National Identity Is Made Up [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/national-identity-myth.html?emc=edit_int_20180228&nl=the-interpreter&nlid=79463061&te=1 <comment><USER3> Here are some arguments in favor of national identity being "real": (as in, likely to arise in any culture, perhaps in any species that's able - in a Chomsky recursion sort of way)

\- You have a greater interest in reaching consensus with people in the same democracy as you, because their votes determine the laws you follow and vice versa.

\- People who live in the same country as you fund the same programs and projects, and therefore share with you some sense of ownership over space programs, universal healthcare, or whatever else your government is spending money on.

\- People who live in the same (democratic) country are co-responsible with you for whatever good or evil your government does. (See: points one and two.) It's not a direct, and the responsibility is spread thin, but however little power Americans have over US actions, foreign nationals have even less!

\- Game theory explains a lot of this. National identity isn't an arbitrary fiction, nor an arbitrary reality. You can think it's good or bad, but it's here for reasons stouter than "someone came up with it."

<comment><USER4> You define 'real' as: "likely to arise in any culture, perhaps in any species that's able". That's a strong claim. Look at your arguments supporting it:

> You have a greater interest in reaching consensus with people in the same > democracy as you...

> People who live in the same country as you fund the same programs and > projects...

> People who live in the same (democratic) country are co-responsible with > you...

These all have the form: if democratic nation-states already exist, people will have reason to identify with them. This is plausible, but does _not_ prove that nation-states are "likely to arise in any culture, perhaps in any species that's able".

What it means is that nation-states are a relatively _stable_ arrangement - that, once extant, they by and large convince people to go along with their existence. But there have been many forms of social organization which were stable for long periods of time before modern nation-states came along. Why shouldn't there be many others succeeding it?

<comment><USER3> If nation-states _don 't_ already exist, then someone will invent them. This has happened over and over again in human history, and native American civilizations serve as a great example. If you have a single, global state, then all of the same identity arguments apply to the new global identity.

So, it sounds like the choices are between many national identities, one (global) national identity, and anarchy from which many national identities will arise given time.

Finally, if you're going to hold the universal single-state together, you would have to crush all civil wars or faction divides before they even started. To do this preemptively is the central tenant of fascism, and to not do it at all will just lead back to having multiple states. So, in the long- term, you'll end up with multiple national identities.

<comment><USER5> Civilizational advance has at its current top-level nationalism.

Self: I look out for my own advantage. Everyone else is of lesser status, possibly and enemy or opponent.

Clans: I look out only for my own family's advantage. Everyone not in my family is of lesser status, possibly an enemy or opponent.

Tribes: I look out only for my tribe's advantage. We may not all be family, the tribe may be made from many clans, but we are one tribe. Everyone not in my tribe is of lesser status, possibly an enemy or opponent.

Nations: I look out for my nation's advantage. We are not all one family, one clan, or one tribe, but we are one culture. Everyone not a member of my nation is of lesser status within my borders, and may be an enemy or opponent.

This is overly simplistic, of course, but nationalism has been the most advanced form of cultural organization we've achieved for a very long time. It's led to the notion of human rights, the idea of rule by law, and the formalization of trade (which has reduced global conflict by a large measure).

Nations and nationalism are good things. They are social constructs, yes, but they are better than degeneration back to tribalism or clannishness. We can observe those regressions in the turmoil of the Middle East.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Granfalloonery like this is what humans are best at. Everything we involve ourselves in is "made up", but that doesn't keep it from existing.

The book Sapiens suggests the word "intersubjective" (I don't know if this came from somewhere else) for things that exist entirely because a quorum believes they exist:

\- National identity

\- Nations as a whole

\- Tribes

\- Religion

\- Money

\- Civil rights

<comment><USER7> Of course. It's what separates us from the beasts and animals.

Sapiens also talks about how humanism is completely made up. Who says a human deserves rights? Why should humans not own other humans? Because we built up a moral system on made up beliefs, largely religious in origin.

And that is good. Otherwise why protect weak humans? Why not just behave more "naturally", like animals?

<comment><USER6> I'm absolutely not being critical of any of this. I think it's pseudo-magical that we've built a moderately-functional society out of 10 billion humans spread over an entire planet.

<comment><USER8> I absolutely appreciate your post for exposing the threadbare premise of the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo Made up? Consider:

1\. Your nationality decides the lower threshold of your social security.

2\. Your nationality decides where and how easy you can travel.

3\. Your nationality decides the justice system you are in.

4\. For many people, your nationality, decides your ethnic background, what language you speak, what culture you are raised up...etc

It is of course not made up, at least for modern people who grow up in a world that is organized by nation, already. Of course, it was constructed, because 2 to 3 hundred years ago, the technology we have at the time is not sufficient to organize and control a population of modern nation. When that technology is in place, boom, the national identity comes with it. It is not coming out of nowhere.

<comment><USER9> It seems that some people have conflated the idea of "socially constructed" with something not being real. Nations are composed of people and power structures; while these may have been designed by people, in no way does it mean that they don't exist, or that they don't create distinctions and differences between groups people over long periods of time.

People naturally feel like their history and the shared history of their kin is part of their identity, something they can lay claim to in an abstract sense. The events of the past influence your birth and life, as they did for the generations preceding you. There is such a thing as a healthy variety of pride in your identity; obviously we know what it looks like when taken too far, but the cries to eliminate it completely seem to me to be dangerous propositions.

<comment> oh-kumudo My thought exactly. Such claims as the one from the video, in fact, are attractive, partially because they are catchy and counter intuitive, a lot like conspiracy theories.

While extreme nationalism is dangerous, nationalism is an effective way, not the most effective, to establish order and reach consensus to tens and hundreds of millions of people. And it is awkward to see that the creator of the video highlight the US exceptionalism to end their argument, which by itself, IMHO, is pretty nationalistic.

<comment><USER10> I didn't get the impression at all that mentioning US exceptionalism undercut the video creator's argument, or that they were really trying to argue that nationalism _isn 't_ an effective way to establish order.

The creator went to lengths to describe how powerful of a force nationalism is. The point is that it's remarkable how much effect it has, given that it's a concept without a clearly defined delineation (categorizing languages, shared history, culture, ethnicity, and even borders is a whole other thing) that didn't exist a few hundred years ago.

Taking umbrage to how the author uses the concept of "existence" or "being made up" as basically a philosophical shorthand in the context of deconstructing what national identity really is seems overly semantic. Is the issue really just that it's controversial and click-baity to say "national identity isn't real" as a headline out of context? Because that's irrelevant to the thrust of what's being said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The scope changes, national identity does not. You don't really identify with your fellow Italians until the Lombards invade. You don't identify with your fellow Christians until Muslims are at your border. You don't identify with fellow Earthlings until Martians show up. As humans we simply round up to the most immediately useful tribe.

<comment><USER12> I think the question becomes, at what point do we use cross-cutting concerns to identify our tribes? Class is the obvious example...when do middle-class people of different national, ethnic or political backgrounds band together to realize that their interests are far more aligned than they are with people who share those other traits but have a different financial reality, either because they're much poorer or much wealthier?

I'd argue that for the upper class, that distinction has already been made. Rich people already view themselves as trans-national and move their money, resources and influence to wherever they feel it best suits them. They hold meetings in ritzy Swiss mountain towns to discuss common concerns and have residences all over the world, regardless of which country or countries issued them passports.

The reason the discussion about national identities matter is that it creates a useful fiction by which certain groups can be oppressed or otherwise taken advantage of. The US army goes around the world acting in the best interests of many wealthy business owners. The soldiers doing their bidding don't come from those wealthy families, they come from lower classes who view their involvement through the lens of nationalism...they're serving their country. It would be one thing if those wealthy business owners footed the bill for the massive military spending that's representing their interests around the world. But that burden falls largely on the country's middle class while those with the most wealth exert influence to reduce their tax burden.

This may seem like it just describes the US, but it's equally true of the situation in some other countries. Russia's involvement in the Ukraine and Syria is equally carried out by its poorer citizens at the behest of those who will make billions off those wars. And while China has managed to steer clear of active engagements much more so than the US or Russia, their military still protects the interest of their ruling class much more so than it does the interests of the lower classes who inhabit its ranks.

So while everything you've said is true, it's also important to have this conversation to better recognize when these tendencies towards tribalism are being abused by those that understand them. Yes, our natural tendency is to seek a simple heuristic that separates an us from a them and to adjust that heuristic in response to the things that threaten us. That simple formula has worked well over the majority of human history. But as our social structures have become increasingly complex, it stops working well for those that aren't actively exploiting it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of comments saying "money and laws and religion are made up, too!" This is absolutely correct but avoids dealing with the spirit of the claim. The reason this is worth saying is because so many people believe that tribalism and its artifacts are essential parts of being human. But it's worth discussion because it's no more "natural" than anything other mythology we create to make a consistent narrative of our history to justify our actions. Having grown up in America this is a practical matter because many people are convinced that America is right implicitly because it's America.

<comment><USER14> I agree with your overarching point but I think the acknowledgement that it's all made up is more of an argument in favor of tribalism than against it. What's good for America isn't necessarily good for the rest of the world. And yet, if America as a gestalt entity always persues the maximum benefit for its people in particular then the only reason this might be "bad" with scary quotes is because other countries aren't doing the same for their citizens for some reason.

<comment><USER10> Why not put the world under a United States of the World to maximize the number of people benefiting from tribalism then? Or else why keep California in the union if what's good for California isn't necessarily good for the rest of America?

<comment><USER14> I'm a little late to reply but the blunt answer is "because it wouldn't be worth it." To clarify, the point I was making wasn't that tribalism is actually desirable, simply that if it's ethically agnostic then entrenched and powerul tribes benefit more from its perpetuation typically.

For the thought experiment, creating a United States of the World would require either literally taking over the world or some amount of agentic sacrifice from every nation absorbed into the uber tribe. The case for California is similarly unrealistic but for different reasons, you can choose to occasionally give a member of a tribe lopsided benefits and deny them at other times. This is especially true when the alternative is compromising the perceived security of people who are already members of the tribe. Put more succinctly, the California idea is bad because it would lead to infighting and can be handled in a non-binary fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a weird argument ignoring the main reasons for nationality - <USER2> and familiarity, i.e. a group of people living next to each other speaking the same language (even with dialects).

<comment><AUTHOR> What's a dialect and what's a language is quite hazy. Bulgaria and Macedonia speak nearly the identical language, and are quite similar culturally, but are considered different nations. From Northern Italy to Sicily the linguistic variation is so much that a dialect can be more similar to a different language than a dialect at the other side of the country. Many nations speak multiple languages that they recognise, e.g. Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Spain (not sure if recognised), many have multiple native languages in their own borders, but do not recognise, e.g. Turkey, France. In many nations the culture of certain areas are more similar to close areas across a border than to another part of the country. Many nations have multiple large religious groups, e.g. Lebanon, Bosnia & Herzegovina, India, Ethiopia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was eloquently covered by Kwame Appiah in his Reith Lecture from a few years ago.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07zz5mf](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07zz5mf)

 _The philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues against a mythical, romantic view of nationhood, saying instead it should rest on a commitment to shared values.

He explores the history of the idea, born in the 19th century, that there are peoples who are bound together by an ancient common spirit and that each of these nations is entitled to its own state. He says this idea is a mistaken one, illustrating his argument through the life story of the writer who took the pen name Italo Svevo - meaning literally Italian Swabian. He was born a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and became a citizen of the new republic of Italy, all without leaving his home city of Trieste. Appiah argues that states exist as a set of shared beliefs rather than membership of some sort of mythical and ancient group. "What binds citizens together is a commitment," he says, "to sharing the life of a modern state, united by its institutions, procedures and precepts."

The lecture is recorded in front of an audience at the University of Glasgow. The series is presented and chaired by Sue Lawley. Future lectures will examine the themes of colour and culture._

<comment><USER7> The idea of "Nation" being a people goes back thousands and thousands of years. I don't think it was born in the 19th century...

<comment><USER17> (Oh, you've unsealed a tin of whoop-ass now. I've dragged out my OED, vol VII, N-Poy.)

"An extensive aggregate of persons, so closely associated with each other by common descent, language, or history, as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory."

This usage dates in English back to the 1300s, with a first example that I won't type because I'm not sure where the letter thorn is hiding; the second is "All naciun and lede aglit vr lauerd for to drede," from Crsor M, 1300. (Geeze, I need a magnifying glass or better cheaters.)

It enters English from French, and before from Latin (that is an 'L', right?): nation-em, "breed, stock, race, nation", from nasci, "to be born".

But it goes on to say, "In early examples the racial idea is usually stronger than the political; in recent use the notion of political unity and independence is more prominent." An example is from 1872, "In Switzerland four languages are spoken; yet the Swiss certainly make one nation."

From reading David Reynolds, my understanding is that the use of "nation" to mean a culturally-related (or "racially", or "historically", or something) group of people that _ought_ to be a political unit, and vice versa, that a political unit _ought_ to be a somehow-related group of people, is a relatively recent thing, possibly a gift of Woodrow Wilson following WWI. (Think of the phrase "nation-state".)

[Word of the day: "Natiform": Resembling or having the form of buttocks. Thanks, OED!]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm reading Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities right now and I recommend it for anybody looking for a deeper dive into nationalism than a video series can do.

<comment><USER19> Came here to recommend that very book. It's a sober and thoughtful read, and changed how I see nations and other communities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like religion, Money, laws and just about anything else that makes a functioning society.

<comment><USER4> Most people will admit that laws are made up; that they are only good insofar as they produce a good society; that laws serve society, rather than society existing to serve law.

Money is a little harder, but IME most people eventually acknowledge that the value of money is simply that we all acknowledge it has value.

Whether people admit that nations are "made up" depends on how you press the point. That the precise boundaries of nations are a product of messy history rather than some ideal truth, most people will admit. But most people will push back if you insist on a broad sense of "made up"; for example, that no privilege ought to be given to "what's good for the country" in national policy, but only what is good for humanity, is a fairly unusual position.

Consider Kennedy's famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". To someone who thinks countries are made up, this is nonsense. Countries are valuable if they serve humanity, not vice- versa.

People are least likely to admit that their own religion is made-up; almost all religions claim legitimacy by asserting they reveal some sort of fundamental truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Was it just me or did the narrator's tone make it seem like he was talking to a child?

<comment> oh-kumudo Sounds too woke to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd check out "The Concept of the Political" by Carl Schmitt...it presents a different argument about national identity and nation states [1][2].

[1] [https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2017/SOC286/um/Schmitt_1996_-...](https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2017/SOC286/um/Schmitt_1996_-_Concept_of_the_Political.pdf)

[2] [https://fee.org/articles/carl-schmitt-the-philosopher-of- con...](https://fee.org/articles/carl-schmitt-the-philosopher-of-conflict-who- inspired-both-the-left-and-the-right/)

</comment><comment><USER23> True but trivial.

Everything is understood in a context. That doesn't mean that the context isn't useful. The human bran economizes everything also how it looks at the world.

It's a solid enough concept to understand ourselves in a bigger context and like most other things it has good and bad sides.

I think postmodernism has a lot of useful perspectives, but it always annoys me when it gets misused politically like this disguised as some great antrophological insight.

<comment><AUTHOR> That trivial truth has killed tens of millions hasn't it? Not that trivial, then.

<comment><USER23> What does that have to do with whether it's made up or not? What is your alternative?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the first part, that mean we can make up a better thing. Also, many people have trouble seeing that's a decision we make, and thus many types of extremism/fundamentalism come around. For the second part, I don't have an alternative, and I believe I don't have to have one before discussing the flaws of what we have at hand.

<comment><USER23> Then you are proving my point. It's politics disguised as some big aha moment.

A much more useful and precise way of looking at national identity is that it has emerged as a consequence of more complex social structures.

It's not something you get to decide it's made up because there is an infrastructure and a reality that supports it.

You can discuss the flaws till the cows come home for all I care, just not sure what the point is if you can't actually point to anything concrete to do about it.

<comment><USER24> > just not sure what the point is if you can't actually point to anything > concrete to do about it

Oppose oppressive policies whose basis (whether stated or not) is nationalism.

<comment><USER23> What policies are you talking about specifically?

<comment><USER24> Here are a few proposed new laws in the US (introduced by the most openly ethno-nationalist member of the House of Representatives):

H.R.997: English Language Unity Act of 2017 [https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr997](https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr997)

H.R.140: Birthright Citizenship Act of 2017 [https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr140](https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr140)

H.R.3600: Census Accuracy Act of 2017 [https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr3600](https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr3600)

<comment><USER23> Those hardly make it up for national identity as that's a much broader spectrum. I was looking for fundamental things in our national identity, not fringe cases.

<comment><USER24> > I was looking for fundamental things in our national identity

Actually, you asked for examples of nationalist policies to be opposed, which I provided.

What in the content of those pieces of legislation is "fringe"? If anything, the fact that they are even on the legislative agenda indicates a normalization of nationalist policy proposals.

<comment><USER23> I was trying to understand what you meant. Those a fringe cases and have nothing to do with what most of people think when they talk about national identity. Again its politics disguised as something else, national identity has its good and bad sides, to good are far outweighing any bad ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" At this point I've gone from wanting to praise these inventors as bold libertarian heroes to wanting to drag them in front of a blackboard and making them write a hundred times "I WILL NOT CALL UP THAT WHICH I CANNOT PUT DOWN"_

National identity is indeed made-up. Would the Times prefer, say, racial identity? Religious identity? Corporate identity? Political faction identity?

<comment><USER26> how about human identity?

<comment><USER25> Indeed. How about it? Has naive adoption of such ever been achieved, without being ultimately detrimental to the host?

There is nuance, of course. Paying my taxes and helping my neighbor doesn't preclude sending aid to Africa.

But nuance is precisely what the title (article is behind a paywall, so I can't read it) dispenses with. There is no balancing of obligations between self, kin, kith, town, state, nation, and humanity as a whole. "Just drop that whole 'national' thing, post-haste."

The reality is: humans are social animals. Groups will form identities, or be dissolved and split into groups that do. And as long as the prisoner's dilemma and tragedy of the commons are things, there will be multiple competing groups, rather than one big one.

This doesn't mean "therefore, genocide." Quite the opposite: good fences make good neighbors. I wonder if those who are so free with their ingroup designations exercise the same fast-and-loose mentality when writing put options. Just as hedges allow investors to take on more risk (because they can take only the risks they want to), fences allow neighbors to share vegetables over the side wall without worrying about finding Fido in the petunias or whatever.

It's sad to see the perfect made the enemy of the good, especially when the good is _really good_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is anyone else unable to find the video? I don't want to see it very bad, but I'd like to know if there is clear reason I'm unable to see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> uBlock interferes with it, even when disabled. Had to use my second Firefox profile that I keep around for misbehaving websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quran: We have made you into nations and tribes so you may know one another. (not dislike one another, and find thyself).

National identity is not made up. It is human nature. If you don't identify yourself by one thing, you will identify yourself by another. And nation is formed around that.

<comment><AUTHOR> \- It's nice to openly cite a verse when referring to well-known sources Koran, Bible, Iliade, etc.

\- The idea of "nation" before the second half of the second millennium and after that point is quite different. Nation as in _nascere_ , in the biblical sense, denoting bloodline, is quite different from how modern nations define being a national.

<comment><USER28> Modern nations have a different version of national. It is more like a certificate you can apply for. By that definition, national identity is made up.

The other def, national identity is carried by the bloodline through the father.

But I believe that one way or another every society converges to a nation anyways. By the bloodline. When there are enough marriages several generations later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's always been that way. Ethnicity is how you describe how people self- identify. Nationality is the political identity you build on top of that because ethnicities are too granular to form effective political blocs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nations are a logical consequence of heritability and therefore this headline is provably false.

<comment><USER31> The first part of your statement is a pretty bold claim, especially when the nation is not a collection of tribes.

<comment><USER30> It's easy to get confused because of how nation, state, and nation-state are often conflated. The defining characteristic of a nation is a group of people tied by birth and anyone with a high school or better understanding of English etymology should know that. Language, culture, and other ancillary features are also all strongly heritable.

<comment><USER32> > The defining characteristic of a nation is a group of people tied by birth

No, the defining characteristic of a nation is a group of people united by a shared identity grounded in any or all of descent, culture, history, or language.

> and anyone with a high school or better understanding of English etymology > should know that.

Anyone with a high school or better knowledge of language should know that etymology may suggest meaning, but is not a reliable guide to it.

<comment><USER30> > No, the defining characteristic of a nation is a group of people united by a > shared identity grounded in any or all of descent, culture, history, or > language

Wrong.

> Anyone with a high school or better knowledge of language should know that > etymology may suggest meaning, but is not a reliable guide to it.

Right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why do you suppose the New York Times wants us to believe something like this?

</comment><comment><USER8> TLDR: National identity is only as old as... nations themselves. Wow! The rest of the video constitutes a bait and switch (nationalism is bad mmkay).

<comment><USER34> _A_ national identity is much younger than its nation, though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Coronadaily – a daily email with Covid19 graphs and stats - <AUTHOR> https://coronadaily.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks, creator of Coronadaily.io here

To try and cut down on my pandemic-related news consumption I forked my code for [https://hndigest.com](https://hndigest.com) and repurposed it to send out a daily report every morning with the stats and graphs of the day before. I made this my "single corona-related moment" of the day, so I can get it over with and get on with my day.

You can select which regions you'd like the graphs to be from, including specific subregions in the US. As a Belgian living in Estonia I've set mine to send the stats on Belgium, Estonia, US, and China.

It's a rough first version and I'll be adding more stats and polishing things up a bit as we go along. I'll try answering questions as best I can, and will gladly accept feedback.</comment>


DARPA funding opportunity: Sea Train [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://beta.sam.gov/api/prod/opps/v3/opportunities/resources/files/75ce65d0aea74d768207c2e8792f7197/download?api_key=null&token= <comment><USER2> SeaTrain is not a new idea, but certainly viable. We actually built one last decade for another agency and it works well. There are other great ideas floating around (no pun intended) that DARPA simply takes a long time to act on, but I suppose there's only so many hours in the day and money in the coffers.

If you're interested in this, I recommend you also check out the NOMARS opportunity (1), the solicitations for which are only offset by approximately 1-month.

It's an interesting time for ocean going vessels. In my opinion, ship autonomy is ushering the biggest advancement in marine engineering since the advent of cargo containerization (and before that the switch from sail to propellers). Not the autonomy itself, per se, rather it's what autonomy allows in terms of new flexibility of hull form, power and propulsion design.

1\. [https://beta.sam.gov/opp/dc4233cf116e4852ba4c7b436db95ae2/vi...](https://beta.sam.gov/opp/dc4233cf116e4852ba4c7b436db95ae2/view#general)</comment>


Retargeting Somebody Else's Site Is Getting Streamlined. Here's How to Do It - <AUTHOR> https://blog.repixel.co/2019/11/19/retargeting-other-sites-is-getting-streamlined/ <comment><USER2> People have "repixeling" since the invention of the cookie decades ago. This is just a marketplace so people don't have to email their advertising pixels around.</comment>


The Browsers of 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/the-browsers-of-2009/ <comment><USER2> I think Opera has the best Cost - Benifit ratio, which is why I use it.

I love the Speed Dial feature, especially being able to hit control + a number to get to one of them quickly. Numbers move between tabs. The order you viewed tabs in is remembered. Thumbnail previews on mouseover of tabs is great if you routinely keep 20-30 tabs open. Adblock is a default feature. There's a built in IRC client. I hear the mail client is great, but I use gmail for everything. Fast forward and fast backward is awesome. Having it remember all of my tabs when I open / close the program is sweet. The trash can for deleted tabs is convenient. I absolutely love mouse gestures.

I'm sure much of this stuff can be done in Firefox with 20 different plugins, but it's all there by default in Opera and works flawlessly. I have two complaints with Opera, though. First, flash doesn't work well for me in linux with the 9.5 beta and, second, some web sites I have to use for school don't work correctly, so I resort to Firefox for those.

Edit: Whoops. That's cost - benefit for developing for a particular browser, not cost - benefit for use. Oh well, maybe someone will find this post useful and consider switching. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know he didn't mean it, but it's starting to sound like an argument to develop more in Flash. ewww.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dang, I thought the article was going to be about some cool new browser technology/GUIs or something.</comment>


Google intensifies censorship of left-wing websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/09/19/goog-s19.html <comment><USER2> Likely this is not targeted at left wing websites, and they are just a convenient victim. I also believe there are other factors. Peoples news preferences are changing a lot lately, but also I believe this change by Googles algorithm is in partnership with establishment preferred media, to promote them, rather than to target either the left or the right. There's nothing to indicate the left is specifically targeted here. Establishment media is promoting itself. Anti establishment media is being "censored" whether left or right. When Huffpo and Salon start getting affected, I'll reconsider my conclusion.

<comment><USER3> Technically speaking as far as I can tell huffpo and salon aren't left, they're liberal. They don't actually support any anticapitialist policies, though they do support a number of liberal policies.

<comment><USER2> They are not liberal at all, they are socially progressive, which is leftist. Bill Maher, is a liberal.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't able to find any articles on Salon's page that were anti-corporate, or pro-social programs. I'm pretty sure they're liberal my dude. Leftist thought is strictly around the economic axis and has nothing to do with "progressive".

<comment><USER4> > Leftist thought is strictly around the economic axis and has nothing to do > with "progressive".

That's a narrow and ahistorical view of Leftism. It's true that modern progressivism is not the same as leftism, but the two are not unrelated (and overlap.)

<comment><USER3> Sure but at least in American politics that's really the rift in the democratic party, Liberal or Left. Meaning identity focused politics vs economic focused politics. Salon and The Hill and Mother Jones in this divide are all predominately liberal.

<comment><USER4> > Sure but at least in American politics that's really the rift in the > democratic party, Liberal or Left. Meaning identity focused politics vs > economic focused politics.

No, that's almost completely wrong. Being _extremely_ generous, it could be interpreted to only slightly misstate something that was approximately true in the early 1990s, at the height of the "neoliberal consensus". At that time, the difference between the (dominant, from Bill Clinton on) neoliberal faction of the Democratic Party and the then-dominant faction of the Republican Party was largely over issues of rights of disadvantaged identity groups (though it must be noted that this was primarily about _economic_ rights, so it is still about the economy) whereas the difference between the progressive wing of the Democratic party and the dominant faction of the Republican Party was more over issues of economic class and structure. (Note that even then, provision of healthcare access was an exception to this, as an economic but not identity-group issue on which both major factions of the Democratic Party differed from then dominant faction of the Republican Party.)

However, that is not because the neoliberal wing is less focussed on economics (neoliberalism, after all, is a label that applies to an economic policy orientation), and with neoliberal economics no longer dominant in the Republican Party, both Democratic factions differ from the dominant faction of the opposing party on core economic issues.

Note that I use "neoliberal" and "progressive" rather than "liberal" and "left" because "liberal" is heavily overloaded in US politics, and the center of mass of the two wings are basically center-right (neoliberal) and somewhere between center and center-left (progressive); there's essentially no substantial true Leftist faction in the Democratic Party.

As far as the outlets you list, _Mother Jones_ is mostly associated with the progressive wing of the party, though that's far from a perfect alignment; I'd agree that the other two, insofar as they align with either Democratic faction, tend to be more in line with the neoliberal faction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Negative SEO?

If well funded right wing players invested time and effort to degrade the rank of popular left wing sites, would they have a significant effect on Google rankings?

<comment><USER2> Doubt it. It's not left vs right. It's establishment media trying to force itself back into relevancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just how reliable are a lot of these websites?

<comment><USER2> They're all antiestablishment, independent players. The "Vox Day", "infowars", "dailymail", and "Drudge Report" of the left. It has nothing to do with the left and everything to do with anti-establishment, whether left or right.

<comment><USER7> Is search traffic dropping for "Vox Day", "infowars", "dailymail", and "Drudge Report" also then?

<comment><USER2> Since April/May, infowars organic traffic from google.com dropped from just below 1 million down to just above 500k.

Breitbart.com is down almost a million since April from almost 3 million.

The other sites mentioned are pretty mainstream with the right now, in a "too big to fall" kinda way, except voxday.blogspot.com but according to semrush, every single one of them have seen declines in organic traffic since April/May.

If you look very far to the right, Daily Stormer is outright banned from Google, and Godaddy.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the extra context, much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Refactoring Non-Deterministic Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.mpscholten.de/software-engineering/2016/03/21/refactoring-non-deterministic-systems.html <comment><USER2> Excellent post, well written and spot-on</comment>


The "attention economy" created by Silicon Valley is bankrupting us - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/30/the-attention-economy-created-by-silicon-valley-is-bankrupting-us <comment><USER2> Its funny because you say were addicted to our smartphones, but here I am on my smartphone reading your article, thinking how its too short</comment>


Marissa Mayer on Google's Failed Groupon Bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/marissa-mayer-google-groupon_b10919

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it me or does Marissa look visibly annoyed/uncomfortable (at around 3:59) when asked about startup worrying that their vision might be watered down upon being acquired by google?

</comment><comment><USER2> Groupon messed up, with all the Groupon clones popping up, I really think they will be kicking themselves in the ass a few years down the road.

<comment><USER3> Well, that's kind of hard. We are aggregating those on our site at <http://www.socialdealmap.com/> but at this moment, besides Restaurant.com, Groupon is way ahead of others.</comment></comment>


Average Credit Score By Email Domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.creditkarma.com/trends/domain

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'd imagine Comcast and BellSouth win because older, less tech- savvy people are more likely to use their ISP account, and credit scores correlate with age. AOL probably doesn't have the same benefit because you can sign up for a free @aol.com address, and kids are a large part of AOL's demographic.

<comment><USER3> I doubt "kids" signing up for AOL are a large reason for the low score. The credit score is from people who wanted to check their score, and I would guess that the number of people <18 who tried to check it is almost negligible.

On the other hand, AOL, Yahoo, and MSN/hotmail all had low scores, which may have something to do with those emails being tied to an instant messaging account.

<comment><USER4> All we know is that from a sample of 20k scores those with Yahoo email addresses (which could well be 10k or 2k, we don't know) had a lower average than the rest. It says nothing about the whole population of Yahoo/Hotmail/etc. because we don't know how the email addresses were obtained.

It would be very easy to bias this sample by showing ads about finding your credit score to different demographics within each mail provider.

<comment><USER5> In addition, they don't show variability within the groups. The differences they find among the averages may not mean much in the context of the variations about the averages.

Furthermore, any statistically significant differences may be due to correlation with other factors. Perhaps domain name varies weakly with geographic location-- which the same source claims also predicts average credit scores.

Finally, their chart accentuates the differences by dropping the zero.

<comment><USER2> >Finally, their chart accentuates the differences by dropping the zero.

Making it more confusing, FICO scores start at 300.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Proper title: "How to lie with statistics"

What is the scientific term for starting your x axis in a way that distorts the graph? I tried looking it up but couldn't find it.

<comment><USER7> Tufte called it the "lie factor" and you can actually measure it. LF = (size of effect in graphics)/(size of effect in data).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good thing credit scores can't be coorelated with my personal email domain...

<comment><USER9> It would be interesting to see the average credit score for people whose email address domain is similar to their name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Starting your bar graphs at the minimum data point is fairly silly, as is ending them at your maximum.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great. Next thing you know people will be judging my finances by my email address.

<comment><USER12> They also have a state map. I think we already do some judging of people based on place though.</comment></comment>


After decades of pushing bachelor's degrees, U.S. needs more tradespeople - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople <comment><USER2> Until being a tradesman is a respectful living it will be passed over for "better" work.

As a degree holding manager in construction I don't like to mention the field of work I'm in to other (sometimes less) educated people as I then have to deal with the superiority complexes of the uninformed.

I mentioned it to my doctor at our first meeting and she asked me point blank if I used condoms since I obviously had multiple partners and likely used intravenious drugs.

I was shocked since as a heavy civil contractor with federal contracts I can't even smoke pot, in my state it is legal, and being that I am married I obviously have very little sex and even then only with the one person.

It's outragious.

<comment><USER3> What city or part of the country are you in? I've seen what you say happen but like to believe it happens a lot less than when I was much younger.

<comment><USER2> I actually travel often for work so I've experienced this on both coasts and at most points in between, but the doctor was in Eastern Washington. Which is quite similar to Northern California about 20 years ago: a little bit country and a little bit Rock n Roll, if ya dig.

It surprised me as the area is generally well educated and has strong agriculture and services sectors in it's economy.</comment></comment></comment>


Combining blockchain and smart contracts to disrupt the music industry - <AUTHOR> https://blog.braham.biz/the-most-exciting-blockchain-project-ive-seen-so-far-5e2e8f969221 <comment><USER2> Already a coin for that:

[https://musicoin.org](https://musicoin.org)

        Musicoin employs blockchain and 'smart contract' technology to execute a usage contract along with a payment transaction - automatically and seamlessly - each and every time a listener clicks the 'Play' button.</comment>


Ask HN: Ok Google. Where Are Your APIs? - <AUTHOR> Surprisingly Google has not exposed APIs to let programmers go wild with their new Google Home speaker. They have built a number of feature as shown here https://madeby.google.com/home/features/#?filters=entertainment,answers,manage,plan,home,fun and a number of IFTTT recipes at https://ifttt.com/google_assistant?utm_source=en-ha-na-gdn . On the other hand Alexa has a full set of APIs and related ecosystem to support it, of course using AWS services, see here https://developer.amazon.com/alexa . Even the investment community is highlighting the gap with Fool.com making the case at http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/20/3-simple-reasons-google-home-wont-beat-amazons-ech.aspx . This is Google - they know better - why the hold up? <comment><USER2> I got an Echo during beta, and there was no API at all. Later, they opened up the API. They've had enough time to make it useful by now (like, answering more than one question in turn!) but it's still not 100%.

Meanwhile, Google Home shipped last month. Building a developer community with necessary support and safeguards takes time. Doubly so if it's a win-or-lose battle for corporate dominance -- they can't just experiment willy-nilly with this, because one mis-step, and people won't trust Google in their homes anymore.

That being said, Amazon seems to have lost it with Echo -- it was the greatest radio for me for a long time, but since a couple of months ago, everytime I ask it to "shuffle my music," it plays approximately the same 20 songs out of my library of >5,000. Not useful; no response; no fix.

So, now there's a Google Home on my bedside table. So far, so good.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is something about curating the ecosystem - Apple puts great effort towards it, maybe not perfect, but certain rules are enforced. Who owns that music "skill"? aren't there others that you could used and replace the not so random one? can't you down-vote it? and help the community curate it?</comment></comment>


Becoming a modern sociopath - <AUTHOR> http://tonomics.xyz/2015/10/11/Becoming-a-Modern-Sociopath.html <comment><USER2> Are there so much start-ups out there who only want free developers?

The bigger problem I always hear from founders (technical and non-technical) is to find good engineers, not to find cheap ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sockpuppet or promotional voting is not allowed on HN. We ban and/or penalize accounts for doing that.</comment>


BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time contains talks of many mathematical topics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/mathssupport/In_Our_Time.pdf <comment><USER2> The science ones are often the weakest, though. Melvyn Bragg is well out of his depth on those topics. My favourite episodes were The Calendar <[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548m9>](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548m9>), The Great Fire of London <[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft63q>](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft63q>), and Politeness <[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29m>](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29m>).</comment>


Show HN: Share your plans. If you've checked in, it's too late - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
We are working on a new service to help you share your plans and also find plans going on around you.  Any feedback or criticism is welcome.
Use Ploono to share what you're going to do. Friends can't join you if you've already checked in. Currently in Beta. http://www.ploono.com <comment><USER2> Clickable: [http://www.ploono.com](http://www.ploono.com)

I've been doing something like this for about 6 years. I've got about 100 people signed up and they get notified when I travel. About half the time I get one or two replying and we sometimes get a meetup, but usually it's just a good excuse to re-establish contact.

Exactly twice someone else has used it.

You need:

* Minimal friction

* Consistent contact - don't let them forget it

* Minimal friction

* Side benefits to get them to join

* Minimal friction

* Major drive to get critical mass

* Minimal friction

Did I mention that it needs to be _really_ easy to use?

It's a great idea, I personally have found it absolutely invaluable, bordering on essential. Everyone I've spoken to says it's a great idea, and none of them use it.

Did I mention it has to be easy to use?

<comment><AUTHOR> We hear you, that's not how we intended to present this service. Clearly, there is room for improvement and lots of things to overcome. Many thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was just thinking about a product just like this.

The thing is, I could never get my friends to use something like this. I tried to get them to use Glympse, and that was a disaster.

If you can make it so that friends can interact with it purely through email or text messages, I'd give it a try.

(See Doodle.com for how the email thing could work. Authentication can be totally nonexistent in this situation.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that you and us sharing the same problem of finding the right target users to start with. Without those early adopters on facebook nor clear demands, Facebook won't be the "Facebook" now and there won't be the 20% of the users who generates 80% of the contents on Facebook. (Majority of the users just log on and consume the content, liking status/comment max)</comment></comment>


Will your company ever run 100% of its IT in the cloud? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bettercloud.com/cloud-office-systems-adoption/ <comment><USER3> I don't think security is as much the barrier here as access - <USER2> servers provide 24/7 access by local employees, and until every part of the stream (employees, clients, HQ, mobile, and cloud) have near 100% internet uptime, access is going to prevent this. But it does seems likely that 100% internet uptime is possible, so I'd say eventually this is how most companies will operate.</comment>


Leaked Internal Memo Reveals the ACLU Is Wavering on Free Speech - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2018/06/21/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech <comment><USER2> If the ACLU loses it's commitment to its principles in favor of it's politics, it will eventually lose its credibility and mark the end of the ACLU as a defender of rights, rather than a promoter of policy. This could mark the end of the ACLU as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this become policy, the ACLU will have become a shell of its former self. Part of our bill of rights is the right to say repugnant things. I have said it before - society should shun you for you beliefs and words, but government must defend your right to say them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like they cherry picked one sentence, out of context, to base an entire article on. This is exactly what I would do if I were trying to chip away at support for the ACLU; fire off an article stating they are backing away from a core value, since most folks won't actually read the memo.

<comment><USER5> Have you read the memo yourself? I don't disagree that the post may be somewhat poorly presented, but it summarizes a large part of the memo in the one sentence it cites. The section "The impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression" on pages 5 and 6 as well as the note on the bottom of page 5 of the memo are exactly what the main post is pointing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Liberty comes in many forms. Why _should_ one particular right unconditionally take precedence over others? If speech promotes oppression of others (e.g. "put them in chains") should an organization devoted to liberty defend it? It's _ridiculous_ to say that this represents an abandonment of principle. It might be unwise because it makes their mission less clear than pure first- amendment advocacy would be, or because of the effect it has on membership, but a general principle of defending liberty would require _active opposition_ to anti-liberty speech. It makes me wonder about whether some of its critics actually believe in liberty or something less noble.

<comment><USER7> If speech promotes oppression of others (e.g. "put them in chains") should an organization devoted to liberty defend it?

How can you not see that the only answer to this is yes, unequivocally and absolutely yes?

Because there is absolutely, 100% no way to define what speech "promotes oppression" that isn't a slippery slope to thoughtcrime and totalitarianism. Period.

The ACLU of Brandenberg v Ohio understood this.

<comment><USER6> You know that "slippery slope" is a fallacy, right? The slope you talk about is no slipperier than the one that leads straight from talking about slavery to actual slavery. The Trumpian "Period" doesn't change that.

Also, note that I mentioned opposition, not censorship. The ACLU has no power to censor anyway. You're still free to spout whatever anti-liberty nonsense you want. The ACLU is free to devote their finite resources to cases and causes that don't have that complication. They're not your slaves, or any other first-amendment absolutist's. As I said, liberty comes in many forms - not just yours.

<comment><USER7> My comment was about an "organization devoted to liberty", not the ACLU. They can of course do as they please, but they won't be able to call themselves that any more.

<comment><USER6> They're not the American First Amendment Union. You want that, go start it yourself. Their mandate is broader, often involving complex interactions of different rights, and sometimes the rights that members of America's most privileged group consider important do not seem that way to others.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it's worth pointing out that the governments the other groups live under are ... not just lacking in the free speech department...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article does not contain the text of the memo, and seems to mostly build on a WSJ opinion piece.

The blogger takes small parts and implies some substantial change or greater meaning. It ends with talk about the "anti-speech left" so this can hardly be considered a balanced source.

</comment><comment><USER10> The stock photo of a Klansman really makes me sympathetic to their case</comment>


Ask HN: any fitbit users? - <AUTHOR>

I remember good interest at HN when fitbit launched.  anybody using it here, how do you like it? <comment><USER2> I'd also like to hear comparisons to other fitness trackers (nike+, fitbug, etc)

<comment><USER3> I use the Philips DirectLife. It is a pretty good design, however the fitbit is interesting with the clip.

The DirectLife site seems a bit dumbed-down to me, and I thought the fitbit site had some interesting information about diet, etc.

I was very interested to see that fitbit attempts to track sleep patterns. Is it successful with this?

Another interesting thing is the fitbit base station - the DirectLife has a USB connector that you have to manually hook up, and you get an email nag if you haven't done so after a week. The fitbit download appears to be passive and that appeals to me. On the other hand, downloading the DirectLife data brings up the site in the browser and so may be a necessary part of reviewing your progress.</comment></comment>


Scientists Uncover Invisible Motion in Video - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/scientists-uncover-invisible-motion-in-video/#.US8ic6HeXQo.hackernews <comment><USER4> Last June, when this first came up, I commented:

 _I was thinking about the implications of using this technique to analyze e.g. political speeches and try to catch people lying on the act. Your application (winning on card games) seems very interesting too_

Now, with the Google glass getting closer to being a real thing in the market, the possibilities are endless (for the good and for the bad). Unfortunately, my mind is kind of twisted and I think about the bad first. Must be a side effect of all the security issues I'm researching.

For instance:

# Google glass + Eulerian magnification + facial expression recognition = Instant "Lie to Me"-like[1] microexpressions expert.

# Google glass + Eulerian magnification + TSA agent: "picking" suspects by the way their pulse react as they get closer to the agent using the "apparatus". Of course, the real criminals would just take some kind of drug to avoid being detected...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_to_Me>

<comment><USER5> I don't really see how you could effectively use this technology on subjects that are not stationary and under controlled light conditions.

<comment><USER6> Yet more cheap computation can adjust for whatever motion/lighting variances are present.

<comment><USER5> I think you are missing the point. It makes no sense to compute away motion if motion is what you are trying to capture.

This algorithm is intended to capture and amplify minute movements without physical contact by measuring the color of individual pixels over time.

All the processing power in the world won't help you much if there are no small movements to measure in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Philips launched an iPad app to do this over a year ago: [http://innovation.philips.com/pressreleases/nurturing- bg_vit...](http://innovation.philips.com/pressreleases/nurturing- bg_vital_signs_camera/index.html)

<comment><USER8> Here's the app in question.

[http://appshopper.com/healthcare-fitness/vital-signs- camera-...](http://appshopper.com/healthcare-fitness/vital-signs-camera- philips)

It's $1 and seems to have mixed reviews. I haven't tried it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The paper from last year's SIGGRAPH - <http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/papers/vidmag.pdf>

<comment><USER10> Is there an open source implementation of this yet?

<comment><USER11> I was thinking about doing this. It's very do-able, there's nothing really complicated going on here. I wanted to do it for mobile devices, but this is going to be pretty resource heavy and I couldn't work out how to do the necessary processing in OpenGL ES...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bet the iPhone app will be great. A few months ago I had some weekend fun implementing this algorithm in a trow-away iPhone application, and indeed I was able to observe the color change in my skin, and when watching to the veins of my arm the movement was greatly amplified.

I was missing a lot of the filtering required in order to amplify more and performance was a bit poor (frame rate) since it was just an hack. Something like that done in the proper way will be cool.

<comment><USER13> Where can I find the algorithms to implement ? would you mind sharing it. Thanks

<comment><USER14> They open sourced their code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Discussion from last June: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4062216>

</comment><comment><USER13> How are they able to change the video frame to show the motion amplification. In the last example, they are amplifying baby's breathing and showing it using some changes into the video frame itself. How are they able to stretch baby's cloths and body without knowing its 3D geometry, even wrinkles on the baby's cloths seems to shift. I am puzzled.

<comment><USER16> Human perception of 3D geometry comes from motion. This is an algorithm to amplify motion. And that's really all that is needed. See "Structure From Motion" and "Optical Flow" for more information about this. Note that this is technology that is used in some video codecs. You may have noticed in some corrupted videos, the corruption artefacts can sometimes move as if they are mapped on a detailed 3d model of the moving objects. But really all it is are 2D motion vectors moving blocks of color around on a predetermined optical flow path.

In this algorithm, exaggerating that same 2D optical flow path has the perceptual effect of somehow "knowing" something about the 3d geometry. you could more accurately say the original motion is constrained by the 3D geometry.

(more) here is a kanye west video that uses the optical flow/video corruption effect intentionally for artistic purposes.

<http://vimeo.com/4578366>

see particularly the sequence starting at 1:00 to see unrelated background "texture" getting motion mapped onto kanye's moving face.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the detailed explanation. The kanye video just looked like a corrupted low res video, I didn't understand that one. But i get the idea, its about extrapolation of moving pixels in 2D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I find neatest about this (if I recall the paper correctly), is that it's essentially the same concept as an unsharp mask filter, only taken over time instead of over space.

</comment><comment><USER18> They mention that they posted the code last year, in August. Does anyone have a link to that code? This is so incredible to me!

<comment><USER19> MATLAB implementation here: <http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone should take the code and make a site/app that can take YouTube videos in and enhance. I would try, but video processing goes way over my head.

<comment><USER21> <http://videoscope.qrclab.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Computer science that can improve people's wellbeing -- in this case, medical diagnostics -- is particularly amazing. I can see this being used by emergency workers to take pulse quickly without having to fumble with electrical leads. The algorithm is also very simple and elegant.

<comment><USER23> I too think this is a very exciting sub-field. EMTs and the like already have something like this, only better: It's called a pulse oximeter, and it determines both heart rate and blood oxygen saturation by measuring the absorption ratio of two wavelengths of light. Commercial devices clip on your finger and cost about $50 (the whole device is about the size of two fingers).

<comment><USER24> I've seen those. But having even a mediocre version of the same available as software for each smartphone will only improve what the casual user or even first-aider is capable of.

I wonder whether it would make sense to give people first aid instructions via an app? I guess when actually panicking, people would work better talking to an experience person over the phone. At least for the time being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My first thought when watching the segment where a clip from Batman is shown is, if this can be applied to movies, it may ruin some of the magic when the video picks up the microscopic motions of supposedly 'dead' characters (as the actors are still breathing and pulsing).

I think this is groundbreaking technology though -- I've read that there are subconscious responses to seeing things we like, such as a delicious food or an attractive individual of the preferred gender; a widening of the pupil or an increase in heart rate and body temperature. Devices that capture these changes can have applications in everything from marketing to security to courting.

<comment><USER26> "My first thought when watching the segment where a clip from Batman is shown is, if this can be applied to movies, it may ruin some of the magic when the video picks up the microscopic motions of supposedly 'dead' characters (as the actors are still breathing and pulsing)."

Because you'd need fancy algorithm to believe that actors in movies aren't really dead ?

<comment><USER25> I was pointing out that as cool as this is, you wouldn't realistically want to watch a movie you hadn't seen before with this kind of augmentation. Part of accepting a fictional story is suspending disbelief.. movies are designed to make this as easy for the viewer as possible. That being said, seeing a dead character breathing would disrupt that suspension of disbelief. It was the first thought that crossed my mind, but I found it interesting enough to share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone should port it over to HTML using canvas, native video and lots of javascript.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can someone explain how they are amplifying the video of the eye moving and the baby in the crib breathing? If they are only analyzing the changes in color, how are they amplifying movement of shapes with that information?

<comment><USER19> They are amplifying a vector of choice. That vector could be change in color or change in relative pixel positions (as in physical motion). In other words, it's not color based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's an app for that: <http://cardiio.com/> (by HNer, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4062555>)

<comment><USER30> I've been using it for a few months and it's surprisingly accurate. It's fascinating to see a video demonstration of what Cardio does with all its math and image processing, since the only feedback in the app is the silly phrases above the stethoscope. I'd love a switch to show the processed video instead of the heart rate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Waho, I think this project is fascinating. Anyone wants to work with me something like 2/3 days to release a web app, that transpose their code in a more "webby" way?

(We have their own solution: <http://videoscope.qrclab.com/> but with all the respect this guys deserve! It's unfortunately far from perfect.)

I am based in Austin, my email is hartator_AT_gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER32> Someone posted this same link yesterday, but I think I am with a ban that make my upvotes don't count, since the arrow go away and the vote count don't change. Goad that someone tried again and made this go to front page, I think it is vert amazing and awesome, maybe animators will be able to use this tech to learn how to avoid uncanny valley

</comment><comment><USER33> I find this fascinating especially that the code is open source. Makes me wonder what kind of applications can be built. Maybe even using some sort of Leap Motion application in conjunction with the amplification algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER34> I imagine that the only real problem is it'll never be able to be 100% real time as you need to sources of colour. I guess you could get pretty close though.

<comment><USER35> It is intrinsically delayed because it's based on the deltas from the previous state, and also they show a feedback loop in the filtering phase.

In one of the example of the color amplification you can see the head moving and a little bit of lag between the two sides, but I can't tell if they have been intentionally synced or this was done truly in real time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can blood pressure be monitored in realtime with this technique ?

<comment><USER36> Pulse, yes, as is demonstrated in the video. Blood pressure, in a calibrated sense, is a lot harder to measure without directly tapping into a vessel or putting a cuff on a patient, both of which are invasive and/or annoying over a long period of time or for chronic / long-term patients.

But a few derivative measures of circulation should be determinable. Both skin color and temperature will relate to blood oxygen levels and circulatory efficacy. It should be possible to note when a patient's circulation is no longer effective, a low blood-pressure situation or heartbeat irregularity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The system works by homing in on specific pixels in a video over the course of time. Frame-by-frame, the program identifies minute changes in color and then amplifies them up to 100 times, turning, say, a subtle shift toward pink to a bright crimson"

So really the title should be "Scientist amplify motion in video" - <USER2> that is what is occurring. There is nothing "invisible" being discovered - <USER3> still needs a visual change.

<comment><USER38> Invisible here obviously means invisible to the human eye. This kind of deliberate point-missing is toxic to conversation, and it just makes you come across as childish.

<comment><USER39> Asking for the nations paper of record to use English properly isn't so bad.</comment></comment></comment>


BuzzFeed Nails the 'Listicle'; What Happens Next? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-nails-the-listicle-what-happens-next-1422556723 <comment><AUTHOR> Revealing data point:

 _BuzzFeed now generates around $143,000 in revenue per employee. By comparison, Time Inc. brought in $417,000 and New York Times Co. produced $450,000 per employee in 2013, according to S &P Capital IQ. (Of course, more mature companies also tend to have higher per-employee costs.)_</comment>


I Bought a Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/i-bought-a-bitcoin.html <comment> guard-of-terra It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work, you need bank transfer, your funds can be frozen, you have to wait in line, etc, etc.

I live in Russia and it's amazingly easy. First, everyone here owns a virtual money account. It works like this: you put some money into it and then you can pay your bills (especially internet and mobile phone), small purchases over internet and you can donate it to other users of the system. It is denominated in fiat money and that's what you put in. On every corner there is a device with touchscreen that accepts cash.

And that's where it ends: you can buy bitcoins with virtual money at metabank.ru. It probably talks to mtgox, buys some bitcoin there for you and transfers is. There is no trading involved, you buy for whatever the price is. You can actually buy BTC with CC attached to virtual money account, exactly like PayPal works. The catch is 6% fee.

If you want to trade, you go to btc-e. It supports a plenty of ways to move money into and out of the system. Fees are like 2%.

<comment><USER2> >It's fun how hard it is for a layperson to buy a Bitcoin in USA. CCs do not work

Because it's too easy to claim fraud and have your CC provider initialise a charge-back.

I don't know why you can't go to an ATM or a 7-Eleven and use your CC with your PIN to make a purchase. The CC company will know it's probably you because you entered your PIN and the merchant doesn't risk a charge-back.

<comment><USER3> In the UK this is called Chip and PIN.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN>

<comment><USER4> And I'm amazed that this hasn't caught on in the US yet. Last time I vistited, I was horrified when they swiped the magnetic strip and asked me to sign for it - felt like I'd jumped back in time.

<comment><USER5> After I got back from my last visit to the states I kept handing my card to the staff when I was paying. They usually looked funny at me and put it in the machine rather awkwardly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the issues that the author had with Bitinstant. The API error indicated that the service - allegedly one of the largest and most reputable Bitcoin sellers in the US - had a total of $16.48 in its possession at the time and could not deliver his order. His experience is not unique - <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.2660>

My guess is that the next big Bitcoin implosion story will be about Bitinstant. Something is rotten over there.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any evidence of nation states or three letter agencies dipping their toes into Bitcoin? Its seems like a perfect solution for the CIA when they need to move money quickly and discretely to 'difficult' regions or individuals.

I know that Gavin Andresen (unofficial leader of Bitcoin movement) did a talk for the CIA in 2011. But I dont know if their interest was about catching bad guys, using it for themselves or seeking to control/manipulate bitcoin: <http://www.bitcointrading.com/pdf/GavinAndresenCIATalk.pdf>

So I think an interesting question is whether these same agencies are generating bitcoins or attempting to manipulate the market. The big news recently for Bitcoin is the introduction of ASIC hardware dedicated to mining. An ASIC miner the size of a PC can generate bitcoin hashes 100x faster than a GPU at approximately the same power usage.

ASIC miners have taken a while to hit the market because making an ASIC is hard and expensive for a small company. You can bet they didnt get funding from a brick and mortar bank. There are only a couple of companies with a shippable product.

But surely making this same hardware is a relatively trivial exercise for a nation state, particularly the NSA who run their own fab and would be experts at making silicon tuned for crypto algorithms.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER8> NSA use FPGAs. Even they can't afford ASICs unless its a supercomputer CPU I.e IBM power and they aren't all that quick compared to an FPGA.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure about that? There have definitely been times in the past when the NSA rented fab capacity from Intel.

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia says they have their own fab at Ft Meade. Or is this just a super secure division of an Intel fab?

<comment><USER8> Intel run it. AFAIK it was used to produce rad hardened and analogue stuff only. Nothing fancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme in that everyone is counting on someone else to want them.

However this is no different from any currency or monetary commodity with no use value. With bitcoin, the "bag holders" at the end of the scheme have something for their trouble: a global, secure, low fee transaction settlement system. Given that such a network would be quite valuable, there's no reason for it to crash to 0, barring threats of violence. Perhaps speculation value will come out over time, but this is fine.

<comment><USER11> _[bitcoin] is no different from any currency or monetary commodity with no use value_

No, bitcoin is different insofar as there is no powerful entity that taxes people and requires payment in bitcoin. This makes it even _less_ valuable than currencies that DO have that feature.

<comment><USER12> That's hilarious, do you even realise what you're saying? You consider it a feature of a currency that there is a violent extortionate power engaged in parasitism of the monetary base.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, it _is_ a historically significant motivator in the adoption of new centralized currencies.

On the balance, however, we are shifting away from that with globalization and the ridiculous logistical requirements of such an approach (eg. every new US president doesn't de-circulate, debase and re-issue USD.)

These days, as long as you have liquidity that allows money to viably function as one or more of a _medium of exchange_ ("settlement system"); a _unit of account_ ("accountable asset"); and _a store of value_ ("somewhere to stash accrued value"), then you're doing OK. Bitcoin has the former two properties and seems to be doing OK in the latter category despite volatility, despite relatively narrow acceptance.

Digital currencies and settlement systems as a whole will undoubtedly continue the trend that Bitcoin has started; the genie is so far out of the bottle at this point it's almost entering the third-stage of truth: _self-evidence_.

<comment><USER14> > To be fair, it is a historically significant motivator in the adoption of > new centralized currencies.

Historically, a new monetary base needed significant printing infrastructure, law enforcement to prevent its counterfeiting (if it is a paper and coin currency, which is effectively every currency ever) and you needed to artificially control its reproduction. That _requires_ a government. That usually is associated with taxation.

I think you are looking at the causal relationship in the wrong way. Old paper money required artificial limiters to prevent anyone from printing it and using it. With bitcoin, the trust system of the block chain means to "counterfeit" bitcoins you need as much computational power as a majority of the swarm.

<comment><USER13> > to "counterfeit" bitcoins you need as much computational power as a majority > of the swarm.

Actually, to the same effect you could use a bug in _bitcoind_ , control of the view-of-the-swarm (network access) by the processing merchant, an implementation issue, or a careful double spend. Bitcoin is exceptionally hard to implement well for merchants, particularly those with near real-time requirements, and it's not getting any easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I keep wondering whether I should be buying bitcoins now, but I have mixed feelings about it. I'm pretty sure its value will continue going up for a while, but I guess I'm still skeptical.

<comment><USER16> If you want to buy because you think the value will go up for no other reason than that the value has been going up then you're just participating in a speculative bubble. You might as well be gambling.

<comment><USER14> If stock markets and currency markets have taught us everything, to some degree, human behavior is slightly less random than a shuffled deck or rolled set of dice.

Just a bit, though. Not much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes to actually act out the show but if everyone just keep holding their passes for no good reason, well then there may not be a show.

From many bitcoins forums, people are hoping that its USD rate climb to $1000 or even $1 million, which is pretty ridiculous. People who have thousands of bitcoins, can probably keep holding on to them after selling 50% of them. But people who gonna buy it for more than $100 , they gonna panic at a first sign of decline. I suspect its not that far off.

<comment><USER12> Serious question, why does the price of a single bitcoin matter when they're divisible to 8 decimal places? Beyond a psychological barrier people have thinking about the 1:100 thing, it's really irrelevant if your cup of coffee costs 10 bitcoins or 0.00001 bitcoins, especially if the calculation is made at the time of purchase relative to an underlying stable value like a basket of the largest fiat currencies in circulation or somesuch, or just the boring plain old USD.

1 BTC = 1000000 USD To put it in a less psychologically alarming way is exactly the same as saying 1 Satoshi = 0.01 USD.

<comment> T-hawk It doesn't matter, mathematically. Psychologically, it absolutely does. Bitcoin running to $150 is way more splashy and headline-grabby than $15. And at Bitcoin's beginning, it looked more respectable in gaining followers when 1 BTC was somewhere near $1 than if it were $0.01 and looking like some penny- stock scam.

Same goes for stock prices. Apple and Google have let the shares run to $400 and $700 instead of splitting to a more industry-standard two-digit number. Of coures the per-share price is meaningless in itself, it'd be the same if ten times as many shares existed at one-tenth the price. But it's a lot easier to grab eyeballs with a stock shooting through $400, $500, $600 benchmarks than a pedestrian $50.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not sure if Bitcoins are a good investment. All it takes is a western country (say Switzerland) to create an online currency and Bitcoins will sink faster than a Carnival ship.

<comment><USER19> Do you even Bitcoin? One of the main features of Bitcoin is that it can't be manipulated by a central authority like a bank or government (ie: they can't steal from the people by printing money).

<comment><USER20> > Do you even Bitcoin?

No but I lift, .... mostly functions, sometimes they have multiple variables ;-)

> One of the main features of Bitcoin is that it can't be manipulated by a > central authority

Q: What can a central authority with power to imprison and/or garnish your wage manipulate? A: anything it damn wants.

Yes the Fed Gov. can't print more bitcoin it sure can come after you with a rubber hose expecting to get some sales, or money exchange tax some rather- made-up-new-law-tax. A few high profile case about bitcoin used for terrorism, drug, illegal porn, money laundering and these new laws won't be hard to make.

<comment><USER21> By themselves, laws don't prevent actions (see copyright infringement), you need enforcement, and if a very large fraction of the population starts using Bitcoins, it can be very hard to stop, at least without taking some very drastic measures.

My guess is that the US government would just get enough computing power to control the network and prevent it from working well.

<comment><USER14> The latter seems very likely if btc every became _really_ popular. It would probably send the United States into a radical depression and destroy its economy, but by then the ~500 Americans that own the world would have flown the coop anyway, and all that USD they had would still be worth something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've recently just sold all my BTC, whilst the hype is still there :) A few friends said I was mad and they would be keeping theirs, but frankly I don't have time to keep an eye on the market and wait for the true peak.

Which made me think of a problem; BTC's are really a speculative market at the moment, rather than a currency (i.e. most people are buying them to trade, not to purchase items). I feel like that defeats the object.

But, hey, it was a tidy profit.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if online gambling and gambling in games would be legal with bitcoins? Or less of a hurdle? This could be a huge boon for bitcoins if so to becoming the web currency/virtual wallet.

<comment><USER24> Legal is unclear but a lot easier for sure. Google SatoshiDice

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> These on-topic comments are all well and good, but what we really want to know is what Objectivists think of the government~

</comment><comment><USER26> ~or~ how to bring in new investors to your bubble.

<comment><USER27> The next crash is gonna be painful. My popcorn drawer is well stocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I bought BitCoin and I liked it Hope my wallet don't mind it... It felt so wrong, it felt so right, let's transact tonight

<comment><USER29> Hey, I know you hate Bitcoin and think it's a pyramid scheme and everything, but isn't it good for smart people, and wouldn't its success create fricture among the elites (like you are always advocating)?

<comment><USER28> It's a simplification to say that I hate it. The work is impressive. If there were a Bitcoin course on Coursera on how the thing works, I'd sign up and take it.

I don't like the forced deflation. Deflation encourages hoarding and protects elites.

With Magic: the Gathering (Mt. Gox has me connecting the two) the hoarding behavior is actually good because it keeps unbalanced cards out of play. With BitCoin, it's going to lock a lot of the stuff up with hoarders. That could destroy it, insofar as if no one's using it, the market becomes illiquid, compromising value and possibly causing panic sales. The thing certainly isn't ready for prime time as a currency.

Also, there's a pretty easy (and legal) way one could destroy BitCoin. Right now, there are no reserve requirements, because it's not a real currency. Start a bank. Make sure it's a limited liability corporation, because this is a bit risky (bank runs). Let people deposit BTC and then lend them out. Now you've put a money multiplier on BTC, and without the reserve requirement, that's unbounded. Goodbye, scarcity. Goodbye, $147 BTC.

At that point, it's unclear that BitCoin has any value, until regulations come in regarding reserve requirements.

<comment><USER30> A fractional-reserve BitBank will only be noticeably inflationary if it can take a substantial amount in deposits, then find some people to borrow them. Since most of the "convenience" arguments for keeping traditional currencies in a bank rather than under your mattress don't seem to apply here, the only reason anyone's going to make a deposit is if the interest on offer appears to justify the risk. Without the backing of a government deposit insurance scheme, I reckon that translates to both a high interest rate AND probably some degree of transparency to convince depositors it's not a complete scam.

Could be an interesting project, but hard to see it causing a major shift in BTC values.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kentucky law could let kids swap foreign language classes for coding lessons - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/03/kentucky-code-language-credit/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm all for everyone learning to code but this doesn't seem to be the way to make that happen. Learning another language also means learning about another culture and learning to think about your own culture and language in a different way. Why should we take that away?</comment>


Bleepmic- a simple way to have conversations. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bleepmic.com <comment><AUTHOR> Bleepmic is a feed of thoughts and conversations. Post short audio notes (Bleeps) and listen to other people's Bleeps. It's that simple.</comment>


What if you got $1,000 a month, just for being alive? I decided to find out - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this to gather views about the likely impact of widespread adoption of UBI on prices, especially rents. I suspect that rents will increase in areas with employment opportunities, and push the UBI minimalists to dormitories on the periphery. Any views?

<comment><USER2> This assumes that the density of fulfilled employment opportunities would raise in some areas. Why would that be the case, given that on the contrary, it is assumed that there will be fewer employment opportunities globally?

Take for example the situation in Paris (but I hear the case is true also elsewhere, like in the Silicon Valley), where there are homeless employees: people who can find a job (and there's a minimum salary, so they should get enough money for a living, assummedly, a UBI wouldn't give them less than they earn), but they cannot find an affordable place to rent, and are therefore homeless (living in their car, or in tents, or just like any other homeless). If they received UBI, instead of having to stay homeless near their place of employment, they could indeed go live anywhere in France, in much nicer places. This would give less pressure on the rental market in Paris, and therefore the prices should go down!

More generally, UBI would give some more bargaining power to the would-be employees, and therefore it should result in less concentration on any dimension</comment></comment>


Coronavirus will change airlines and the way we fly - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-24/coronavirus-travel-covid-19-will-change-airlines-and-how-we-fly <comment><USER2> > Configurations are likely to change as carriers try to squeeze more money > from customers.

If that's not what they were already doing, I wonder what that will look like.

Anyway, it's not necessarily bad. Air travel was way too cheap considering its externalities.

I know someone who _commutes_ by plane because their office is two countries over (in Europe), they don't want to move to the much higher COL country where the job is, and the office won't let them be remote with the same salary. So every week twice a week, they fly. And it's still cheaper than living next to the office. This insanity and many like it must stop, it's so much pollution for completely stupid reasons.

<comment><USER3> Do they go in to the office twice a week or do they fly on Monday and leave on Friday? The part about not letting them be remote is confusing me.

Where do they stay when they go in to the office?

<comment><USER2> They fly on Sunday afternoon and leave on Friday after work, so they spent maybe 48h total with their family. They have an apartment rented next to the office. It's still cheaper apparently because they bring their own food for the week to avoid spending money on it here, the kid goes to school in the other country, and the partner doesn't work. Oh and the airport is 90 minutes away (by train thankfully) from the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think about the depression era behaviors that stuck around in my grandparents as a good example of what to expect coming out of this pandemic. They learned certain things out of necessity and it changed their worldview on everything from darning their own socks to what ingredients they'd use in their cooking.

I expect that many of us will carry similar behavioral scars for years or decades later - ensuring we have masks on hand, unconsciously observing social distancing, being wary around crowded spaces like airplanes and airports. I don't know what all those behaviors will be, but there's no way we avoid carrying at least a few with us.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I expect to walk straight to the sink and wash my hands, as soon as I get indoors, for the rest of my life.

<comment><USER6> Incredible that it takes a global pandemic for people to care about hygiene lol

<comment><USER7> There were no significant threats in the West before corona to justify high level of hygiene. How many people does the average person know who died of something preventable with good hygiene?

Secondly, increased hygiene has it's own set of problems. You dont kill just corona, you also kill the countless harmless pathogens, but who are important to keep your immune system on its toes. Its suspected that the reason there are so many allergic persons in the West lately it's the increasingly sanitized world around us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux I have a hunch that once the severity of the pandemic eases, we may see an increase in car journeys for holidays, particularly for continental Europe. Why? Many people will remain cautious about travelling with strangers in closely packed airplane cabins or even train carriages. The alternative is to travel by car. But people can only tolerate a certain amount of time in the car and so this may affect where people travel. Will densely packed cities lose out as holiday destinations?

Governments want people to travel because tourism and hospitality employs thousands of people and brings substantial money into the economy for almost every country in the world.

I'm sceptical the airline industry, which has thrived with low fares, particularly in Europe, will raise prices. I expect they will do everything to tempt passengers to return to the air with low fares. Will that be enough to tempt us back on board?

<comment><USER8> That's a good point, but I'm also starting to speculate whether, when the infection rates and (crucially) hospital occupation rates diminish, we will see some people deliberately _seeking_ to get infected so as to gain immunity whilst the risks are low, specifically, when they can be reasonably certain that if they experience severe symptoms they'll have a place in an ICU to receive intensive care. This might sound unsound (pardon the awkward phrasing) but it's not necessarily irrational given the perceived advantages of immunity and the diminished perceived risks. It might not even be socially undesirable either, as a kind of "low burn" through the population, or at least it's sturdier members, might be seen as building up that "herd immunity" which makes it difficult for the virus to reach the higher-risk individuals.

<comment><USER9> What's with WHO statements that there is no evidence of immunity for covid19 infected?

<comment><USER10> They don't want people to be confident, they don't want to take the risk that they skip vaccination.

<comment><USER11> If I understand correctly, no immunity would imply that there won't be a vaccine.

<comment><USER10> Well, they also flip-flopped between the wearing of masks in public communications, just to keep supplies available to medical staff...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish they would simply remove every second seat and charge twice the price. That would mean the same revenue for the airline and a much more comfortable flight for me. Win win.

And they would probably still have some wiggle room. Because 50% less customers would mean at least _some_ reduction in costs.

What about the HN gang? Would you keep flying if prices doubled?

<comment><USER13> If I wanted to pay ~double for a more comfortable flight, I'd be flying first class everywhere.

<comment><USER12> Not sure where you are flying. In Europe, there usually is no such option. Most of the time, all you can do is pay an additional €30 or so and get a seat with more legroom. And that's it.

<comment><USER14> That's true if you're flying on budget airlines like Ryanair or Easyjet, but nearly all the legacy carriers offer a business class "cabin" where the seats are usually the same as in economy but middle seats are kept free. That's a 33% reduction in density, not 50%, but it's not far off.

<comment><USER12> Those business class seats on "legacy carriers" are not available for double the price. Try some flight searches and compare direct one way flights between two cities in Europe. First of all, you will have a hard time finding a direct flight by Lufthansa for example. Secondly, a Lufthansa business flight will usually be over 5x the price of a Ryan air flight.

<comment><USER14> Oh yeah, I doubt you'll find business class tickets that are anywhere near as cheap as twice the price of the average Ryanair flight, but as someone who is in the lucky situation to be able to avoid airlines that I find actively unpleasant, the price hop from economy to business needn't be that large. It depends on the airline, route and dates of course, but I've seen (and bought) short-haul business class tickets that were less than 150% the price of economy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google acquires Indian AI company - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/12/google-acquires-indias-halli-labs-which-was-building-ai-tools-to-fix-old-problems/ <comment><USER2> Anyone knows what they actually do?</comment>


Are founders significantly richer than most people? - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2008/01/30/are-founders-significantly-richer-than-most-people/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a pretty good example of how averages can fail to really tell you anything.

Entrepreneurs by their nature have more individuals at the end of each side of the scale, whereas people who work are clustered in the middle.

All a higher average tells you in this case is that when you "win" as an entrepreneur, those payouts are larger than when you "win" in the workforce.

Duh.

<comment><USER3> The end of the article is more enlightening though.

"Wealthy individuals with lower ability can start new businesses because they are less likely to face the disciplining effect of external finance."

The author also writes that those same correlations occur in business school and other upper tier schools, which lend themselves to perceptions of high achievement.

At no time however have capital costs been low like in the software industry, so perhaps the real key is to encourage more of the low income to hack away :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's just bad math... Using a mean when they should be using a median.

Throw Bill Gates onto a bus and the average bus rider earns billions a year... That's not particularly meaningful.

"Sorry, this is another myth. Entrepreneurship creates a lot of wealth, but it is very unevenly distributed. The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year. Only the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees. And the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he otherwise would have earned working for someone else."

(from Scott Shane, the author of "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship via <http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/01/top-ten-myths-o.html>)

<comment><USER5> > The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year.

Before or after the owner/manager's salary?

If the owner/manager isn't paying himself a salary, then it's more of an expensive hobby than a business.

<comment><USER6> Proft = money left after paying expenses, salary included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are so many different kinds of entrepreneurs, and so many different types of new enterprises (restaurants, used car dealerships, high-tech startups, law firms) that statistics about the "average entrepreneur" aren't very much use to anybody.

It's like trying to decide whether plumbing is a good occupation by looking at the average salary of jobs starting with P.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Entrepreneurs are, on average, significantly wealthier than people who work in paid employment. Research shows that entrepreneurs comprise fewer than 9 percent of households in the United States but they hold 38 percent of household assets and 39 percent of the total net worth._

according to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107334>

</comment><comment><USER9> Cause and effect....

Why don't journalists and even academic writers get this simple point ?

<comment><USER10> Because in today's "journalism", correlation = causation. Makes more sensational headlines like, "Rats Bring Garbage Into City"

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen Titles phrased as questions might as well end with "No." As in "...richer than most people? No."</comment>


QuadrigaCX traders lost money on Cryptopia on the same day in January - <AUTHOR> https://amycastor.com/2019/05/28/quadrigacx-traders-lost-money-on-cryptopia-on-the-same-day-in-january-my-first-story-for-decrypt/ <comment><USER2> scammers taking it to another level</comment>