Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-firing-its-human-editors/?tid=sm_fb <comment><USER2> Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites.

And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline created by right-wing websites. Something along the lines of "Obama lets immigrants across border to kill white people"...

I think tech culture's misguided desire to treat everyone "equally" creates a huge imbalance. You can't put the NYTimes in the same category as Breitbart. Just as you wouldn't compare it to "National Enquirer".

Edit: To keep my reply on topic, I am adding this thought: I think Facebook knew this would happen and that is why they had humans curated the trending list. I don't think they deserved the negative backlash, although I understand the slippery slope it creates.

<comment><USER3> Here's Glenn Greenwald, who can hardly be accused of being right-wing or a Trump supporter, on media bias:

        The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump,
        and preventing him from being elected president. I don't have an actual problem
        with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses
        such extreme dangers. But that doesn't mean that as a journalist, or even just
        as a citizen, that I am willing to go along with any claim, no matter how fact-free,
        no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous it could be, in order to bring
        Trump down.

Although he doesn't name them, it seems to me he's likely referring to the vary news outlets you would consider beyond reproach (say, NYT or WaPo). Does this perhaps make you reconsider your position?

EDIT: formatting.

<comment><USER4> This is extremely obvious if you are non-partisan. Right now, there are huge issues about Clinton just released by wikileaks[0] she said that she has a "public position" and a "private position" to placate a room full of bankers (Read: Hey guys I won't really do any of that Bernie Sanders stuff, I'm just saying it for votes)

CNN's top story: Trump said "grab her in the pussy" in 2005

[0][http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/top-10-hilla...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/top-10-hillary- clinton-scandals-exposed-wikileaks/)

<comment><USER5> One of the Wikileaks "scandals" in this article is that Hillary Clinton advocates "a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders".

Scandal? Come on, that's not a scandal, that a policy position. Personally, I agree with free trade in general, so I'm not scandalized by this "revelation" one bit.

<comment><USER4> >Scandal? Come on, that's not a scandal, that a policy position.

That is pretty clearly an endorsement for TPP (other leaks make this connection more obvious[0]). Hillary says she is not in favor of it, this seems to directly contradict that statement. Saying one thing behind closed doors and another in front of the voting public is a scandal to me.

[0][http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/leaked- email...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/leaked-emails- clinton-defending-tpp-late-june-2015/)

<comment><USER5> It is well known that Hillary Clinton was defending TPP as late as last year (and the "hemispheric common market" comment comes from 2013 -- [http://fortune.com/2016/10/11/clinton- wikileaks/](http://fortune.com/2016/10/11/clinton-wikileaks/)).

It is also well known that Hillary Clinton has sort-of kind-of changed her position in response to the Bernie Sanders left pull.

Yes, in my personal opinion it's probably not a strong pull, and Sanders voters who feel strongly against free trade / TPP / etc. are justified in feeling suspicious. But a speech from 2013 when she was openly promoting it doesn't exactly tell too much.

<comment><USER4> >But a speech from 2013 when she was openly promoting it doesn't exactly tell too much.

What about emails from last year? Consider that with the 'private position' and 'pubic position' comment and you are a fool if you think she will do anything she claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You're going to have to break the Turing Test before you get good automated content curation. There will always be error.

People are worried about bias. I'm skeptical that humans have the ability to be politically unbiased on an individual level. Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiased. Information aggregators should have their members clearly spell out their positions on popular issues in their bios (an openness that should be a part of the responsibility of being an information aggregator) and there should be "block designed" hiring around these issues to maximize political diversity and reduce bias _in aggregate_. Otherwise network effects are just going to cluster people with similar opinions around each other.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER7> >Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiased.

You're falling into the trap of American politics by making every issue a binary choice. For instance, I find the abortion debate to be such a non-issue and if someone asks me what my stance is, I respond by saying I haven't done enough research or soul-searching to form a coherent, rational position on this issue.

And I probably will not ever get around to doing this research. I'm ok not having a position on certain issues. I wish this was more acceptable. Instead, the US political duopoly and it's first to the post voting encouraged big tent parties who more or less have to agree on most issues. I'm going to paraphrase Rumsfeld's brilliant turn of phrase here, there are known unknowns, and there's power in accepting that.

<comment><USER8> You should note that you have the luxury to even consider the issue of abortion because you've already been born.

<comment><USER9> They are also lucky their parents met, so your point is?

<comment><USER10> Tends to be a less inflammatory 'pro life' way of saying, "it's easy to be undecided when the decision isn't about you being murdered." Or something provocative along those lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Today's news presented to me by Facebook includes Putin prepping for a Third World War by having diplomats' families return home.

My understanding of it is that he made some pronouncement that their kids are best off returning to Russia for a good, traditional nationalistic education - which has somehow warped into something more apocalyptic. Certainly, Facebook didn't originate that interpretation, but it's helping to propagate a story that's only being reported by tabloid outlets; there is no other facet of the rumour being presented by more measured and reasonable outlets.

<comment><USER12> There's a lot more back story. [Here is a video]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo)) of Putin explaining that we're essentially on the brink of a major world war, and that the average citizen in the western world is oblivious to it. (Or just look up "Putin's warning" and pick your outlet.) Couple that with Hillary's insane anti-Russian position and things could get ugly really quickly.

<comment><USER13> Would you rather pay the Danegeld and let Russia run amok invading its neighbors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand why facebook repeatedly tries (and fails) to become a news source. They can make more money by being the world's watering hole, there is no need (and not much money imo) for going after the role of newspapers/tv. Given that their offering is exclusively popularity-driven, the quality of their news offering will always be less-than, or equal-to a very bad tabloid. If they are looking for political power, they already have it by controlling communication channels.

<comment><USER15> I think their long term plan is to literally take over the entire internet, by replacing every feature of every successful category of website. The free Facebook-net for India and Africa, this Facebook for enterprise thing, the embedded games, video... I fully expect to see Facebook for schools soon, followed by diplomas and then degrees granted by a Facebook online university.

Maybe they will even try to roll out a voting app some day? It could start as a polling app, and then slowly take over the voting booths in areas where they can buy the necessary permissions. Those governments that grant them control over their elections would celebrate increased voter turnout, and accept a massive campaign contribution (in "premium" Facebook ads) for being the party that opened the door. Jesus, now that I think about it, we could actually end up with a real technocracy in a generation or two, run by... Facebook. That is really, really scary. Brawndo.

<comment><USER16> I don't think such a system would be a technocracy - it would seem to be more along the lines of a Corporatocracy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy))

<comment><USER15> I guess. But the political moderators in the corporatocracy would all get laid off once they finished training the AIs. Then it would count as a technocracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that anyone on the internet is an actual human being. Especially so if this entity decides what I'm reading and why. I want to see the source to ranking algorithms, input sources and moderation activity. Not that I don't trust the Zuck.

<comment><USER18> Nice try, bot!

<comment><USER19> In all seriousness we probably already have AI companies subtlety testing their software on these boards =]

<comment><USER20> I can all but guarantee there are AI comments and voting rings active here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get it?

Are they trending stories or not?

Why would they not include them even if they were fake, they are still trending?

Should FB lie to us?

<comment><USER22> The question is why FB is trying to be a news source - that's nowhere near the expected purpose of this site. No one registers on FB just to read news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know I might be shooting myself in the foot here by posting this.

I got so annoyed by Facebook's banal trending news suggestions that I wrote a script to flag every trending news item as offensive (on the premise that it is the flag most likely to have lasting effect). I never see trending news on Facebook anymore after running that for a while.

</comment><comment><USER24> Working as intended; trending is trending.

<comment><USER25> very good point! Indeed, if fake news are trending, they should be on Trending. Its a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hate trends. They're inherently manipulative regardless of whether the topics are selected by a human editor or an algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER27> The real lesson here is that the industry is still really bad at AI. We're good enough at it to build useful tools for tasks where failure isn't too big of a problem but once it is, you want a human filter.

</comment><comment><USER28> There's a peculiar detail in this story.

It refers to "the 'Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' — a discredited libertarian medical organization."

1\. First, why the quotes around the name of the organization? Is this not its actual name? 2\. Discredited? By whom? Isn't "discredited" an objective judgement -- and thus, one the author should support with a rationale? 3\. Further, it's odd that of all the examples mentioned, the AAPS is the only one not linked to. Why? The release must be online, if Facebook linked to it.

Curious.

<comment><USER29> Because they promote objective untruth: HIV doesn't cause AIDS, abortions cause breast cancer, vaccines cause autism, and so on. They're a low-quality organisation who use a fancy name to impress the impressionable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Glad I'm not the only one who noticed this, although what tipped me off was a trending story about the Warriors wanting to trade Andre Iguodala for Iman Shumpert, which was based on a blog post by a Cleveland high schooler (for those who don't follow basketball, it's a completely ludicrous idea).

</comment><comment><USER31> What is the error rate of fake news over verified (real) news? A 5% margin of error could be acceptable. A 50% error rate would indicate a serious problem.

> As part of a larger audit of Facebook's Trending topics, the Intersect > logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the > workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five > trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly > inaccurate.

Yes, but out of how many Trending stories in total? Eight fake stories over a three week period seems like an acceptable rate of error.

Trending stories are popular stories. A fake story has an element of satire. These stories could be popular because of the satire (and the subsequent humor). Trending does not imply veracity.

<comment><USER32> This raises the really interesting point that _news doesn 't have a post mortem process._ It would be a very interesting experiment to, say, revisit a sampling of top stories at some interval (say 3-6 months) and compare the _reported_ facts ( _and omissions_ ) with the actual reality.

From such elements as "did names and places get accurately reported?" to "was the underlying narrative correct?". Quotes and attributions might be a particular element. Predictions (particularly in financial reporting) as well.

This needn't be every article, but some weighted sample based on a story's placement, impact, subsequent references, etc.

<comment><USER33> > _This raises the really interesting point that news doesn 't have a post > mortem process._

Great idea, and what higher education should be doing for research. Generally there's no process.

But personal experience is that whenever I have been involved in a situation about which news has been made, the outcome has always been that the reporting is somewhat sloppy, inaccurate, and agenda-driven.

This is with so-called reputable journalism; "fake news" is then even worse.

So, even if I do a non-professional post-mortem on my own, I see that the news was not completely healthy. And pointing this out to journalists generally makes them just angry. Even if you are completely polite, they block you on Twitter, etc. If you comment a news article in reputable newspapers' web sites to correct errors with good sources, it's not unusual that the comment is moderated away.

<comment><USER32> I need to think myself on just what metrics ought be used. I find, for example, looking at fact-checking efforts, that the focus is often at too fine a level of detail. That by focusing minutely on facts, the big-picture accuracy (narrative) is often lost.

The question of how to deal with _missing narrative or omitted detail_ is also huge. There are efforts underway in that regard, usually in the legal field. The Innocence Project would be an example.

I can think of a great deal of follow-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion which have turned up since, and in particular numerous instances of people caught blatently lying.

The public though seems mostly to move on. I feel that's a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The media hunt against Facebook backfires and Hacker News is very much part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think it's an experiment. A lot of people actually use facebook as their sole source of news... Especially the younger generation. This is quite scary because Facebook's algorithms are actually acting as a filter on top of already existing media filters. Before you know it the chain will be so deep it will be hard to know where anything came from.

Another problem is similar to the reddit problem. Both the AI and your customization can create an atmosphere where you literally get served only opinions you want to hear. I actually think a more random algorithm would be more beneficial than what's trending.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe Facebook's human-curated news content had a political slant because much of the fake news out there has the opposite political slant. Perhaps an unintended consequence?

Or perhaps it's just that the fake news that is shared on Facebook has a particular slant, thus removing that content gave the appearance of a preference for a different political slant on the part of the curators.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why can't they just filter on the domain level and throw out fake domains entirely?

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't want AI _or_ humans deciding what I read. I want to choose what I read. I would like to just turn off "trending" whatever the fuck altogether. Give me back the Facebook that was just content from my friends...

</comment><comment><USER39> I have the entire div blocked because I'm terrified of cherry picked news

</comment><comment><USER40> It's a sad indicator really. The fact that it's trending means a lot of people were posting it. It's hard to tell how many actually BELIEVE it, but I'm guessing it's the majority.

</comment><comment><USER41> Nothing surprising from a company that notoriously fumbles removal of content (minor nudity gets removed while violence, abuse, fake pages and graphical gore (not in a journalistic sense) remains)

</comment><comment><USER42> Humans are meant to program things. Life is meant to measure and judge. Software isn't very good at that yet because we've yet to figure out why we're good at it.

</comment><comment><USER43> It was never very good to start with, when the whole thing turned to garbage when they fired the curation team I took that opportunity to block the element using ublock.

</comment><comment><USER44> So this is a lot like what Google experienced for a long time. Its algorithms would get manipulated.

However, would you prefer Google to _handpick_ (let's forget about the volume of manual labor for now) which sites get to be at the top? Or would you rather just keep improving those algorithms?

I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

<comment><USER45> > I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser > extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

And they will if their future power relies on the specific candidate, which is ironically also lobbied (paid) by them.

I don't want to sound like a hippy in the 1960's, but if there ever was a need for the "fuck the corporations" slogans, it's now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> still better than having some people filter the news according to their political views.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems like a good fit given that people are maintaining fake friendships and fake amazing lives on their timelines. [edit] yes I am bitter from past experience.

</comment><comment><USER48> Fake news that people happen to be sharing at that moment. Fake it or not that is what people is interested in and what is trending.

</comment><comment><USER49> The next billion dollar startup will be a self-reprogramming, employee-less AI company which can self-produce memetic lolcat videos and celebtity gossip. >.< Unfortunately it all comes crashing down when the Twitter bot becomes obsessed with Godwin's law tropes (never happened before) and starts a political action committee (PAC) to advance it's self-directed agenda... not much different from the human world. Instead of firing as in human employees, the PR supervision process will say the Twitbot was "retrained from scratch" (reformatted) and instructed to ignore some taboo topics. ;)

In other news, humans now have even fewer jobs to do... all those idle people without jobs (ie, truck/taxi drivers, pilots, ship captains, BS office jobs) are completely, harmless, disorganized and bear absolutely no ill will against the vast majority of new wealth trickling upwards at an accelerating rate, into fewer hands.

<comment><USER8> You posted it as ironic, but after reading your idea there are 5 teams feverishly working on it. :) By the way, how does lolcat-aio-matic.com sounds to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fake news are better than biased news.

<comment><USER29> In what way? Explain and justify, please.

<comment><USER14> Fake news are easier to detect. Bias is always subtle and insidious.

<comment><USER29> And yet we see the general readers swallowing fake news as if it were truth, and even retorting that they don't care if it's fake, it's the kind of thing those people would do.

This is out of the scope of news and into the scope of propaganda, and it does matter.

<comment><USER14> They are very rarely "actual fake news", but usually untruths presented in a way that is impossible to falsify. At least to my experience. Perhaps you could cite a news item that survives but is proved to not have happeend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The Washingtonpost has repeatedly published fake news since forever.

</comment><comment><USER51> Yeah, all because people wanted to scream "bias." Sadly the community here seemed apt to agree with it, but I definitely have my opinions on that. Quoted from a previous thread:

>Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship.

But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship.

People in aggregate are terrible at curation. You really do need editors for a reason. But Facebook should have been extremely blunt about the situation before. The fact that its curators let through more "liberal" sources than conservative ones, doesn't necessarily mean they're biased. It really could just be that conservative sources are far more likely to not be at a high enough standard to be posted -- which seems to be the case given the examples in the article.

<comment><USER52> You know what they say: Facts have a well known liberal bias!

<comment><USER53> I think that may be true, but only because what is widely considered and presented as fact by the most mainstream sources of information actually have a significant center left bias. I think it's generally missed because people confuse bias as having to do with having a more extreme political position, when you can actually be biased in favor of any part of the political spectrum including the center.

<comment><USER54> As someone with a left-leaning bias, I agree with your assessment, if only in the sense that the loudest and most powerful voices in the most reputable newsrooms tend to also have (implicit) left-leaning biases. I would love for their to be a conservative equivalent (this was the reason for the founding of Fox News pre-Ailes: get a bunch of conservatives in the newsroom and have them do their jobs to the best of their ability, following an implicit rather than explicit bias).

Does any equivalent exist today (eg trying to report as an outlet run by conservatives instead of a conservative outlet)?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mixonset – Lazy DJ app AI-mixes playlists with beatmatched transitions - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/mixonset-your-personal-dj/id1477282813 <comment><USER2> Interesting! Would love to see it in action. Is there a demo of f it at a party?</comment>


Founders: What do you hate MOST about hiring? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a new concept to identify highly relevant candidates through semantic matching. It works pretty well, but I wondered, if there is anything in particular, other than digging through batches of inhomogeneous resumes trying to find the "skills" section - that you, as startup founders or experienced entrepreneurs really HATE about the recruiting process? Thanks guys. <comment><USER2> My biggest problem is finding others who are just as motivated and passionate about the project as I am, or at least close to that level of enthusiasm. I'm sure every founder comes to a point where it's less about that and more about finding someone who can get the job done right and is a good contributor.

<comment><AUTHOR> i like your comment, since I have been through the same blues. it's hard to excite people when they feel they haven't been part of the core idea from day one. would you say, that, in your case, finding trustworthy partners is a more crucial task in the first year than finding people who are really good at what they do? or is that an impossible statement in the frist place? trying to wrap my head around these problems to refine my concept a bit. all comments like joshua's are greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER2> I would agree that finding and building a team in the first year, first MONTH if possible, is critical to building a core foundation of enthusiastic people who love what their doing. After that, you really just have to do your best to find team members who can do a good job and can be motivated to at least appreciate what their a part of. At that point, it's up to the founders to keep everyone focused and motivated.</comment></comment></comment>


How often do you check to see if you're getting better at coding? - <AUTHOR> http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2012/11/21/baselines/ <comment><USER2> I look back at what I was doing 6 months ago every once in a while. If I'm not embarrassed, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER3> ^this. "I was really really wrong when I started using blocks. I don't do this now" is something I had to say about a project that got put on hold shortly after I got to start using block based networking in Objective-C

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have only been programming for about 2 years, but already in that time I have noticed an incredible amount of changes when I look back at my old code. Some of the things that I did back then were so dumb I'm not sure how it ever worked. In general though every time I look back at my old code I realize how far I have come and it encourages me to keep pushing myself to write better code with good style. It also really is, as the article says, a humbling experience. Even though I am still relatively new to coding it shows that I still have a lot more to learn and that I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was back then.

</comment><comment><USER5> Often I get surprised at seeing old projects (mostly websites) still live, get by and work well, but inspecting the code will show the backend is dreadful.

More importantly, it also reinforces a mantra that you only need to build things that are "good enough" for your use case.

<comment><USER6> Whenever I'm stuck fixing a horrid mess of buggy legacy code, it always strikes me that the code was someone else's idea of "good enough".

That's why I no longer subscribe to that mantra.

<comment><USER7> I think it's still a valid viewpoint. "Good enough" is an opinion and just like all opinions, some are more valid than others. There's a range between "good enough" and "perfect" where plenty of very good products exist.

Also, there's the possibility that the horrid mess of buggy legacy code (been there, I feel your pain) wasn't someone's idea of "good enough" in a technical sense but rather "good enough so that my boss doesn't notice." I've had the displeasure of working with those individuals before. They don't care about getting better at coding—they care about flying under the radar and collecting their biweekly paycheck.

<comment><USER6> That's true. "Good enough" can range from "it runs" to "written in a well- structured, maintainable manner". Most people choose to stop at #1, and that's fine. Until you have to fix the damn thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is something reassuring about looking back and seeing how much you have improved over time. I think it is in our nature to keep optimising and trying new ideas. My coding style is constantly changing over time. I hope I never stop improving because in a way that is what drives me to keep programming.

As for finding bad code, I wrote something today I was not proud of (doing it right would be a large rewrite of a common component... too big a job for today) and knew if I look back on it in the future I would be embarrassed about it, so I wrote myself an apology in the comments.

<comment><USER9> > I think it is in our nature to keep optimising and trying new ideas.

I wish there were more people in my office who thought like you and I.

<comment><USER10> Get a new office then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Today was the inaugural meeting of a software craftsmanship group at my company. One of our members had a strong concern about metrics for measuring improvement. My response was that "improvement" or "getting better" is too nebulous a concept, so it depends on how you measure adherence to a set of values.

Does anyone have a more concrete approach to metrics of improvement? Or a better way to articulate this concept?

<comment><USER6> Same way we determine what constitutes obscenities: "I know it when I see it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not so easy to tell. In the early '90s I did a lot of x86 assembly. I haven't done any assembly in at least 15 years or so. Looking back I can't really tell if it's good or not. And if I tried to do any assembly at this point I'm sure it would be awful. On the flip side, back then I didn't know any javascript so I supposed I've improved 100% in that area.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have kept all my code from when I first started coding. Plenty of nostalgia there. I'm surprised I haven't lost it yet!

Even over the course of 12 months I can see improvements in my approaches problem solving, code structure, and where I got lazy, haha.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Get into Statistics? - <AUTHOR> My ultimate goal is to become proficient in statistical learning (you may know it as the boring part of ML). I've read a lot of good things about Introduction to statistical learning, but that book assumes a level of statistical knowledge that I do not possess - specifically, it throws around word like t-distribution, degree of freedom, p-value etc.<p>I'd like to understand those basics before I get deeper into the book. Is there some other preliminary textbook which would introduce me to those concepts? <comment><USER2> something called mathematical statistics and data analysis was my college textbook. it covers those things but it's a tough read and i did not like it. now actually, statistics is already quite advanced math. you might want to try learning probability theory and measure theory first as they are considered prerequisites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thanks, I'll be on the lookout for that one. I have some basic linear algebra and analysis under my belt, not too much probability nor measure theory, though. I hoped there might be some way to introduce the concepts in an intuitive manner (and as much rigor and detail as possible on this level) while maybe leaving some of the proofs or harder parts out.

Most of the books I've seen are either "monkey see, monkey do" or rigorous mathematical gibberish, but nothing in between.</comment></comment>


Colleges want professors to stay mum on student Covid-19 cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/08/31/colleges-want-professors-stay-mum-student-covid-19-cases <comment><USER2> They would, they are sensitive about cash, all about cash - let them die in silence... the ultimate conflict of interest...</comment>


Need money for plastic surgery   - <AUTHOR> http://www.gofundme.com/4h0kws Good people could you help me to share my page? i really need help and for 20 biggest promoters i promise to pay $50 each. Please help me. <comment><USER2> What you need is a change of mind, not a plastic surgery. Your nose looks perfectly normal to me, but I suspect there might be an issue with the attitude. You need to convince yourself that it's a good thing.

In reality no one notices your nose. Women are like VC's, they invest in your personality, not in what your product is.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> please help. if you cant donate, at least share it.</comment>


The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind - <AUTHOR> http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/the-older-mind-may-just-be-a-fuller-mind/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&emc=eta1&_r=1&

<comment><USER2> These studies drive me crazy. Maybe I'm wrong, but I always feel like some researcher got busy with a dataset and a copy of R, saw some correlation and then wrote a blog post about how we're all doomed.

My personal experience is that I'm sharper at 40 than 20, I know more, and I learn more quickly because I've learned to be more efficient with my time. I cannot say the same about all of the other people I grew up with. Often, they're just too tired to read a book, learn a new instrument, write some code or (heaven forbid) start a company. They'd rather chill out and watch TV.

Which is fine, but if you're not using your noggin, it's not going to be as sharp as it was when you were being forced to use it in college.

<comment><USER3> My experience is pretty much the same as yours. I feel sharper in some ways. I definitely work much smarter than I did in my 20s by magnitudes.

Although, mildly annoying, I find myself more frequently going to another room to fetch something and forgetting what the thing was.

<comment><USER4> Wiser, sure. More productive and efficient, sure. But raw cognitive power to learn wholly new ideas/languages, no way.

<comment><USER2> I dunno.. most of the spoken languages that I've learned I picked up in my 30s (bits of japanese, chinese, swedish, irish). I also took up piano at 38 and can play reasonably well, having never played an instrument before in my life.

I would agree with misterjangles about memory. My 6 year old daughter can beat me the odd time in various memory games. When I do beat her, I think it's probably because I'm relying on strategy as well as memorization. But is my memory getting weaker because I can use strategy instead, or is it just some kind of natural decline?

<comment><USER5> I wonder too, is your daughter more able to completely focus on the game?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> crystallized knowledge (as measured by New York Times crosswords, for example) climbs sharply between ages 20 and 50 and then plateaus, even as the fluid kind (like analytical reasoning) is dropping steadily — by more than 50 percent between ages 20 and 70 in some studies._

That seems very strange, because it contradicts my own experience completely. As I grow older my ability to remember things gets worse, but my ability to understand and reason about things has gotten so much better it's not subtle at all.

Now, of course it is very possible that my sample size of 1 is slightly inadequate to draw any conclusions at all. But I would have expected that at least the direction of the trend would have to be the same for all individuals.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.granitenet.com.au/assets/images/Sjohnstone/my%20b...](http://www.granitenet.com.au/assets/images/Sjohnstone/my%20brain%20is%20full%20sm.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER8> That theory would predict that people on the same age, but with bigger vocabulary (or expertise in a particular domain) take more time to pick words (or make decisions in that domain) which is the opposite of what seems to happen in everyday life.

<comment><USER9> I find myself struggling more to pull a specific word out of memory than I did when I was younger. I have chalked that up to the amount of information held in my memory, and that my search algorithm isn't very efficient. Sometimes the answers to a question take days to bubble up out of my memory banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this imply that people who read more might end up having less mental agility earlier on in life?

The results seem scary. With how much information people take in now days (media is everywhere!), might mental agility be slowing down at an even earlier and earlier age?

<comment><USER11> Just some fun speculation - perhaps it means on average we're consuming the same amount of data no matter what we do (assuming full mental cognition; and with a +/\- ~25% variance depending on intensity of data consumption). So the hard-drive fills up regardless, with our choice being what the data consists of.

<comment><USER10> I think rate of data consumption can vary. For example, I consume a lot more information reading than if I am watching a TV sitcom. (Ignoring the multimedia aspects of TV, the actual amount of information acquired, and then processed, is going to be higher reading, for example, discussions on hacker news)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sharper now, but I was a lot more motivated when I was 20.

</comment><comment><USER13> So basically, evidence for declining mental ability with age + fancy unverifiable model => evidence for increasing mental ability with age.

This is the worst kind of PC science.</comment>


Is it Snowing Microbes on Enceladus?  - <AUTHOR> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/27mar_enceladus/ <comment><USER2> Off topic (sort of), but this reminded me of 2001/2010. Arthur C. Clark was on pretty much on target. In 2010 he predicted we'd find life on an icy moon of the outer solar system. He happened to posit it was Europa (around Jupiter) but then the original novel had the mission flying to Saturn. The movie and sequels changed it to Jupiter because Saturn was hard for the special effects. Anyway, pretty darn impressive sci-fi speculation that might come true. And now back to our original discussion....

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hope that companies like SpaceX reduce the cost of space travel to the point where we can send out more probes to check things like this. It's early days for private space travel, but I think the next 10-15 years are going to be very exciting.

<comment><USER4> Not sure that they'll help much since most of the costs aren't launch related:

"The total cost of [the Cassini-Hughes] scientific exploration mission is about US$3.26 billion, including $1.4 billion for pre-launch development, $704 million for mission operations, $54 million for tracking and $422 million for the launch vehicle."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini–Huygens>

Space probes are already cheap for what they accomplish. For comparison, we could have sent about 45 Cassini probes for what has been spent on the International Space Station (all costs in).

<comment><USER5> I work for NASA in a planetary science organization, so let me say this: cost accounting of space missions is unique to the way NASA/ESA operates. Much of that cost is tied up in things like paying researchers and graduate students to do studies during the decades of time between missions, obscene university overheads, re-inventing the wheel with a new spacecraft design for every mission, prime contractors who attempt to _maximize_ the number of subcontractors and resulting complexity because that awards them points in the selection committee, etc.

Private industry could do it way, way cheaper. SpaceX could probably build and launch 45 Cassini probes for what cost to do Cassini–Huygens.

<comment><USER4> Let's see how things go, thus far SpaceX has proved they can get stuff into orbit but they aren't super-cheap yet.

Private industry can do a lot of things but a Cassini probe mission for $71 million all in seems unlikely in the near future.

NASA has a contract with SpaceX for 12 supply missions at $1.6 billion while NASA says a shuttle launch was about $450 million (but that figure probably doesn't include all the costs).

So SpaceX at this stage is at about 25-33% the cost of a space shuttle mission, but that's still a long way until we get to "45 Cassini probes" for $3.2 billion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...And we have found that aside from water and organic material.."

Surely finding organic material is an incredibly big deal, yet it's mentioned in passing. I feel as though I'm missing something fundamental here.

<comment><USER7> It used to be the case that life was considered as some sort of fluid stuff which was added to the Elements to turn the 'inorganic' material into 'organic' material -- the low-level chemical distinction between 'nonliving' and 'living'. In Latin the life-fluid stuff was called _vis vitalis_ and this view was called Vitalism.

What you are missing is that in 1828 a dude named Friedrich Wöhler took two indisputably 'inorganic' compounds, put them together, heated them up on a stove, let them cool, and got an indisputably 'organic' compound called urea, which disproved vitalism and established that 'organic' is a relatively arbitrary condition having nothing to do with life per se. Today it basically means "It contains carbon in it, and it wasn't one of the carbon-containing substances which were so plentiful in non-living places that vitalists considered them inorganic." The list of exceptions is not too long, but it dates back to this old philosophy. Organic no longer means 'living' because of the disproof of vitalism.

The More You Know.

<comment><USER6> Thank you, very well explained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it snowing organic compounds? Probably. Is it snowing complex organic compounds? Let's go see. Is it snowing microbes? At this point, we're leaving the realm of scientific evidence and throwing out sensational headlines. I'm not saying that it's a particularly poor speculation, but I personally think the article name could have been more accurate.

<comment><USER9> I agree. Nasa makes a lot of searching for life in various places, but I reckon it's something for media soundbites than the actual reason they explore places. For example, they're still searching for life on Mars. Google "nasa life on mars" for examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like they can't figure out where all of the heat is coming from. Is it possible this moon is partially heated by radioactive decay like the earth is?

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

<comment><USER11> Tidal heating is likely the largest contributor.

Tidal friction explains why Io is the most volanic body in the solar system and its deformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is so exciting! and I don't really know why. These are just microbes we're talking about.

<comment><USER13> Life appearing independently on two different planets in the same solar system dramatically jacks up the odds that life appeared somewhere else in a universe made up of 100 billion galaxies, each of which contains 100 billion star systems.

<comment><USER14> If we find life elsewhere in our solar system, my money is on it sharing a common ancestor with life on Earth. We already know that rocks ejected by meteorite impacts can wind up on another planet. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine some spores coming along for the ride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We need to monetize the investigation of Enceladus. Bringing back alien life from another planet would give us the opportunity to adapt their sensors and tools into our technology. Could we patent the blueprint of the alien life to reward the company that brings it back here?

Could the government say: "whatever company brings back an alien life form from enceladus can receive just compensation for any company who uses it for 50 years?"

<comment><USER16> You are assuming that:

a: There is life there.

b: That the life has some kind of economic value.

c: That there is a world wide government that could enforce this.

d: That it's morally OK to patent life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Incidentally, Spewing Plumes is (now) the name of my (nonexistent) band.

<comment><USER17> Wow -- apparently as karma goes up, humor goes down.

<comment><USER17> No really, please bury this: \- You expended energy clicking it \- I get the satisfaction of righteous indignation \- In 12 months, my bitterness is justified by the meaninglessness of it all</comment></comment></comment>


Time Out has bought London events startup YPlan for £1.6 million - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/time-out-acquires-yplan-2016-10 <comment><USER2> cheap sale if confirmed</comment>


Labor agrees to pass encryption laws 'to keep Australians safe' over Christmas - <AUTHOR> https://www.sbs.com.au/news/labor-agrees-to-pass-encryption-laws-to-keep-australians-safe-over-christmas <comment><USER2> "The government had repeatedly argued it was vital to pass the encryption laws before the holiday period, when intelligence agencies said they would come in handy to deal with an annual spike in terror threats."

Those intelligence agencies always seem to know what is best for everyone else. Do they themselves use encryption, of course they do because it works.</comment>


Ask HN: Shared company or personal blog? - <AUTHOR>

We're a small group of devs sweating in a start up. While none of us have blogs most of us expressed interest in writing them.
We plan to set up a company blog with articles directly related to the company and its products but obviously some of us want to write stuff that isn't. These would be professional blog entries (not vacation descriptions and such) but wouldn't talk about our production.
Should we allow everyone to write their articles at the company blog or should we just keep a listing of personal blogs? <comment><USER2> Make company blog contributions voluntary with the caveat that the content must be relevant to the company or industry.

Everything else goes in their personal blog.</comment>


Free Source Code Available To Download - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apptopia.com/free-source-code/

<comment><USER2> I disagree with the part of his post that reads: "First, to do a chargeback when you are buying software and or intellectual property rights is repugnant. Its something you can never give back. No matter what. It can never be deleted. And you know this when you are making the acquisition."

There is not other way to signal to the developer that the software is not what you thought it was. For instance, I purchased a note-taking app from the App Store last night that turned out to not be what I needed. There was no way of knowing this beforehand because there is no free version that I could test and pirating it would have been way more trouble than it's worth (plus, I'm not doing that anymore).

So, what's the reasonable solution? For physical goods, if I'm unhappy with the purchase, I can return the item and receive a refund. For software, there is no good return method.

Now, one could argue that it's only a $10 app, but that isn't the point. The point is that $10 paid for something that I don't want or need, and while $10 probably isn't much to me, it should not be yours because your product failed to meet my needs.

As for the rest of the post, the purchaser in that case _was_ out of line. He'd bought the product, used it for a significant amount of time, and apparently gotten some value out of it. At that point, there should be no ability to return the item.

<comment><USER3> On Apptopia you don't buy apps, you buy all of the source code and distribution rights to an app. So in this case the buyer bought the previously closed-source code, took what he needed from it, and then filed a chargeback. That's much different than buying a packaged app for personal use from an App Store.

<comment><USER4> They should have stated a brief blurb about themselves in their blog post. Not knowing anything about Apptopia, I thought they released something this guy created on his own from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wasn't previously aware of apptopia -- looks very cool and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it before. There's always an interesting outlier project that escapes our notice, right?

But I'm a little confused about this situation. Who was listing this app? (i.e., who originally coded the app?) Was he/she consulted about the situation?

Perhaps I'm not yet understanding how Apptopia works, but I'm surprised you took this action without consulting with the app's author. Or do you own all the apps listed outright? Or did you pay him/her for the app, regardless of the chargeback?

Anyway, glad this made to to HN, I'll take a closer look at Apptopia.

EDIT: And just to be clear, I meant an outlier on the distribution of the projects that are on my screen, not a global outlier for everyone. Clearly, given your funders and growth, many people are aware of your project.

<comment><USER6> Hey Eric,

So we brokered this app acquisition. The seller (original coder of the app) sold the ownership to this buyer. After paying for and receiving the app, this buyer initiated a wrongful chargeback (we paid out the seller already, so we took the hit as the broker and escrow provider).

So in essence, since he "returned" the app to us, we now own it, and therefore, the app developer community now owns it.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER7> Just thinking out loud here - Is it possible for you to determine whether the buyer and seller were related somehow ?

<comment><USER8> Really wild point. So malicious, but i guess in the same sense that would be a "clever" way to "pay yourself". The seller is someone we have worked with before and has multiple listings with Apptopia (and has had them for a few months now). They also have separate payment profiles. So if they are the same, they have gone through great lengths to hide it...

Still good to keep an eye on. Thanks for making me think through it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It isn't really clear from the article under what license the source is available. For instance, is it using a common Free Software license such as GPL or a BSD-like one, such that interesting parties can actually do something with it? That would be much more consumer friendly than the mere permission to have a look at it.

<comment><USER8> Wow. This is an amazing point, and quite honestly i am sorry for not including it. My intent is to have people DO SOMETHING WITH IT. Not just to look at it. I want people to very much do anything they find of value with it. Would that be more GPL or BSD? I will update the post...

<comment><USER10> Go with BSD if you want people to do something with it. Unless you don't want for people to make closed source apps with it, then go with GPL.

<comment><USER8> Post Updated to reflect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses>

Thanks for pointing this out guys. JK

<comment><USER9> Note that there are 2 common variants of the BSD license: "2-clause" and "3-clause". Don't forget to specify which one you mean.

I'm using the ISC license (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license>) which is equivalent to the 2-clause BSD, but does so with fewer and simpler words.

Also, the MIT license (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_license>) is quite popular. It is also equivalent to the 2-clause BSD, but not quite as short as the more modern ISC license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good for you, Jonathan. Apptopia is an incredible service and this is a great response to being ripped off. I know how hard you work on each sale so it's frustrating that something like this would happen.

<comment><USER8> I really appreciate the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great gesture to open source it. Thanks!

Downloaded the source and took a look at it. It is a PhoneGap powered Android app, that serves as a viewer to some hard rock artists' videos on YouTube.

Screenshot (as rendered on Chrome) - <http://i.imgur.com/cAzRLpG.png>

</comment><comment><USER12> While it's always great to see android apps being made available for others to investigate and learn from, I have to ask: Are you sure that there isn't something else going on that would explain this behaviour?

I've just installed the app on my own device (Galaxy S2), and the app is simply terrible. It's slow to respond to clicks, scrolling is laggy, I actually can't view any videos because the click event isn't triggering anything (I can see in the debug logs that it's happening, it's just not doing anything)

All I'm wondering, is if the chargeback was because the buyer was unhappy with what he/she got?

<comment><USER6> Hi Daniel,

The scenario you're describing is exactly what we try to prevent with our code review option. Likewise, every app we broker is listed publicly on either the AppStore or Google Play, so every buyer can and SHOULD download the app to preview it.

I should also note (which I hoped was obvious, but after re-reading the post and thread I realize it isn't), that we actively reached out to this buyer to see what was wrong and what happened. We even gave him the opportunity to withdraw the chargeback and indicated that we would continue to do business with him. Even though it's somewhat of a moot point, this chargeback was not the result the buyer being misunderstanding what he was getting.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the explanation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Slightly OT, but I hadn't heard of Apptopia before. Cool idea. Anyone had any experience, either as a buyer or seller?

<comment><USER6> Chris - habosa commented up top on his experience.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Managed to miss that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate, hate, hate floating "share bars" like the one on this blog. Yuck.

<comment><USER15> Yup, but AdBlock is your friend. This got rid of it for me: DIV[id="dcssb- slick"]</comment></comment>


Symantec: Anonymous stole source code, users should disable pcAnywhere - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/symantec-says-anonymous-stole-source-code-tells-customers-to-disable-security-product.ars

<comment><USER2>
      > Symantec released a patch fixing three vulnerabilities
      > in pcAnywhere version 12.5 (the current version) on
      > Monday, and said it will continue issuing patches
      > "until a new version of pcAnywhere that addresses all
      > currently known vulnerabilities is released."

Sounds like they've been sitting on a bunch known vulnerabilities. At least this acts as a kick in the pants to _actually_ fix them.

<comment><USER3> These sorts of reactions by vendors really imply to me that the full disclosure philosophy is better. How much better would things be if Symantec had kept - or been kept - on the ball?

<comment><USER4> The philosophy of responsible disclosure is something only pushed by security vendors, people who use open-source software (it's being a good member of a community) and brainwashed white-hats.

The security professionals who do this for a living, and study this should disclose fully, but a corporate entity will never. They cannot because of shareholders, and there are way to many bugs out there and it would be embarrassing cleaning up that much crap.

Security vulnerabilities are sometimes architectural problems, some are related to ignorance, but a LOT more are just stupid bugs and people not writing code that is correct. A good attacker doesn't care how they get in, there is always a way.

It's a losing battle, just ask EWD.

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340....](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html)

\\\ Edit: Words are tough.

<comment><USER5> The _point_ of full disclosure is to give the "corporate entities" that like to sit on vulnerabilities a swift kick in the ass and get them to do something...

<comment><USER4> I plead no contest to PWI. I swear that it was all straight in my head.

<comment><USER6> You blew over .08; I'm rescinding your Internet license. You can apply to the MPAA to get it back in three months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Symantec says the theft actually occurred in 2006

So somebody stole the source code _five_ years ago and they're starting to fix _some_ of the glaring vulnerabilities today because this somehow got in the news?

That's reason enough to stay away from all network-enabled Symantec products, I would expect them to be equally insecure if this is the way they do things.

<comment><USER8> Did it happen in 2006? I thought the 2006 version was what was stolen, but this happened just recently.

EDIT: Never mind.. it did.. wow.. well supposedly nothing was released publicly until just now though. Someone was just sitting on it. Ex-employee?

<comment><USER9> Even if the theft did happen yesterday, they had still been sitting on serious vulnerabilities for several years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If hackers can find exploits in your software after its code is made public, then they can find them before as well. Relying on source code being secret is security through obscurity, which everyone should know is not security at all. Especially for software with security implications (remote access, encryption, etc.) the last thing you want is proprietary code.

</comment><comment><USER11> Protip: ClamAV [0] is a software that doesn't need to rely on code secrecy, and it's completely free (as in beer and, more importantly, freedom).

[0] <http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/>

<comment><USER12> I've been using ClamAV / ClamWin for several years.

It was primarily design for scanning email attachments, but the client is OK for usage on your desktop. Also, it only detects threats but doesn't clean the infected files - which is OK, because you shouldn't trust AV software to clean your files. Once your computer is compromised, you're better off formatting your hard-drive and reinstalling everything from scratch (which is why it's always a good idea to have periodic backups of your work).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh yeah, sure. Anonymous stole your source code 6 years ago. Give me a break.

<comment><USER14> But the theft was obscure, so our jobs were secure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this stands as a perfect example that I can use to educate friends and family on why having access to the source code for the programs that you use is important.

When someone is proud of their work, they like to show it off, and this is true of programmers as well. If I make a neat program, and I'm really proud of the job I did writing it, I want to show that off by showing people the source code -- thus increasing my epenis/karma/reputation points etc. Conversely, if I presided over a software product that I knew had bugs and I needed to release said product regardless, I would _have_ to keep the source code tucked away so that nobody could tell how bad said product is.

<comment><USER16> Your first paragraph nailed it, it is of course a great reason for open source code - letting others audit it.

Second paragraph, way off base. Reasons for keeping source code private are far more likely to be based on a business plan, not on coders being embarassed about their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> TIL that pcAnywhere still exists. Last time I used it, 56k modem was the state of the art.

<comment><USER18> We use it extensively since we require logging and the ability for remote troubleshooting.

<comment><USER19> You know those same capabilities are included for free with every modern operating system, right?

<comment><USER18> We can't standardize on RDP because it closes the remote display when we need someone to walk our help desk through what they are experiencing, VNC was hit or miss for features and support when we were looking at products so that wasn't used. pcAnywhere also integrates with our asset management system and help desk; both from Symantec.

<comment><USER19> > _We can't standardize on RDP because it closes the remote display when we > need someone to walk our help desk through what they are experiencing_

That means you're looking in the wrong place. You don't want Remote Desktop. On Windows XP you want Remote Assistance, and from Windows Vista you want Windows Desktop Sharing. Same underlying protocol, but different semantics -- the session stays open on both ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People still use PCAnywhere?</comment>


Rewriting TeX/LaTeX Engine in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/crlf0710/tectonic/tree/oxidize <comment><AUTHOR> The initial step used c2rust[1] tool for automated conversion of C to Rust, and automated refactoring of the resulting Rust code. You can see the original issue[2] in Tectonic about oxidation plans. And there is a bunch of issues[3] if you want to help the project.

[1] [https://github.com/immunant/c2rust](https://github.com/immunant/c2rust)

[2] [https://github.com/tectonic- typesetting/tectonic/issues/459](https://github.com/tectonic- typesetting/tectonic/issues/459)

[3] [https://github.com/crlf0710/tectonic/issues](https://github.com/crlf0710/tectonic/issues)</comment>


eHarmony sued in California for excluding gays - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/05/31/eharmony_sued_in_california_for_excluding_gays/ <comment><USER2> "Carlson's lawyer Todd Schneider said the lawsuit was "about changing the landscape and making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love.""

But you don't have the right to force a private web site to achieve that task for you, do you?

<comment><USER3> Does this mean I get to sue GayFriendMatch.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Typically discrimination (in the legal sense) doesn't work backwards. The gist of it is that the groups who can sue for discrimination have to be politically disadvantaged. If straights wanted to force GayFriendMatch.com to match straight couples, a law could easily be passed.

I sort of wonder what the real aim here is. It seems like the service is being targeted because of the religious beliefs of the founder as much as the product itself.

<comment><USER4> _have to be politically disadvantaged_

I'm going to make a wild guess and say that, pound for pound, homosexuals have political influence twice as great as heterosexuals, and, in their core issues, 100x as great.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SirixDB – Storing and Querying of Temporal Data (Java and Open Source) - <AUTHOR> I'm developing a storage system for versioning data at the subfile level, especially well suited for SSDs due to its log-structured COW nature. It implements a novel versioning algorithm called sliding snapshot, a diff-algorithm which makes use of our stable record-identifiers and optionally hashes, another diff algorithm for importing similar XML-documents as a versioned resource as well as novel XPath axis to navigate not only in space, but also in time. Recently, I've implemented a higher level, asynchronous REST-API with Kotlin (Coroutines) and Vert.x in a seperate module.
The system is heavily inspired by the filesystem ZFS.
My goal is to put forth the idea of a versioned, distributed storage system to easily support temporal analytical tasks, which are best applied to a series of revisions in order to analyse how the data has changes. Other tasks might simply include easy undo/redo operations.
http://sirix.io <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe someone has an idea what's wrong with my simple Dockerfile, I'm getting the exception "io.netty.channel.AbstractChannel$AnnotatedConnectException: Connection refused: localhost/127.0.0.1:8080" when I want to run it via `docker run -t -i -p 9443:9443 sirixdb/sirix`.

Any help is greatly appreciated :-)

The Dockerfile used:

[https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix/blob/master/bundles/sirix-r...](https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix/blob/master/bundles/sirix- rest-api/Dockerfile)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's somehow not connecting to the Keycloak-instance. Same with using the host network:

`docker run --network=host -t -i -p 9443:9443 sirixdb/sirix`

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh by the way retrieval of nodes/records and storing modifications are logarithmic (O(log n)). Space complexity is O(n).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just updated the documentation slightly, how to set up and start the HTTP- server without docker.</comment>


Histories Hidden in the Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-histories-hidden-in-the-periodic-table <comment><USER2> > Another scientist toying with Boyle's phosphorus found that, "if the Privy > Parts be therewith rubb'd, they will be inflamed and burning for a good > while after."

The first test you should do with any unknown substance, yes.

<comment><USER3> Lol, reminds me of examples like Kopi Luwak coffee beans - somebody, somewhere, followed a type of cat, civet cat, and, once the cat defecated, decided that _that_ cat shit looked most appealing, so why not go ahead and taste it? Or, pore through the shit, extract the beans found in the fecal matter, and make coffee out of those. Why not?

And, thanks to those people's sacrifices, we now get to enjoy good coffee.

<comment><USER4> It could be that it was perhaps a delicacy to eat cat feces: perhaps it was due to a cat's carnivorous diet, and it could be that one day a cat feces eating guy or gal got a good buzz and made the discovery that that cat had been eating a certain berry. Chasing the buzz they figured out coffee.

<comment><USER5> My bet would be on famine, a kid, or both.

Alternatively, if you encounter the cat's faeces after it got dispersed a bit, it may take a while before you realize that the nicer tasting coffee beans you find went through a cat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend "The Disappearing Spoon." The title is a reference to Gallium's low melting point, and the book has wonderful histories of most of the elements, and the table itself.

<comment><USER7> I came to recommend the same thing. It's a fun read and filled with lots of great science history.

[https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Disappearing_Spoon....](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Disappearing_Spoon.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great podcast about the elements in the periodic table:

[http://episodictable.com/](http://episodictable.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what analogues exist between naming chemical elements and the history of allocating IPv4 addresses or short domain names</comment>