Who Do You Trust? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bhorowitz.com/who_do_you_trust <comment><USER2> This is a somewhat random note on the subject, but after reading one of the threads yesterday on Stripe, I found myself reading through their list of prohibited businesses/services (it's an interesting read if you're curious about high-fraud/sketchy business models).

And sure enough:

54) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions

which says a lot about the industry.

(Note in looking this up just now, I found its only in the UK prohibited businesses, not the US list, which is also somewhat interesting)

<comment><USER3> That might be due to restrictions on things regular companies/people can post in the UK. I used to work for $big_parcel_company and the list of things you weren't allowed to send was... interesting. Some made sense (bodily fluids for instance) some just seemed like old hangups (which possibly accounts for the hair in this case).

<comment><USER4> Hair is a fairly dangerous product; Lice, fleas, ticks, and other nasties that can spread disease like to nest in it. It's technically a body part, and I only say technically for the sake of argument; It is a body part. Most people are grossed out by fingernail clippings, which are pretty much the same thing (Primarily keratin).

Hair (and probably fingernails, were there a market for them) is relatively easy to clean compared to other body parts, but it is still a potential biohazard. Having regulations and restrictions around it makes sense - And I'm a die-hard libertarian saying this.

<comment><USER5> Presumably animal fur isn't prohibited. You can catch nasty things from fur and hides, and some tanning processes are nasty, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a totally bizarre posting. Capitalism is the best system except for these fundamental facts about how f'ed up it is?

And on a post about the craziness and bad experience in a wasteful business area that shouldn't exist? The entire concept of African American women buying Indian hair is just a continuing piece of systematic racism taken to its fullest by the victims themselves. This entire system from the hairdressers lacking capital for inventory to the women buying the hair is all disgusting waste.

The whole "this garbage (capitalism like this) is the best possible option" is pathetic learned helplessness.

<comment><USER7> This comment is interesting to me because as much as I try, I have absolutely no idea who you are mad at in this scenario.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting reply. Just because a situation is f'ed up doesn't necessarily mean there's a clear evil entity responsible. To push it to that would be scapegoating.

We can find a source for this particular topic though: the long disgraceful history of racism that leads people to think that Indian hair (being straight like lots of European hair) is more beautiful than curly African hair.

There are so many problems, socially, economically, etc. with this situation; and I'm annoyed at anyone who describes the situation as something _other_ than messed up. It's messed up that many black women think their natural hair isn't attractive enough; it's messed up that many black men think black women's natural hair isn't attractive enough; it's messed up that capitalists figure out how to continue promoting those views and profiting off of this; it's messed up that there's still enough economic inequity that black hairstylists work on tight margins and credit… and it's messed up that the jerks who wrote this article are brainwashed into thinking this sort of capitalism is the best economic system we could ever have. It's also messed up that they think it's reasonable to publish something that says effectively "X is the best we can have, except that it is horrible" without any sense of irony or other nuance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the Orthodox Jewish world, many women wear sheitels, essentially wigs sourced from human hair. The entire buying experience is very different from what Ben describes in his blog. The women who sell the sheitels provide the whole experience, from picking out the hair type/color/length, etc, to making sure it fits well and that the customer is satisfied. Granted this is a much smaller and niche market, and the products (sheitels) themselves can easily sell for $1,000-$2,000+. (source, my wife regularly wears a Sheitel in accordance with Halacha).

<comment><USER9> God: I thought I told you to cover your hair!

Woman: Ha! These are not my hair. I covered my hair with someone else's hair. So technically, I'm in the clear.

God: Wow! Totally did not see that loophole.

<comment><USER10> Maybe Jewish women started being accused of 'making a political statement' and being harrassed in the street because they covered their hair, so they had to make a compromise.

<comment><USER11> Is that like when Enron started being accused of inflated revenues and 'cooking the books' ... they also had to find a compromise and shred away the evidence! What type of non sensical argument is this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good starting point for this article is the movie "Good Hair" by Chris Rock. But rest assured, there is already a lot consolidation that already happened for Temple Hair in India. The raw material for this is, faith of Hindus (Hindu Women to be specific - since they have the long hair), that giving away hair as a form of surrender to God. Any guess, how long that will last?

edit: changed movie name [Bad Hair]

<comment><USER13> > Any guess, how long that will last?

Maybe once India becomes a developed country and quality of life will increase for ordinary Indians then they will stop trying to please god.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like vc money has found another industry to come into and kill thousands of mom and pop businesses. As this process continues, massive investments to take over every industry by using efficiencies of scale, will there be any room left for the lower class entrepreneurs?

<comment><USER15> Why are mom and pop businesses better than those who buy or sell/cut hair? Shame on you for objectively deciding one group of people is better than another.

<comment><USER16> Really? "Shame on you"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought a wig for Comic Con last year[0], and it was an interesting experience. The local shop carries 3 grades, with an option to spend even more.

The entry level is polyester, with colors not normally found in nature. The mid-grade polyester (what I got) normally sells in the $180-230 range. Natural hair starts at $400, and obviously looks the most realistic.

Most of the hair is sourced from outside the US, from India and Asia. So the colors are usually very dark. They will bleach it to produce lighter shades, but if you need/want true Blonde, you'll have to buy either a bleached darker shade and hope for a good match, or spend significantly more for northern- European sourced hair.

Hair length is an issue - waiting for your hair to grow long before selling it obviously takes a while, so it sells for a premium.

And now I know a lot more than I ever thought I would about aftermarket hair supply. :)

[0] I went as Lucius Malfoy (Draco Malfoy's father) from Harry Potter: [http://nebula.wsimg.com/773ae27d6ab68c28500b6986588b0da2?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/773ae27d6ab68c28500b6986588b0da2?AccessKeyId=148434A7A621E0442192&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

</comment><comment><USER18> "Mayvenn will send you a check for your earned commissions every month. You can do anything you want with it – pay rent, pay for your car or buy those shoes you wanted!"

From Mayvenn's site. Does this seem insulting to anyone else?

<comment><USER19> In an initial reading it strongly implies Mayvenn thinks its customers don't know that checks can be redeemed for normal money. There is also a bit of a scale jump from "pay your rent, your car" to "your shoes". But I guess it is implied its $200 shoes.

Since this indeed seem like a pretty insulting way to address a business owner, maybe a more reasonable explanation is that Mayvenn earlier paid commissions in store credits and not actual money? An alternative would be that they pay in some sketchy way that can eventually be turned into normal money. Both alternatives would create a need to reassure prospective clients that they will indeed get real money at the end of the day.

<comment><USER20> If the hairdressers in the target market tend to have cash flow problems, it wouldn't be too surprising for them to not have bank accounts / be unaccustomed to handling checks. Even in America.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why complain about the supply chain if the problem that's being fixed is only the customer experience?

<comment><USER22> I noticed that too. I think it's the rhetorical hook but also the context. The supply chain is a pretty good story and makes an interesting story out of what would otherwise be "just" mobile e-commerce sites for hairdressers. Fair enough. Arguably, fixing the supply chain to make it more efficient may involve a series of dis-intermediation steps, of which this could be the first. Perhaps the hairdressers will go directly to India or China -- or perhaps Mayvenn will do that on their behalf (taking just a little bit for the effort). Guesses. All guesses.

<comment><USER23> What I'm wondering is if this model would work for other things besides hair, where the retail outlet is constrained on the ability to hold inventory. Maybe mechanics shops?

<comment><USER24> I know someone who runs an auto parts store -- their primary business is selling to mechanics. They have delivery trucks that are out all day dropping off parts to the local mechanics that called in saying "I need an alternator for a 99 Civic." So the auto parts store is effectively serving as the "warehouse" from which the shops buy their inventory as needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25>
        I'm into distribution, I'm like Atlantic
        I got them mutherf**ers flying across the Atlantic

What is the meaning of this quote? I read the linked rapgenius which explains it but it seems pretty weak as an illustrative quote for the linked article.

<comment><USER26> It's referring to the supply chain of illegal drugs. Heroin comes in from SE asia, flown in to the US. Similar to the hair market before, it's a bad system, with no way to do quality control of the product.

<comment><USER27> More specifically, Rick Ross (aka Freeway Rick) was a notorious LA drug dealer in the 80s. Now he's selling hair:

[http://www.lamag.com/features/freeway-rick-is- dreaming/](http://www.lamag.com/features/freeway-rick-is-dreaming/)

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/05/188908281/freew...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/05/188908281/freeway- rick-ross-new-business)

<comment><USER28> Don't forget that Gary Webb broke the story about the CIA running the drugs to Rick Ross and other inner city areas, and ended up committing suicide (or according to some being suicided.)

The British and Dutch started it with the opium wars and now America took a page from their book and does it too. This is the real issue behind the war on drugs. They create a black market and then own that market, makes for tons of money that's unaccountable to congress (eg perfect for black budget ops).

Opium production in Afghanistan was almost nil before we invaded, and now Afghan heroin is getting shipped straight to America and business is booming! Similar things happened in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

<comment><USER29> I hadn't connected the recent popularity of heroin with the decade-ago colonization of Afghanistan. But of course, that's the time it takes to setup mass cultivation, informal supply lines, domestic distribution networks, and finally, social popularity.

Gosh, this shit really does camouflage over human-imperceptible timescales.

<comment><USER28> The kind of entities that participate think in longer timescales than most, which is a key advantage for plausible deniability. Strategically effective, I'll give em that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of my coworkers just pointed me to Chris Rock's documentary called "Good Hair" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So)

Wow.

<comment><USER6> I think the previous documentary put out just prior to that is actually deeper and better, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Nappy_Roots:_A_Journey_Thro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Nappy_Roots:_A_Journey_Through_Black_Hair- itage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Marc Andreesen made a comment on a recent a16z podcast that they were interested in the challenges of global remittances. This seems like a related interest: How can we use technology to provide credit, transfer and remittance services to a user base that may be exclusively using mobile phones and/or in emerging markets with limited internet access? There are likely a number of industries where this pattern can be repeated.

<comment><USER32> This is a big thing in emerging markets—in some countries, even the people who don't have food, power, or water infrastructure have cheap Chinese smartphone and ubiquitous 3G/LTE data. In there market's in particular, there's a pending shift for small businesses to move away from cash and to electronic payments, which opens up a whole 'nother world in terms of relationships with financial institutions, access to credit, etc.

<comment><USER33> On the other side of that _whole 'nother world_ is a blockchain waiting to replace all of those relationships.

<comment><USER32> Not really. The underlying currency—be it bitcoin, USD, yen, rand, or rupees—still requires lenders, payment systems, institutional agreements, and general technical enablement. At that point it's all 1s and 0s anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "whom"

<comment><USER35> I thought whom follows a preposition: To whom is the message addressed?

<comment><USER36> The pronoun is in dative case, or even if objective case, the test works of "whom" because "I trust her/him" and not "I trust he/she".

<comment><USER34> Just FWIW, it is not in the dative case. The dative case is only for indirect objects (which follow pronouns), or direct objects specifically related to the act of giving. Trusting is not giving, and there is no prepositional phrase in this sentence, and so the pronoun is a direct object. But yes, it still passes the test for whether it's objective or subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hey this is Neeharika from Sonar. We spoke with Taylor Wang, COO of Mayvenn yesterday and wanted to share a post on how Mayvenn's thinks about community and SMS: [http://blog.sendsonar.com/2015/06/19/how-mayvenn-grew-its- co...](http://blog.sendsonar.com/2015/06/19/how-mayvenn-grew-its-community- using-sms)

</comment><comment><USER38> What the fuck is with motherfuckers misspelling words like "fuck" and "motherfucker"?

It's rude to misquote something. The rapper known as Rick Ross didn't say "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers", he said "motherfuckers". It's right there in the song if you hit play.

Why does he edit the text of the song but not the audio?

What the fuck is wrong with Americans thinking that some words are "bad" and should thus always be misspelled?

If they're bad, stop using them. If you're going to use them, spell them right. Spelling it "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers" doesn't keep my brain from thinking "fuck".

PS: HN's markdown doesn't let one escape an asterisk to get a literal asterisk.

</comment><comment><USER39> I can't help but see parallels between Mayvenn and Uber. Will the next we hear about Mayvenn be its investments in lab-grown hair the way that Uber is heavily investing in driverless vehicles?

<comment><USER40> It also seems clumsy how they appear to mention that a venture capitalist can earn disproportionally more than a hair stylist and that they unfortunately can only improve that by a little amount. The truth is, of course, that they have mainly invested into Mayvenn because it's a $5B/year market and yet another gap between massively occurring human interactions into which you can squeeze a money-milking machine (cf. Facebook, AirBnB, Ebay …). I can't wait to see these services being distributed, open source and based on the blockchain.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure I understand your argument that open-source or the blockchain adds significant value.

If you take the article at its word, the state of the art is a distributed collection of small-time suppliers offering goods for sale without refunds for installation by third-party integrators -- the consumer's stylist.

Mayvenn improves the distribution story by integrating the stylist into the supply chain while providing customer service and inventory at zero risk to the stylists who can't afford to carry inventory themselves.

Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER40> I was more generally speaking. In this case, I think some sort of regulation would be necessary to improve the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Indian women sell hair to Chinese, who productizie it and sell to Koreans, who further refine it and eventually sell it African American women == worst experience? I think this sentence is soaked in prejudice.

Most global supply chains, some for super luxurious products have these three countries involved... I dont know how that automagically qualifies for a horrible experience

</comment><comment><USER42> So, basically African-American owned beauty salons can't get credit even though they are clearly good for it since this business can happily carry out arbitrage against it.

Um, that's a pretty ringing _indictment_ of capitalism, not an endorsement.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's interesting that the yiddish word for expert is spelled similar to maven, which is also means expert in English.

<comment><USER44> The English word 'maven' has Yiddish origin.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> hairbitrage

<comment><USER46> Barbitrage

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> WhoM do you trust? Not "who" do you trust.

</comment><comment><USER47> > _A nurse, whose dedication to her craft saves lives and brings hope to the > hopeless, will make a fraction of what a crappy banker, who brings misery to > everyone she encounters, earns._

A part oft this problem is that the health system is also an economic system. It shouldn't be, but they're trying to make and save money in every aspect.

There are few things that I wish were more strictly regulated by the state. Health care, with health as the primary goal, is one of these things.</comment>


Objection: Dependency Injection Framework - <AUTHOR> http://objection-framework.org/

<comment><USER2> I like it! It really helps, especially in writing concise tests.</comment>


Melting Yukon ices reveal 5,000-year-old archaeological treasures - <AUTHOR> http://www.macleans.ca/authors/john-geddes/melting-yukon-ices-reveals-5000-year-old-archaeological-treasures/ <comment><USER2> More than anything I am ecstatic to hear that First Nations are playing a key role in the archaeological work. It's a great way to integrate cutting-edge technology while simultaneously encouraging teenagers to become interested in their heritage.

<comment><USER3> Based on the age and region of the artifacts, they are probably related to the Dorset culture. Some of the First nations in the area are descended from the Thule, who migrated from Siberia and extirpated the Dorset after the date of the most recent of these finds. As such, this is not really the heritage of those first nations that is being studied, but people their ancestors may have encountered and still tell tales of. Other first nations in the area likely share a common, but distant, ancestry with the Dorset. Most people of European extraction are far more intimately linked, in terms of decent, to the Roman empire than any of the modern first nations would be to the Dorset.

It's a bit strange to think of in this way, but the Inuit are almost as new to North America as Europeans are. Vikings built tentative (and quickly abandoned) settlements on the East coast of Canada when the Inuit were establishing themselves in the West and had yet to spread across the North. The Vikings actually encountered the Dorset before they disappeared, and later the Thule as they replaced the Dorset. As such, those of us descended from Vikings are almost as intimately related to the Dorset as the Inuit!

Archaeology is a discipline that, ultimately, tries to tell the story about those who came before us, no matter our relation to them. First Nations groups really have no more right to protest these digs than we, here in Canada, have to protest digs in Italy. It is only our vast ignorance about the pre-history of the Americas that forces us to entertain their court claims. The artifacts uncovered by melting ice must be found within a very short period of time before the stories they can tell are lost for all time. While it is important to involve First Nations, just as any other Canadians, their interference, to the point of entirely preventing searches some years and thereby causing the loss of a part of our heritage, must not be permitted. The history of humanity belongs to us all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing how people who deny climate changes have no good answer to why ancient glaciers keep melting. But this melting allows for great archeology.

<comment><USER5> Do folks who think that the world is only 6000 years old have anything for human-made artifacts 9000 years old?

<comment><USER6> Satan put them there to trick us.

<comment><USER7> I thought you were right and did some searching. It seems you are wrong though. It turns out that the method of dating is flawed and old stuff like fossils have just been dated wrong and are less than 6000 years old. It's so depressing flicking though these sites.

[http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/BQA/k/...](http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/BQA/k/200/How- Does-Bible-Explain-Fossil-Ages-Over-6000-Years-Genesis-12.htm)

[http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand- years.h...](http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand-years.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Engineering Statistics Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm

<comment><USER2> I have to say, NIST dudes are/were so underappreciated by the likes of me. Is it just me?

I was in a LUG in the DC area and one of the dudes there was a NIST guy. His use of Linux and Unix was not surprising, but when he would tangentially mention what they were doing with their boxes I would always wonder: how the hell do more people not pay attention to NIST? But maybe that is just me. I have done a lot of sysadmin in the education industry, where we are famous for listening to no one and being the butt of security nightmare jokes.

As someone who is weak in all post-high-school maths, and stats in general, I have definitely bookmarked this for later. I did not care for stats until I finally took my first true computation linguistics class, Statistical Methods for NLP, and years of wannabe linguistics without math seemed pretty retarded after that.

Thanks for a cool link.

<comment><USER3> It's not just you.

I don't know how are things in the US, in Europe not many people even know they exist. 10 years ago I was doing some work with biometric identification and it turned out these guys had an open source system for fingerprint recognition (including test data).

Not only they were incredibly helpful, they even sent me a couple of CDs with all the information for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As good as that is, see this: [http://dlmf.nist.gov/](http://dlmf.nist.gov/), the online companion to the truly epic NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, itself the modern successor to Abramowitz and Stegun.

<comment><USER5> That is a nice piece of work. If you click on any of the 3D graphs you can grab them and drag to view from different angles. Very cool.

<comment><USER4> It (and the book on which it is based) are amazing. Virtually every older applied mathematician has a copy of the original Abramowitz and Stegun, which was supported by the National Bureau of Standards, prior to NIST. The successor ([http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/ab...](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/abstract- analysis/nist-handbook-mathematical-functions)) is really an incredible achievement. The reviews are hilarious. One notes "The book is quite heavy; for convenience, one might be inclined to place it on a stand, as with an unabridged dictionary". Another review begins "This is like trying to review the bible".

The online version also lets you get LaTeX for everything, and has many other features. But the print version is a thing of beauty.

In full disclosure, the Editor in Chief and Mathematics Editor, who devoted the last 13 years of his professional life to the project, was my stepfather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worked at NIST about 10 years ago, for a summer internship in the Physics division.

Absolutely top notch scientists, some good facilities, a decent budget and very well scoped research objectives. Management was also largely hands-off. Great place to work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking at the chapter on Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), it mentions that "EDA techniques are generally graphical. They include scatter plots, character plots, box plots, histograms, bihistograms, probability plots, residual plots, and mean plots."

There is another term for EDA, and it has a whole industry built around it: business intelligence (BI). BI is focused on aggregating data from operational systems (OLTP) and producing new systems optimized for analytics and decision making (OLAP). Top products in this space include: QlikView, Cognos, Tableau, Hana, etc. One can make a decent hourly rate working as a consultant in these systems.

</comment><comment><USER8> Okay, I read through the first few pages and it seems to me that this is a difficult presentation, where facts are presented before they are explained.

<comment><USER9> This is a common difference between presentation for reference and for pedagogy.

It is extremely difficult to write well for both purposes, so good examples are rare (c.f. Kernigan & Ritchie)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree about the difficulty in serving two masters and that _The C Programming Language_ is well written in this regard. Most authors are unfortunately not in position to authoritatively declare portions of a subject undefined and get away with it. K&R is not really so much a handbook as a specification. Its strength is that it often specifies by showing rather than describing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This brings back memories of when I would program in R at undergrad. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course most of the so-called engineers who read this site (programmers w/out engineering degrees) have no use for stats.</comment>


Show HN: Access new kinds of meta data about any web page - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebroach.com

<comment><AUTHOR> You'll be able to see (quantitatively) things such as how controversial an article is, how useful a tutorial/how-to is, how funny or boring or (a bunch of other things) an essay is, and more information of this nature. Right now it is a standalone system, but we're working on integrating it with google search through extensions.</comment>


The alarming rise of female genital mutilation in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/health/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-explainer-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> This article doesn't mention the fact that a vast majority of FGM cases are carried out in Islamic theocracies and Islamic communities abroad.

The article rightfully points out that "no religious texts require FGM." But it neglects to mention that Islam's Hadith does indeed mention FGM, and according to that Hadith, Mohammed permitted it saying, "Yes, it is allowed. Come closer so I can teach you: if you cut, do not overdo it, because it brings more radiance to the face, and it is more pleasant for the husband."

This is used in several Islamic nations to justify the practice, and is why FGM cases are overwhelmingly Muslim cases.

Why does this article omit this information?

The article mentions rising cases of FGM in Minnesota. As a Minnesotan, the reason is apparent: our state has been a home for Somali immigrants to the United States, an overwhelming majority of which are Muslims who support FGM.

Again, the article omits this information, and instead tries to give the impression that FGM is equally practiced between Islam and other world religions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm dumbfounded that this still happens in 2017. And not only that I feel a terrible sense of hopelessness for the millions of women (of all ages) who might be subject to this right now. How do countries change the minds of cultures to end such barbaric practices?

<comment><USER4> By taking a hard stance on mutilation of children of any gender for the sake of religion.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to turn my voice into text data with as little friction as possible - <AUTHOR> I want to make a system to speak to my iPhone, make that audio file into texts, and import that to Evernote or Notes. How can I achieve this with as little friction as possible? <comment><USER2> I've been using [https://otter.ai/](https://otter.ai/) on the iPhone (An android app also exists) to do this. It is tremendously helpful for getting a first draft out despite writing anxiety.

It lets you speak uninterrupted for as long as you want and doesn't require you to restart. The text which it produces is quite high quality -- not stenographer-level quality; you still need a trained human for that. -- but if you're in a quiet area, it is certainly good enough to transcribe then go through an hour later and correct the errors.

It can export directly to Bear, email, or notes. I assume Evernote works too.</comment>


A dark knight is better than no knight: Why we need Bitcoin despite its flaws - <AUTHOR> http://suitpossum.blogspot.com/2015/03/bitcoin-power-dynamics.html <comment><USER2> After reading so many essays about all the benefits of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, I've come to believe the proponents have an _incomplete_ view of how _any digital currency_ with mainstream success would ultimately interact with the real world.

For example, proponents argue that bitcoin frees ordinary people from the tyrannies of the governments' central banks. Their reasoning: the governments can't control/inflate/dilute bitcoin -- therefore, it is an honest currency. The flaw in that reasoning is that _governments can control bitcoin_ or any digital currency and they don't need the NSA to take over 51% of computing hashes to do it.

Here's an example... the United States of America sees that bitcoin transaction volume is a threat and therefore, they pass new law that renders all contracts using bitcoin as consideration to not be enforceable in the U.S. court system.

That's the problem with bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't come with its own court system or its own police force. Basically, it doesn't come with its own government. Government is its own government.

This blind spot in so many bitcoin essays is like idealistic pirates thinking they can buy some abandoned offshore oil rig, declare sovereignty, and then run copyright infringing web servers from it. Well, the fiber optic cables from that platform have to ultimately connect to USA, Europe, etc. You can expect that governments (there's that inconvenient govt again) can prevent it from connecting.

I do think a digital currency will be the eventual dominant payment system. It's inevitable. It may be bitcoin, it may not. I contend that whatever it ends up being, it will be allowed to exist at the pleasure and approval of the government.

To me, the interesting thing about bitcoin is the technology of a "worldwide digital public ledger." There are lots of legitimate progress and offshoots of the technology that can be made from that. On the other hand, the dreams about bitcoin being a mechanism to subvert the governments is nonsense.

<comment><USER3> _> I do think a digital currency will be the eventual dominant payment system._

Government issued money already falls under the category of "digital currency" as far as most people are concerned. I doubt that blockchain based currencies will ever see mainstream adoption because the only thing they bring to the table is decentralization; a feature that the overwhelming majority of people will never need.

I'll concede that decentralization is probably a desirable trait, and if decentralization came free with the switch to bitcoin, I think there would be a compelling reason to expect that bitcoin would eventually see wide adoption, but decentralization is _not_ free, it's extremely expensive, and once miner subsidies disappear and the true price of securing the network becomes an upfront cost to general users, nobody will even consider using bitcoin except in situations where decentralization provides tangible benefits (i.e. for incognito transactions).

There will always be individuals who want to perform digital transactions outside of the traditional system, so cryptomoney will probably always be with us, but barring the unforeseeable, there just isn't any reason for its usage to grow _much_ beyond the current niche.

<comment><USER4> > _but decentralization is not free, it 's extremely expensive, and once miner > subsidies disappear and the true price of securing the network becomes an > upfront cost to general users, nobody will even consider using bitcoin > except in situations where decentralization provides tangible benefits (i.e. > for incognito transactions)._

The cost of securing the network fluctuates to match mining revenue, which in turn is determined by the market price of bitcoin and the number of bitcoins being rewarded to miners for each block they generate.

In other words, when the block subsidy decreases, the security of the network will decrease, the average transaction fee will not increase. Now, increases in total transaction fees could potentially compensate the loss of mining revenues from the subsidy declining, if transaction volumes increase, but the average fee per transaction will always trend toward the very minimal cost for a miner to process it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think very many people (if any) are arguing that Bitcoin should go away, or that it's inherently bad. People are just saying that the likelihood of Bitcoin actually gaining large scale adoption as a currency is incredibly low, because of its nature.

<comment><USER6> I met a lot of people who say it is a "Ponzi scheme" and bad for the environment because of the required energy.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine people calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme are worse for its image than all of the Ponzi schemes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The potential of cryptocurriences seems pretty amazing, but the killer to me is the incentive to horde as an "investment" rather then spend.

Also the ease and unfairness of early adopters accumulating a mass of the imaginary bitpoints that they can later sell for dramatically inflated "value" once it becomes harder to mine is absurd.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention how delusional it is to talk about how amazing a new crytpocurrency will be under wide adoption, but then think that they'll make a ton of money.

It is impossible for something to be simultaneously a good currency, AND a good investment. A good currency won't fluctuate in value, and a good investment will do precisely that. If you purchase and hoard bitcoin, you're basically ensuring that it doesn't become widely adopted.

<comment><USER8> _It is impossible for something to be simultaneously a good currency, AND a good investment._

If that were true the forex market wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER9> Forex is generally not a good investment. Sure, some people get lucky and have hot streaks, but it's very very tough, even with high frequency trading.

<comment><USER8> And yet forex is literally the highest liquidity market on the planet, plenty of which is speculative trading... go figure.

<comment><USER10> I'm not a finance expert or anything, but I don't think the forex market is really meant for long-term investment with continual profits. From what I've heard, it's more for stuff like making it possible for companies that deal with multiple currencies to manage and put a specific price on the risk of relative value fluctuations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somthing like bitcoin is definitely necessary but with its flaws Bitcoin will either get replaced by something better or it will stay in its niche.</comment>


Ask HN: How do self-driving cars help Uber? - <AUTHOR> Over and over I hear that autonomous cars are the key to Uber's successful future. However I fail to understand how that will help them achieve profitability? how is a self-driving car a cheaper alternative to the status quo? As I see it, the current system for Uber pays drivers (per hour or per ride) only when they are driving. Parking coss, repairs, gas, and the time between rides is all unpaid. As soon as Uber owns their own fleet of taxis, won't these other factors quickly eat away at any potential savings? Although I'm sure there is variability in the costs depending on the geography, how does Uber benefit from needing to continually pay for a 24/7 fleet when they have what seems like the ideal system already: drivers on demand. What am I missing? <comment><USER2> I think you're missing that we already have a profitable business model as an example: rental cars. If it were true that the costs you mention outweigh the potential per-vehicle revenue that can be obtained from renting out cars, Hertz, Enterprise, etc. would all be bankrupt. Obviously they are not, so that business model works.

You can think of Uber + autonomous as a rental car fleet with higher average daily revenue per vehicle (and obviously far more customers per vehicle per day). Admittedly, the costs would likely be higher as well, but the bet is that the net result will be higher profitability overall. By removing the driver cost and largely removing the insurance cost, you end up with highly predictable vehicle costs and can manage your business model around that to remain profitable and hopefully get to a near-monopoly position in major metro areas, supplanting traditional taxis, rental cars, and even public transit along the way.

<comment><USER3> For a rental agency the fleet is kept as a discrete number of locations. For a taxi service they need to be kept around the city. In addition, how is the insurance cost removed? I see your point about rental agencies proving that maintaining and housing a fleet is possible, but a mobile fleet in a busy metro area seems orders of magnitude more complicated so at least somewhat more expensive...

<comment><USER2> I'm not following your first point. Autonomous Ubers would be housed in discrete locations near metro areas in off-hours and then roam around during the day or use negotiated low-rate parking spaces, so the location cost would not be much higher.

Insurance rates are based on actuarial estimates of likelihood to cause accidents. Autonomous vehicles will not be on the roads in a meaningful way until they are _significantly_ better drivers than humans, thus insurance rates will drop low enough that fleet owners just self-insure to cover incidental damage from no-fault causes.

I'm also not sure what you're getting at in your last point. Uber has already built out a highly capable dispatching service to manage large fleets roaming around urban areas and they have a massive dataset to be able to predict ideal fleet allocations. The only real added cost will be the fuel overhead to support cars driving around looking for fares (currently that cost is eaten by human Uber drivers).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the better AIR development strategy? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a javascript, C++, Java, C, OCAML, F# programmer who is looking to pick up AIR programming.
As I understand it, AIR development allows you to start with Dreamweaver, Flash, or straight HTLM/AJAX (I guess with Eclipse?)
So what would be the trade-offs with each choice? Is Flash/Flex tough to pick up? Full of idiosyncrasies? Is Dreamweaver cumbersome for rich apps? Is Eclipse/JS tougher to set up yet more powerful in the long run?
Any help from AIR programmers would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> I used to use Flex for AIR development, but I think I'm about to switch to HTML/JavaScript now. Here are a few reasons:

\- I can reuse more (code, designs, etc.). This, obviously, will vary for different people. If you are Flash/Flex developer already your situation will likely to be quite the opposite.

\- HTML is easier than MXML. Obviously, this is somewhat subjective, too.

\- jQuery. HTML/CSS/JS wins.

\- Webkit (HTML) engine is less clunky than Flex. GUIs are, IMHO, snappier when built with Webkit, and this is very important to me. Also, Webkit support for effects and animations is surprisingly good (although Flash beats it easily in this area).

\- Aptana IDE is free and is very good (never tried Dreamweaver, though)

So, here you have another opinion. However, it is worth stating that Adobe favors use of Flash/Flex for developing AIR applications (not sure why), so you'll have to jump through some hoops in order to get started. Aptana helps a _lot_.

Finally, I must say that it's a pity you have to choose. Ideally, you would combine the best of both worlds for your app. And although technically feasible (Flash libraries can be used in a HTML project, and HTML pages can be loaded into Flex application), it is very hard to do, because of the two totally different IDEs (Flex Builder and Aptana) which make debugging such "cross-over" application very hard. So, I guess you'll have to choose. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've had a lot of success using the FlexBuilder plugin for Eclipse. Also, you can just use the straight up open source flex compiler and write all your actionscript and mxml by hand using your favorite text editor.

Also, I would just use ActionScript and MXML instead of HTML/AJAX. Actionscript is basically just javascript anyhow, and MXML is a lot easier to work with than HTML.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a note for anybody else who is following along, looks like Adobe wants $250 bucks for Flexbuilder.

Is it just me? Or does Adobe try to screw you out of every penny possible the minute you move beyond their free stuff? It's like they have a grudge against giving anything away for free and need to make up for it in the pricing of everything else they have.</comment></comment>


A Call to All UI Designers: Do Not Play Skype's Game - <AUTHOR> http://kaishinlab.com/no-to-skype-competition/ <comment><USER2> As a designer, these pieces come off to me as whiny. I have a difficult time picturing why a designer would sit there angry at a company for crowdsourcing a design.

Some 14-year-old designer is not cheapening the work we do by submitting logos for free to a bunch of companies hoping to get exposure. Out-of-work designers are not taking all the other freelance jobs because they decided to do some blog layouts at $50 a pop.

Designers: get over yourselves.

If you, as a designer, truly feel the work you are doing is better than a design competition, then don't submit your work to a design competition. If you're really _that_ good, freelancers offering services for cheap, near-free, or even free shouldn't bother you at all.

Also, "keep in mind that you are betraying the design community?" Design community? _What_ design community? The design industry looks like this:

1\. Top-tier ad agencies/teams like Psyop, Leo Burnett 2\. Smaller ad agencies 3\. Freelance designers 3a. Unemployed designers

So who is our hypothetical 14-year-old logo-designing student hurting? Ad agencies. If your work is really worth that much more or is that much better, companies will pay handsomely for it. If they won't, it's _you_ that's the problem, not the designers submitting free or near-free spec-work.

Apologies for the rantiness of this comment.

Edited for typos.

<comment><USER3> _If you, as a designer, truly feel the work you are doing is better than a design competition, then don't submit your work to a design competition. If you're really that good, freelancers offering services for cheap, near-free, or even free shouldn't bother you at all_ << This is exactly why I wrote the article. You guys are talking money, I am talking ethics.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but I do think it's pretty presumptuous of you to speak for an entire industry. I do not think it is unethical, as long as the terms are clearly laid out beforehand.

<comment><USER3> Sure, I might have gone overboard, but the basic idea is still the same: That thing needs serious design thinking, not patchwork.

I consider it unethical for a company to throw a smokescreen instead of solving the real problem. And my piece was all about shedding some light on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You are trapped in the same Hell as other creative types, such as musicians: there are countless young aspirants who are willing to do this work for free just for a shot at "making it", but precious few people who sign checks who are able to discriminate the quality of the work.

Engineering and accounting, your two comparison fields, don't suffer this problem.

<comment><USER5> Engineering, accounting, and other +regulated+ fields use social engineering to solve the problem of how to be paid handsomely. What they have done is convince society that there should only be a limited number of engineers and accountants, those that are highly trained and have passed rigorous examinations. The imbalance of supply and demand takes care of the rest.

In those two fields, you can see that when supply is unfettered, compensation does fall. For example, accountants in Canada make fairly good money, but unlicensed "tax preparers" do not.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if you are just trying to make a supplemental point, but this isn't really where I was going.

Either my cell phone drops its signal, or it doesn't. Either my books balance and my checks clear, or they don't. In engineering and accounting, there are absolute and obvious measures of success.

When it comes to UI design, who decides when the design is successful? My boss? He approved the Pontiac Aztek. Lord help us all.

<comment><USER3> Allow me to chime in, UI design is as methodical as engineering and accounting. There are quantitative and qualitative methods to build and evaluate interfaces. Maybe you are referring to aesthetics, but that's only a fraction of what an interface is...

<comment><USER6> There may be metrics available, but it's an inherently fuzzy proposition to say a design 'works' or 'doesn't work'. For developers, once features are pinned down, there are much clearer criteria for success--a feature either works as described without errors or it doesn't. Most of the subjectivity that developers deal with is actually related to design.

On the extreme end, you can say a design definitely doesn't work if a large percentage of users can't accomplish their goals or get frustrated in trying, but you can easily run into situations where half your users love a feature and will be frustrated without it, and half hate it and will have fits if you don't change it. Of course, these are the kinds of issues UI designers are paid to resolve, but there will rarely-to-never be total agreement between a designer, a client, and the client's customers on which aspects of a design work and which don't. Not so in development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one who thinks there's way too much similarity between the the RIAA's "Save the artists" screeching, and the "design industry's" "Save the artists" screeching?

Your existing business model is disappearing, and your cartel isn't going to stop it. Sucks for you.

(BTW, my wife is a graphic designer, so make of that what you will)

<comment><USER8> This was kind of my thinking regarding sites like eLance and 99designs. When I first saw them I thought they were a great way to connect with designers that have more modest salary expectations. Though there are a handful of problems with these services, you just have to decide if the problems are worth the savings.

But I've been really disappointed by the huge backlash against these types of sites from the designers. There have been a few anti-99designs articles on HN recently and the attitude is like the massive IT outsourcing panics from a while back. The outsourcing came it changed some things but talented people still have jobs. Designers just have to realize the people working for free, or the outsourced design work, aren't their competition. It isn't work they are losing out on, rather it's work they would never have gotten because some people have small budgets, and that's fine. I think there is plenty of work for everyone without crapping on the design outsourcing (crowdsourcing) industry.

<comment><USER9> As a designer, when an org comes to me and says "we have $[laughably small amount] to spend on this website", I point them to WooThemes and tell them to pick one out. I'm happy to sit down with them for a few hours and do some basic work, but put the burden on them. It works great for me, because I get to do a little design education, still get paid, and focus my time on more lucrative projects. It also can pay dividends when clients come back to me later for more work or other design changes.

To put it in a more uncouth way, 99Designs and WooThemes take the pain-in-the- ass clients and get them out of the way. I don't see it as a bad thing. I just wish I had come up with the idea first.

<comment><USER10> Why don't you make your own little stable of design templates and sell them to these pain-in-the-ass clients on a non-exclusive basis?

Later on you can charge more if they want it personalised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The question of free or cheap is important, but not why I would not submit a design to a competition like this. (I'm not a "designer," so what follows are simply general remarks about my personal experience with things like this.)

Software design of all types, including UX, is an attempt to solve a problem given a set of constraints. There are thus three things involved: 1) solving, 2) the problem, and 3) the constraints.

Crowdsourcing solutions emphasizes the solving part while glossing over the problem and the constraints. Even if the "client" (in this case Skype) articulates the problem and the constraints clearly, why do we assume they are doing a good job of understanding what they want? As Einstein put it, we cannot solve a problem using the thinking that got us into it in the first place.

A big part of "creativity" is being able to redefine the problem or to play with the constraints in a novel way. This is not going to happen simply by submitting a solution to a different problem and expecting the client to say, "Aha! We were trying to solve the wrong problem!!" Humans being humans, you need to go through a process of discovery together and see if you can come up with new ways to reframe the existing problem. This cannot be done in a dictatorial fashion by the "client," nor can it be done in a dictatorial fashion by the designer, it must be done collaboratively.

Imagine Skype asked for keyboard bindings to make managing multiple chats easier. How would you go about submitting a design that used Kinect to implement a 3D gestural interface so that users could manage multiple conversations in 3D space using a different part of their brain to keep track of who is having each conversation?

This might not be a good idea, but if it _was_ a good idea, you can't get there through a design competition, you get there through interviewing the Skype stakeholders and investigating what problem they're _really_ trying to solve.

So coming back to this design competition, if I were a designer I would pass. Not because I'd be giving away my work for free, but because I wouldn't be able to do my best work, which consistes of investigating all the problem and the constraints before trying to solve the problem.

NOTE: This has nothing to do with free vs. expensive. A handsomely paid gig to design the best solution to the wrong problem is not interesting to me. I would trot out this exact same reasoning to a client that came to me with a "spec" or set of "requirements" and who offered to start paying me immediately to code a solution.

<comment><USER11> The assumption that too many people are making is that design is just that last thing to be welded on in the assembly line. Design isn't just a product, it's also a process.

<comment><USER5> It does not surprise me in the least that the people who produced the Skype 5 "design" also treat design as something to be welded on at the end of the assembly line.

 _Design isn't just a product, it's also a process._

Thank you for articulating in nine words what took me eight paragraphs to fumble around.

<comment><USER12> I happen to know the guys who designed Skype for Mac.

And by no metrics did they simply weld it on at the end.

There are many many many factors involved in why Skype looks like it do and works like it does, but treating the design as something to be welded on at the end ain't one of them nor is not having a process.

<comment><USER5> I'm delighted to hear that. It is restores my faith in our profession to know that there is a process in place and that the final result reflects the forces and contraints in place.

+1!

<comment><USER12> They guys that did Skype was 8020studio.com probably on of the best design agencies in the world if you ask me.

<comment><USER5> And I hope this actually reinforces the point I made. If it looks to me like this did not take place, it is because I obviously don't understand the forces and constraints upon the solution. Perhaps I don't fully understand the problem they are trying to solve.

If they did an excellent job, then they knew something that is not obvious from looking at the design competition, which is why I suggest that being involved in the full process is so important.

<comment><USER12> Well let me give you a pointer on what and for who they are solving problems.

I think the numbers are something along the lines of this:

90% of users on Skype don't have much more than 5 contacts in their contact list.

95% of all messages are. "Can I call you?"

<comment><USER13> "95% of all messages are. "Can I call you?"

It's hard to separate cause and effect though, 95% of _my_ messages are "Can I call you?", sometimes repeated 3-4 times, simply because the system often fails to reliably transmit anything longer without messages being lost, arriving out of order, etc. It is clearly hard to observe the users scientifically when the interface affects their behaviour.

<comment><USER12> Sure but even if it was only 70% or 80% it would still be important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A Call to All UI Designers: You're being disrupted.

There's millions of amateurs and pros moonlighting for extra cash all over the world, and they're all hungrier, cheaper, and _want_ to work whether it's for fun or for money.

For every established designer who sneers at Skype's competition there'll be 1000 who submit and cross their fingers hoping a) their work reaches 10s of millions of people and b) Skype or others give them a job.

<comment><USER15> This "disruption" you're speaking of has been going on ever since the nineties, when the web became popular.

To many companies design and UX is something that anybody can do, especially software developers and managers/customers with strong opinions, so why hire somebody that does design/UX for a living? Also many other companies hire crappy designers with 2/3 mediocre websites in their portfolio and that are listing photography as their hobby -- for cheap.

The end result is something you can see for yourself -- lots of crappy designs and unusable apps out there.

And crowd-sourcing is the alternative to the above. But IMHO, a good designer is more valuable to user-facing applications than a good developer, and if you want your app to kick-ass, the designer must is a crucial part of the development process.

So it's nothing new really -- good designers will always be paid handsomely, bad designers will have to work harder -- isn't that the same thing happening with software developers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This post is nothing more than propaganda to protect established designers from competition (those who are starting out or are just not very good at marketing their skills). Perhaps this was not the author's intention but it is the consequence of his reasoning. I don't think many designer want their profession to be protected by a trade union and this kind of mentality is what leads to it.

I say, if you are not an established designer with a large base of clients, do participate in the contest!

<comment><USER17> I'm a very experienced designer. This has nothing to do with competition _(seriously, if a contest can unravel me then I'm not really a professional)._

The rejection of contests has to do with wasting time on wishful thinking without even the minimum form of reward: constructive feedback.

Our advice is based on actual experience. What's yours?

<comment><USER16> This has nothing to do with competition? That's not what I get from this sentence:

        keep in mind that you are *betraying the design community*,
        and that *might harm you as designer* in the long run.

That actually sounds like a threat to me.

<comment><USER3> I didn't meant to threaten anyone in my article. It's just a way to draw attention to the seriousness of the matter. As a matter of fact I couldn't care less if there are any people who enter the contest. They are amateurs and and they will stay so until they take their profession more seriously.

<comment><USER2> You don't care at all if anyone enters the contest, yet felt the need to write this incendiary piece that calls on _all_ designers (which you now deride as "amateur") not to enter this contest? You then further go on to suggest that an entrant's credibility/integrity would be compromised by doing so.

So, which is it?

<comment><USER3> What I said reflects solely my opinion on the people who enter the contest. As far as I am concerned, anyone who takes UI design seriously wouldn't bother doing so... Again, I am not expecting you to agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What we do, as UI/UX people, _will_ become a commodity. It's already happened with design and simple web programming, but the quality is very poor right now. Basic economics suggests that it _will_ improve.

You can sit and whine about it, or you can make sure that your product is so vastly better than the competition that anyone who knows better will pay for it.

We're already a step up the value chain from pure designers or pure web coders, but as long as there are more people willing to do the job than there are jobs, you'd better be good =)

</comment><comment><USER19> Or you could redesign Skype and probably get a job out of it or at least an amazing project to put in your portfolio. This is a huge opportunity for anyone trying to break into the business - college kids, amateur designers, the unestablished.

<comment><USER20> Completely agree, this author apparently, potentially, lives in a sort of cloud society where every designer is paid handsomely for his work and you don't have to scrape and beg and plead and bleed and tactically position yourself in order to make it. A winning Skype redesign would be life-changing for anybody with the time to submit to such a contest, by definition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the author's overall thrust: that the new Skype UI for Mac is horrid and that a large company with lots of cash should generally pay quality, full-time designers who can spend a lot of time understanding the product and producing an interface that gels with the user.

What I do take issue with (Edit: and what it seems that others have taken issue with since I started writing this reply) is the following sentiment:

> "Such Design competitions are a disguised form of crowdsourcing, and are > extremely insulting to the design profession."

Aside from the point that there's nothing 'disguised' about this being a crowdsourcing exercise, I've seen the similar view asserted around the place that designers should somehow be exempt from market forces. If you can't compete on price (which you can't if that price is free), then do what most of the designers that complain about this stuff can (or at least should be able to) compete on - quality and experience.

<comment><USER13> It's the usual lemon market argument though: clients can't discern quality reliably so they go for price only, which drives quality out of the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You know what 99designers can't do? They can't visit your clients' offices. They can't justify their decisions in realtime. They can't 'sell' their design beyond simply clicking 'upload.' Basically, they can't be convincing to the people who hold the purse strings.

But you can. That's your job. You're a designer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi all,

I have spent almost one hour reading all of your comments and replied to as many as I can. Needless to say, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Actually, I was expecting quite the opposite, if the strong tone of the article is anything to go by.

Again, let me reiterate that I am NOT against design contests per se. I am against companies who take design lightly and try to patch stuff when things go astray. Do any of you think that changing the visual style of the chat pane will solve the several issues of the new UI?

Folks, this is a program used by millions of people, including computer un- savvy people who are having serious problems with the new UI. Forget logos, the problems here are functional first and foremost, and it is not a design contest that will solve them.

For those of you saying that this is a chance for young designers to get their name out in the world, allow me to tell you that there are hundreds of other ways to do that. Free or open source projects that need UI designers are not hard to come by.

Also, I am under 25, and by no means an old timer who is trying to spoil the party.

Cheers,

</comment><comment><USER23> Meh. I think asking (especially young) designers to consider the value of their work before giving it away is a reasonable thing.. but to try to pseudo- unionize to prevent this from happening is silly.

This happens to lots of markets, with similar complaints. It's certainly happened in photography, and the result is painful.. mostly for craftsmen in the middle of the talent & pay scale, who's overhead and value was frankly inflated by a rather narrow market channel and burden-to-entry.

Both disappeared, and the market corrected. Is it sad? Sure. It's a bummer to know that in some parts of the market hard-working people were replaced by flickr searches or microstock, but there's something beautiful about it also. Either way, it's inertia. It's what happens, and what's always happened.

I think the natural result can be a very positive one for the very talented. There's a sharp talent & value contrast this kind of shift causes. People in the middle need to move up or down and take advantage of the changes.

Adapt or die.

</comment><comment><USER24> From the article:

> _There is no way in hell any company would launch an engineering or > accounting competition._

Ahem: <http://www.netflixprize.com/>

<comment><USER3> Everyone seems to be pointing in the article to the Netflix prize, but hey, don't take my phrase word for word. That's actually an exception that confirms the rule... What I meant is that spec work in design is being tolerated by both companies and designers more than any other field...

<comment><USER25> > _don't take my phrase word for word_

Say what you mean.

<comment><USER3> My message is clear. You are free to disagree, just don't feel the need to bring down my piece sentence by sentence...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why does nobody mention that this competition is for "chat styles"? That the content of the chat window is the only part of the new oh-so-awful Skype 5 for Mac that you can change with custom "styles", and that no matter how good the UI/UX designer, they can not fix any of the perceived problems with the Skype 5 UI by creating a "chat style"?

<comment><USER27> True. If they're looking for a great UI designer/design, and not just a photoshop job, they have to give the UI person access to the product flow decision-making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Caution: wild stab in the dark here.

"Playing the game" isn't going to lead to $0 for the 'winner' and Skype just rolling out the submission immediately. I'd be willing to be there would be some paid consultation between the 'winner' and Skype, although they probably won't commit to a specific winning $ amount up front.

I understand the basic argument of "they're getting our work for free!". Really, I do. But the notion that "hiring a professional UI designer to fix it" will cut it might not be correct.

First, they've paid people to come up with the current one, so simply paying people doesn't necessarily get the best results.

Second, Skype in particular is used by a huge number of people, all with various needs and experiences. Getting input from a broad range of people informed by their usage of Skype and other apps should yield a final product better than the mind of one "professional UI designer". Possibly not, but the odds are in favor of a crowdsourced approach coming up with something as good or better than pinning this all on one hand-picked by Skype with no input from the community.

</comment><comment><USER17> Rather than putting time and effort into a "contest", these designers could be doing something more constructive like contributing to open-source projects.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's worth rereading what Mike Montiero wrote about the new Gap Logo.

[http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_ne...](http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/10/dear_gap_i_have_your_new_logo.php)

</comment><comment><USER29> This game is for a young or unknown designer. It's their chance to establish themselves and build their portfolio. As a professional who makes a living in design, you are not obligated to compete. Though, you are still invited.

It was Skype's choice to put on this contest, and it should be assumed they know it is possible they won't get as quality a final product as possible. There are plenty of projects out there for quality designers to work on, and it bothers me that so many designers complain that free/cheap client work is such a pain in the community's ass.

Without a doubt, the type of client who wants to go that route is someone a designer of your talent wouldn't want to work with in the first place.

Right?

</comment><comment><USER30> Skype's user experience designers -- assuming they have any -- finally have management's answer to the age old question. Yes, you are indeed chopped liver.

</comment><comment><USER31> All I could think of was Heroku's blog being ripped when reading this.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Such Design competitions are a disguised form of crowdsourcing, and are extremely insulting to the design profession."

Oh, come off it. Too many designers become smug asses with an unwarranted sense of importance. Competitions like this are opportunities for those just starting to get their name out in the world. You're not going to be put out on the street because Skype held a public UI contest rather than hiring your firm.

<comment><USER3> I do not run a design firm. I am just a no-name freelance designer who loves his job. If you think that I wrote the article because I am concerned about paying my bills, then you completely missed the point.

It's sad to live in an era where someone who loves what he is doing for a living is called a "smug ass with an unwarranted sense of importance" ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a designer, I'm not very concerned about spec work. The wide availability of cheap desktop publishing software could have made design as a profession vanish because it gave people the ability to do it themselves.

But that didn't happen. Instead, people did try it themselves and the market was flooded with extremely poor design. Before, not having a logo at all was the floor, the absolute minimum of branding. But after DTP, the floor was raised - having a poorly-designed logo that you did yourself was the new minimum. Today, crowdsourced logo that you paid $300 for is rapidly becoming the new minimum.

Nothing changes for designers, because there is no ceiling. Thinking of design in the very narrow, branding sense: it cannot be commodified, because whenever the minimum level is raised, it becomes ubiquitous and generic, and that creates the new zero point. Designers get paid to design things to stand out from what's ubiquitous, whatever that happens to be at the time.</comment>


The IRS Tried to Hide Emails That Show Tax Industry Influence over Free File - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-tried-to-hide-emails-that-show-tax-industry-influence-over-free-file-program <comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 A quick scan of articles doesn't explain why the IRS would be so keen to agree and a quick scan of the web didn't bring up any obvious answer to that. Could someone explain?</comment>


More Information About Last Week's Takedowns - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/11/last-weeks-takedowns/ <comment><USER2> I understand that Facebook is in a very tough position, trying to deal with very sophisticated and well-resourced propaganda organizations out of Russia and who-knows-where-else.

But still, I find this post more than a little creepy.

It's mostly, I think, because you could change a few names and this post would sound _very_ much like a press release from state-owned Chinese media, about how they shut down the Falun Gong or some dissident group in the interest of national harmony.

Maybe it's the Orwellian language. "Inauthentic"? If Facebook banned everyone who's inauthentic on their site, they would be left with hardly any users at all.

<comment><USER3> Is it all that complicated, or is this another case where HN has a blind spot about the concept of "intent"? The issue with Russian troll accounts is that the accounts are created and driven specifically to deceive other users. You can't say that about Falun Gong.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that (possibly) true about a huge number of advertisements, political statements, religions, etc.?

When a politician says "this is good for my constituents" when it's really good for their donors, should they be banned from facebook?

<comment><USER5> I guess, isn't there a difference between the actions of an individual and the actions of a nation state?

A singular politician voicing his/her opinion/rhetoric is one thing, a concerted nation state attack is entirely different.

I think it's interesting people are not making this distinction here.

<comment><USER6> Could this an effect of the size of Facebook?

With the amount of users they have, they are bigger than many nation states (and they also cross borders), so maybe people perceive the difference a bit immaterial?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebook took down the pages of a lot of legit people I know and follow. So did Twitter. The solution is not better AI or blocking, it's for people in tech to start encouraging others to go back to the way we use to find data.

Are you using an RSS reader? If not, you should be. Don't use those useless YouTube subscriptions, but use the RSS channel feed. Tell people about RSS. "You remember Google reader, well there are some great alternatives like Feedly and Newsblur .. and you can export all your feeds if you ever want to switch and they never block anything or change the order in which you view things like Facebook/Twitter."

Are you on Mastodon or run an instance? You should and encourage other people to find an instance. If you know how, you can run your own for your friends and family.

The solution is for people in tech that know how to latch onto, run and encourage more distributed systems of getting our news, blogs and entertainment that don't filter things for us.

<comment><USER3> What's an example of a page Facebook took down, or an account Twitter took down, where you think they were in the wrong?

<comment><USER7> Carey Wedler: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4zu_QS6hK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4zu_QS6hK4)

<comment><USER3> Carey Wedler wasn't banned from Facebook, but theAntiMedia, which is a left- wing, pro-Russia version of Infowars, was. (I guess Wedler lost her Twitter account?)

Interestingly, Facebook actually got dinged from real news outlets because its algorithm was ranking stories from theAntiMedia (and other conspiracy sites) higher than those of actual journalists during events like the Vegas shooting. So that might have played into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is interesting about these posts is how diffuse the messages are - it's more about causing divisions then pushing any single cause.

<comment><USER9> It's cool that accounts that want to sow discord and divide our society are being taken down. But I would also like to see the same standard applied to the media. Dividing society and causing pain is how they made their millions.

<comment><USER10> How do you define sowing discord or dividing society? If you look at most of the social advances hard won over the last twenty years, they have always caused discord and challanged society. In America, the right to bear arms has caused massive discord, same with same sex marrage, leagal marijuana, black lives matter... not to mention discussions about political leaders. In other countries similar discord is sown regarding Brexit in the UK, Aslyim seekers in Australia, Climate change. Each of these debates have been accompanied on both sides by a range of discussions with debatable facts.

At what point does the carrier of the message become the legitimate editior or even worse censor of that information. Who decides what is a fact? The winner? The CEO?

As far as I'm aware there is only one disicipline that is considered to have proof of facts, the rest is either best guess that meets the evidence or simply opnion. Allowing the messenger to chose what is and is not a fact removes the massive benefit provided by the internet, the ability for everybody to have a voice.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

We have just celebrated the anaversery of the end of the First World War, lets not have this date be celebrated in the future as being the start of the loss of freedoms that millions died for.

<comment><USER11> >In America, the right to bear arms has caused massive discord, same with same sex marrage, leagal marijuana, black lives matter... not to mention discussions about political leaders. In other countries similar discord is sown regarding Brexit in the UK, Aslyim seekers in Australia, Climate change. Each of these debates have been accompanied on both sides by a range of discussions with debatable facts.

Maximised and polarised to the maximum by the media. That is the real common component here. Most people would be apathetic to those issues, if it wasn't for the media bombarding them and pissing them off.

<comment><USER12> > _Most people would be apathetic to those issues, if it wasn 't for the > media..._

Just wanted to point out though that these issues were chosen precisely _BECAUSE_ most people are _NOT_ apathetic to them.

That's what makes them good wedge issues. For instance, whether the media would cover them or not, people would still want marijuana. (And another set of people would still want marijuana banned.) People care about the issue regardless of whether or not the media covers it.

That's why these are good issues to use if your intent is to destabilize a society. They are latent, un-"dealt with" issues. I'd imagine those are the sort of issues you'd look for when trying to increase discord in target nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember when Facebook censored my communications with friends and family about the Snowden documents, Bernie Sanders, and Mayday Protests. This was before the current trend of labeling the justification "Russian propaganda" \- it was just part of the routine American censorship.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, a government organisation is openly telling Facebook how to moderate speech now, and they're complying? I know Facebook's a private company, so they don't have to uphold the 1st amendment, I'm just wondering how far do we have to go down this rabbit hole before people wake up.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. This is government censorship, they're just using the facade of Facebook to do it. COINTELPRO is a good read, the FBI is untrustworthy and works against American interests when it comes to foreign and domestic politics and political organizing (please notice the specifics of this, I am not saying FBI is untrustworthy in all aspects).

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is this different than this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439175)

It's government instructing Facebook to remove pages. This only provides a few examples, and someone else in this very thread said they took down legit pages of legitimate people they know and follow, presumably also at the FBI's request. Is this not government censorship?

Does the FBI get to start taking down legitimate left wing organizing as they've done in the past with cointelpro?

<comment><USER16> According to the FB article, they took down the pages because the pages violated FB policy.

The FBI's involvement was merely to call FB's attention to the existence of the pages. From the article, it seems that FB takes down such pages regardless of who happens to call their attention to them.

<comment><USER15> What is Facebook's exact policy for removing legitimate accounts with real American citizens behind them just posting political memes and organizing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It'd be interesting to see a list of what exactly they took down.

</comment><comment><USER18> Vague headline not appreciated. Put the word Facebook in there at least so I can know whether I'm interested.

<comment><USER19> You can see that it's on fb.com next to the title</comment></comment>


The evolving fight against sham reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21676835-evolving-fight-against-sham-reviews-five-star-fakes?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/five_star_fakes <comment><USER2> I wish sites with reviews would do a better job of letting me skim for issues.

Often the first thing I do when looking at a product/service with reviews such as on Amazon or Yelp is to look at the distribution (which Yelp used to feature prominently but now buries under a tiny "Details" button next to the review count).

Then I drill in to specific 1-3 star reviews to look for recurring trends of problems people are having and also read through the questions for "gotchas."

I wish there was a service that pointed out summaries of the negative reviews to look for trends (as opposed to one-offs which might be fake reviews).

Positive reviews are helpful, but for some reason I look at the negatives first.</comment>


Ask HN: Job manager/queue for cloud instances - <AUTHOR>

I have following problem to solve and in order to spare me from reinventing the wheel, I hope for some pointers to existing solutions or services:
On top of a cloud infrastructure (AWS, Rackspace...) I need to somehow be able to manage jobs (research software which can take from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours to run), i.e. starting jobs on idle instances, spin up new instances if needed and stop unused instances.
Does anyone know of a solution or service which could help me in this regard? <comment><USER2> Please check out DNAnexus ([https://dnanexus.com/](https://dnanexus.com/)). (Disclosure: I work there.)

It's a platform-as-a-service that allows you to do exactly what you're asking. You submit jobs that you want to run, can set up dependencies between jobs in a pipeline, and we do all the instance management (though you have the option to choose different instance types to optimize the runtime or cost of your jobs depending on their resource requirements). It's built on top of AWS, though from the user perspective it's cloud-agnostic (e.g., you don't have to know anything about how to bring up/down EC2 instances, nor do you even need an AWS account).

Although it was designed with genomic data analysis in mind (in particular, some of the relevant security controls for HIPAA and CLIA compliance), it's actually quite general. So even if you aren't doing bioinformatics, you can think of it as a nice service for running arbitrary Linux executables on arbitrary files in the cloud with minimal setup and administrative overhead.

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email (jdale at the domain mentioned above).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, I sent you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might want to try CFNcluster ([https://github.com/awslabs/cfncluster](https://github.com/awslabs/cfncluster)) or Starcluster ([http://star.mit.edu/cluster/](http://star.mit.edu/cluster/)). If you are used to Grid Engine, you should find them pretty easy to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Starcluster seems to be what I was looking for! Thank you very much</comment></comment>


Jupiter's south pole - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21390/approaching-jupiter <comment><AUTHOR> This is an enhanced image. Here's a submission with the first image: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614530)</comment>


House Judiciary Committee Refuses To Hear Industry Concerns About SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/13455416712/house-judiciary-committee-refuses-to-hear-wider-tech-industry-concerns-about-sopa.shtml

<comment><USER2> Techdirt doing procedural reporting about congress.

Do yourself a favor and search for [ycombinator tzs techdirt] (actually, if you have a little time, you can leave the "techdirt" out of that query, because 'tzs is awesome) and get a feel for Techdirt's track record on stuff like this.

You can very safely assume that procedural shenanigans for this bill will be covered in excruciating detail by sites that haven't obliterated their own credibility, like the EFF. Meanwhile, all this posting did is get a bunch of people to spend time talking about how "congress is bought and sold" and the system needs to be replaced and something about Obama and boom look at that I flagged this story.

Really: go read 'tzs comments; they're fantastic.

<comment><USER3> You want the EFF's coverage? I think it was already on HN, but here you go:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood- finally...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets- chance-break-internet)

Ars Technica also has a discussion of its constitutionality, as debated by famous constitutional scholars, which might interest those with a legal bent:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/famous- holly...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/famous-hollywood- backed-first-amendment-lawyer-says-sopa-is-a-ok.ars)

<comment><USER2> Both of those: credible sources.

Techdirt? Not so much.

<comment><USER3> I hope that provides more value to the story.

I take this all as an indication that the industry, especially with the hire of someone like Abrams, is seriously pushing the issue and plans to make it an issue in the next election if they don't get what they want before then.

<comment><USER4> If this is so devastating why doesnt Google do a "mock seizure" in which there search engine is seized by the government. They cant out influence Hollywood, but they sure can cause a ruckus online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's cute that people still get worked up about stuff like this, as though they're honestly surprised that legislators are bought and sold.

Here's the thing: the system is broken, and it impossible to fix. It will fail, though, and that's when there's an opportunity to replace it with something better (or, something far far worse).

<comment><USER6> While you may be right in that the system won't be fixed, the correct response is to not get worked up about it and sit around waiting for the system to fail. It's not like government will disband and people will look around and say "Ok, that didn't work. Anyone have any other ideas?"

Keep getting worked up, and keep making noise about it. More people need to care more.

<comment><USER7> Yea, it is not impossible to fix if people would simply wake up in time for the next election.

<comment><USER8> Yeah? Wake up and vote for...who? Neither side of our current two party system has made noteworthy improvements. So...it's election day....I'm wide awake...and who am I supposed to be voting for?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mike Masnick is turning into the Matt Taibbi of copyright. I'm not a supporter of this legislation, but nor am I a supporter of this uninformative tabloid journalism. If Mike Masnick wanted you to be fully informed then he'd explain what the procedural future of this bill is if the judiciary committee _does_ give it the nod (which would not exactly be surprising, because the House judiciary committee is headed by Lamar Smith and is thus going to give the nod to _any_ bill of which he's a sponsor). He could point out how it's then got to survive debate and a floor vote in the House, how it would then have to be reviewed by a Senate committee and debated and voted on there, and how the reconciliation process would come into play if the committees don't agree.

But there's none of this, just another 'from the _snarky-joke-about- bureaucracy_ department' subheadline, and another article suggesting certain and imminent doom to follow immediately after the committee hearing. It's pure gutter journalism, and the only redeeming feature is that most of us happen to agree with the author's stated position. I don't even know if this is Masnick's actual position or not; he comes across very much as a journalist who has mastered the art of identifying a market and telling the people in it what they want to hear. He always appeals to the emotion, and never provides context.

This is called 'point of view' journalism. Here's an explanation by a well- established practitioner called Matt Labash on a journalism industry website; he was discussing it in the context of conservative/liberal politics, but the fact is that this is a style employed across the political spectrum:

 _[on why point-of-view articles sell so well] Because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually._

Please don't interpret this as a critique of conservatism in particular; it's populism that I hold in low regard. Nthing Tom's suggestion below that you look to the EFF for informed and informative argument against this legislation. Call me a an elitist snob if you like, but I am sick to the back teeth of this linkbaity rubbish passing itself off as journalism. Shallow uninformed coverage like this makes it _easier_ to marginalize the interests of consumers and open-internet advocates, because the average Joe does not have the patience to listen to someone running around with hair on fire.

<comment><USER10> I was actually interested in reading Taibbi's book on the financial crisis, would you actually recommend against that?

<comment><USER2> I think Felix Salmon at Reuters sums Taibbi up nicely: "you don't read a Taibbi rant for an evenhanded look at both sides of a complex story. It's more a forcefully-put case for the prosecution: some of his charges might not stick, but he'll throw a few chancers in as well for good measure".

To that I'd only add that Taibbi seems deeply incurious. Other journalists will attempt to explain the motivations and mechanics behind a particular trade or instrument. Taibbi will respond, "I talked to some of the principals in this story and there's no way you can come to any conclusion other than that this a giant fraud". Which may be right as far as it goes, but it doesn't help you understand what's actually happening.

I think people like us are trained to be very wary of anyone attempting to conceal facts, even if they're right. We can think for ourselves.

So many excellent people have done real legwork (defined partially as "hurting their brains to understand things like how a trust holding 250MM of mortgages is tranched and why a hedge fund wants one of those tranches and a bank another"), it seems a shame that everyone's paying attention to the journalist who's really just got a talent for telling people what they want to hear.

Even if that's what you really want, Michael Lewis does a better job of it. For that matter, you really ought to read _Liar's Poker_ if you haven't already. Some of the acronyms have changed, but the underlying game is the same.

For the record, I appreciate and enjoy Taibbi's writing on politics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like the only hope for stopping this is a presidential veto. Time to step up the pressure on Obama and push for it. He's not exactly an ally, but congress is a foregone conclusion.

<comment><USER12> Obama has hired a good number of former RIAA officials to work in his administration, so I'm pretty doubtful of a veto.

<comment><USER11> As am I, unfortunately. Still, a presidential veto, however unlikely, still seams more realistic than the bill being defeated in congress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _What kind of democracy is that?_

The best money can buy, son.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wait. Are we in favour of industry lobbyists now? I'm confused... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER15> Surprise surprise. This is going to get ramrodded through.

<comment><USER16> People seem to forget that the other previous laws were modified by court decisions to something more reasonable as its less likely to buy off Supreme Court Judges than congress people..

The main fight is not in congress people its those first few Supreme court cases bought before the court by industry big firms like Google, Amazon, etc</comment></comment>