Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement - <AUTHOR> https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389297/tech-companies-and-17-govts-sign-up-to-christchurch-call <comment><USER3> This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitrarily arrests dissidents, the LGTBQ community has to hide because it's illegal, and protests are outlawed. India already overuses counter terrorism laws to charge dissidents and activists and there are religious minorities that suffer heavily from discrimination.

This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles over freedom of speech. Now people have given them moral authority to curb an already very broad and ambiguous category of terrorists and now extremists. Sure I get it, there is a bunch of vile on the internet and the world would be a better place without it. But my "better place without it" is different from somebody else's and so is the "it". This won't end up like what is in your head.

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were already there. These people grew up with it. Social, cultural, religious, sexual, moral borders, you name it, every border we have is being rewritten and when you rewrite those borders, especially this quickly, people are gonna get scared, they're gonna lash out, and because of it more people are getting scared and want to control one of the most powerful tools to freedom.

<comment><USER4> >Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

The interesting thing is that this really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

Consider weapons treaties, like the UN ones banning the use of land mines and cluster munitions. The only countries that have signed them either don't have any reason to use them, or are allied with a nation that hasn't signed that treaty.

This is much the same story. The US hasn't signed this, and never will (because it explicitly contravenes a cornerstone of its supreme law), and at that point what the other countries do is pointless unless they outright block US services from their networks- in which case there will be riots in the streets. Governments don't survive for long when they alienate the vast majority of their population, and the majority of the population uses US services.

Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.

<comment><USER5> > Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an > online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without > prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do > sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a > competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a > signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

Hell 4chan trolls moderation with really bad content for sport from time to time. I hate to go there but I think its sometimes necessary to see it happen to prove that laws dont stop people already violating laws from _gasp_ violating laws. You cant moderate them IRL what makes you think you can stop them online?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world's largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging.

And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its complexity, is a far more tractable problem compared to building a system that can avoid promoting content that promotes violence. In the meantime, they throw armies of people at the problem, to moderate content and respond to user reports, but it's a losing battle.

They had the technology to create a monster, but don't have the technology to stop it.

<comment><USER7> > They had the technology to create a monster, but don't have the technology > to stop it.

At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other idea, or regulated out of existence. Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law. Sufficient competition ensures that it is the only winning strategy.

Obligatory SSC: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

<comment><USER8> > Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law.

A common misconception: [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations- obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a large portion of the NZ population is.

This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place. I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense is considered a crime, something this terrible shattering the illusion of nanny government protecting you requires a whole lot of deflection and ultra maneuvers to secure the next election cycle.

New Zealand's knee has jerked so hard I'm feeling it in my groin 8k miles away.

<comment><USER10> NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some authoritarian ploy.

<comment><USER11> > It is not some authoritarian ploy.

Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to guns and free speech _is_ an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.

<comment><USER10> All laws "use the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good".

<comment><USER12> Sure, all law is an exercise of authority, and hence authoritarianism. The commenter was merely calling out that... no matter how you dice it... a new law is always authoritarian, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Tech companies and governments sign up_

Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our most fundamental rights as citizens.

<comment><USER14> Only Americans have fundamental rights.

Everyone else has "hate speech," which depending on how that's interpreted, can mean anything from thinly veiled blasphemy laws, an inability to bluntly criticize Scientology or Islam, or charges for making Nazi jokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Preventing viral spreading of the videos I think is unquestionably ideal, but there's also a section in this "Call" stating another goal, to "Counter the drivers of terrorism ... to resist ideology and narratives... through education and building media literacy..." [some words removed so the message is less hidden]. It's hard not to suspect political motivation, given that Internet platforms are turf wars for politics these days.

<comment><USER16> Imagine the next "favorite" presidential candidate that has $1.4 billion in corporate funding. But late in the game it seems like the people may actually vote for her opponent. What is this corporate money to do? Why, implicate her opponent's followers in some kind of "terrorist" act and get their forum taken down due to the "call" and "lessons learned from the tragedy"

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan.

The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could have been prevented without any of the changes being proposed.

<comment><USER18> 4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.

<comment><USER19> Just to expand on this a little bit, it is contingent on ISP and as far as I know, the following websites:

\- voat.co

\- 4chan.org

\- 8ch.net

\- liveleak.com

\- archive.is

\- bitchute.com

\- zerohedge.com

\- kiwifarms.net

I think I'm right in saying that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are the 'Big Three', and they have blocked the above.

Here in NZ, It's Vodafone, Spark and 2 Degrees, all of whom, I understand, blocked access, though I've been unable to verify this first-hand.

There are also hefty prison sentences [0] (up to 14 years) and fines for people who read/distributed the manifesto and watched/shared the original footage.

Edit: More comprehensive block-list can be found here: [1]

[0] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand- at...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-attacks- social-media.html)

[1] - [https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet- censors...](https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censorship- in-australia-and-new-zealand-who-decides)

<comment><USER20> Wait, are you saying that _watching_ the video is considered a crime in and of itself? Not redistribution, and not even mere possession, but just seeing it?

<comment><USER21> Certainly, like child porn, watching snuff movies was already illegal in NZ before the alt-right terrorist attack, all the NZ censor did was confirm that the snuff movie fell under that category, it was essentially born illegal. No one passed any special new laws to make it so.

It also falls under the US supreme court test for obscenity and is equally illegal in the US

<comment><USER14> >It also falls under the US supreme court test for obscenity and is equally illegal in the US

I don't think that's correct.

There are no federal obscenity laws. The U.S. government does not expressly prohibit obscene conduct. In fact, the U.S. government expressly protects some communications in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

[https://legalcareerpath.com/obscenity- law/](https://legalcareerpath.com/obscenity-law/)

<comment><USER21> 18 USC 71 ... is the federal obscenity law, it's been much patched in and around child porn, but the basic law is still there. Of course there's been a lot of Supreme Court rulings in and around it culminating in the Miller test ... Your 'shooting video' is really a snuff film, probably one of the few genuine ones (along with those made by ISIS, and just as bad) and certainly falls under the Miller test

<comment><USER22> You can't just redefine a murder video as pornographic because you don't like it. You mentioned the miller test, so you already know it requires that it depict "sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law".

Ignoring the state law requirement (which you haven't cited), the video does not depict sexual conduct.. and there's no way you can twist this into being illegal in the US. It's not illegal. Period. ISIS videos aren't illegal either.

You've clearly misunderstood our laws.

<comment><USER21> 18 USC 71 is about 'obscenity', which doesn't just include pornography. These days it includes a bunch of clauses about child porn, but that's mostly about politicians wanting to get their names on the board. The original, base law is more general and its definition comes from common law modulated by many supreme court decisions

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's almost like they give more of a shit about people posting things on the internet than some looney slaughtering 51 people.

<comment><USER24> \- he posted on sites which were considered targets. \- he posted a manifesto online (it's been censored in NZ) \- he livestreamed the act (also censored) \- his attack has been referenced by subsequent attacks (this was his goal) \- he wants to use the courts as a platform (our media has voluntarily agreed to censor proceedings) \- he said his rights are being infringed by not having phone and other communication (his "rights" need to be weighed against all the dead and injured) \- other groups want to politicize and publicize his agenda (should they be censored?)

His efforts to use the web as a platform for inciting hate and further violence led to our government's response. If the US President incites hate and violence via Twitter we would be having the same discussion no?

<comment><USER25> The idea of censoring his manifesto is strange to me. You'd think people would just want to argue the points brought up in his manifesto on their merits and win mindshare that way.

<comment><USER10> How well is that working against the flat-earth and anti-vax communities?

<comment><USER26> Well, a good chunk of the US anti-vax movement seems to be ultra-Orthodox Jews: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/nyregion/measles- vaccine-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/nyregion/measles-vaccine- orthodox-jews.html) Their religous beliefs don't permit them to have unfettered Internet access because it'd expose them to corrupting ideas (like, say, the idea that vaccines are safe).

<comment><USER10> And yet more than a good chunk of the anti-vax movement worldwide has unfettered Internet access. Ultra-orthodox Jews certainly aren't a factor here in New Zealand.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, it's almost like the Internet has no inherent effect one way or the other on the rise of anti-vax beliefs or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> More internet censorship?

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess they're not going to ban content that glorifies war, though? That would be a bridge too far.

<comment><USER29> Dont be mad, the military is paying quite a bit for advertisement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

<comment><USER31> What constitutes 'extremism'? It's a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.

<comment><USER32> Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in power.

<comment><USER31> And yet those in power are the ones who get to decide what the term means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would be interested to know what the technical difficulties are in scrubbing a banned video, and all derivatives, from a Facebook.

Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video contains a fragment of another video? Surely.

<comment><USER34> There are, YouTube has a fairly effective algorithm that is used primarily to remove copyright-infringing content:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_\(algorithm\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Aren't they missing the point here? The problem isn't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first place?

As these large hosts move more and more away from mere platforms to content curators it does make a lot of sense that they'd also be more responsible for what they curate, but at the same time, it seems like this responsibility will ultimately leak back into the parts of these services that are really just platforms and ultimately to those that don't curate content at all.

<comment><USER24> > _The problem isn 't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook, > it's the fact that he did it in the first place?_

The Las Vegas shooter we're told had no motive, but there's a public sense that each massacre is trying to "out do" a previous kill count. With Facebook being the go to place when one occurs, it's instant fame and notoriety for the perpetrator. For this reason our government and media took the immediate response of "de-naming" the killer, but with instant global online platforms this is after the horse has bolted. This approach of involving platforms directly is to neuter the draw of instant notoriety. To remove fame (or widespread publicity if there is an agenda) from being another contributing factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, this is not a slippery slope at all, no sir. And the real extremists will just use Tor.

<comment><USER29> The police in Germany already proposed to ban Tor as its "really not needed in western democracies".

<comment><USER36> Laying down the groundwork for the Fourth Reich, I see. 30 years down the road someone gets elected who really doesn't want to go when the term is up. If things are well bolted down by then, they could stay indefinitely by simply sending people to jail for "extremism". It's as if history doesn't teach people anything at all, even recent history of less than 100 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about changes

<comment><USER38> Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.

<comment><USER39> Who is far left in this? Jacinda Ardern represents a centre-left coalition government.

<comment><USER40> Some people like to use the term "far-left" to mean "far-left of me", without acknowledging that they're nowhere near the center themselves.

<comment><USER41> In fairness, people do the same thing with "far right". I've met some people who would likely characterize President Obama as far right.

This particular pathology seems to arise from the idea that "far $TYPE" is inherently de-legitmizing. And once you've de-legitimized someone or some position, you don't actually have to take them seriously, so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find it problematic that there have been oodles of very classical kinds of 'terrorism' and 'extremism' on Social Media since the start.

ISIS has been recruiting with absolutely brutal kind of stuff on Twitter, etc..

But now we have this nutbar thing in New Zealand and it's a 'global action'?

Aside from the complications mentioned in some other comments ...

... the Jacinda / Trudeau / Macron triumvirate I think were looking in the wrong places.

So it's probably good that we're taking action, and just beyond repulsive that that some massacre was broadcast live on Facebook, but I hope we accomplish do this without too many existential issues.

</comment><comment><USER43> Make internet more expensive therefore limiting its impact among the stupidest members of society - the working class.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is horrifying

<comment><USER45> Why? I'm honestly surprised by the brevity of your comment and by how strong your opinion apparently is in one direction.

<comment><USER29> It is organized censorship across a large part of media people use to communicate today. As a cooperation between governments and those companies.

It really doesnt need more then OPs comment, this is abhorrent. Its quite a big step towards an authoritarian society and the transformation into dictatorships.

In hindsight the generation of the anti-authoritarian left growing up after the fall of the USSR got rather careless with authoritarian tendencies on the left. Lessons learned my ass, here we go again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [removed]

</comment><comment><USER8> "Never let a good crisis go to waste"

</comment><comment><USER47> <This comment has been removed due to it's violent nature>

<comment><USER48> The Aristocrats!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate.

This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.

<comment><USER50> You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?

<comment><USER51> _better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit others to their causes?_

It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today. Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)

<comment><USER10> Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why should the likes of Fox News be exempt

<comment><USER53> I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or message boards do.

There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some of the stuff that festers on the internet.

<comment><USER52> > doesn't endorse terrorism

The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.

<comment><USER54> Every mainstream outlet promotes wars in the middle East.

The only individual who is saying to not do that is... Tucker Carlson, who is on Fox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely scrubbed from social media.

</comment><comment><USER56> I hope one day we will be able to condemn these politicians, bureaucrats and big corps for their crimes against free speech, just like we did with the nazis when they tried to subvert Europe. We need serious laws with draconian punishments to protect our rights, what we have now is insufficient.

</comment><comment><USER57> It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.

<comment><USER58> The comparison isn't between 40 people's right to live vs every terrorist's right to free speech. It's between some probabalistic chance that 40 people's right to live isn't violated in the future due to these actions, versus some probabalistic chance of millions of innocent people being silenced and having their privacy violated in various ways due to the collateral damage from this kind of policy making for the foreseeable future. This shit _never_ gets revoked once it's in place.

History is wrought with examples of people's free speech being violated. How many examples do we really have of when someone's free speech was successfully violated to protect proportionally more important rights?

The entire western world is slowly giving up every single ounce of privacy and freedom, in exchange, and for what? ISIS is finished, the rate of Muslim terrorist attacks seems to be falling off pretty fast, and the swell of fascist sentiment will slowly wind down too once the factors that triggered it are no longer present. This isn't some new concept that's never happened before. And in 10 or 15 years are we going to be happy with the state of government control in countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc given what we've got out of it?

<comment><USER57> There's a lot of counterfactuals here, both numerical and historical - <USER2> example, your suggestion that policies put in place to deal with a problem never being revoked which is simply not supported by fact. As your whole post is dedicated to invalidating the question I posed I hope you'll excuse me for not spending an hour on a point-by-point refutation of your numerous and very broad claims.</comment></comment></comment>


The Complete Guide for Metabolomics Analysis Methods and Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.creative-proteomics.com/services/untargeted-metabolomics.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Features for New Target Metobolomics: 1.More metabolites detection - <USER2> from traditional LC-MS or LC-UV technology, with the new positive and negative conversion technology (Polarity Switch), new target metabolomics can scan up to 1000 metabolites in a period, greatly improving the efficiency of metabolic products at the same time detection.

2.Easy to identify metabolites - A metabolite will be identified by its parent ion, daughter ion, and Collision Energy in Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) technology. Two-step screening before getting into the detecor highly improve the accurancy of methobolites identification.

3.Easy to handle follow-up ioinformatics - New target metobolimics can analyze metabolites without the time-consuming database search and compound identification. And analysis results can be used for multiple comparative analysis, principal component analysis, metabolic pathway analysis and other biological large data processing directly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Untargeted metabolomics It will scan all the small molecule ions (50Da ~ 1200Da) in the sample, and obtain the ion mass spectrum. The metabolites are identified by comparison with the database. The most commonly used analytical platform for untargeted metabolomics is GC-MS. However, GC-MS still is not perfect for metabolomics applications. Such as, GC-MS uses single mass spectrometry and lack of fragment ion information which will lead to many compounds can not be accurately Identification. Besides, there are other platforms can be applied for metabolites analysis: NMR platform and LC-Q-TOF. But untarget metabolomics can only provide the relative abundance of metabolites, not the absolute concentration of metabolites.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Target Metobolomics The traditional targeted metabolomics can only detect about 10 metabolites with the limitation of instrument conditions. But it has been raid developed with the improvement of instrument technology and become new bright spot for metobolomics. New targeted metabolomics can simultaneously quantify more than 1000 metabolites and reduce the time of post-processing data which can significantly improve the efficiency of metabolomics, making the biomarker screening process become more simple and reliable with less metabolic product verification steps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Brief Introduction Metabolomics (Metabolomics) is a new system of biological technology developed by the post-gene era, aimed at the determination of all small organisms within the metabolites. Compared to Genomics, Transcriptomics and Proteomics, metabolomics directly and accurately reflects the current state of the organism and tell us what happens to the organism instead of predicting what may happen! Metabolomics includes untargeted metabolomics, targeted Metabolomics and next-generation target metabolomics according to their detection of metabolites.</comment>


Arduino Controlled Dishwasher - <AUTHOR> http://www.neonsquirt.com/dishwasher.html

<comment><USER2> Every dishwasher needs an LCD panel that reads "The dishes are CLEAN"

<comment><USER3> And every dishwasher needs an option to not reset the _clean_ setting it the door was just opened and closed within a few seconds. I loved his idea to only reset it if it's open for a few minutes, indicating enough time to have emptied the dishwasher.

I wonder if he think his little project was worth not buying the $150 replacement part? Clearly it was a lot of fun.

<comment><USER4> That's a really great idea! You should patent it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I own Fisher & Paykel dish drawers. They are mostly wonderfully engineered. A clever bit about them: they open the fill falve and shortly after start the wash motor. Then they measure the draw of the motor circuit. When the draw is sufficient (due to the motor working harder against the water), they know enough water has entered and close the fill falve. At one point, one of my fill valves failed and the water wasn't entering quickly enough. This eventually triggers a timer, and the drawers shuts down telling you the water isn't entering quickly enough. Mechanically, you can also work on them almost without tools. Anyway, just thought I'd post a bit because I really appreciate good design.

(They also have an interesting bit of poor design that has caused them to leak out water onto my floor after a plastic part broke. Sigh.)

</comment><comment><USER6> When consumers start wanting their home electronics to be future proof, they will one day be looking for the Aurdino logo in the product information.

<comment><USER7> The main thing preventing appliances from becoming future proofed is crappy parts(mostly the mechanical parts). For example, in the past a washing machine had lasted 20 years. today it's 3-4 years.

There are high end brands who have a guarantee of more than 10 years, but they're expensive and the cost per year comes about the same as the cheap ones.

<comment><USER8> And after those 3-4 years, you can probably get one that washes better, quieter, and uses less water and energy (all of the above perhaps only marginally), for the same yearly price. It's not really _that_ bad of a trade- off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thinking about this in terms of what low-level actions are being performed by the Arduino (relay closures, sensor readings, basic I/O), it strikes me how this can be an alternative/complement to platforms like LabView. I feel this is significant due to the prevalence of these platforms in engineering education as well as in industry R&D, test labs, etc. - in my opinion, the more (different) tools that are available and to which people are exposed, the more likely these people will be engaged (in the case of engineering education) or able to get their jobs done.

<comment><USER10> Yes, of course it's a good complement for industrial or laboratory automation, test automation, industrial control. There are loads of different ways to solve these kinds of things, and they are all used somewhere...

But in bigger companies, there's the issue of standardisation: A company policy might mandate that all test-automation has to be done with LabView, so even a simple "dishwasher complexity" device might be implemented on a dedicated PC because it's just cheaper to shell out the $1000 for hardware than to re-train engineers to do Arduino on a $20 board.

Or some other company (possibly more industrial automation inclinded) might do everything with Siemens-S7 controllers.

This is why in reality you often see things setup with the apparently wrong tool for the job, but limiting the number of choices might make (business) sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of the project that a guy added twitter support to his washing machine. I for one would like to know when my washing is done without having to walk all the way down the stairs =)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want to shorten the innovation cycle in any product to be more like that of software, the easiest, most trivial way to do so is to make it software upgradeable.

</comment><comment><USER13> Funny that. My Maytag just failed with the same problem he mentioned except where I live (Canada) it's 300$ for the part + installation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Random Arduino/electronics tip: the Sharp S202S02F relay ($4 at Parallax) is an awesome little solid state relay that will do 8A at 240V.

<comment><USER10> This device might deal quite badly with inductive loads such as the dishwasher motor or heating element (often wound in a spiral).

The lifetime of the solid-state-relay will be reduced if you don't use the proper subber circuits (see for example the S202S02F datasheet found as the first google hit).

A old-school mechanical relay might be a better fit.

To drive mechanical relays, the ULN2003 is a very handy part. It's 7 transistors + freewheeling diodes + resistors in one 16pin DIP.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I'm curious as to why it would be bad with inductive loads, since the first application listed includes motors and heaters.

Thanks for pointing out the snubber circuit. I hadn't noticed and am about to build a project with the S202. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Wehrmacht Veterans Created a Secret Army in West Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/wehrmacht-veterans-created-a-secret-army-in-west-germany-a-969015.html

<comment><USER2> The pre WWII, much of what was to become the German military of WWII was secret and unofficial, so there is a precedent here that makes it understandable how something so extraordinary could come about. It's also an alarming precedent, given that precedent's association with the Nazi regime. However, it's also quite understandable in the context of the atrocities experienced by the Germans as the Soviet military rolled in from the east. Those in turn are also understandable, given what the Germans did on their way in to the USSR.

War only produces more war.

<comment><USER3> "atrocities experienced by the Germans as the Soviet military rolled in from the east" \- don't invade places then. 'Atrocity' is when someone exterminates people just to clear the land. The word you were looking for is 'retribution'.

<comment><USER4> Exterminating people to clear the land is called "genocide" (and it's one of the most severe forms of genocide), which is only one of many different kinds of atrocities. Atrocities can and often do occur in regular warfare, and they definitely happened on both sides on the eastern front in WW2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There were plenty more secret armies: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio)

<comment><USER6> Well, Gladio was an "official" secret army started by the NATO, but in this case, a bunch of veterans got together to form a secret army with no supervision at all. Only in 1951, the German BND resp. its predecessor organization, Organisation Gehlen, is instructed to observe and control them. Organisation Gehlen started as a German CIA unit with former Wehrmacht and SS officers. It is a prime example how the old Nazi elites were essentially still in control after World War 2, and how they could essentially do as they place.

<comment><USER2> "old Nazi elites?" It's my understanding that the Nazis were "young turks" in their day who usurped power from an older military class elite. Of course, internal politics in the face of being on the losing side of a war and occupation by foreign powers probably resulted in the subsumption/unification of those groups into one after WWII.

I don't feel easy with the vilification of patriotism. Such feelings grow from the natural instincts of people who feel affinity with those from their own culture and who wish to defend their homes. Any harm done happens when sociopaths exploit such feelings for their own cruel ambitions.

(Yes, some xenophobia is also involved, which must be counteracted through education.)

<comment><USER7> Hitler was 44 at the time he took power, so not a youngster. Many original nazis fought in WWI, so they easily could count as old old Nazi elite by the time WWII ended.

<comment><USER2> "Young Turk" is figurative. He also wasn't a Turk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> if one looks at the "people uprising" in eastern Ukraine, the one would wonder how many of these people were "sleepers" contacted and organized by Russian special services well before the uprising.

Note: i'm a Russian (and like many Russians do have genuine Ukranian blood, not just simply something like relatives living there) and, unfortunately, have no choice but to support the "people uprising" as these "green little men" is the only hope of Russian speaking population in eastern Ukraine against "trains of friendship" of Ukranian nationalists descending on their towns and villages.

<comment><USER9> >have no choice but to support the "people uprising" as these "green little men" is the only hope of Russian speaking population in eastern Ukraine against "trains of friendship" of Ukranian nationalists descending on their towns and villages.

Could you please elaborate why you have "no choice" ? How exactly did Ukrainians threatened the Russian people in Ukraine so you agree on war ? Wasn't a Yanukovych a pro-russian president ? Why not simply wait for an election as a democratic country ? Why support those who want war and war of the nations ?

This is not a war of two countries it's a war of two nations that share the same roots. If the war is the last option Russia had, they are indeed very disparate. I don't think they are in need of support, they're more in need of mourning.

Violence is the weapon of the weak said the great Gandhi. Even when violence appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. -- Gandhi How many died already ? In name of what ? Stupidsapiens. If we could all once agree to stop the violence, stop talking politics and more about how we can evolve and improve our lives and live in peace, that would be a tremendous achievement..

<comment><USER8> >Could you please elaborate why you have "no choice" ? How exactly did Ukrainians threatened the Russian people in Ukraine so you agree on war ?

why war? I just support the right of people to take power in their hands and form their own state when their basic rights are violated or not protected by the current state they reside in. United States two centuries ago, colonial Africa 60-40 years ago, Kosovo, South Sudan,... Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine,... . If it were my decision Chechnya would be separate today.

>Wasn't a Yanukovych a pro-russian president ? Why not simply wait for an election as a democratic country ?

exactly. Yanukovich (while being complete trash, not that other politicians there are any better though) was democratically elected. What would be the point of new elections?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got an unfortunate Google 'accordion' ad at the bottom of that article, offering me among other things "Research your ancestry", "German WW2 original items" and, er, "Walk-in showers"

<comment><USER11> Wow, I don't know if there's a way to teach the ad algorithm taste, but maybe it should detect whether the context is positive before it associates two things for advertisement purposes? Walk-in showers....</comment></comment>


Code to joy: learning to code in middle age - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/code-to-joy <comment><USER2> I wonder if a guided introduction to JavaScript, restricted to just the good parts and using some tools such as a linter to enforce that, would have made it more approachable to the author. Maybe use TypeScript in strict mode, along with a project template for a minimalist framework (e.g. Vue).

I loved Python for years, going back to when I discovered it in the Red Hat Linux installer in 1999. But it seems to me that Python has been sliding into irrelevance for a while. Even now, 10 years after the introduction of the ihone App Store, I don't know of any mature way to develop a mobile app with a native UI in Python. The same goes for using Python in the browser. So for the things that most people actually want to do with code, Python is relegated to the server (assuming there is one), and they have to learn something else anyway. So, might as well start with the something else that will get you the farthest.

<comment><USER3> Python has huge relevance in data science, which is a vast and growing field. It isn't going anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Smith (the author of this article) at PyCon a few weeks ago. He was really interesting to talk to.

He said he was interviewing one of the people who walked on the moon a while back. The guy stepped out of the interview to take a phone call, and when he came back he said he just learned that one of the other men who had walked on the moon had just died. Andrew reflected on this, and recognized that these men are dying and soon there will be no one left alive who has walked on the moon.

He decided to track down each of the people who were still living who had walked on the moon, and hear their stories firsthand. The premise of the conversations was, "What do you do after you've walked on the moon?" He wrote a book about it, called Moondust. I haven't read it yet, but it's in my Amazon cart at the moment.

<comment><USER5> You might want to read the one-to-three-star reviews before ordering. If they are to be believed, Moondust is less about the astronauts and more about Andrew Smith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Help! My mother has expressed an interest in learning programming. How do I do this best?

<comment><USER7> For people without a specific goal in mind I'd recommend getting them set up with the Python3 turtle module. It's fairly self-contained and allows for immediate results. Additionally it's very easy to nudge people when they are using the turtle module. e.g. after introducing loops ask if they can draw a square using only one forward() and one rotate(). after introducing functions you can ask if they can make a functions to draw N-gons. what happens if you try to draw a 100-gon? etc etc.

After use of the turtle module is comfortable python offers no end to possibilities in other areas.

That said, "best" is surprisingly subjective when it comes to programming, so feel free to go a different route if that feels more appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The error in the author's code seems to be better described as an "unnecessary function call" than a "stray parentheses". I spent more time looking for that stray parentheses than I should have before noticing the call to .title().

Very good article though.

<comment><USER9> str.title is a method, the code is correct - it's the fixed version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very well written article. I think everyone can definitely emphasize with the confusion that comes with having to dig through APIs and tooling for the first time.

When a friend asked me to teach him some python the most stressful part for him was setting up the editor, understanding the command line and how an API worked as well. Like the author he grasped fundamental python pretty quickly.

I think there's still no really good solution to make the whole process appealing. You can have people write puzzle solutions which circumvents the API and documentation issue but doesn't produce a real project, you can give them an IDE which avoids the command line but doesn't teach much and often is too complicated for a simple script, and so on but there's always some nasty issue for beginners in the process.

<comment><USER11> The Lazarus IDE short circuits most of these problems and can quickly build some very "real" feeling apps that can solve real problems for people just learning to code.

It is object pascal (with the attendant quirks) but it seems to be code-ish enough that people can transfer on to more modern languages without too much fuss.

[https://www.lazarus-ide.org/](https://www.lazarus-ide.org/)

<comment><USER12> Jeff Duntemann has uploaded a draft of his upcoming ebook, _FreePascal from Square One_ , a revised version of his earlier books on Turbo Pascal and Borland Pascal:

 _The book's mission is to be what Assembly Language Step By Step is to assembly language: An absolute beginner's tutorial on programming in Pascal. This includes people who have not yet learned what programming is and have never written a line of code in their lives._

[http://www.contrapositivediary.com/?p=4034](http://www.contrapositivediary.com/?p=4034)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >For the very first time I began to suspect that coding really was an art, and would reward examination.

It certainly is. Back in the day, software developers were called "authors."

>BookOmatic9000

That's ... just ... horrible. Yea, naming things is tough.

Anyway, good luck. I've been doing it since 3rd grade in the 80s, and it's still interesting. Except Javascript; that's the opposite of interesting.

<comment><USER14> I second the comment on javascript. I hate the language so much I keep hitting refresh daily on webassembly to monitor its penetration. Javascript is just a joke and like everything that makes no sense it gets the votes from the industry.

<comment><USER15> Hm. Have you taken the time to learn all the new features and develop something with them? Most people who work with JavaScript these days seem to like it quite a lot, myself included. Since ES6 released it's become a solid language with a few strange quirks, whereas it used to be a crappy language with a few useful features.

<comment><USER16> ES6 is really nice but it's still JavaScript so it's untyped and therefore much less pleasant to work with at any kind of scale than, say, Java+IntelliJ which is like butter. Not sure which static typed languages will be WebAssembly-able, though? Go? Rust?

<comment><USER17> JS isn't "untyped", it's _dynamically_ typed. And this is absolutely not a problem at scale if your development practices are up to scratch - or at least, not a bigger problem than the myriad of other design tradeoffs that every major language has to deal with.

Static typing is massively overvalued. It has non-zero value, but it's a _tradeoff_ with other things, and the amount of importance that people tend to place on it is absolutely out of proportion with the _actual_ value it provides.

EDIT: This extends beyond just 'static typing', as well. The design of programming languages is an exercise in tradeoffs, and people rarely take the time to understand the tradeoffs introduced by their pet language feature, instead presenting it as some inherently ideal thing where any language that doesn't have it must _therefore_ be bad.

<comment><USER13> It's not scaling issue, it's a refactoring / maintenance issue. Weakly typed languages cost much more to maintain because you can't have good refactoring tools.

In a strongly typed language, if I want to rename a parameter that is used in 20 places, I can hit "Rename," rename it, and it will rename all 20 instances with perfect precision, and that's it. With weakly typed languages, you have to search and replace, which is much more prone to error. This is much more of an issue for JS applications that are much larger than just doing some stuff on a page.

I agree, it's a tradeoff. Many languages these days can do both. The best is strongly typed until you are dealing with JSON or something of that nature.

<comment><USER17> There is absolutely no reason why this wouldn't be possible in a dynamically typed language. I'm in the process of building such a tool for JS, in fact.

You don't need static typing to do codebase-wide renaming, it just makes it a little easier to _build_ the refactoring tools, but since that is a one-time cost it's not really a particularly important factor in the language design. Other language design decisions have much more influence on this development cost, too, such as reassignability and scoping rules.

"Strong typing" is also something totally different from "static typing" \- I'm not sure why you're bringing it up here. The two are not interchangeable terms.

EDIT: Actually, doesn't Webstorm _already_ do such mass-renaming for JS?

EDIT 2: I also object to the use of the word 'refactoring' to refer exclusively to renaming variables. Proper refactoring involves _much_ more work, most of which isn't automatable regardless of the language you're using.

<comment><USER16> > You don't need static typing to do codebase-wide renaming.

But you do. WebStorm isn't magical. It can't understand your untyped code like it can understand typed code.

The more I'm reading your comments on this thread the more I'm not sure you've ever used a static typed language with a good IDE. If I am correct, I think it makes more sense for you to try Java/IntelliJ and then weigh in on this subject. You may have a very different opinion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Younger Adults Make Up Big Portion of Coronavirus Hospitalizations in U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html <comment><USER2> >> New C.D.C. data showed that nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54.

To be more specific:

>> Among 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized, 9% were aged ≥85 years, 26% were aged 65–84 years, 17% were aged 55–64 years, 18% were 45–54 years, and 20% were aged 20–44 years. Less than 1% of hospitalizations were among persons aged ≤19 years (Figure 2). The percentage of persons hospitalized increased with age, from 2%–3% among persons aged ≤9 years, to ≥31% among adults aged ≥85 years. (Table).

More to the point:

>> The cases described in this report include both COVID-19 cases confirmed by state or local public health laboratories as well as those with a positive test at the state or local public health laboratories and confirmation at CDC. No data on serious underlying health conditions were available. Data on these cases are preliminary and are missing for some key characteristics of interest, including hospitalization status (1,514), ICU admission (2,253), death (2,001), and age (386).

From the report:

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm...](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm6912e2_w)

I don't really get why the 20-54 age range is reported as one category in the NYT article when they're reported as separate categories in the CDC report. Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the article groups 20-54 because some people believe that only older people are much affected by the disease. They picture hospitals filled with the elderly. However, the data shows here that if you visited a US hospital filled with these COVID-19 patients that close to 40% of them would actually be younger people.

The article is not claiming that 20-54 year olds with the disease have a 40% chance requiring hospitalization. The stats quoted also do not show that the 20-44 or 45-54 cohorts have a 20% chance of requiring hospitalization. Instead, it's saying that the 20-54 cohort makes up close to 40% of the people who require hospitalization.

I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-54) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-54|need hospital) ~= 40%

The point is that it's not only the elderly who are affected here. They may be most at risk, and most likely to die even with hospitalization, but even younger people get sick enough to require hospitalization, without which the fatality rate of that cohort may rise as well. If we don't "flatten the curve" then adults of all ages may not get the hospitalization they need and start dying.

(edit: corrected age bracket from 20-64 to 20-54)

<comment><USER2> >> The article is not claiming that 20-64 year olds with the disease have a 40% chance requiring hospitalization.

The article subtitle says:

"nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54."

>> I.e. I think you have the probability conditional backward. It's not P(need hospital|age 20-64) ~= 40%. Instead it's P(age 20-64|need hospital) ~= 40%

The article is not making any such formal distinction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment asked:

>> Would it weaken the arcile's point to report that 20-44 year olds and 45-54 year olds both had around 20% chance of being hospitalised?

But I think that's unfair to the article. The data are not showing that 20% of age 20-44 are hospitalized (which is how I read your question). Rather the data say that 20% of the hospitalized are age 20-44. In fact, the article does report that explicitly in the 6th paragraph:

 _In the C.D.C. report, 20 percent of the hospitalized patients and 12 percent of the intensive care patients were between the ages of 20 and 44, basically spanning the millennial generation._

So the article is being fair to the report, it is just summarizing the report data in the lede.

<comment><USER2> >> The data are not showing that 20% of age 20-44 are hospitalized (which is how I read your question).

That is clearly not what I say. I quoted the CDC report that clarifies that a) 20% of those hospitalised were in the age range 20-44 and 18% in the range 45-54 and that b) that is only those for whom there is age data, which were only a small proportion of all confirmed cases. Please give me the benefit of the doubt that I know how to read English. At the very least I must have read and understood the passage I quoted!

The article is pulling the CDC data this way and that and tries to argue that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisations from the US", but there is no reason to base such a claim on the CDC data _and there is no such claim in the CDC report_. The Times article simply mashed up some of the data in the CDC report to make a sensational title. My comment suggests that, if they want to attach a probability to the hospitalisation of different age ranges, they should not try to aggregate the CDC age ranges just to get to that "almost 40%" and instead use the best approximation that can be derived from the CDC data, which is about 20% for those in each age range, 20-44 and 45-54.

And you are pulling my comment this way and that to show ... I'm not sure what. Do you agree with the article, that "younger adults make up [a] big proportion of coronavirus hospitalisation from the US"? If not, what exactly are you disagreeing with in my comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the definition of "sick enough to be hospitalized"? Given the over- abundance of caution, I would imagine a good number of people with positive tests are admitted, monitored overnight, then released in the morning, without ever really showing much more than mild symptoms.

Tom and Rita Hanks were hospitalized. The worst of it, according to them was "a bit tired, some body aches... some chills. Slight fever too" Now he "feels the 'blahs' but has no fever."

[https://twitter.com/tomhanks/status/1237909897020207104](https://twitter.com/tomhanks/status/1237909897020207104)

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/18/tom-hanks- has-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/18/tom-hanks-has-the- blahs-rita-wilson-recover-from-coronavirus-australia)

<comment><USER4> Anecdotally from people talking on my local subreddits, very few people are getting testing at all unless they need serious medical attention. People with less severe cases just get sent home. They're only getting tested if they have confirmed contact with someone who tested positive, or recently returned from international travel. I guess that way we can pretend community spread doesn't exist.

The medical treatment that movie stars and NBA players are getting is not representative of the average American's experience.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not just the elderly who will die if the system is overwhelmed. Nearly 40% of those that are sick enough to require hospital care are between the ages of 20 and 64[1]. If everyone is getting it at the same time and there's not enough health care to go around, those 20-64 year olds will be dying too.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. As of March 18th in Italy 8.3% of healthcare workers are infected and several older doctors have already died. That's bad for everyone in all age groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious about comorbidities in those below 65 that were hospitalized. The US generally leads the world in a lot of those health problems that predict poor outcomes if you get COVID19

</comment><comment><USER7> That's expected. All the service industry workers are in that age range and can't afford to skip work because of some coronavirus.</comment>


How Larry Page killed Google... - johnx123-up http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1628031

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the Support page is outdated? (Maps Labs is now a shortcut on the bottom left of the page.)

I just reported the problem via the short survey linked on the page. Let's see how long it takes to fix it...</comment>


Tell HN: Quick and free SSL hosting? Remember Dropbox... - <AUTHOR>

I was working on integrating a custom iframe tab in a Facebook app, and was having a lot of trouble displaying it to users browsing FB with SSL enabled. I don't have a server with an SSL certificate, and didn't want to pay for a new host or bother with getting a certificate.<p>You know who does have an SSL certificate? Dropbox. It's certainly a hack, but you can serve the iframe document from your public folder, and it works really well. There are bandwidth caps (10GB/day unpaid, 250GB/day paid - https://www.dropbox.com/help/45), but it could be a great solution for some situations. <comment><USER2> Neat hack, but certificates can be had for free nowadays[1,2].

[1] E.g. startssl.com.

[2] Of course, this means that the CA system is broken - you can't do any serious validation for $0.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat hack! If you want a similar solution for something a bit more dynamic, all the <http://pagekite.net/> sub-domains are SSL-enabled by default.

You run whatever HTTP server you like, PageKite operates as a front-end and handles SSL. The connection between your server and the PageKite front-end is encrypted as well.

Like Dropbox, there are bandwidth limits on the PageKite service, but for heavy users we'd be pretty open to negotiating - our public price structure is more meant for personal sites and prototyping. OTOH, for something like a Facebook app, 1GB probably goes a very long way.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about App Engine or S3 if you're just serving static files?

</comment><comment><USER5> They could stop serving your content at any moment though... Not a very robust solution.

<comment><USER6> Agreed! Never trust a third party for your content.

<comment><USER3> That's a strange attitude.

I don't see how a paid Dropbox account is somehow riskier than a leased vserver. As long as you abide by the ToS, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I love you</comment>


Koch Industries - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries <comment><USER2> I keep hearing Americans refer to these boys as the "coke brothers". Is that a jab at their petroleum cracking activities producing massive amounts of coke, or do they actually call themselves the "coke brothers"?

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia is useful here:

> _" The Koch family (/koʊk/ KOHK) ..."_

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

<comment><USER2> That was the first place I looked, and by its descriptive nature it is indeed useful for ascertaining that people do in fact say "coke brothers". But the question asked was what the actual Koch brothers say.</comment></comment></comment>


Another YC "Clone": Launchbox Opens Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.launchboxdigital.com/apply-online.html

<comment><USER2> Looks way more "MBA-oriented" than YC. Still, the more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER3> Hell yeah the more the merrier. There's no way tiny yc can support the huge number of capable people out there who's talents are going to waste. That's becoming more obvious every cycle.

Edit: unless they really screw it up and scare away investors. Still, I am impatient to see angel funding to less well-connected people expand at a higher rate. Even risks considered, I welcome the yc clones.

<comment><USER4> That's not true so far. We've never rejected a group because we didn't have room. If we keep getting more good applicants each cycle, we'll keep accepting more, till something breaks. Then we'll fix that and keep going. (This m.o. freaks out Jessica, but Rtm and Trevor and I keep assuring her that this is how you scale systems.)

<comment><USER2> There could be people who belong to the set "talents are going to waste" and who might make a go of it that, however, don't belong to the set that you consider "really good". At least logically it makes sense that, being human, your judgment is not infallible and that some good ones might have slipped between the cracks. Having some other places to go, even if they're not as good as the original is good, and validates the original idea. I think the only thing to worry about might be that if there were so many really bad ones out there that it taints the whole lot by association, but that doesn't seem highly likely to me.

<comment><USER4> I was replying specifically to "There's no way tiny yc can support the huge number of capable people." I'm not saying there are no advantages to having multiple sources of seed funding, just that our inability to scale isn't one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Washington DC!!!! I was reading along, a little worried by the judicial fire power of the lead founder (they could have some strange fine-print that you sign that gives away something you didn't realize at some future time.) and then say that "you must move to Washington DC for 12 weeks! Wow.

<comment><USER6> Ah, then the key to acceptance is to name your company "General" something.

It does bring up a key point, though. The contacts that you make there are going to be generally government affiliated, which is fine if that's the kind of interest you're going for. Personally, even though I left a lot of friends behind around BWI, I have no desire to go back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing that YC has that no other's can get, Paul Graham. It only makes sense that the seed funding companies are headed by people who've created products in the same area that their potential applicants are in.

PG made a web application, which is why I think the majority of successful companies out of YC (from what I've seen) are web application companies. The leaders of YC know how to encourage the growth and profitability of web applications.

This "YC Clone" has quite a bit of business big wigs, but only a few technical types (AOL and Xfire come to mind). It seems like these would be the people who recommend that you hire a "businessman" CEO asap, accept millions more than you need in funding, and sell enterprise-oriented products only.

Really, who wants to make another AOL?

</comment><comment><USER8> Jeez, they copied the YC application questions just like Techstars did.

<comment><USER9> TechStars: 14 Questions

YC: 30 Questions

LaunchBox: 42 Questions

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> its been open for a while now

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> On one hand, I can't help but think that these YC "clones" are lesser versions of YC. Maybe I'm biased because of what I have learned here.

OTOH, so what if they're just as good (or almost as good)? If others find success some other way, so much the better for everyone. As anyone who has found success can tell you, there's plenty to go around.</comment>


Narcissists and Psychopaths Are More Likely to Refuse to Wear Masks, Research - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/narcissists-psychopaths-face-mask-requirement-mandate-social-distancing-covid-19-coronavirus-1519732 <comment><USER2> clickbait</comment>


The Curse of Analytics and the Big Data Hype - <AUTHOR> http://www.klaviyo.com/blog/2012/07/16/the-curse-analytics-big-data-hype/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting a little tired of these succinct blog posts which I think I'm going to start calling "toilet confessionals"; someone gets some grandiose epiphany while sitting on the can, and then bangs out a few paragraphs for a blog -- complete with massive hand-waving and over-simplifications (such as using shallow metaphors like comparing a business activity to a Snickers bar) -- and then pats themself on the back before calling it a done deal.

> Here's the problem – analytics are expensive. They take time, they take > knowledge, they take investment in analysis tools and data systems, and > crucially, they require we be willing to change our behavior based on what > we learn.

VERY broad generalization here; "analytics" is arguably the cheapest thing that you can do, unless you go and buy million-dollar software packages to do it for you. Nothing about analytics says that you must have your own private server farm, an enterprise copy of MicroStrategy (or w/e), and a building full of PHD's to get results.

> Moreover, analytics without purpose and no tie to decisions keep us from > focusing on the most important tasks ahead of us.

Oh, come on. Replace "analytics" with 1000 other words and the quip still fits; this isn't a revelation on analytics, it's a fact of productivity: you'll never get to where you're going if you don't know where it is that you want to end up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Certainly this reminds me of many of my past experiences in larger businesses. Analytics using bad methodology, producing untrustworthy statistics for the sake of having statistics. What a waste of money and productivity that is.

However, just because we think we know the answer doesn't mean we actually do, so I would strike that consideration off the list. Often it is good to measure what we already think we know so we can be sure we actually have evidence to back it up.</comment>


Code Academy Intro to Objects lesson 6 - <AUTHOR>

I have finished every lesson currently available in CodeAcademy except Intro to Objects lesson 6. There's something about it that I'm just not getting. Has anyone here solved it? I just need the full code that would be a successful answer so I can see it and learn from it, if anyone has it that'd be so awesome. If you don't want to post here email to firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> My phrasing of "has anyone here solved it" implied I think it's crazy difficult, I know it's not. I'm just not getting it. If anyone has the code that works for it, gosh darnit I'd love it. firstname.lastname@example.com if you wanna email it</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers? - <AUTHOR>

After reading the recent articles about the brewing war between google and newspapers, I am still unclear about one thing - why did it start in the first place?
Newspapers need more eyeballs reading them so that they can make more money. Google sends traffic to papers --> more traffic means more money. How does blocking google help newspapers make MORE money?
Can someone please explain this? Why did this war start in the first place? <comment><USER2> It started because the newspaper industry is looking for new ways to mitigate declining revenue, IMHO. If the newspaper industry was doing well, we _probably_ would be hearing about how they're giving away news to drive eyeballs to sites -- much like how they operated as a newspaper, not a news organization who publishes to the web.

Craigslist and eBay are the two standouts who rang the knell.

[http://news.cnet.com/Report-Craigslist-costing-newspapers- mi...](http://news.cnet.com/Report-Craigslist-costing-newspapers- millions/2100-1024_3-5505076.html)

My understanding is for years, the newspapers gave news away for near free, subsidized by advertising and in the black because of it. Take out the classifieds and you've removed a valuable service to the community and a major revenue source. Now, they're reduced to news organizations. Their revenue has been declining. Aggregators are the current scapegoat and one of the potential revenue modes.

Fifteen years ago, I had five choices for daily print news. My two local papers, the USA Today, NYT and the Wall Street Journal. Today, each of them compete against themselves and a litany of other "print" news. CNN, ABC, CBS, and your local TV stations are now "print" publishers too. The competition is even more fierce.

The news industry as a whole changed with the internet. You no longer need presses and trucks or 100,000 watt transmitters to distribute news. The sour economy only expedites this shift. Some will come out as agents of change. Others will fight to maintain what they had. These are the ones who are trying to plug something that started long before aggregators.

edit: good read -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506483>

<comment><AUTHOR> Good explanation. But how does blocking google help them make more money?

<comment><USER2> Blocking Google is a gambit to get aggregators (Google, others) to negotiate a licensing fee.

(Aggregator license revenue + site revenue + declining print revenue) > (site revenue + declining print revenue). It's a tourniquet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter Newspapers provide facts and opinion. The facts can't be copyrighted so anyone can repeat them. The opinion and the bias of any particular newspaper are noise not signal from the point of view of increasing the actual _information_ you have. Its the internet killing the newspapers, by unbundling what most customers want; entertainment, celebrity gossip, sports reporting, from what "serious journalists" go into journalism hoping to do, investigative reporting, political reporting, policy analysis, etc. Most people don't give a damn about any of this, but the institution of the newspaper means the advertisers who pay the salaries of everybody on the newspaper get the (large) audience of people who buy the paper for gossip and sport and the (small) one who buy it for policy wonkery, so there's a cross-subsidy. There are also bloggers who are much better than the vast majority of what you'll see in the papers. The average quality is lower, but the sample size is enormously bigger, and the variance is really rather large so the opinion niche is also threatened. And some people will do it excellently for free.

So the newspaper business model is dead. Facts can't be copyrighted, opinion is available for free, cross-subsidisation is no longer viable, and across the developed world the newspaper reading population is trending down. There are bright spots, like India, but most 1st world journalists are screwed.

So an entire industry is thrashing around with two choices;(a) die (b) Find an alternative business model. As the biggest, most profitable pure play internet company, shaking Google down is a better choice than resigning oneself to death. As such if you're looking for someone to get mad at, someone to negotiate with as if they're the Internet, they're the best bet.

<comment><USER3> _The facts can't be copyrighted so anyone can repeat them._

The AP would disagree with you, as they've got a number of old case precidents claiming that "hot news" is a property right, and that they own it.

[http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/news_alert/90yearold_la...](http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/news_alert/90yearold_law_used_in_ap_suit_against_content_site_109074.asp)

I predict that AP, along with the other aggregators such as AFP and Reuters will fall in line with the RIAA to buy legislation protecting their obsolete business models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Newspapers print paper. They aren't in the business of making websites. Just like buggy whip manufacturers, they're a relic of the past.

Associated Press, which is a collective of newspapers, is in the role of MPAA/RIAA, because they believe that they have ownership of facts. This isn't the first time they got into trouble about their business model:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._United_Stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._United_States)

<comment><USER4> Actually, buggy whip manufacturers are still in business:

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

I like to read my newspaper while eating lunch. Don't want to use a WiFi laptop for the same purpose. It doesn't fit very well on the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They've mostly been complaining about Google News (as if it were the source of all Google's revenue). They are also disappointed by the fact that Google seems to make money in the process of sending people their way.

The real issue with their cash flow is that printing a paper is not an efficient way to run a website. If you stop printing the papers, the operating costs are much much lower.</comment>


Cybercrimers stole $0.26M with 6 missed calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/how-6-missed-calls-left-mumbai-businessman-robbed-off-rs-1-86-crore-1972131?amp=1&akamai-rum=off <comment><USER2> For anyone not familiar with Indian currency naming and exchange that seems to translate to ~$265,500

</comment><comment><USER3> My phone is the single weakest link to life security.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Sim swap fraud through missed call_ : How is this done? How can it be prevented?</comment>


A Holographic Future - <AUTHOR> http://dain.io/post/117746721225/a-holographic-future

<comment><USER2> Whao man, that's pretty cool. VR vs holograms - i think holograms win.

</comment><comment><USER3> i wonder how these new technology will affect people's vision, but in that world there's no use for good vision since everything will be right in front of you</comment>


The Wait(list) Is Over: Appcelerator Platform 4.0 and Arrow Are Open to All - <AUTHOR> http://www.appcelerator.com/blog/2015/05/platform-4-0-and-arrow-are-open-to-all/

<comment><AUTHOR> By Jeff Haynie May 21, 2015 @ 12:20pm

Since introducing Appcelerator Arrow as part of our Platform 4.0 launch in early April, demand has been… big. How big? Well, at one point, requests for early access were coming in at a rate of 3,000 per hour!

Today I'm happy to invite one and all to try Arrow and the Appcelerator Platform—no more waiting list. Now, simply enter your email or GitHub ID and gain instant access to all the power of Platform 4.0.

In addition to Arrow, highlights of 4.0 include:

– Hyperloop Abstraction Layer (HAL): Our cross-platform, object-oriented C++ runtime library is the foundation for the Hyperloop and Ti.Next initiative. It provides seamless integration between C++ (i.e. native) and JavaScript languages.

–Apple WatchKit + support for Extensions: With 4.0, you can embed Share Extensions and WatchKit Extensions (built natively in Xcode) in Titanium apps.

–Support for Windows native apps: Currently in preview and leveraging HAL, the 4.0 release adds Windows (alongside iOS and Android) as a supported native format.

–Refreshed, integrated Q&A: We've refreshed and entirely redesigned Q&A support, to make finding answers to your questions easier and faster than ever.

–New Platform Marketplace: With Arrow, we're launching a brand new marketplace accessible to all Platform users, so that our huge ecosystem of customers, developers and partners will be able to sell or share reusable API components and data connectors alongside client app modules and extensions. –Appcelerator University: A comprehensive online source of videos, tips, tutorials, Q&A's and best practices to help you build great app experiences.

These capabilities help boost the speed and innovation of virtually any company or developer who's using mobility to reframe the way things get done. Check it out for yourself and see!</comment>


Talks gem now works on mac and linux and show notifications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ruby-talks/talks

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a small screencast about talks gem <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaUpwQMBvOY>

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice. I often miss error on long deploy, because I hide terminal window.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice one!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most important thing you learned at your last job? - <AUTHOR> We've seen things. We've seen companies scale. We've seen products get built. We've seen things we thought were amazing fail. We have learned culture, business, and tech lessons.<p>At your last position, or maybe the position before that, what was the most important thing that you learned? <comment><USER2> If you wish to climb the corporate ladder, stick in there when things get crazy. When mad shit is going down, when entire groups are being canned and chaos is reining, then that's when opportunity sometimes presents itself. Sometimes the last man (or woman) standing looks around a little later, when the dust has started to settle, and finds themselves to be the new leader.

<comment><USER3> Default? The two sweetest words in the English language!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone's feelings matters.</comment>


For Facebook Execs, More Money Means More Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404623,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Dvorak flagged on principle.

<comment><USER3> My favorite part is that he opens with two lines about what he hates about Facebook IPO stories. The rest of the article is, then, exactly one of those articles.

<comment><USER4> But at the same time it isn't. He's using "Facebook" purely as link bait and instead ranting about "people who got rich really quickly" and how they usually self destruct in some fashion or another. Facebook is never mentioned again after the first sentence. Rather pointless article, but then again, it is Dvorak.</comment></comment></comment>