The Dutch tech whiz who could save journalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.eu/article/the-dutch-tech-whiz-who-could-save-journalism/ <comment><USER2> Klöpping is an interesting character to me. From his appearances as a 'tech whiz' on one of the biggest (if not _the_ biggest) Dutch talk shows I get the (possibly wrong) impression that he's the type of 'tech whiz' that isn't so much really good at any particular 'tech', but rather that he's really good at knowing _about_ tech. But I might be wrong.

And I have to say: he really _is_ pretty good at what he does. I don't recall ever hearing him explain something or write about something in tech that was outright wrong, which in my experience is quite rare even for 'good' tech journalists. I find myself often cringing at how they get some detail wrong, as well as cringing that I'm probably one of a small group of extreme geeks who would even notice it.

On some level, despite him actually being good at his stuff, I feel an kind of vague dislike for him at times. I suppose that feeling comes from the fact that he's not just very knowledgeable in a field that I consider 'mine', but that he's so damn good at explaining it an somehow making it 'cool'. And perhaps it's because it underlines how important presentation and social skills are alongside 'raw' skills. I suppose I'd feel similar about someone like Kevin Rose had he been a very public face of 'my tribe', rather than mostly operating within it.

It's not a feeling that I would describe as justified or good. Mostly just interesting that it's there at all. When it comes down to it I love having a 'spokesperson' who doesn't misrepresent the things I love.

(As it's quite likely that he, at very least, lurks on HN: Hi Klöpping, sorry that I think you're an annoying little punk sometimes without good reason. I really like what you're doing with Blendle; any way you could allow it to integrate with Instapaper?)

<comment><USER3> Doing my best to balance my inherent tech optimism and pessimism on Dutch TV, while trying to make it interesting enough to have it be on TV at all, all the while trying to take not too many short cuts to make people like yourself not too angry -- I'm still learning how to do that :).

<comment><USER2> I _knew_ it!

Anyways, don't worry about pissing those of us who are on the nerdier, less- social side of the spectrum. That's our/my problem, not yours. And from my experience it's definitely not that you're 'off' or oversimplifying the things you talk about. You strike a good balance.

(sadly, I just can't stand DWDD anymore... I blame De Snijtafel.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't know Blendle before, but I gave it a go after reading this article and have to say I'm impressed. Being the news junkie that I am, though, I can totally see how I would end up spending more than €50/month on this. Not sure if that's worth it for me to be honest.

I would totally buy a fixed cost contract though. My Spotify and Netflix are about €9/month, so if I could get quality journalism for €9/month (or even €20/month) I would totally be on board. But paying €0.25 per article... not for me.

<comment><USER5> Their daily "best article" mail is quite good, I read more diverse and higher quality articles than I would have otherwise. I think they are still experimenting with pricing, I don't mind 0,25€ but some articles (looking at you Spiegel) were 1,99€, which is insane - I requested a refund, which luckily takes just a click. Annoyingly they don't show prices beforehand.

<comment><USER6> > Annoyingly they don't show prices beforehand.

Is that even legal in EU consumer law?

[http://www.consumerhelp.ie/pricing-rules](http://www.consumerhelp.ie/pricing- rules)

"Shops and service providers must display their prices, and there are rules on how they must be displayed. You have the right to clear and accurate information on the prices of goods and services so that you can compare prices and make informed choices."

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the no-questions-asked money back policy changes this? Just guessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've posted this before, but I'll say it again:

A fun thing about Blendle is that it is open source. At least, the front-end is, and probably unintentionally.

They left their Webpack source maps on the server [1]. Chrome automatically unpacks the source map into a directory structure in the 'sources' debug view. It's nice to see how they are building their React application.

On two separate occasions, four months ago and a year ago, I've sent them an email about this, but never got a reply back.

[1] [https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map](https://www.blendle.com/js/app.js.map)

</comment><comment><USER8> I am looking forward to micropayments but I sure hope it will be platform independent. Blendle is just another platform like iTunes, App Store, Netflix etc.

Platforms are good for the platform's founders and investors and they take care of the transaction cost and do provide some marketing although I often find platforms limit my choice instead of expanding it.

I don't mind the existence of platforms if they don't have exclusivity on content. But I would love an alternative, where you could pay content creators 2, 5, 10, 20 or a few hundred cents directly.

I can chat, phone or email anyone directly for free or almost for free, even with advanced security. Why can't I pay them for free or low cost? Isn't the tech involved in sending or receiving a secure email with attachement more advanced than the tech that makes sure one bank credits the same amount someone else's bank debits?

<comment><USER9> The standard knock against micropayments is mental transaction costs--going back well over a decade. I think it's fair to say that the cost of doing the payment transfer isn't really an issue; even if it is with current systems, that can be dealt with.

However, there is an issue with having to explicitly decide to pay 5 or 10 cents every time you want to read something online. And if it involves having to get an email with attachment sent to me, the mental overhead and friction is even worse. It's not that people will never buy but there's a huge difference between free and just a few cents.

<comment><USER10> That's why batching needs to be used, so all those little 5-10c transactions get accumulated and sent as one larger one. Then once a month or when you've read $5-10 worth of articles you'll be charged. This usually means that there will be one, or a handful of, providers so that you won't have an outstanding tab or credit at too many places.

So there we get back to a subscription magazine model. It's easier mentally to have one, or a few, subscriptions charging a fixed amount per month to read content. Unfortunately even if you do pay $5-$10 per month for a subscription, the publication can make more money from you by selling ads in the publication.

<comment><USER9> Maybe. I still have to decide at the point of download whether I want to pay, albeit a small amount, for the article in question. I don't say it can't work. For a long time, it's how we paid for telephone service. And it works for music/movies, although those goods each have their own unique characteristics --even if subscriptions are becoming more popular. (Music you reuse; the movie watching experience is something of a commitment.)

Of course, subscriptions have their own issues especially if the content sources are fragmented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york I like what they're doing - I do not want to take out a full subscription to all the possible news sources just to read a couple of articles a month.

However, their "iTunes for Journalism" model is not the best one; "Spotify for journalism" is better: fixed monthly price and all you can eat. I do not want to expend the mental energy thinking about whether an article is worth the 0.25c.

Blendle also has to recognize that the value is different - you can replay a song many times, but an article loses value very quickly - read it once, maybe go back to it for reference, and that's it. Pricing needs to take this into account.

<comment><USER11> It certainly adds some cognitive overhead to the user.

I think a solution might be buying credits, e.g. you have bronze/silver/gold credits, and each article could be priced at 1 bronze/silver/gold credit (because the price being e.g. 3 credits would keep the overhead). This layer of abstraction removes the user from thinking in terms of money (e.g. this article cost 0.25 euro), a bit.

In terms of monthly subscription, I would assume pricing articles individually makes it easy to deal with the publishers? X people read it at price of $Y, so you get X*$Y minus some fee, can't get any easier. It would get much more tricky if trying to split the monthly cost.

<comment><USER3> We thought about credits. It might work, I'm doubting about this one because if feels a bit user-unfriendly to make it less transparant. What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I much prefer the transparency of an actual price. The cognitive overhead of converting credits in your head to euro is much higher, and I suspect most of us do so anyways (I know I do at festivals, for example, at least until a certain level of inebriation).

Furthermore, credits can come across as a bit 'sleazy' to the consumer. Every person I know assumes that, in general, credit-based systems are implemented to make more money (again, festivals: I just want another beer, not buy another ten credits if I just need _one more_ to get my fucking drink!).

<comment><USER12> I agree. Credits wouldn't make it any more careless, only more tedious. I think only 'an all you can eat' would be a more attractive system than the current one.

Though, it seems to me that even in the current model what is missing are very strong network effects. It would be interesting to see if adding additional incentives increases/improves sharing. For instance, what if an article becomes free after N friends read it after sharing? It might cause people to share articles that their social circles are very likely to read.

Another interesting feature would be a share-once link. Sometimes you read an article that you want to share with someone specifically. You don't want to be an *ss pointing them to a paywall, so you pay the Euro 0.25 for them :). It's not only a convenience, but also a potential way to bring in new customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use it and it works really well. For the price of a cup of coffee, I read a week of the best articles from a whole range of newspapers and magazines. And when you accidentally clicked a link or an article is really bad, you can ask your money back with a single mouse click.

</comment><comment><USER14> I use Blendle occasionally in the Netherlands and it works amazing. In my case, it allows me to read articles I would otherwise simply not read. I'm not willing to pay for a subscription to a magazine or newspaper just because I like one article. Buying a single article however, for 0.25 euro, works perfectly fine for me. Especially because Blendle provides the infrastructure for paying, so the transaction takes very little effort.

</comment><comment><USER15> First thought after reading this: let's say there is a good overview of markets from a known economist, written in a few hours, vs. a deep look into corruption in charities/government/whatever that took many months of research and investigation. Why would these two articles cost the same few dozen of pennies? Wouldn't it devalue more time-consuming work?

Of course you can draw parallels with music. A track with an orchestral recording vs. solo piano recording, or a rock band vs. purely computer electronic music, all cost the same $1/€1/£1. At the same time concert tickets for a fully-blown symphonic orchestra are usually more expensive than that of a piano concert (adjusted to fame/importance, etc.)

Maybe it is not a problem after all. Or maybe it is, time will tell.

<comment><USER2> First off, they don't have to cost the same amount of money. And second, the amount of work/quality affects the reputation of the publication, which in turn affects the amount of people that pay for the article _and_ the price that can be asked for it.

On Blendle, I've not paid pennies for articles that seemed interesting but came from low-reputation publications, and I've paid more than a buck for articles that didn't immediately catch my eye, but were published in a top magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> With the thirty percent cut they leave a big opportunity for others to step in. While the music industry may have little choice when iTunes made its debut there are far more sources of journalism and many of those have well developed web based outlets.

How well does this product do with independents? Tech has opened the door for everyone to be a journalist and perhaps through a tool like this some could get more exposure?

To be honest, with good web familiarity I don't need an aggregator for news. I don't even care for Apple's attempt which in itself my impact Blendle

</comment><comment><USER17> I think that this kind of business model hides an threat unless anonymous payments are provided: you will completely loose your privacy as everything you read is now connected to your more or less real identity and actually nothing prevents them to serve you the ads, especially because you are now identified better than before.

I think this is also the reason why Apple installed the ad-blocker - they want to enter into this market and grow it as it appears that ad-based business model is not working for them.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I also find this really concerning.. I use Blendle to look up articles relating to pedophilia, to see how it's portrayed in the media. Now Blendle is giving away €2,50 on signup, so I can create new accounts as I go along... but I really wouldn't want to connect my regular account with it, and I would for my usage, but there really is no way to do it.

If you're wondering how the subject is portrayed... very badly. Almost always the molester stereotype, especially in British media. You might want to read up on these threads if you want to get a better picture:

\- [https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what- sho...](https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18782/what-should-i-do- if-my-15-year-old-son-is-sexually-interested-in-younger-boys)

\- [https://www.quora.com/Pedophilia/What-does-it-feel-like- to-b...](https://www.quora.com/Pedophilia/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-a- pedophile-1/answer/Ben-Kirssen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If this works (the cynic in me feels people don't read anymore), and the numbers that I've heard through the rumor mill indicate it does with about 100-150k paying users with decent return payments + a 30%, it might be a decent attack vector into the dreaded academic publishing landscape eventually. Their 30$/article fees are just a tad bit on the ridiculous side.

</comment><comment><USER20> i hope they succeed it would be much better if people started paying for their entertainment again instead of getting bombarded by free stuff. however this is probably why they won't succeed.

<comment><USER3> We're at 650.000 users in NL and DE, out of which 1/5 actually pay with real money. It's not everyone, but it's a start :).</comment></comment>


Every generation gets the self-help guru it deserves - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/05/110905fa_fact_mead <comment><USER3> I swear (not having heard of Tim Ferris) I thought this article was a brilliant send-up of the self-help industry and the public's appetite for it. Towards the end of the article I was in awe of the journalist, who made it sound almost-believable while being so ridiculous - and then I saw the comment here and after a bit of googling I realised: this thing is real.

<comment><USER4> Tim is real. He is a hacker at heart. He does to time and body exactly the kind of stuff that we here celebrate doing to computers.

<comment><USER5> I like some of it, but much of it seems a lot less scientific than what we try to do to computers. Have any of these odd health remedies been empirically tested? Does organic almond butter on celery sticks actually repeatably reduce insomnia? (Also, is its organic-ness a statistically significant factor in its efficacy?) It seems to have an uncomfortably high overlap with some of the natural-medicine/new-age-remedies crowd, in terms of having (sometimes) scientifically _plausible_ arguments for a mechanism, but not much in the way of empirical evidence validating the effect.

<comment><USER6> I bought it when it came out.

You have to understand that the entire premise of the book is that n = 1. There's nothing scientific about it. It's not billed as such, and it is silly to expect it to be so. Sure, Ferriss dips into talking about the science of the body at times, and often tries to couch his forays in it, but the reason it is interesting/amusing is that he tries out some of these ridiculous ideas to see if they actually work.

It should be viewed as a jumping-off point, not an authoritative source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the title, I thought this was going to be a negative article.

Instead, it says something which should be obvious: Self-help gurus are successful because they address current issues that people are having.

... That sounds so amazingly obvious that you are now wondering why it had to be said, I'm sure. I know I am.

But after thinking for a bit, I've decided that maybe the guru doesn't fit the times... Maybe the guru would have been successful at any time, if they lived then? They have an eye for the world, how to fix it efficiently, and how to tell people how to.

Ferriss' books have been on my to-read list for a while... I guess I should get around to it.

<comment><USER8> "Addressing the issues people are having" defines finding a market - a good thing here :-)

However, I would like to question these issues in the first place.

They look a lot like an existentialist crisis to me - basically finding no purpose in one's own worth, and thus spending time doing something deemed worthwhile and in line with individualistic values : "improving" oneself.

Better abs, travel, less time spend at work - that's what's popular today, but is this the successful recipe for reaching happiness? I strongly doubt that.

What about using some of these wits to actually create some economic activity or solving different problems? You know, mastery, independence, purpose? At least there are more proofs there.

I fear this investment on the self is misguided - since it has a negative interest rate (because until we get better at cryogenics you still die in the end).

I could believe in an investment of the self if it was consistent - <USER2> besides the revasterol thing mentionned in the article (which doesn't work on primates unless you have a special gene removed IIRC), it seems very lowball.

That's how I'd sum it up - minimalist in the "minimal effective dose" sense, low risk - low gain, no passion. Mod that down if you want, but I'm sure we can do much better as a species.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Ferris rails against what he describes as "the deferred life," or traditional work-and-retire life planning. But he swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, advocating living entirely in, and for, the present.

What both of these philosophies seem to miss is that the self exists to create something enduring. This can be a legacy, or a company, or children, or a work of art, or essentially anything that outlasts the expiration of one's body and mind. Neither the deferred life nor Ferris's "4 Hour Workweek" places any sort of priority on this type of long-term goal, and achieving such a goal requires a necessary degree of sacrifice. It certainly requires focus, cumulative effort directed toward a tangible outcome, and more than 4 hours a week.

Everything is an adventure for Ferris, but it's an adventure without direction or destination. It is an eternal, guilt-free spring break, bankrolled by ad hoc projects and detachment from any forms of obligation. That may indeed be an improvement over cubicle slavery for most readers. But it'll still be a fundamentally hollow existence for anyone inclined to build or seek meaning.

<comment><USER10> > _"It is an eternal, guilt-free spring break, bankrolled by ad hoc projects > and detachment from any forms of obligation."_

I stopped reading here. Where do I sign?

> _"This can be a legacy, or a company, or children, or a work of art, or > essentially anything that outlasts the expiration of one's body and mind."_

I disagree completely that a legacy is a necessary component of having led a fulfilled life - even though I personally seek to leave behind some legacy myself. That said, how _hasn't_ Ferris left a legacy? He's published something that's been read by more people than just about any of us would ever achieve in our lives, and that's at age 33.

The best most of us can hope for is to influence a few people in the form of children.

In my experience, "eye on the prize" styles of living is the surest way to miss out on all the flowers along the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's always about the guru - never about the content. Sure, the specifics change to adapt to current needs but fundamentally you'd be better off listening to what your mother told you. However, the guru is so much more interesting and, well, not your mother.

There's something about listening to someone else confirm what you already knew about yourself deep down. If it's put into eloquent terms you'll have a name to put to your yearnings and then, maybe, you'll end up doing something about it. More likely you'll read the book and then sell it back to the Book Bin when the next guru appears.

<comment><USER12>
      There's something about listening to someone else confirm
      what you already knew about yourself deep down.

Is that it? Or is it: _There's something about listening to someone else confirm what you WANT TO BELIEVE about yourself deep down?_

<comment><USER11> Not an either-or. Both are alluring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think any generation deserved L. Ron Hubbard.

</comment><comment><USER14> Every startup could use a co-founder like Tim Ferris to make a project become mainstream.

Don't get me wrong. I read some of his books and didn't change my life. But it made me think harder about how to promote and sell my ideas and myself.</comment>


The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.dashes.com/~r/AnilDash/~3/2ZnCyz_odlY/the-decade-long-campaign-to-lock-down-your-computer.html

<comment><USER2> Apple didn't invent the GUI or the mouse, which were all taken from Xerox who in turn took them from earlier people. They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system. They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return. They borrowed extremely heavily from old products for their re-invention [1]. Jobs delusionally claimed the iPhone technology was somehow "stolen", when there were tons of tablets and smart phones before the iPhone and people had bolts on their physical doors which were "slide to unlock". This instigated a wave of patent attacks, including Jobs getting his personal friend the CEO of Oracle to attack Android on facetious Java issues that resulted in them getting spanked in court. And now, as the private Samsung design images show, the claims about the similarity of the Samsung models are just laughable. But nevertheless they don't want to compete on merit against products that look vaguely similar (in a world of rectangles...) but have "SAMSUNG" in large lettering on the box and the back. They try to claim that customers would be confused by this entirely different branding and even got a number of temporary injunctions against competitors. In addition to this they run the App store like dictators, and small developers are cast to the wolves at a moments notice. They have horrible customer service in many places outside of the USA (and even there they've be sued numerous times in the USA for dodgy practices like selling phones with dodgy reception). They are not God, they are just a publicly traded company looking for profit.

Gatekeeper confirms that it's not special and just another public company with a legal duty to make profit for shareholders in spades. Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services). As I understand it, those in the app store gold rush already have to pay for all sorts of development licence and software stuff as it doesn't come with the OS. But what if the TSA doesn't like your TOR app because it's exporting munitions to terrorists? We used to laugh at that law back in the 1990s because it was unenforceable, now it looks like we are headed for a future where the app would just silently disappear from people's desktops. But you paid extra for the dev kit version right? But as you had illegal apps which were detected on your desktop your commercial bread-and-butter ones are now suspended, under review, or taking longer to review for updates.

Steve Jobs' pathological lying about Apple's inventiveness always struck me as unsettling, but there is much worse coming in the future I fear.

[1][http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the- secr...](http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to- apples-future)

<comment><USER3> > They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to > obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system.

Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

> They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return.

No they didn't. Apple's immediate cashflow problems were solved by a debenture sale in 1996. The stock purchase by Microsoft was intended to align incentives and was really a minor concession. The major benefits for both parties were, on Apple's side, an assurance that Office would still be released for Macintosh, and on Microsoft's side, an assurance that Apple would not pursue IP lawsuits against Microsoft, up to and including stealing the source code for QuickTime: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company>

> Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you > run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning > even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave > in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services).

And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

If your comment illustrates anything, it's that when you mix truth, lies, half-truths, and outright fantasy, you can come up with a good flame against any business, be it Apple or the local corner store. Reality is always more slippery than that.

<comment><USER2> >Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.

Taken from the KDE guys, who had to make a lot of noise to get contributions back from Apple. And if the KDE guys hadn't done tons of work before, why didn't Apple just start from scratch? If the bad press about it hadn't forced their hand, I doubt they would have done anything. And, at this point, when you count KDE at the start and Google at the end, Apple wouldn't even have a majority share of the reasons for Webkit's success. Good to see your only point on this issue is a weak drowning not waving one. That's the best you've got?

Regarding Apple getting help from MS, $150million is actually a lot in those days. And even more than that was having MS Office and IE on the Mac. I accept if MS hadn't done it though it's likely anti-trust would have come sooner and they would have been broken up. But it's a pretty minor point in argument, so I don't mind refuting your refutation that it was "minor" but then defeating my own argument with a better more contextualized one (MS needed to do it for anti-trust), as it's not a central point. Besides that helped the monopolist by getting in bed with them, seems they will do anything to survive.

>And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.

The key point here, is I don't actually believe it is true right now (like Jobs believed his lies, or at least his fans did and do), I just propose it as a likely future. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle marketing company that has invented very little indeed. On top of that, the pattern of their actions says "big corp/profits".

So in summary, you have used a lame-duck Webkit argument which actually proves my point about how little open source they do whilst helping themselves to as much as they can. You then attack a minor point about the MS investment but nothing on the GUI or design issues, customer service, or lawsuits. Then you finally accuse my plausible projection of being a fantasy. It's not really much of a fantasy to say that it looks like the trajectory of the "remove two buttons from the Xerox mouse we invented because our users are stupid" public company in search of profit that lies constantly about itself and engages in near fraudulent legal proceedings against competitors will at some point decide that their desktops should run like their phones.

All my points show they aren't any different to any other corporation, and how in many cases they are worse, and they already have a device which is locked down like that with many App store scandals. Now they are developing in a very similar direction on the desktop, so we just complete the trend-line and we have 1984-lite (which they notoriously abused for profit in their ads along with many other historical figures in the cynical attempt to tie their bottom line to things people care about, Orwell must truly be turning in his grave to be associated with such saccharine ingenuous phonys).

<comment><USER3> I don't have to refute all of your points, because I never said you were wrong about _everything_ , just that you mix truth, half-truth, lies, and outright fantasy to draw a tendentious picture that contributes practically nothing to the discussion.

I don't want to argue with you because it's unlikely either of us will gain from the experience. You will simply take it as an opportunity to continue flaming, which I will learn nothing from, and I will try to keep reiterating that you aren't contributing anything useful to the discussion, which you will ignore and respond to with even more useless flames.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's possible Apple and Microsoft are pursuing the same goal.

But I don't think Apple has that in mind. iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices are relatively open.

When Microsoft announced UEFI Secure Boot, the first articles were about desktops. A "surprise" announcement later about ARM devices being locked and not unlockable should be the proof of what Microsoft wants.

When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers. Apple can of course always betray their user base, but they haven't done it yet. Cut them some slack.

<comment><USER2> Why should we cut a publicly traded legal entity notorious for lying about their inventions and being extremely litigious any slack? Have you seen how ridiculous their lawsuits over the Samsung stuff are? It's quite obvious they are prepared to resort to any filthy tricks to stop competitors. They also have a long history of screwing people who develop software for their "ecosystem", most recently in the myriad app store horror stories. Why should anyone believe a single word Apple says?

<comment><USER4> I'll try to respond logically, but I'm not motivated to engage in a debate with you. This will, therefore, be my last response to you after which I plan on ignoring anything you post.

My post doesn't quote anything Apple said. I am reasoning solely from their actions.

I don't use a Mac - I think they're overpriced and the latest OS versions haven't introduced anything of interest to me. I admit, their hardware is beautiful, but I am frustrated by the lack of high-resolution screens anywhere else in the industry and I intend to vote with my wallet.

In the meantime, feel free to review my comment history. I have tried to contribute links to <http://coreboot.org> as often as possible. I'm never going to give up the ability to compile my OS from source, which means I won't need an apple laptop. You can pry the kernel source code from my hands when I'm dead.

The only "slack" I propose we give apple is to not claim they are backing Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative without evidence. Essentially, my argument is exactly the same as yours: why should we claim something about apple that is not backed by evidence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Suddenly I'm a lot less indifferent about my ipad's inability to run torrent apps.

<comment><USER6> You can always jailbreak to run Bittorrent apps.</comment></comment>


What Wikipedia Won't Tell You - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/what-wikipedia-wont-tell-you.html?_r=2

<comment><USER2> This was an Op-ed by Cary Sherman, head of RIAA, and not a regular NY Times staffer. His opinion, is of course, a bit skewed.

<comment> the-cakeboss Sure, but then again, so is Google's, Wikipedia's, Reddit's, Mozilla's, The Pirate Bay's, Torrentfreak's etc...

While I do believe Mr. Sherman isn't coming from the best of places, I think that there was quite a large amount of misinformation coming from various interested parties, and I have always felt comparing SOPA with China or even censorship is nothing more than alarmist rhetoric.

<comment><USER3> I think it is hardly alarmist rhetoric. It's not particularly easy for sites to be shut down under the current rules, but it's far from impossible. DaJaz1.com was shut down by the ICE for over a year unjustly, with almost no recourse for the owner and not one was held accountable.

If that kind of abuse can happen now, it is most certainly not hyperbole that we will see a LOT more of these injustices happen by taking due process out of the courts and putting it into the hands of the copyright industry.

Slippery slopes usually are, except when lawyers get involved. I wish I still had the link, but I once read an extremely informative essay on the impact of lawyering on the erosion of civil liberties, especially when corporate law is involved. There is simply too much money supporting the time and effort of corporate law to the benefit of companies and detriment of citizens, civil liberties and the commons. Heck, copyright terms now extend beyond the life of the author. If that's not proof of a slippery slope, I don't know what is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Perhaps this is naïve, but I'd like to believe that the companies that opposed SOPA and PIPA will now feel some responsibility to help come up with constructive alternatives._

This is exactly wrong. It shouldn't be the responsibility of companies to write laws. On of the big issues that the SOPA/PIPA debacle brought to light is that if companies are allowed to write laws, they will write them in ways that fouces on benefiting them instead of the general public.

Perhaps this is naïve, but I'd like to believe that the companies that proposed SOPA and PIPA will now feel some responsibility to stay away from law making.

<comment><USER5> There already are "constructive alternatives" to SOPA and PIPA. They're called Spotify, iTunes, Rdio, Netflix, Hulu, etc

<comment><USER6> They aren't "constructive" from the point of view of the encumbants, who incidentally, have the largest capital for lobbying.

If we the public can somehow band together, the total lobbying power gained is actually higher, but obviously, people dont give a shit until it personally affects them. Hence, if the encumbants can slowly tweak the law, one painless step at a time, they will win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny how the RIAA head complains about it being unfair when they didn't bother to invite anyone who opposed the bill during the hearings. Yet when Wikipedia does what it had to do to make a point, it is "unfair" and was "manufactured controversy"

Also, see previous whining here: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/opinion/fighting-online- pi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/opinion/fighting-online- piracy.html?_r=1&src=tp)

Really after seeing what the DoJ did to MegaUpload, it raises the question of why they need more powers seeing as how they are able to take down domains regardless.

</comment><comment><USER8> From our point of view (Hacker News readers), it's easy to forget that these blackouts and the mainstream press that they created are the beginning and end of most people's SOPA education. I heard an intelligent and otherwise well- informed person say, "Yeah, what was this SOPA thing? It came up all of a sudden and then went away."

In that context, the focus on "censorship" _is_ a bit misleading. It's a good way to get people's attention when you don't have the time to explain the DNS and why it's not an appropriate tool for combating piracy. Indeed, "censorship" is probably too _weak_ a concept for the damage that SOPA would have caused to the internet, since it implies a selective redaction instead of the complete and indiscriminate excommunication of every blacklisted domain. I wouldn't call it "misinformation," but did people who knew better (so to speak) choose a "loaded and inflammatory term"? Absolutely.

It is marvelous how the victim of this "digital tsunami" can spin the case in his favor. Still, it's probably accurate to say that most people didn't understand what they were opposing.

</comment><comment><USER9> >>>"Old media" draws a line between "news" and "editorial." Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don't recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact.

That is utter bullshit. This piece is full of such falsehoods.

<comment><USER10> fair point, google promises neutrality in its search results. Wikipedia has a disclaimer about the reliability of its content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act>

</comment><comment><USER12> This is unacceptable BS.

Sorry I don't have more to contribute. I'm just really disgusted by this.</comment>


Blundering Sony Nukes PS3 Supercomputing and At What Cost? - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/Articles/Sony-Ban-Nukes-PS3-Supercomputers-Damages-Future-Game-Development/ Gamers, of course, are the ones who will pay for Sony's mistake long term. Don't expect the scientific/HPC community to come rushing as saviors when it comes time for Sony to babble about the PS4--and without the help of this august assemblage, maybe we'll get stuck with games featuring cutting-edge 1987 graphics fidelity. Leisure Suit Larry, here we come. <comment><USER2> "It would have required a minimum amount of effort to earmark a small run of pre-Slim hardware (or a certain batch of PS3 Slims) for HPC researchers."

Even a small amount of effort is more than most companies are willing to expend on a sales channel that loses money with every sale. Stupid Sony isn't going to lose as much money as last year. Keep this up and they may make a profit. What a blunder!

<comment><USER3> All sony had/has to do was license out the cell processor and the OtherOS technology, or increase the price on the units and limit the sales channels. Sony could have figured out a way to make money on this.

Of course, I'm surprised somebody else hasn't done the same thing by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article forgot to mention one important point. The option to install another OS on PS3 only disappears if the firmware is updated to the latest version. And to my knowledge, I see no reason why these computing farms should update. They need no PSN access and updates bring no new benefits to the installed OS. New PS3 slim models are already missing that option out of the box.

<comment><USER5> This is true, but I believe the point isn't that pre-existing PS3 HPC clusters will be hampered, it's that no new ones will be created.

<comment><USER6> That hardly matters, since the PS3 is already obsolete for HPC. In 2007 it was pretty interesting but today you should be using GPUs.

<comment><USER7> Aw, man, I'm so conflicted about that.

I made the financial effort to refurbish the "fat" PS3 when it died, even though I'd already bought a Slim, just to keep that system around to learn Cell programming. It's still running the old firmware and, in fact, boots directly into Yellow Dog Linux by default.

Yet, I agree, it feels kind of pointless nowadays, with the GPUs becoming so much better all the time. Just recently the GTX 260 broke the $200 floor at newegg.com and I'll probably buy one pretty soon (maybe when they are around $150) - and those things are pretty powerful. The real motivator is actually to play Tomb Raider Underworld :-) but I'm pretty sure I'll at least try and do some CUDA with it.

So, doing an open source project on the Cell doesn't seem so attractive nowadays. Maybe just for bragging?

I've also heard rumors that there's a successor to the Cell in the works. I'm not sure how it will compare with the GPUs though.

<comment><USER6> Putting aside what I know about this specific topic, a hypothetical Cell 2 would remain the same for five years and thus might be interesting when it came out but would also be obsolete for most of its lifetime. There's just no way for console chips that are updated every five years to compete with CPUs and GPUs that are updated every year.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the UK's Home Office reduced its cloud costs by 40% - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/how-the-home-offices-immigration-technology-department-reduced-its-cloud-costs-by-40 <comment><USER2> ...which currently make up about 30% of the compute powering their non- production containerised clusters...the department paid approximately 80% less for cloud resources by using excess capacity services.

Must be a weird pricing scheme if doing something to 30% of your compute saves 80% of the cost. The numbers don't look quite right.

<comment><USER3> I think from the terminology they use they they are on GCP, where they sell their preemptible instances at 80% off the normal cost. The numbers are right, the language is a bit off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As soon as management starts looking at optimizing efficiency numbers like "Average CPU utilisation" a smart developer starts to run low priority "while(true);" loops to make CPU utilisation higher.

Instead management should be looking at the cost of running a service, and ignoring efficiency or utilisation numbers. It turns out basic things like enabling caching in the application can have a far bigger resource saving than stopping the test VM's over the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothin here is remarkable, you could even get these from the CSPs websites. What is remarkable (unfortunately) is that a large enterprise is going to this effort to optimize their cloud architecture. Far too many enterprises move to the cloud, without taking advantage of the flexibility the cloud offers, then claim something is wrong with the cloud. Kudos to the British government for encouraging this.

</comment><comment><USER5> GDS are excellent: they are the "internal consultant" organization aiming to bring up the standard of computing in UK public services without handing huge amounts of money to exploitative external firms.

The Home Office handles immigration in the same way that America's "ICE" does, with all that implies.

</comment><comment><USER6> nothing really groundbreaking here</comment>


Atomic John: Truck driver uncovers secrets about first nuclear bombs (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/12/15/atomic-john <comment><USER2> I appreciated "The End of the Tour" vibe of the writing. I'm always fascinated by men/women who are obsessed about something. It makes me think of the [http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=989...](http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=9897) a piece of art created by one man over 14 years in a rented garage. Nobody knew of its existence until his death. I'm glad that Atomic John was transparent about his obsession.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the book he wrote: [http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside- Little/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside- Little/dp/B0006S2AJ0)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought his book a few years back after seeing an article (quite possibly this one) about it. I haven't gotten around to reading it in depth, but several times I've spent a few hours flipping through it reading bits and pieces. It's fantastic if you have any interest in the subject matter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks to be behind a pay wall or something of that sort as there is the title but not body content - has anyone got another link?

<comment><USER5> Archive.is is your friend:

[http://archive.is/Efd68](http://archive.is/Efd68)

<comment><USER4> Thank you :)</comment></comment></comment>


Cerebral – Declarative state and side effects for popular JavaScript frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cerebraljs.com <comment><USER2> Been using Cerebral for two projects (one large and one small) so far and it's simply been an amazing experience. It's incredible how such a simple framework/concepts can cover everything you need, even for large apps. It doesn't only handle state well, but also provides a good solution for handling side effects.

Also, the way routing is handled is really something other frameworks should learn from. It's slightly unusual in the beginning, but when you "get it" you suddenly realize everyone else has got it all wrong.

Just a shame it's not more well known, as it compares very favorably to other state/side effects management frameworks like redux and mobx.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have been using Cerebral since version 1.0. I have finished few projects for two big banks. IMHO, the main Cerebral selling point is the simplicity of the uniform and declarative state management enforced with the state of art Debugger. Cerebral is simpler and more comfortable than Redux, MobX or Recompose. The declarative, composable uniform abstraction for both synch and asynch (side effects) actions is awesome. More, I added to all of that one more thing - the famous "no-runtime-exceptions" guarantees coming from Elm. Being pragmatic I use the hybrid: Cerebral + React + Elm. It works perfect together!

</comment><comment><USER4> Using Cerebral in a complex React + TypeScript app and really enjoying the workflow. This is a great tool to work with and a great community as well :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Have been using Cerebral for my projects written in React for a while. Christian and other maintainers have done an amazing job. They just got the web development right from routing, declarative business logic to managing side effects. Try Cerebral and never look back.

</comment><comment><USER6> Used Cerebral on an Ionic app, re-wrote an XMPP client that took over a 2 years to write in 3 weeks time. Great community, really love using it and its the best programming abstraction I experienced.

</comment><comment><USER7> Been using it now for a while. Finished 2 Enterprise Web Apps using it. Its really easy to dig into my Apps even after a few month without touching them. Will use it for my Future Web Apps as well (Together with React)

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Cerebral for all my frontend apps as well as function-tree for node backends, and I totally love it! It is very productive and the community is great!

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome and helpful community, super ideas behind the cerebral, handling side effects in JS as they should be handled :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can't recommend this project enough! Used it on several projects with great success. Plus the maintainers are amazing!</comment>


A Twitter adaption of "Ulysses" reveals the secret of Bloomsday - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/everyday-is-bloomsday/487313/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This part made me chuckle:

 _Twitter had published an application programming interface (API) for its service. Using the API, I wrote some software to automate the posting, such that everything would be timed correctly. I just had to push a button and watch. We named the project "Twittering Rocks."

It ran successfully in 2007, and thanks to the software, it would be easy to run Twittering Rocks every Bloomsday. Which we did, in 2008, and 2009, and 2010. Then it broke completely and hasn't worked since._

It broke, surprisingly, not because Twitter arbitrarily decided to screw developers. It was because of the migration to OAuth, which, if memory serves, just happened to coincide with the beginning of the period in which Twitter decided 3rd-party devs were screwable.

The conclusion nonetheless is apt:

 _How many apps on your phone don't work properly anymore? Software breaks all the time.

But books don't._

<comment><USER3> They did that one time in Night Vale...

"Listeners, we are currently fielding numerous reports that books have stopped working. It seems that all over Night Vale, books have simply ceased functioning. The scientists are studying one of the broken books to see if they can understand just what is going on here. The exact problem is currently unclear, but some of the words being used include 'sparks,' 'meat smell,' 'biting,' and 'lethal gas.' For your own safety, please do not attempt to open a book until we have more information on the nature and cause of these problems. The city council has released only a brief statement, indicating that their stance on books has not changed, and that, as always, they believe that books are dangerous and inadvisable, and should not be kept in private homes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am so glad to have come across this article; thank you. Since an aborted attempt to read it -- with its hundreds of pages of stream-of-consciousness -- I have always wondered why this book was so praised.

<comment><USER5> What's your takeaway from it then - if you now think it's worth its praise why is that?

<comment><USER4> There's a piece of writing advice I like: "Take pity on your reader." Stream of consciousness style writing at such length is very painful to read. So I never understood why an author would do it, but for some kind of self- gratification that strikes me as pretentious. Now this article has explained that Joyce had a goal that I often think about in relation to my often humdrum life, elevating the ordinary. I have a bit more respect for this now. Perhaps not enough to read the thing again, but still.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. How does stream of consciousness elevate the ordinary? Forgive me for trying to drill down to the nub of the matter but without it the answer is just pushing the bubble up the wall.

Since you didn't realise this on your own when reading it can I assume that it didn't succeed in that respect?

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but I think books like Ulysses are more important for historical reasons than intrinsic literary value. It's not a bad book (far from it) but not a Top 100 Book [1] IMHO.

[1][http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100_2.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100_2.shtml)

<comment><USER5> I happen to agree with you 100%. I read the book this year and found it fascinating to see how easily relatable people 100 years ago were, especially since the stream of consciousness gives a better insight into their thoughts than a regular novel would. I did not however think it was a great book in itself which is why I'm curious to know what makes it great in other people's opinion (especially since I didn't find that article very supportive of it). Most of the time it felt like the author was enjoying himself more when writing it than I when reading it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accelerator targeted against E-Commerce Companies Invests SEO instead of Cash - <AUTHOR> http://swedishstartupspace.com/2014/07/09/online-marketing-veteran-opens-private-accelerator/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

> The accelerator is similar to other accelerators, but diverges a quite a bit > also. Instead of cash, the "investment" is 120 000 – 250 000 SEK in SEO and > online marketing. The accelerator will also take 12% in company equity

250 000 SEK = ~$36 500 USD</comment>


5 AI Trends for 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://functional.works-hub.com/learn/5-AI-trends-to-watch-in-2018 <comment><USER2> Combine that with Blockchain</comment>


Srandom: Fast /dev/urandom PRNG - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/josenk/srandom

<comment><USER2> Replacing /dev/random and /dev/urandom with a non-CS-PRNG seems like a horrible, horrible idea to me.

And totally unnecessary. Create a new device. Use that in your dd calls.

It may be okayish for him, since his only use case _seems_ to be "wiping my disk".

But boy, talk about surprising behaviour… replacing something well-known with something else entirely.

<comment><USER3> Your statements are very shallow. Without details, it looks like a random rant.</comment></comment>


Buster: Captcha Solver for Humans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dessant/buster <comment><USER2> The modern implementation of reCaptcha is quite possibly the worst plague of the internet. If you're using Tor or any non chrom*-based browser, you're out of luck. Piece of garbage really should have been decommissioned by now.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, when I'm on firefox with PRF on it won't even allow me to attempt the audio captcha. I don't see how this add-on works for anyone with even the most basic tracking protection.

<comment><USER4> I have the full tracking protection on Firefox and it works perfectly.

Before I found the extension on HN a few months ago, I hated recaptcha. Every site using cloudflare was pain in the ass.

Not only does it make 1-click validations possible, it slashes the number of recaptcha requests (for me).

It's only failed me once. Google said I was using automates captcha solvers. Went offline for a while and voila.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, I'm the author of the extension. If you have some experience with machine learning and you'd like to contribute to the project, please get in touch by opening an issue.

The long-term goal is to sample the user's behavior and maintain an offline model for mouse movements and keyboard navigation. Highlighting likely matches in the visual challenge should also be possible to aid people with disabilities, when they are blocked from accessing the audio challenge [1].

[1] [https://github.com/w3c/apa/issues/25](https://github.com/w3c/apa/issues/25)

</comment><comment><USER6> As a long term user I really don't want this to become popular and inevitably crushed. Let it flourish in the shadows.

<comment><USER7> Shhh.... don't upvote this submission ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't that mean that Captcha as a concept has run its course? Original idea was that humans are better at this kind of tasks than machines, but it seems it's other way around now.

<comment><USER9> Not really, this only uses speech recognition but it can't do images.

<comment><USER10> > Not really, this only uses speech recognition but it can't do images.

Neither can blind people. I think there would be legal repercussions (in the US at least) if Google effectively walled off the internet to visually impaired people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This might be so huge for accessibility. I know, that's what audio captchas are for, but, dear Google, not everyone speaks English, you know?

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this is based on paper by University of Maryland [1] It uses the same concept to solve recaptcha[2]

[1] [http://uncaptcha.cs.umd.edu/papers/uncaptcha_woot17.pdf](http://uncaptcha.cs.umd.edu/papers/uncaptcha_woot17.pdf)

[2] [https://github.com/ecthros/uncaptcha2/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ecthros/uncaptcha2/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER13> My take on this: The only thing this will do is make Google either remove the audio captchas or make them super difficult to solve, even for us humans.

<comment><USER14> Is there some ADA regulation that requires them to include audio captcha for users with disability?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for this! I am also very irritated when they disable paste in password fields. Enough to drive me batty.

<comment><USER16> There's an extension called "don't fuck with paste" on chrome for that.

<comment><USER17> It's also available for Firefox.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck- wi...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-with-paste)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out." \--Steven Wright</comment>


Strowger Telephone Switch (1891) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch <comment><USER2> "He was said to be convinced that she, as one of the manual telephone exchange operators, was sending calls "to the undertaker" to her husband."

Wonderful tidbit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have seen Strowger switches in the wild.

In 1965-66, my first grade class visited the local AT&T Central Office. We saw a wall of what I later identified as Strowgers. I thought they looked like mailboxes on end at the time.

The MIT dorm phone system used Strowgers at least through 1980, and could be seen by curious students.

<comment><USER4> I played with one tonight at a local museum. Had 4 lines on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's an art project from a few years ago which made a feature of running Strowger switches. The art aspect deals with migration and conflict minerals.

[http://yoha.co.uk/tantalum](http://yoha.co.uk/tantalum)

"The first thing that visitors see is a towering rack consisting of electromagnetic Strowger telephony switches. The undertaker Almon Brown Strowger patented this design in 1891, the first automated telephone system of its kind. The switches are triggered by a computer..."

</comment><comment><USER6> The museum of science and technology in Ottawa had a working demo of a stepper switch. When you hear one in action you quickly realize how a rotary telephone works and why it makes the noise it does.

I've heard people say it's quick the sound to hear a CO full of them in action.

</comment><comment><USER7> My dad was a telephone engineer in the 80s and 90s in the UK. He took me to the exchange a few times and I can still recall the impressive noise of the Strowger (or maybe they were Director) units.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great video about it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZePwin92cI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZePwin92cI)

</comment><comment><USER9> I went to a telephone maintenance school in the Navy in Virginia, 1976. We studied these things, but I never encountered one in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER10> Until the mid 80's MIT Dormline ran on a Strowger switch. It was replaced by a 5ESS dedicated to, and IIRC, owned by MIT.

</comment><comment><USER11> cstross is fond of a tale that the Mexico City telephone exchange continued working from underneath an earthquake-collapsed building, because it was running on Strowger switches. I haven't been able to track down a reference elsewhere, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Still the best way to explain net neutrality to a layman.

</comment><comment><USER13> A few percent error rate, but no single point of failure.</comment>


The Society of Mind (1988) - <AUTHOR> http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/

<comment><USER2> I highly recommend taking LSD after digesting this book. Much of it is reinforced by direct experience in that state. Agents and the turf wars among them are made more apparent as the grip of the giant mythical "I" weakens.

Then re-read the book. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> There isn't much context here, so for those who are unaware of the book or its author, it is worth reading the wikipedia page [1] and maybe a review such as [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind)

[2] [http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html](http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html)

<comment><USER4> minksy also developed a theory later on about how emotions play into cognition and intelligence and wrote [1] as kind of a sequel to SOM.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't read this book, but from the Prologue it sounds somewhat like the idea of metasystem transition from the book "The Phenomenon of Science" by V. Turchin.

edit: I'm really confused about the downvote, what is wrong with pointing out a work in a similar vein?

<comment><USER3> I thought your comment was useful and about learned something new (to me) from it. Have an upvote from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know how this work (Society of Mind in Hypertext) was able to be published on the web?

I have the hardcopy at home and have for years. It provides a unique perspective on some ideas about our minds.</comment>


At Google, an Employee-Run Email List Tracks Harassment and Bias Complaints - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/at-google-an-employee-run-email-list-tracks-harassment-and-bias-complaints <comment><USER3> > One employee said that during a one-on-one performance review with a > manager, he was told that his rating dropped from "Exceeds" to "Meets" > because he didn't get as much done while on paternity leave.

If true, that is quite obviously legally actionable.

<comment><USER4> I'd agree that someone who is on leave, and doesn't work, indeed"meets" expectations. It would be a problem only if everybody is expected to exceed expectations, but then all the evaluation process becomes, almost by definition, nonsensical.

<comment><USER5> That's ridiculous. Leave is leave; it's an employee's right that's offered in law or in their contract, and they should not be punished in any way for taking advantage of it.

If the employee would otherwise exceed expectations and took paternity leave, then they still exceed expectations. If they were hired in March and worked for 40 weeks, they would not be penalized for failing to work in January or February. Leave should be handled the same way.

If the employee was not professional about taking leave (didn't give any notice, did not work with colleagues to organize coverage of his tasks, etc.) then things are different. Similarly, if they promised to do something while on leave and didn't, then that would be an issue.

<comment><USER6> > Leave is leave; it's an employee's right that's offered in law or in their > contract, and they should not be punished in any way for taking advantage of > it.

Being rated as someone who meets expectations is not a punishment.

Certainly, one has the right to exercise one's rights, but one also has a duty to acknowledge that they impact others. Someone who takes paternity leave will, mutatis mutandis, achieve less than someone who does not; someone who is on leave for an entire review period and does nothing related to work cannot fairly be said to exceed expectations.

<comment><USER7> > Being rated as someone who meets expectations is not a punishment.

On a scale of 1, 2, and 3, where each of these confers different privileges, when I knock you down from a 3 to a 2 specifically because of X, I am punishing you for X.

The corporate words tied to the ratings are not magical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sad to see so many comments here worrying about such a list becoming "weaponized".

TFA says that the list is anonymous, and that "usually, the people in the complaints are not named" (the cited exception being naming Eric Schmidt, the CEO, for behavior during a large company meeting). You're not going to publicly shame someone without naming them, so clearly that's not the intent or effect.

The point of the list, again from TFA, is to raise awareness about bad things that happen at Google, often outside the view of privileged white men like myself. With 20% of the company subscribed, it sounds like it's working.

This trope of jumping immediately to the problem of false accusations is sadly common in discussions e.g. of rape reporting. Yes, some reports of rape (and harassment) are untrue. The vast majority aren't. Jumping so quickly, as many comments here have, to considering effects of fake reports is wildly disrespectful of the (largely female, and thus underrepresented here and at places like Google) victims, and is part of the reason that rape and sexual assault go underreported.

I would encourage those of you who have such a reaction to step back and consider why people might submit anonymously to such a list, and what benefits a company might get from having one.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, and speak here (as always) for myself.

<comment><USER9> I'm also a Googler. Unlike you, I'm forced to comment anonymously, using a throwaway I just created using Tor. Why? Because I'm a member of one of the "privileged" groups that many think make up too great a portion of Google's employee base, and because some people (especially the ones graduating from college these days) think I'm an oppressor just because of my race and gender.

Nevertheless, I need to pipe up and express that g/yes-at-google makes me feel terrified. I'm not alone either. Some people have expressed that they plan on discontinuing all non-work communication. I've done the same, but not announced it. I've also started scrubbing all my technical communication. Anything I say might be interpreted in the worst possible light as taken as evidence of deep-seated bigotry and bias. I've never had to be this paranoid before in my life.

The scariest thing is that I've seen people "called out" for comments that would have passed even my paranoid-mode filter, even on purely technical subjects. At this point, I'm scared of making too much or too little eye contact. (Either one might be a micro-aggression.) I feel that no matter how careful I am about what I say and no matter how little bias is in my heart, it's only a matter of time before I land in front of HR for something I didn't intend to say.

Programs like YAG sensitize people to these sorts of uncharitable interpretations of others' speech. They encourage a kind of paranoid bunker mentality when it comes to social interaction. They teach people that their experiences are particular to their identity, not universal among their colleagues. They teach people to punish the wicked, not work together to solve problems.

Is this the kind of company we want to have? Is this the kind of culture that _any_ organization should foster?

<comment><USER8> I'm truly sorry you feel this way.

I'm another white man who works at Google. I don't feel this way. You see me here commenting using a username that's easily traceable to my real identity. So we are reacting to a similar situation quite differently. What's the difference between us? I don't know.

I also think that your having this feeling is not WAI -- Google has been pretty clear that they want everyone to feel psychologically safe at work.

Ultimately what you have is a feeling -- it's not a fact, or even an opinion. I can't argue you out of it. But feel free to reach out to me IRL if you want to talk about it. I am easy to find.

<comment><USER10> Another throwaway here. Let me explain why I'm afraid.

Discussion that I've seen around microaggressions seems to land on the idea that, much like sexual harassment, one can be guilty without intent or awareness. This is a difficult to balance situation because, on the one hand, you have the fact that we as white men do not know what it feels like to be "othered" or harassed every day of your life, thus making our own judgment of what constitutes fair and unfair treatment somewhat skewed. On the other hand, this can lead to the infliction of the "perpetrator" status in situations that, to my honest attempt to calmly and thoughtfully analyze the circumstances, grant too much power to the accuser.

Prior to the current email list under discussion, there was a web app internally for tracking microaggressions. I remember reading it and being horrified at the treatment that non-white people in general, and women in particular, endured - story after story of degradation, insults and bullying. Referring to these actions as "micro" aggressions was comically understating their magnitude. However, I did see one or two stories that I thought were an _extremely_ uncharitable interpretation of a normal, everyday situation. I vividly recall one - let me attempt to retell that story here: "One day I was waiting for the bus to ${SOME_DESTINATION}. The bus stop was unusually busy, lots of people were around. Somebody said out loud 'Wow, looks like everybody is going to ${SOME_DESTINATION} today'. This comment was aimed at me because I was not white."

In the above scenario, I acknowledge the possibility that the speaker was aiming a negative comment at the reporter...but surely it is also possible that a non-biased person would make that comment innocently, perhaps even without knowledge that the non-white person were present? The reason I am afraid is that I can imagine myself making an innocent comment like that, bereft of any bias (implicit or otherwise), and I am afraid of what the consequences might be. Having a discussion about the comment would be fine, but what if I were to be brought in front of HR and have it formally recorded in my employee file? What if I received explicit disciplinary action? Could I be fired in circumstances like this?

As I've said, I recognize the legitimacy of the vast, vast majority of these grievances as well as the need to share them. What scares me is the absolutes with which they are spoken about, in that the accusation of having committed a microaggression or act of bias always means the accused is guilty. Without acknowledgement that communication is challenging and an innocent comment can be interpreted uncharitably, I am afraid of the potential consequences.

<comment><USER8> > What scares me is the absolutes with which they are spoken about, in that > the accusation of having committed a microaggression or act of bias always > means the accused is guilty.

Can you handle a little guilt, though? It sounds like you can -- you're saying, I know I'm not perfect, I know I can be better.

I think that is, to a first approximation, the standard applied to employees at Google.

> On the other hand, this can lead to the infliction of the "perpetrator" > status in situations that, to my honest attempt to calmly and thoughtfully > analyze the circumstances, grant too much power to the accuser.

In the story you relate, does the accuser actually have any real power? They told their story, and...that's the end, right? I think you're assuming somehow that every time someone says "someone did this shitty thing to me," they want HR to fire that person. I know from talking to people who have had shitty things done to them that that's not true. People -- victims, HR -- have a sense of proportionality.

And I'm sure someone here can come up with an anecdote that shows someone acting without proportionality. But the fact that the system isn't perfect doesn't mean it's wrong as a rule, and consider that for every one accused who is acted upon disproportionately, there are surely many more victims who never seek or see justice. So if the system seems more imperfect to you lately, perhaps what is actually happening is that the imperfections are being felt more equitably.

If Google fired every white man who referred to a group of people men+women as "guys", there would be very few of us left. I don't mean to say that stuff like that isn't important and that we shouldn't change our language, just that degree of harm and intent _are_ important. I have never heard anyone from HR suggest otherwise.

If I can make a guess as to where this fear might be coming from: A friend at another company related a story to me about how she tried to gently correct a coworker's microaggression. He blew up at her, angry that she was making a big thing out of a little thing. Which she wasn't, objectively or in intent. But then she took the blowup to HR.

So that's what happened, but I have to imagine his story is going to be, I made this innocent comment, and then I got taken to task with HR over it.

I'm sure many people have stories like that, where they completely miss the point about what they're actually talking to HR about. And then maybe these stories make their way to you, and you conclude, "gosh, I'm terrified of stepping out of line, look at the awful thing that happened to person X for doing basically nothing. And this other thing in YAG, I did that myself recently. I am terrified." But I suggest there's a different way to look at the same data that paints a quite different picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel this might be problematic. The Soviet block countries had something called a culture of criticism and self-criticism. As part of this culture, factories would orchestrate meetings in which people who ran afoul of party management were publicly humiliated by their colleagues and ostracized. What's wrong with simply firing people who are implicated in harassment and possibly reporting them to law enforcement?

<comment><USER12> I like how submissions are anonymous. Back in USSR an anonymous tip was a good way of getting rid of your annoying neighbours or rivals.

Another convenient thing was that with an anonymous complaint the burden of proof lay solely on the accused, who had to protest his innocence without even being able to face the accuser. But we are half-way there anyway, aren't we?

<comment><USER13> As has been mentioned elsewhere - names aren't mentioned in the list.

Also even with anonymity although such a system maybe open for abuse, so that people can implicate innocent people, the potential to allow actual victims to speak up who wouldn't otherwise seems worth the risk

<comment><USER12> This reminds me of the whole metadata collection scandal/argument, because this is what is being shared - metadata. Just because you don't name a person directly, does not yet imply anonymity.

Another observation - the article states that people aren't "usually" named. I don't see anything preventing the peoples names appearing later on, as this thing develops.

<comment><USER13> As far as I can tell, it's run for employees by employees. If it ever starts doing more harm than good, it will just stop. People have to want to submit and want to read it.

So I don't see this as management sponsored spying, just employees wanting more transparency. To highlight what actually goes on.

I believe the point with the 'usually' was that the only one who had been named was Eric Schmidt from a open meeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not a big fan of HR departments, but an open company-wide-readable email list seems like it could have it's own perils.

Hopefully it's carefully moderated/anonymized/edited by somebody who is good at that sort of thing.

<comment><USER15> This has really huge potential for abuse.

How do we know the acts happened indeed?

<comment><USER16> While there are instances of false accusations, isn't the larger problem in our society that people are harassed or abused at work on a seemingly regular basis?

<comment><USER17> False accusations are also harassment.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. But it seems like the problem we have now is that more people are being harassed and not being taken seriously with their claims than people making false claims. Is that a world we are okay with living in? Regardless of the answer we should be having that conversation

<comment><USER17> One problem I have with these list is, as you say, they make it seem as if there is a huge problem with people being harassed. I am not convinced that is true, because the context is missing. Like how many people work for Google, how many incidents are there per month, and how many of these incidents even warrant a complaint?

There is already a debate about the "princess" incident. Eventually somebody will make statistics about that list, and the "princess" incident will be counted as a harassment incident along the lines of grabbing somebodies ass or blackmailing them for sex over losing their job. That seems very misleading.

Also, I'd argue the existence of such a list is already harassment of a lot of people. If now you have to watch your back for every comment, it doesn't make for a very pleasant work day.

I can not judge if "princess" was harassment or not, because we lack context - and so do the readers of the list. It could be friends who habitually edge each other on, like calling a vegetarian "princess" to probe their determination. Or it could be said with disdain, Redneck style (anybody who doesn't eat meat can't amount to much). We don't know. But everybody now has to worry about their words being taken out of context and glued to the wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is confidential material for public consumption? All this is stuff that ought to go to the Ombudsman, HR or the police to be dealt with properly. What good does it do to hear "my supervisor is habitually oversharing and told me she smokes hashish and is worried about an upcoming drug test"?

<comment><USER19> Because you don't necessarily need to involve the police every time you're trying to set an interpersonal boundary. Most people are well adjusted enough to change their behavior when you ask them to, and you don't need the threat of firing or jail to convince these people. You just need to ask them, nicely but assertively, to stop.

<comment><USER18> When you post to the mailing list it's obviously gone past the "assert- boundaries" point, because you tried that already. Nicely but assertively is a problem with unreasonable supervisors in an "at will" state and a weak labour market.

<comment><USER19> The mailing list isn't just for calling out your supervisors, and the article implies that the managers of the list do give people the chance to respond. It sounds less like a way to anonymously out inappropriate or offensive behavior and more like a way to give examples after the behavior has already been dealt with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> \- A female employee was allegedly called a "princess" for favoring salad over burgers.

I imagine the guy that delivered that comment would be hard pushed to figure out what he did wrong. I suppose we all have to really careful what we say.

<comment><USER21> Can you explain specifically whats wrong with the comment.

This could be making fun of a friend. How is this harassment?

<comment><USER22> "Princess" in the UK at least would be pretty offensive in that context - <USER2> wouldn't dream of calling a colleague that.

<comment><USER23> No it wouldn't. Try spending some time further up north.

<comment><USER22> I'm in Scotland :-)

<comment><USER23> and find that offensive?!

<comment><USER22> No - I wouldn't find that offensive (I've been called far far worse things in a work context) - but I'd be _very_ worried about potentially _causing_ offense, more for the sake of politeness than the HR impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the 'curation' might skew folks' view. E.g. if one believes Ted is a rotten guy, one might mention all the times Ted does rotten things, but if one believes Tod is a great guy then one might just not mention the rotten things _he_ does.

Likewise, I wonder how often this list mentions when someone casually makes a rude remark about Christianity or Judaism, or when someone puts down men, or whites, or Republicans. Maybe it does — certainly the article didn't mention any anti-right bias incidents though (unless I missed it after reading twice).

</comment><comment><USER24> This is what happens when people have lost faith in the formal process and instead institutionalized gossip as a necessary system for their own protection.

</comment><comment><USER25> > "Subsequently informed by the engineer that she was expected to 'sleep with > everyone' because that's the culture here."

I'm rather "unenlightened"/regressive/whatever from a SV perspective. But... If there wasn't a significant power difference here, like an intern vs someone senior, how does this even happen? I mean, I get it if it was one-on-one, even a direct boss might pressure someone into that. But "sleep with everyone"? What's the expected response?

Or was this some poor excuse after a failed attempt? "Hey don't get upset. Everyone sleeps around on this team."

I'm just having a hard time comprehending this quote, not from an offended view, just a practical/social/etc. view.

<comment><USER24> It's a common abuse tactic: establish the behaviour you want as "normal" and gaslight people who object. Often it works. It's also the sort of thing that people can very easily explain away as "joke", "hazing", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can see this getting out of hand quickly. Humans have a tendency to amplify anxiety of local, improbable events. This is essentially a weapon that can quickly impact morale and elevate disruptive conversations that will become far removed from the situation with too many participants. I'd have optin, in- person support groups where nothing leaves the room and it is limited in size. Sometimes spreading a problem across more people does not fix it, it only makes it worse.

<comment><USER27> being constantly disrespected by coworkers can also impact morale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is excellent, especially seeing as how so often HR's duty is only to the company and not to the employee making the complaint.

Tangentially I wonder if a similar system could be used to report bullying in schools. Perhaps the anonymity only works at a certain scale.

</comment><comment><USER28> Once this list has enough reach, someone may weaponize it. I've seen it happen.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this what got Amit Singhal in the first place, perhaps? (EDIT: I guess not, he left fifteen months ago, this list is eight months old.) It's briefly mentioned in this article, but I was shocked less people talked about what the Amit Singhal story meant for Google.

That one of their most senior executives, who at one point rewrote the entire Google Search engine, when that was possible for one person to do, and worked there for sixteen years was fired for sexual harassment.

It's hard to imagine he suddenly started harassing women sixteen years in, so I have to wonder how long Google may have been trying to protect one of their most valuable employees.

<comment><USER30> I've worked with my share of jerks and assholes. Rarely have I seen them dealt with. Mean people often know how to manipulate their messaging you avoid punative action. Few places have a zero tolerance policy, they'll just move them somewhere else.

None of the jerks or assholes I've known had anything happen to them, that I am aware of. I'd like to think they'll be fired eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "is facing growing pressure from diversity advocates and the media"

I don't think these entities should have the power to exert pressure.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a Bentham construction inside Big Brother, how quaint.

</comment><comment><USER32> What does "employee-run" mean in this context? (isn't everything at Google employee-run by definition?)

</comment><comment><USER33> I am not quite sure about whether sexual harassment laws are a good idea yet.

</comment><comment><USER34> So here's the rules of this brave new world: beyond your house you're a sexless, emotionless creature without family, life outside the office, without sense of humour, without personal interests and preferences.

Be like this, and you'll get free meals, free shuttle bus and goats at company campus. And it's good for your resumé.</comment>


A Mathematical Analysis Of The Iranian Elections - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000004.html?referrer=reddit

<comment><USER3> The article is very interesting in my view. It states that a sampling of the numbers do not follow expected random patterns.

But let's talk about the real issue. When you forbid independent monitors, announce results before the votes gets counted, and conclude absolute certainty in the results before there is a statistical analysis, it is hard to believe in a fair election.

<comment><USER4> > The article is very interesting in my view. It states that a sampling of the > numbers do not follow expected random patterns.

If you try a whole bunch of fairly arbitrary metrics, e.g. how many end in 7, how many end in 5, how many have consecutive increasing digits, and you mine the data into finding two arbitrary ones that random chance would say occur 5% of the time, does that really tell you anything about the data? I find this article a stunning example of the dangers of mathematical ignorance.

<comment><USER5> Go read up on Benford's law. (See [http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/1999/May/nigrini....](http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/1999/May/nigrini.htm) for an example of how it was used)

I'm not familiar with the digit-distribution law the article mentioned, but on its face it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. I'd prefer to see some study applying this same analysis to thousands of other elections, of course.

But, prima facie, using digit distributions to detect fraud is not at all unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weird. The article is invoking Benford's Law without identifying it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law>

Here's an article that concludes that the election results do not run afoul of Benford's Law:

[http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/benfords-law-and-iranian- ele...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/benfords-law-and-iranian- election.html)

<comment><USER7> The article is about the last digits of the numbers. Benfords law is about the first digits.

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Generalization_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Generalization_to_digits_beyond_the_first)

<comment><USER7> Right, that's why I said digits. The law pretty much says "uniform" for the last digits, like this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The real question is: given any set of data, after the fact, what is the chance that a numerology detective can find some metric that will indicate suspicious activity? (Pretty much 100%)

I'm calling bullshit.

<comment><USER8> It's not unreasonable to expect that the last two digits of the voting counts should be distributed uniformly. Given that we also know that the wiring in human brains keeps us from properly sampling a uniform distribution by hand, the article employed a simple strategy of looking at the last two digits, assuming they were drawn from a uniform distribution, and asking if that were so, what is the probability that this would be our draw?

You gave no reason to be skeptical, and simply illustrated your lack of familiarity with basic tools of probability. Funny that you would below speak of a "stunning example [...] of mathematical ignorance." If you wanted to substantively contribute to the discussion, perhaps you should try explaining why this was an invalid test instead of just labeling the authors as "numerology detectives?"

<comment><USER9> To be fair. It should be noted that US and UK elections have far larger variances than the elections in Iran. I suspect it is because incumbent politicians are allowed to engage in 're-districting'. I would need more data to make a definitive statement on the 'why'. In my view though, when Republicans carve out new districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, and when Democrats carve out new districts in Chicago, it is a form of election tampering. A very effective form of election tampering. Only the evidence of having tampered with the elections via re-districting shows up via Benford's law. Again, that part is just a theory. The explanation could be as simple as tamperers stuffing ballot boxes in the US as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a link to a more technical version of this somewhere? That might settle alot of the debates going on (on this website that is).

<comment><USER8> You can go straight to their website, but here is an alternate analysis. My apologies for not having time to do both their analyses, I'll try when I get home, but I have to run.

Grab their data: Iran_2009.csv Then: (apparently I can't embed preformatted text. Sorry.) Try this: [http://img.skitch.com/20090621-xrmw8yrxaec15jku414ffb2cjq.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20090621-xrmw8yrxaec15jku414ffb2cjq.png) -or- <http://earlh.com/HN/iran.R> , and <http://earlh.com/HN/Iran_2009.csv>

Here's a histogram: [http://img.skitch.com/20090621-ewdbtr9q2cw5hyemn64fg3kbqd.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20090621-ewdbtr9q2cw5hyemn64fg3kbqd.png)

The p-value I get is p-value = 0.07685

NB: there is something weird going on with their data: it doesn't sum properly. [http://img.skitch.com/20090621-dx6nqws4u9rc5p3nghsnuy24j3.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20090621-dx6nqws4u9rc5p3nghsnuy24j3.png)

\</comment></comment><comment>--- So, the way this works is that I look at the last digit in each of the totals, then ask what is the probability that we should observe such a distribution of final digits if the final digit were distributed as discrete uniform U[0,9]. I use a chi2 goodness of fit test, then calculate the p-value with H0 = the final digits are distributed uniformly. We would reject H0 and say the election was rigged at an alpha level of 0.9, but not at 0.95. Take of this what you will, but I'd hope to have a higher significance level for elections. : shrug :

<comment><USER11> <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

<comment><USER8> Oh thanks! I suck for missing that...

Code for above:

       d <- read.csv(file='~/stuff/earlh/Iran_2009.csv', header=T, sep=',')

       lastDigit <- function(v){
       	v - 10*floor(v/10)
       }

       digits <- lastDigit( c(d$Ahmadinejad, d$Karroubi, d$Mousavi, d$Rezaee))
       hist(digits, breaks=10)

       #chi2 gof
       tab <- table(digits)
       n <- length(digits)

       model <- chisq.test(x=tab, p=rep(0.1, 10))
       model

       # hand generated -- check our work above
       ts <- 0
       for(i in 1:length(tab)){
       	ts <- ts + ( tab[[i]] - 0.1*n)^2 / (0.1*n)
       }
       qchisq(p=1-0.076, df=9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Again, people fall into the fallacy that statistical averages must be followed exactly. It is not so.

Edit: Very surprised at the -3 mod. Are people here really so bad at statistics that they think this?

Example: Just because the average rainfall in a spot is 10 inches, does NOT mean it has to be 10 inches every year. If you have 6 inches one year that is NOT an anomaly. That is perfectly normal. Sure it might be unlikely - <USER2> unlikely things still happen! In fact they must happen, just not as often at the more likely things.

So the analysis of the votes, sure it might not match the average, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. It could simply mean that you happened to get the 10% chance.

PS. Not that the vote fraud is in question. It's not, it's obviously fake. But not because of this analysis.

<comment><USER13> A lot of scientists would be very pleased to have results with a 99.5% confidence. The fact that the results have a 0.5% chance of being real, combined with the fact that Ahmadinejad's votes have a significantly different distribution from the other candidates' makes this a pretty strong argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." (Josef Stalin)

Either if the elections are rigged or not, 49% of the population can not be subdued to the will of the ruling 51%

We need to change electoral systems, specially "winner takes all" ideologies, the tyranny of the majority.

We need to learn to live together and share power together.

And to separate if we can not. Nothing should be imposed.

<comment><USER15> I think calling electoral systems, a tyranny of the majority, is a gross exaggeration. A multiparty system, one with an empowered opposition where bills require 2/3s not merely 1/2, encourages this within an electoral system.

In Iran, trust in the system was lost. This is much about Iran's supreme leader as it is about the election for president.</comment></comment>


Break Glass in Case of Google Turning Evil - <AUTHOR> http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/preparing-for-the-worst/

<comment><USER2> Cute. :) But it seems like a lot of time and effort to put into a joke. Perhaps they could have spent those resources on decreasing their Google dependence...

</comment><comment><USER3> I enjoyed the article, but does the phrase "Break Glass in Case of Google Turning Evil" even appear anywhere on the page?

<comment><USER4> It's in the video.

<comment><USER5> I'm disinclined to upvote when I'm forced to watch a video to find out why I should watch the video.

"A picture is worth a thousand videos"</comment></comment></comment>


911 was Nuclear: The Physics, Mathematics & Chemistry of 911 using USGS  - <AUTHOR> http://www.box.net/shared/hf1eev4jvv

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious if you physics, math and chem buffs concur with this report....</comment>


Weekend hack - Node.js on the .NET runtime - <AUTHOR> http://newcome.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/node-net-node-js-implemented-in-javascript-on-the-net-runtime/

<comment><USER2> Microsoft's JScript is in a poor shape and is being deprecated. They'll probably build another interpreter on top of the DLR.

I don't know how good or complete the alternatives are though (probably not as mature as Rhino) ... <http://github.com/fholm/IronJS> ; <http://jint.codeplex.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments. It looks like Node.net should port to any of those Javascript implementations. The basic requirements are the ability to use functions as delegates for callbacks from the host platform and thread sync primitives to serialize access to the event dispatch queue.

<comment><USER3> It's cool that you're trying for basic API compatibility with Node, and it would be neat if you could make use of some of the libraries that have been written for Node. The only problem with that is that some code written for Node is already using features of Javascript which exist in V8 but not in JScript. Ryan has written about which ES5 features are implemented in V8 and available in Nodejs here:

[http://wiki.github.com/ry/node/ecma-5mozilla-features- implem...](http://wiki.github.com/ry/node/ecma-5mozilla-features-implemented- in-v8)</comment></comment></comment>