since the device is designed to be always-connected, it could be bundled with a mobile contract (albeit a data-only plan), just like an iPhone, and thus heavily subsidized by the carrier. While most of us know that a two year contract is a really expensive way to get $300 knocked of the price of a phone, it does allow for really amazing devices to have really amazing looking prices, like $200 for the iPhone or $180 for the Nexus One. I suspect the tablet could see a similar subsidized price (and similar lock-in to a single carrier that made a deal with Apple, hoping for a knock out hit like the iPhone has been for AT&T; they'll be disappointed, but the deal probably could have been made).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> looks like the screen is four times the size of an iPhone. it can run iPhone apps, either tiled or pixel-doubled to fullscreen. it is of course tied to the App Store. there will be an emulator to develop for it, just like the iPhone. the new SDK and emulator is supposedly available today.

the liveblog sites are too overloaded for me to get much more than that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if anyone is using qik.com to stream the event from their iPhone...

</comment><comment><USER13> From the Engadget leaked photos, it looks like it has both cellular connectivity and a front video camera. Video calling, here we come.

Still, the more I find out about the device, the less interested I am. It looks like it's just going to be a huge iPhone. Fun, but not _useful_. And while I miss almost nothing about my previous smartphones before the iPhone, I do miss the ability to be able to install whatever I wanted. Locked devices foster an entirely different application ecosystem -- one that's not super useful for programmers, I find.

<comment><USER14> I'm with you. Although I feel sure (tr: believe without specific evidence) that this will be a well-made device and cause even more people to throw money in Apple's direction, and I like tablets a lot, I'd prefer something built around a more open platform. I can live without the cellular connectivity.

Obviously Windows and Linux desktop metaphors are inappropriate for a device of this size (the main reason they haven't taken off in this space previously), but to my mind the front end is only a shell anyway, no?

This isn't meant to rain on Apple's parade, though. Rather, kudos to them for pushing into new territory and bringing the future that extra step closer.</comment></comment>


Forthcoming OpenSSL release announced - <AUTHOR> https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2016-January/000058.html <comment><USER2> Reading the tea leaves on this one early we can probably assume there's a good chance the high vulnerability does not affect libressl, which forked before the 1.0.2 codebase. We'll find out about the low.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did they communicate these issues via a backchannel to LibreSSL and BoringSSL yet?

</comment><comment><USER4> Will this be the first High issue since 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 stopped getting fixes? It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

</comment><comment><USER5> what's the procedure to update in debian? the offical repo will be updated immediatly or what?

<comment><USER6> From my limited understanding, the update would be pushed through the security.debian.org repository ASAP, which should be configured by default.

I wonder what the 0.9.8 EOL means for squeeze-lts. Does the Debian LTS team just backport all applicable 1.0.1 patches? Isn't this a little risky? They might not have an intimate understanding of the opaque codebase.

What about Wheezy and Jessie after support for 1.0.1 ends on 31 December?

<comment><USER7> This is why long-term support is less cool than it might first appear.

<comment><USER8> You get problems like this, but with the amount of overlap in time the different versions provide, with regards to security updates, I'd say its far from unreasonable that one should be able to move over to the next version before stuff like this becomes a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the range of severities? Is 'high' the highest?

<comment><USER10> "Critical" is the highest. A link to the list of severities is smack in the middle of the message.

> Please see the following page for further details of severity levels: > [https://www.openssl.org/policies/secpolicy.html](https://www.openssl.org/policies/secpolicy.html)

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I should get my sight checked!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So rhe Openssl devs are the new carpenters? They should specify an exact time instead, so that I can upgrade at a known time without having block the entire afternoon. They could just as well tell us it would be available at 5pm.

<comment><USER12> Assume it will be available at 1700 UTC then.

There was a time in the not so distant past when we didn't even get a "heads up" like this so, personally, I am appreciative of the advance notice.

<comment><USER11> That means that my 10k company users will have systems vulnerable for between 0 and 4 hour longer than necessary. That is less than optimal. Really, why do thy even give a 4 hour window for when it will be released?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder which exploit mitigation countermeasure was "bugfixed" in the new release?</comment>


Intel says Qualcomm tactics forced it out of modem chip market - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-says-qualcomm-tactics-forced-151000021.html <comment><USER2> >"But when all was said and done, Intel could not overcome the artificial and insurmountable barriers to fair competition created by Qualcomm's scheme..."

Intel doesn't like a taste of it's own medicine?</comment>


The Reality of Rewrites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bennorthrop.com/rewrite-or-refactor-book/chapter-2-the-risks-of-rewrites.php <comment><USER2> I've seen this happening so many times. Unbelievable how things are similar with every project and there's no real solution at aging software once technical debt is left to pile up.</comment>


Apple Safari users suffer crashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420573 <comment><USER2> I've tried to like Safari. It's certainly snappier than the alternatives. It's fast and seems light. I'll go as far as to say I _want_ to like Safari. As a heavy iPhone and Mac user, going all in on Safari would buy me a lot. In a similar vein, I _want_ to like Firefox - even more so than Safari. An open source web browser by a non-profit? Sign me up. That's an excellent concept to rally behind.

But...

I can't ditch Chrome. I know it eats up resources like it's nobody's business, I know it's probably tracking me, I hate that it wants me to 'log in' like it's some sort of operating system, but I just can't kick the habit.

I think it's the tabs. For whatever reason, chrome is simply the best browser for those 50 tab research sessions. It's also the best file downloader, the most configurable, has the best extension ecosystem. It manages to be the best pro-user's browser, and the best layperson's browser at the same time.

I still have all three browsers sitting in my dock. I just use Chrome by default.

<comment><USER3> This is me exactly. I can't stand the UI in FF. It seems to change too much and it's ugly. There are probably plugins to help with that, but I haven't invested the time to look into it. It's also hard to kick the Chrome dev tools.

<comment><USER4> How is FF ugly? I don't find the UI very different from Chrome and Safari.

<comment><USER5> I don't get how he thinks it's ugly or different.

Not only is it very similar but, unlike Chrome or Safari, every aspect of it is customizable so you can make it look however you want. Out of the box you can rearrange the the UI elements to match Chrome or Safari.

<comment><USER6> I absolutely hate the FF UI. I WANT to use FF, I actually switched a few months ago and did it for a couple of months. I THINK my problem (I say think because I feel like someone will measure the pixel and say I'm wrong) is that it feels like there is a ton of wasted space between the tabs, above the tabs. etc. I can't control the size of the top bars and they're huge compared to chrome. I'm a fan of tiny icons and very, very compact UIs so that I can get more on the screen at once. Here's my comparison on a 28" monitor [https://www.dropbox.com/s/k32gln7s3ev5a7t/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/k32gln7s3ev5a7t/Screenshot%202016-01-27%2010.51.41.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER7> You might try the "Custom Tab Width" add-on to shrink your Firefox tabs. I also like to set my toolbar bookmarks' names to an empty string, so my toolbar is just a bunch of bookmark favicons.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-tab- wi...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-tab-width/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I really worry how much I depend on software written by Apple.

On the weirder end of Safari bugs, mine can only open t.co (Twitter short link) URLs about 1/4 of the time. The rest of the time it sits there, eventually telling me the server is not responding. Apparently it is a bug at a "lower level than Webkit". The mind boggles as to what it actually is, and it's been like this for _months_.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/22/10813862/Safari-sucks- at-t...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/22/10813862/Safari-sucks-at-twitter)

<comment> k-mcgrady This was driving me mad for ages. I was blaming Twitter and my connection until I finally discovered it was Safari. This was the last straw for me. Having Safari on my desktop synced with my iPhone is so useful. Safari credit card and password storage works better than Chromes (imo) and I find it superior in almost every other way. But with todays issue, the t.co issue, and another issue where my entire Mac would randomly freeze and require a forced reboot on some videos (not sure if it was flash or HTML5) I've just had to give up and switch to Chrome.

<comment><USER8> They both show worrying things to me:

\- app crashing because a remote server is down? Bad coding. Bad QA. What else is lurking in that codebase?

\- weird bug affecting one domain? Fix it. Twitter is not a small site. But it's been months and they still haven't fixed it.

<comment><USER9> > _app crashing because a remote server is down? Bad coding. Bad QA. What else > is lurking in that codebase?_

That happens all the time with all kinds of apps, which nethertheless might be indispensable.

<comment><USER8> If only it were open source, then we could check.

<comment><USER9> If only it were open source and its users had both the knowledge required, the time AND cared enough to check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The bug may have been uncovered by a server change, but Safari really shouldn't be crashing just because it can't reach the suggestions server.

That is, frankly, pisspoor QA by Apple.

<comment><USER11> It isn't just crashing Safari but does a full OS reboot on my 5c running 9.2.1 (which is the latest release iOS version as of today).

<comment><USER12> Yep. Hence it's barking the wrong tree to frame this as primarily Safari's fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Appears to be caused be search suggestions in Safari address bar, which seems to be server side so it's affecting various versions of software.

Reddit thread linked in article: [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/42wle1/safari_crashi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/42wle1/safari_crashing_after_ios_921_update/)

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone owning an iPad Air and thus forced to use mobile Safari, this is hardly any news for me.

Back in 7.1 scrolling or zooming a page "too fast" led to an immediate crash. Onto 8.0, it still did but the threshold was apparently raised a bit. It was finally fixed before 9.0 but now fullscreen HTML5 video playing starts to crash randomly. Even worse, sometimes the page just goes blank and you have to reload it - The last time this happened I had spent five minutes filling a form. Hilariously, the preview interface still shows the actual page, so I managed to click the submit button by mapping its position from the preview.

</comment><comment><USER14> Opera trying to capitalize [https://twitter.com/coastbrowser/status/692367086631391232](https://twitter.com/coastbrowser/status/692367086631391232)

</comment><comment><USER15> Upon upgrading to Yosemite two years ago, Safari stopped working completely on two out of my three Macs (one brand new, bought just months before) with the third one intermittently working. Apple's software quality is really a joke and Safari is the new IE in many ways. Its support for standards is behind every other major browser and it hardly ever opens without crashing. Why would I use such shitty software when I'm not forced to? I avoid iTunes for the exact same reasons except when Apple forces me to use it to put music on their devices. The core OS X system is generally solid (other than the myriad of wireless issues Apple can't seem to ever solve) but the apps that come with it range from substandard to total shit quality.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody else noticed how Safari doesn't seem to get Javascript exceptions right? Errors often have no stack trace, or their information is of limited use.

At least, that is what I am experiencing lately.

Chrome/Chromium, on the other hand, almost always gives me the information I need.

<comment><USER17> No, but if you're relying on sourcemaps to get useful information you might want to confirm that the toolchain is producing fully-valid sourcemaps. I saw some very odd failures while that stabilized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Works fine for me (Mac OS X), and I guess am one of the few who prefers Safari.

<comment> yoz-y Works for me as well. Are you by any chance using duck duck go as your default search provider?

<comment><USER19> Works fine for me too and I'm using DuckDuckGo on both iOS and Mac.

<comment><USER20> I use DuckDuckGo as well and I was affected by this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I experienced this issue earlier today. I assumed my Safari had gotten corrupted somehow, crazy that a serverside issue would bring down the browser like that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I haven't experienced this issue but the last month I have been getting a lot of tabs crashing and reloading. Anyone else with the same problem? It's not related to any particular site. Some text about the page had a problem and had to be reloaded is displayed in a status bar above the page beneath the tabs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Still broke on my iPhone. Not sure a server change should break my iPhone internets, very poor.

</comment><comment><USER24> No issues here on the latest El Capitan and iOS.

Though I wonder if this isn't "accidental" sabotage on Google's part. Wouldn't be the first time. Didn't something from their side break something just for Apple users not long ago? But then again, they have lots of Mac users inside their own company..

</comment><comment><USER25> Safari needs to start respecting HTML5 input validations.

<comment><USER9> From all the things mentioned in this post, that's probably the last thing it needs.

Most browsers out in the wild don't support them anyway, and that's something for developers to worry -- most pages implement their own JS based validations on the client anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty sad Apple.</comment>


Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation (five lessons for making an unforgettable pitch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2007/sb2007076_474371.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

<comment><USER2> Sometimes CEOs give boring presentations on revolutionary products. More often they give boring presentations on boring products. Steve Jobs has a huge advantage when it comes time to show his work because he produces such earth- shattering stuff. His salesmanship is the the icing on the already-delicious cake.

<comment><USER3> Jobs does often end up being in the position where he can sell some pretty awesome products, but he's also adept at finding reasons to find things awesome in the first place. If he'd sold OSX by dryly listing its features, you might think "ah, UNIX, yeah, probably good idea, failed before with AUX, though". But when Jobs described OSX to people, they came away thinking "wow, this is a major leap in operating systems design." Part of this is pure charisma and great delivery. Another part of it is just a knack for picking up on genuinely great aspects of a product that others might not think to highlight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The takeaway? Build up to something unexpected in your presentations._

That's the only takeaway?

Jobs appeals to nostalgia and positions Apple as the heroic company making the world a better place for people to live in. It's emotional and genuine if perhaps a little exaggerated. That it builds up with dramatic tension is just the basic foundation of the speech. It's the details and romanticism that put it over the top.

<comment><USER5> Which is why I don't get the whole "charisma" or "reality distortion field" claims. He's just this guy, you know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Point 3 about vocal variety is not as easy to do as you might think. You need practice. Toastmasters is a great organization for learning to speak well in front of groups, prepared or extemporaneous.

My club meets in Boston near Downtown Crossing on second and fourth Wednesdays at noon. Or look on the Toastmasters International web site (<http://www.toastmasters.org/>) for a club near you.

<http://ourdoings.com/oratory-authority/>

</comment><comment><USER7> The advice of having one point per slide and using an image instead of lots of text should be in a message that pops up everytime someone starts Powerpoint.</comment>


Wikipedia Should Go For-Profit, Give Profits Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/3/better-idea-for-wikipedia-go-private-give-away-profits <comment><USER2> Kind of missed the benefit of going "for profit," since 501c3's can donate to other causes as long as it's for the public benefit: <http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopich01.pdf>

While I love Paul Newman's food, acting career, and generosity, going "for profit" I think causes more potential problems than it solves.</comment>


Beautiful doesn't make it true - <AUTHOR> http://ma.rtinseeba.ch/post/530394501/beautiful-doesnt-make-it-true

<comment><USER2> If ever there was a strawman. He says: "Planes emit CO2 - but they emit almost completely clean CO2 (note that bar global warming, CO2 isn't considered harmful). Volcanoes blast tons and tons of all kinds of nasty and not so nasty stuff into the air. Some of the ash contains nutrients that will fertilize soil, other will, as mentioned, cause acid rain. It's much more complex than CO2."

Well... no, the question raised is clearly about CO2 and nothing but CO2. How much do volcanic ash clouds affect the planet's albedo? How much precious fossil fuel do the planes collectively consume? Not relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think the IIB post is partisan.

This author says, "they emit almost completely clean CO2 (note that bar global warming, CO2 isn't considered harmful)" ... To my ears, that's a major understatement ("bar global warming"). I'm almost inclined to think it's more partisan than the original post, to be so dismissive of climate change.

But beyond that, the point that seems most incongruous is the suggestion that because volcanos emit a more explicitly toxic gas (S02) that we shouldn't have an awareness of our own emissions and their effect on the environment. By comparing it to a volcano's emissions, I am simply impressed by the scale.

I think you really have to read into this to derive a moral/political statement. Nobody is trying to hide the effects of S02.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's intentionally partisan, I think it's simply under thought (like, at this point, the vast majority of IIB's stuff). It's not that you don't get a comparison, it's that the comparison doesn't really mean anything. When you are comparing these numbers you want to understand the impact they have, not just the numbers themselves. As the OP said, it's simply misleading to portray this relationship as meaningful: it's not.

The only value of these numbers, as you have said, is to have an awareness of their relative effect on the environment. That's not what's being presented here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as I know high quantities of SO2 shield earth from sun rays causing cooling on global scale. I've recently heard about volcano eruption about hundred years ago (maybe two hundred I'm not sure) that caused ground-frost in July next year severely harming crops and causing hunger that led to many thousand deaths in US and all over the world.

So if you are afraid of global warming you should welcome every volcano eruption with joy as its SO2 emission counter-effects influence of many millions of tons of CO2.

<comment><USER2> 1815: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_without_a_summer>

Not sure about the joy bit since large SO2 emissions have a catastrophic effect on agriculture as you noted, but do not have effects lasting more than a few years. CO2 lasts a good bit longer than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives." (Albert Einstein)

</comment><comment><USER7> From what I have seen so far " _Information is Beautiful_ " would more accurately be called " _How to lie with cute infographics_ ".

I don't think they intentionally lie, but their infographics are often misleading at best, and give people a false sense of understanding and knowledge.</comment>