Design Thinking and Mass Incarceration - <AUTHOR> https://casetext.com/posts/design-thinking-and-mass-incarceration <comment><USER2> > _We don't have an end design in mind. At the same time, however, the costs > of continuing along our historically unprecedented levels of incarceration > remain obscure to all but the most determined news hounds._

Two sides of the coin: a) conspiracy theory and b) unintended consequences. You use unintended consequences when pretending your ruling class (you know, the ones who literally make the many rules we live under) is just bumbling, perhaps selfish but more or less benevolent overall.

Conspiracy theory typically has the same overall systematic benevolence, except some evil schemers perverted everything.

Imagine a politician stumbling across Wikipedia: _" Hmm that's odd, we imprison ourselves way more than anyone else. And somehow, we keep funding all the infrastructure needed for that. Ehh, you learn a random weird thing everyday."_

Someone with the least bit of institutional awareness can — hold on to your hats — entertain the thought that the system is running as expected and intended. Just like if any other nation had these results. Not a bug, but a feature.

> _prisons have failed to deliver on the promises of rural economic > development so often touted._

An illustration of how "unintended consequences" perverts our minds. What strange person writes, _" Russia's prisons failed to economically develop rural areas, as so often touted"_ with a straight face? (Or China, or Iran?) No, some claims are such an insult to intelligence that no one would write them with a straight face. And yet, here it is.

(Such a sentence is so disturbing that I hope I just missed the part where he admitted to satire. It's just intellectual self-defense not to read this article too closely.)

<comment><USER3> While it is easy to pretend that some secret cabal is pulling all the strings the reality is the majority of the population wants to be tough on crime. This leads to politicians competing to be seen as tough on crime.

<comment><USER4> Except the majority of the people want to be tough on crime because they have a grossly distorted view of how much crime there is and how severe it is because of the large news corporations 24/7 coverage of every violent incident.

Which re-enforces the "tough on crime" mechanism, the whole system is rigged towards incarcerating people.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's really true. Here's the homicide rate in various western countries: [http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5463783b6da811d8298...](http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5463783b6da811d82983136a-960/screen%20shot%202014-11-11%20at%205.56.18%20pm.png). Our current prison industrial complex was designed in the 1980's and 1990's, at a time when our murder rate was 5x higher per capita than in our peer countries.

Chicago, which features prominently in the news, has over 4x as many murders as London, despite the latter being a much larger city. You're much more likely to be murdered in Chicago than to die in a traffic accident,[1] while the opposite is true in most of the western world.

[1] Interestingly, you're also about 3x more likely to die in a traffic accident in the U.S. than in the U.K.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I find very nice since about one year on HN: We are witnessing a massive documentation effort on the prison system and criminal law enforcement effect, with many good quality articles about effects, facts, downsides and proposals.

I'm not located in US and I don't know what is the mood over there. I assume HN is generally a very selected minority. I also witness Trump's ascent. However I'm deeply happy that America is reflecting upon their judicial system. As many articles appear, more people become interested and think about solutions. We may be seeing the beginning of a popular trend and if you keep going, you may have a huge impact.

<comment><USER7> There's Trump but there's also Bernie Sanders, who recently called for eliminating private prisons. He's within 10 points of Clinton in the latest national poll.

<comment><USER8> Please. There are no private prisons.

A private enterprise receives 100% of its income from its clients.

No prisoner is paying to be incarcerated.

What you mean to say is that the Government gives taxpayer money to some prisons, and some private persons end up pocketing this taxpayer money.

There is no private business going on in prisons.

<comment><USER7> We have prisons which are run by the government, and we have prisons which are run by private companies that sell their services to the government. Call the latter what you like. The companies that run them do a poor job with prisoner safety, and lobby the government to keep the prisoner supply high. In some cases states have signed contracts that require them to supply a minimum number of prisoners regardless of crime rates.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how- for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/)

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu- la...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu-lawsuit-east- mississippi-correctional-facility)

<comment><USER8> > run by private companies that sell their services to the government

If a company's sole paying client is the government (i.e. the public at large through government coercion) then that isn't a private company.

A private company is one where if all the potential voluntary clients give up on, it goes under.

Is a spy a (foreign) private company since it also sells its services to the government? Is a saboteur a private company? Is a privateer?

This service (keeping prisoners) only exists for one type of client, clients that have a monopoly on force, also known as governments. A private business may indeed sell solely to the government, but it can only be private if the service it offers exists for more than that one type of client. Failing that, such "company" is a Government Agency, whether the government admits and/or makes it official or not.

In days of yore the UK would also call privateers private. Do you see the pattern of governments trying to distance themselves from the evil they're doing by labeling unofficial government agencies "private companies"?

This is not about a person's preference for calling things a certain way. In a proper discussion we have to settle the meaning of words and phrases. And the phrase "private company" in no way encompass the work of government agencies whose product could not be sold to the general public directly.

Sorry DennisP, you're just wrong. "Call it what you want" is not an argument, much less a counter-argument to my arguments. You could have taken the normal route and just said "you're right", but instead you're choosing to keep pushing the "call it whatever" non-argument button. Be a good loser and admit you're wrong, or refute my arguments.

I can also tell you went through all my recent past comments and voted them all down, as I went from 0 to -10 immediately after our interaction. Very childish of you, but not surprising.

How do you hope to solve problems and disagreements if you're not willing to abide by the code of conduct that those who argue seeking to learn follow?

If you believe what Socialist Bernie Sanders thinks is "private" then you'll believe anything.

<comment><USER7> I have not downvoted any of your comments. Whoever did that was someone else.

My point was just that there are two ways we run prisons and Sanders proposed shutting down one of them, for various good reasons mentioned in my links. Many people call that type "private," including major news organizations. I actually agree with you that it may not be the best term, but it's the only one I've seen in common use. The basic facts are the same regardless of nomenclature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://archive.is/BsKoF](https://archive.is/BsKoF)</comment>


JacquesM's Unofficial Hacker News FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ

<comment><USER2> Not bad, but slightly outdated. To search, you can just use the search box at the bottom of the page. searchyc.com doesn't work anymore.</comment>


Coronavirus Comparison Tool - <AUTHOR> https://coronaexaminer.codemochi.com/ <comment><USER2> this seems nifty, but it's basically impossible to pick some of the smallest countries my clicking on a map, a search field might be useful.

EDIT: also, it might be more interesting to show the progress starting from the first death, or the first 100 cases, to make plots easier to compare.</comment>


Microsoft's fonts catch out another fraudster–this time in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/microsofts-fonts-catch-out-another-fraudster-this-time-in-canada/ <comment><USER2> Moral of the story: if you're going to backdate documents, use a VM with period OS/software. It probably wouldn't hurt to use antique printers as well.

<comment><USER3> Use old paper and old ink, too.

It's probably possible to tell that ink was applied to paper recently, even if the ink and paper are both old, but I'd expect that the longer it has been the more uncertainty there is so you should be able to fake an N year old document without having to let the ink dry or set or diffuse or whatever it does for N years. I'd assume that there are ways to speed this processes up, too.

I have no idea what the curve looks like though. This may only be practical if you aren't in a hurry. So, faking a document that you've just found out you need and you need soon might not be feasible, but faking something like a mint condition vintage comic book might be possible.

Probably should also use vintage staples or glue or whatever was used for binding at the time you want to claim the document is from.

This is really the kind of thing you want to plan ahead for, rather than find yourself on eBay trying to find a specific make or model 50 year old printer that works.

Any competently run evil organization that has a decent budget (Hydra, KAOS, Cobra, AIM, etc) will regularly buy copies of the document production equipment and supplies used by contemporary businesses, governments, and hero groups and keep that equipment working and well maintained for several decades for retroactive document production.

<comment><USER4> >It's probably possible to tell that ink was applied to paper recently,

Confidence on this measurement is probably very low. Documents in a basement in Miami (they don't do basements in Florida for a reason) will age very differently to documents in an attic in Tuscon which will age very differently than documents in a garage in Fairbanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like someone could create a little program that could let you choose time specific fonts. Though I really can't see much use in such a program other then something someone might produce just for practice.

<comment><USER6> Any situation where you need era-appropriate typography and are serious about it even when you're not trying to be deceitful. Eg. movies, games, and their various marketing material. Though usually if you are serious you have money to hire a graphic designer.

<comment><USER7> Or just hire a nerd with all-sixties IBM gear :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDP3Iz6D6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDP3Iz6D6A)

(although the pedantic in me notes that he used the wrong selectric ball (prestige elite vs large elite) for the license)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tangential to the main point of the story, but why were this CEO's homes up for grabs when his company collapsed? Isn't liability limited to the company?

<comment><USER9> Some background: [https://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/the- seven-...](https://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/the-seven-year- battle-to-get-former-look-communications-directors-to-repay-indemnification)

</comment></comment><comment> a-dub lol. wouldn't surprise me one bit if there's an additional watermark buried in tiny variations in the kerning or something as well...</comment>


The Flattening of Ebook Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/?p=3590

<comment><USER2> Author of the original Association of American Publishers report posted a comment to Washington Post article with rebuttal of this interpretation of their data:

 _As the person who produced the AAP report quoted here, I 'm not given enough characters in Comments to point out the countless errors in this piece. It misunderstands our basic data and, since our reports only track current vs previous year, quotes figures that come out of nowhere and are unrecognizable. It misses the widely-reported fact that Q1 2013's overall eBook growth slowed because of the Children's/Young Adults category: The Q1 lead-up to the Hunger Games film in March 2012 drove C/YA eBooks to extraordinary triple-digit growth; minus a comparable blockbuster in Q1 2013, C/YA slowed. Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction eBooks, however, grew 14% in the same time '12-'13 period._

 _Also, an essential point is missed: These are not retail sales numbers but, instead, publishers ' net revenues coming from all their distribution channels including Institutions (e.g. schools, libraries) and Book Fairs. That also means, for instance, that with Borders' financial troubles no longer a factor, publishers have seen their net revenue from print stabilize which, in turn, affects their overall percentage earned from eBooks in these reports._

 _Finally, the piece 's premise that an eBook is an eBook is an eBook is wrong. Each category within consumer books - Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Children's/YA and Religious Presses - has moved into e-formats at different points in time. Adult F/NF was the pioneer, starting years ago, and that growth has become more consistent as it's matured. C/YA, which entered later, is now in the midst of enormous transition. Religious Presses are more newcomers to eBooks. Lumping these distinct categories together and making broad generalizations makes little sense._

 _We release highlights of all our reports to media (including the Post). We 're happy to share. But an article based on a non-journalistic blog that itself has only second-hand information does a disservice to readers, authors and publishers._

 _Andi Sporkin_ _Association of American Publishers_

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e-book- sales-are-leveling-off-heres- why/?commentID=washingtonpost.com/ECHO/item/1376001588-174-705)

<comment><USER3> This is proper journalism ^, getting analysis from people who didn't just read the abstract.

<comment><USER4> Yes. And I must say OMG, i thought proper journalism was dead! Nice to see it is still alive somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the most interesting things to come to light in the anti-trust decision against Apple was that Amazon was happily buying bestselling eBooks from publishers for $13 and reselling them for $9. The publishers preferred the opposite: for Apple and Amazon pay them $9 and then resell the books for $13. The publishers WANTED the eBook market to slow down - they didn't want people to stop buying hardcovers from Barnes and Noble for $30 and they didn't want people thinking that a new bestselling novel was only worth $10.

</comment><comment><USER6> I actually find myself buying more and more ebooks lately. I find it really convenient for various reasons, including Whispersync (which is quite useful). Also I travel a lot and am in the process of finishing multiple books, so it's obviously convenient to not have to carry giant books around.

I think a lot of factors are influencing this trend, but I don't buy that DRM is the problem. As rude as it may sound, I doubt most of the general public even knows what DRM is. Well, the data itself shows that the majority of consumer book sales are going to paper, so that argument may be moot anyway.

Newer generations probably won't purchase nearly as many paper books (or digital, even) as older generations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The market will probably shrink and be taken over by short-form work designed for tablets and e-readers.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Most of the current e-book contents & formats (Kindle, epub, etc.) have not yet fully exploited the capabilities of the digital medium. I'd say we are not more than 30-40% (or less) there, even just considering the current level of technology.

2\. Habits are hard to change. What you are most accustomed to when growing up, you tend to continue unless the advantages of change is overwhelming. Current e-book formats do not yet offer huge advantages over paper books, thus many adults keep buying paper ones. (Some advantages, like physical storage space & weight, are big, but confined to specific situations, say during travel, as mentioned in the article.)

3\. New generations of kids are more and more distracted by digital interactivity and communications. I suspect the average amount of long-form reading per person in the developed world has declined over time. (Does anyone have an estimate?) Long-form narratives like paper books and current e-books cannot now hold attention of most casual readers, especially the young. Even though I did not grow up with a computer and read many books as a child, I now read quite a bit less books and many more short items on the Web (articles, blogs, forum posts, etc.).

4\. Over time, when the new generation of digital natives grows up and technology progresses, e-books would gradually but surely dominate the reading market for all types of books. More importantly, popular non-fictions will be developed as a new kind of e-books, which cannot even be fully presented in the traditional narrative form. Al Gore's Our Choice [1] is just an example of the first generation's interactive e-books.

[1] [http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/](http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/)

<comment><USER8> In response to (3) -- I read a LOT as a kid, too, and I also stopped as I got older. Until I got a kindle that is: now I read every day. I'm quite happy about that.

And the browser in the PaperWhite is really handy, when I'm on the go ill, often leave the tablet to home and use my kindle to read HN or The Verge.

Just a random anecdote :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well ebooks prices are ridiculous in the first place. I only buy ebooks when the price is not fixed (bundles) and without drms. Other that that, there is so muc free stuff to download from the public domain, i dont get bored.

And i still buy physical books, too.

<comment><USER10> I'm with you on the no-DRM, if I do buy a DRM eBook I have to be able to remove the DRM (defeating the purpose).

<comment><USER11> The DRM which genuinely vexes me is Audible, so I make a point of ripping (+++) anything I buy, because it actually makes the works difficult for me to play otherwise (it blocks output from the iPhone except in analog, so it doesn't play on my vehicle dock. I end up having to rip and put them on SD cards to play directly on the car's audio system.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why we keep having this conversation when the answer couldn't be any more obvious...avid readers represent a minority of the population. And while avid readers represent a big chunk of book sales...many books are purchased by people who rarely buy books at all (let alone for pleasure).

When purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)

<comment><USER13> Or as Steve Jobs put it: "People don't read anymore."

<comment><USER14> and he didn't have a problem with that.

<comment><USER15> He still bothered to produce a biography of himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article cites a number of reasons why this could be the case.

I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem.

But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this).

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading- pap...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper- screens)

One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit."

Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description.

Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.

<comment><USER17> > [if] you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If > Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too.

I break DRM on all the Kindle content I buy. If I couldn't break the DRM, I wouldn't buy it.

I also try to support non-DRM books by buying them preferentially. Baen books, for instance. There are other non-DRM publishers. And no, I do /not/ share.

I have a Kindle DX for reading papers (e.g., from the ACM). I haven't tried reading conference papers on a tablet (e.g., iPad) mainly because I don't have one, and while I wonder if the experience is better, I like the fact that the Kindles don't have to be recharged every day. The fact that I can go a week or more without recharging makes them a lot more book-like to me.

<comment><USER14> Some Kindle titles have disabled DRM. its an option the author can set. obviously, few choose to do so. I imagine Cory Doctorow does.

<comment> mkr-hn You can't disable DRM in KDP if you upload a book with it enabled, so authors can't change their mind later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently bought 7 books. The price difference for a PDF file was sometimes more than a real physical copy. For whatever reason I was not willing to pay even the same amount. So, into my online shopping cart went 7 print copies ... go figure.

<comment><USER15> I feel the same, but lately most ebooks I looked at were a couple of EUR cheaper than their paperback counterparts. I think the publishers/vendors are learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _> The shift from e-readers to tablets is putting a damper on e-book sales. _

I didn't understand this part. Why would tablets usage reduce e-books sales if you can read e-books on your tablet all the same? If the author means the DRM issue, then it's not really the case, since there are many DRM free e-books sold already, and even with DRMed ones, DRM can be removed in most cases in order to access them on any device you want.

<comment><USER20> There are DRM-free e-books but most aren't. The dominant e-book providers use DRM. That's why you need specific software to read e-books such as iBooks (soon to be available on the Mac, that wouldn't be necessary without DRM!), Kindle and Adobe's DRM-infested e-book reading app.

DRM can be removed in theory but most users won't make it through Calibre and the necessary scripts. In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal, and in almost all countries, offering software, knowledge etc. on removing DRM even for legal purposes such as personal use is illegal. Removing DRM is therefore not an approach compatible with a mass market.

<comment><USER21> > DRM can be removed in theory but most users won't make it through Calibre > and the necessary scripts.

I really hate Calibre, and I can't understand why someone hasn't forked it and released a limited set of tools just for DRM stripping. Obviously this is legally difficult but certainly do-able.

> In addition, in many countries, removing DRM is illegal,

It's weird that I am committing a criminal offence if I buy a DRMd ebook and rip it to a format I can use, but I'm not committing a criminal offence if I just download a DRM-free version of the same book.

<comment><USER22> The scripts are typically not tied to Calibre. Just execute them with command line arguments instead.

Of course that doesn't change anything legally but technically making a simple "GUI" to de-drm ebooks is something that any high-level programmer could do in a few minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this is mostly price driven. The initial frenzy over Ebooks was the promise of volume - 2000 books on my Kindle! Which has faded as people realize that it would cost $200,000 to fill the Kindle, and the result is far less useful/general-purpose than a printed book (no loans, sales, requires battery, lasts shorter amount of time)

</comment><comment><USER24> Are they factoring indie sales into these numbers?

Large media producers of all stripes are notorious for conflating _their_ sales with _all_ sales. That makes for a particularly egregious practice here, where indies may account for 30-40% or more of sales.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm with John Carmack that really it is just better having everything in the cloud:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s)

So ebooks only growing at 5% with 25% market share surprises me. At that rate it will take ebooks 10 years to draw even with print:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En+%3D%3D+0.75*.95%5En%2C+n%5D)

</comment><comment><USER26> I am not surprised. The quality of a majority of the e-books (especially those found on the Kindle) are horrible! I really can't see people being prepared to pay money for poor type-setting and layout.

<comment><USER27> I am forced to agree. Recently I was looking to buy a few books and the reviews had a recurring theme: The e-books had a lot of typesetting, grammatical issues etc. while the print books were fine. I bought printed copies for all of them.

This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have a data point which supports the thesis, at least in the torso and tail. I have a published two books within the last 16 months. For the first one, published in early 2012, the Kindle sales were usually 2x to 3x that of the print sales.

This held steady until around November of last year, and then suddenly declined. Today print sales are nearly 2x that of the Kindle sales.

The important data point is that the Amazon sales ranks of both have remained steady.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really interesting, because me, my partner, colleges at work and friends are all buying more ebooks than we've ever done before. All our work books are now digital and the older generations in my family all now own kindles (and use them).

</comment><comment><USER29> This article only looks at sales in ebooks from publishers. It does not look at independent sales figures, which make up a majority of the ebook market.

</comment><comment><USER30> every single time I look to get an eBook they are always more expensive than a real copy plus shipping.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wonder how much piracy could be influencing these numbers.</comment>


The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-enduring-mystery-of-jawn-philadelphias-allpurpose-noun?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=slate <comment><USER2> These articles on "jawn" always miss the use of "the jawn" which works in a manner similar to saying something is "the shit." In other words, the phrase "That jawn is the jawn" is a valid sentence, meaning "That thing is the best."

Stuff like this is why I think "jawn" is the fuckin' jawn.

<comment><USER3> I met a guy from Philly who over used "the jawn" so much we started calling him John. He was also often caught uttering phrases like "I'm from Philly yo"

<comment><USER4> I once played chess against a guy who used this word for just about everything. He made his move while I wasn't watching, I turned around and asked him what he did.

"I took your jawn with my jawn." I said "which one is John?" He said "They're all jawn."

From then on, every time I spoke to him I replaced every noun with "John." Surprisingly, even without nouns, we never had much difficulty understanding each other.

<comment><USER3> Funny "I took your jawn with my jawn" is what AlphaGo said to Lee Sedol after the first match

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It just seems to be a similar sort of placeholder word like "thing".

<comment><USER6> Or "smurf" or "smeg".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read this jawn and wanted to suggest some other Philly-related jawns that you might want to check out if you come to this jawn:

* TastyKakes. Not quite as delicious since the Flower Foods acquisition a few years back, but still tasty. I especially like the peanut butter cake jawns.

* Soft pretzels. Get those jawns when they're still hot.

* Cheese steak. Don't go to one of those tourist jawns. Instead, get it from a mom-and-pop corner store kind of jawn.

* Wawa. Heaven's convenience store. Once you've been to this jawn, you'll never go back to 7-Eleven.

* SEPTA. Just kidding.

* Comcast. Also just kidding.

<comment><USER8> Soft pretzels with mustard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wooder and crick are dead on. Also unmentioned is "down a' shawr", meaning you're going to the shore, specifically New Jersey.

<comment> nommm-nommm I hear crick as an alternative pronunciation all over the northeast.

<comment><USER8> I grew up 30ish miles west and moved out > 40 (Yikes!) years ago. We used both crick (a small creek) and creek (a larger crick). My mother lived all her life near or around Philly (and hated that that term) and put an 'r' in wash: Warshington D.C. I don't know if that was regional or not. I can still instantly tell someone has the accent if I hear them say 'On' (the 'o' gets caught in their nose, almost if followed by a 'w') or 'now' as it sounds like an 'e' preceeds the o.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The artificial language Lojban[1] expresses everything as predicates. For example, the word "benji" expresses the relationship "send", and it would have parameter slots around it for the sender (x1), the thing being sent(x2), the receiver (x3), the origin (x4) and the medium (x5).

Lojban uses the word "zo'e" in the same way as jawn, to indicate an unspecified parameter in a predicate. This way you can skip over a parameter or emphasize it without specifying it. (Usually this isn't needed because x1 and x2 are most used and come right before and after the relationship word. Also, there are ways to reorder the parameters.)

There is also "co'e", which is the word for an unspecified relationship.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> dont understand the mystery that is attributed to 'jawn' in this article. I have known a couple slang words in my own lifetime that have been used in an all purpose manner similar to 'jawn', the only real difference is that jawn manages to remain stable, most of these generic slangs fade out relatively quickly because they are pretty much meaningless...

<comment><USER12> Curious, what are the other all purpose slang words?

<comment><USER13> Not the parent poster, but in Ireland there's "yoke" meaning 'a thing whose name one cannot recall, does not know, or does not wish to specify. "how much did that yoke set you back?"'

<comment><USER14> See also "wossname."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I grew up northeast of philly, and definitely remember the word being pronounced more like 'joint'. But then, the closer you get to the city, the more pronounced the philly vowel slur becomes. Also, I did not realize this was a regional word (and jimmies as well. What does the rest of the country call them?)

<comment><USER16> Sprinkles. But they're wrong.

<comment><USER17> Hundreds and thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think "jawn" in Philly isn't as unique in its flexibility as the article tries to make it out to be. In DC, "jont" is apparently just as flexible.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/dc- slang...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/dc-slang-a- quick-primer/2012/10/10/9d725bfc-12d8-11e2-a16b-2c110031514a_blog.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> A jawn is like..... [http://youtu.be/wtmpW6qI-KU](http://youtu.be/wtmpW6qI-KU)

<comment><USER20> jawn is that real joint [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5IpX9T5eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5IpX9T5eM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am currently in central Connecticut and it drives me crazy that natives employ the "glottal stop" for t's in the middle of words. To my (prejudiced) ears it sounds vaguely ignorant: Bu'on for button, the town of New Bri'ain. There's a pause where the 't' was, but no sound.

</comment><comment><USER21> A cool word I probably overuse is "sketch", which I've only ever known to be used on the West coast. I'm in Vegas, which is landlocked in the desert but we seem to be a bit of an extension of The Left Coast, Vegas being the only blue region of Nevada. As far as I can tell the word percolated down to us through alt and underground culture, primarily hitting my network through early 2000's trading of skateboard VHS tapes. A lot of our memes came from those vids, 2005's Baker 3 being the apex of that cultural transference ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Skateboards#Videography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Skateboards#Videography)).

"Sketch" is a bastardization of "sketchy", and depending on which of those variations someone in my town uses to describe a person or a situation, I know whether they'll share certain cultural touchstones with me.

<comment><USER22> Live near Toronto, Ontario. Definitely heard 'Man that is just sketch' a lot. Probably more widespread than you think given the other responses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am from, and live, just outside Philly and I had no idea "jawn" was strictly a Philly thing (err...jawn) haha. Cool to find out it has such a unique etymology!

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jawn](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jawn)

</comment><comment><USER25> Speaking of Philly words there is also a unique meaning to the word "jit". Curious if anyone knows what I am talking about.

</comment><comment><USER26> Japanese has a bunch of words that are used for both people and things like "mono" (もの) and "yatsu" (奴).</comment>


Ask HN: Would you tell your manager a teammate is interviewing elsehwere? - <AUTHOR> Simple as it sounds. If you found out a key team member was interviewing outside the company, and the loss would be devastating, would you mention it to your manager in hopes of being able to retain that team member?<p>How would you handle this? <comment><USER2> Generally, no. Things to consider:

\- Your intentions might be good, but it could backfire. The manager or company might not try to retain the team member like you expect. If they think the employee is leaving, they might rush to replace that person with someone who won't be leaving the company soon.

\- Unless the team member explicit authorizes you to share the information, you should treat it as confidential. You would be violating that person's trust, which is nearly impossible to recover once broken.

\- You put your own reputation at risk by breaking that person's trust. Once others learn that you shared confidential information with your manager, they'll assume you're not trustworthy. You can't afford to damage your own reputation.

\- Put yourself in the team member's position. Would you want someone else to reveal your career plans to your manager?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a bad idea that I think it was already a mistake to post it to HN without using a throwaway account -- even if it is not a real-life inspired post, your manager doesn't know that. I would delete the post.

The main reason it's a bad idea is that if your coworker decides not to leave after all, you've just limited their growth at your co, perhaps permanently, and invisibly to them.

I think the only way something like this could work is if you're able to find out the true largest source of unhappiness for the coworker, and then present it to your manager as a general problem (unattributed to your coworker) and say you're seriously worried it's starting to affect morale.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised people ever post to HN with an account that can be in any way linked to their real identity. You either create an ongoing chore of self- censorship or expose yourself to real world consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is from my perspective as a person working in America. I absolutely would not tell: that's your colleague's private business and absolutely none of the manager's. It also puts your colleague in a terrible position if his attempts fail.

If you believe that your colleague is that critical, discuss it with him directly and discreetly, and maybe make a point of evangelizing him to the management (but do so without tipping anyone off—shouldn't be too hard if the colleague is that critical).

</comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely not.

Your colleague's career decisions are none of your business. Their relationship with management is none of your business.

Beyond that, the relationship between employee and employer should be professional. Professionals understand that people--even important people-- sometimes leave, and they plan for that. Thinking you need to look out for the company is a misunderstanding of how the professional world works. If the company wanted to ensure a certain term of employment or provide some fallback in the event of someone wanting to leave, they would have written that into the contract and paid accordingly. They didn't, so they've knowingly accepted the risk of this person leaving.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would not mention it to my manager, although I may try to talk the team member into doing it himself.

The reason that I wouldn't do it is because I wouldn't be OK with violating the trust. Not only would it harm my relationship with that person, but it would signal to everyone else that I can't be trusted with sensitive information.

What I might do, though, is to try to engage in some knowledge transfer, to get that person to pass on the knowledge they have that makes the loss of them so devastating.

</comment><comment><USER8> No. Don't be a narc. The team member might have personal reasons as to why he or she is leaving the company.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would never do this. I might tell myself I was being discrete, or I was in solidarity with my teammate, but I'm not sure what the really real reason is. I'd just try to forget about it, or maybe to prepare a little for what comes after that teammate leaves.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would definitely not tell the manager unless my teammate gave me express permission to do so. That is unless you care far more about the company than about that person as an individual.

</comment><comment><USER11> If this team member is as key as you say, your relationship with them is probably just as important to the future of your career as anything they might be able to do on your current team.

</comment><comment><USER12> No, it's not your place to discuss that with your manager.

</comment><comment><USER13> nope, not your place to do so.</comment>


Zimbabwe Printed the First 100 Trillion Dollar Note in History  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wayangtimes.com/zimbabwe-printed-the-first-100-trillion-dollar-note-in-history.html

<comment><USER2> That's not really the first, but it is not that great either.

The dubious honour of being the first currency to be available in such enormous bills is held by the Hungarian pengő.

see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_pengő></comment>


Ask HN: How do I improve my productivity? - <AUTHOR> I have been working as a web developer for over a couple of years now. One thing I always end up feeling is that whatever task/story I am working on could have been done much faster and probably with a better solution. I attribute this to not having expert knowledge of the underlying tech(say Mysql or Python/Django). And to that end, I do try read and practise a lot. I end up with a similar feeling no matter what.<p>Is there some other angle to this? Are there some things I am missing? How do I get more productive in terms of speed and quality of my work? <comment><USER2> There's a lot of books written on this. In general, you have to follow the right order of things.

1\. Follow rules rigidly, without understanding or judging, similar to how a baby imitates her parents by putting on clothes or drawing on paper. Don't try to be clever. Just copy and pay attention.

2\. Be able to treat parts as a step. Bundle together chunks of work - this is how I filter an array, this is how I commit code, this is how compile a site, this is how I add a button to the page.

This phase is the longest. Practice until you can do it without supervision/guidance. Practice until you no longer struggle with it. Then practice some more until it's as natural as typing, where you can sense when it's off. Expect to spend 10 years on this, faster if you practice right and practice hard. Is there a Leetcode problem you can't solve? Solve it. Is there open source code you can't reverse engineer? Reverse engineer it.

Don't try to learn everything though. Just find something you like and build that to fluency.

3\. By now, you start experimenting. You start taking risks. You start to get curious and obsessed, instead of needing to motivate yourself. You customize procedures for yourself. Your results will be crude (hacky).

4\. You'll start to see lots of exceptions to the rules. You may have multiple mentors and see that they're not aligning. Instead of rejecting maxims, you merge them to guide you. You produce a high standard of work, with little effort.

5\. You no longer rely on rules and maxims. You have an intuitive grasp on things, but unlike step 4, you can combine them with data and rationality. You have visions on how things go together.

College puts us in 2, but often not enough, and we get dumped into 3 before we're ready. My advice is to go back to phase 2, keep practicing, keep finding mentors. All of these phases have a plateau that you have to push through, and all of them have different mentors, often those who are stuck on their own plateaus.

If you want books, I recommend, A. Mind Over Machine, Dreyfus; B. Mastery, Greene; C. The Art of Learning, Waitzkin.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does a guitarist get more "productive" in terms of speed and quality? Practice.

Build things you want to use. Or build things other people want to use. Do practice problems online (LeetCode, Project Euler, etc.). Read more documentation.

Pick a tech stack that you want to become an expert on (preferably an employable one), and start learning. Buy the books.

It sounds like you're feeling a lack of confidence in your knowledge and abilities, and the only way to improve those is to continue learning and improving.

One other consideration is: do you spend a significant amount of time on repeated processes? Perhaps during development you're 1) logging into your database, 2) dropping some tables, 3) re-running some tests that populate the database, 4) viewing the results. Can you automate such processes? Can you put together a few scripts or utilities that make you more efficient? Can you find boilerplate or scaffolding that gets you 20-30% of the way there rather than starting from scratch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The last bit of advice is something I can act upon. Although I do have automated some tasks, I think going all out on automation wherever possible will lead to saving some time. Might help

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I always end up feeling ... could have been done ...

Stop it. Stop it. Anyone can feel that about anything, anywhere, and at any time, and it's only destructive.

Yesterday is history,

tomorrow is a mystery,

and today is a gift...

that's why they call it present

\---

I mean, it's good you want to do better. So, do better.

<comment><USER5> > that's why they call it present

The etymology is interesting[1]. It seems the common idea is being right in front of something as with something "being presented" or a person that "is present". "The present", as in the time, is short for "the present time" (the time that's with you), and "the present", as in the gift, is short for "the presented thing".

It seems the 2 diverged from Latin "praesens", which meant "being there", and then reunited into 1 word with 2 definitions. The meaning of "present" for time seems to be more in-line with the original "praesens", and it was the meaning for gift that saw more change: "being there" -> "in the situation in question" -> "face to face" -> "place before" -> "to offer" -> "gift"

Anyway, I feel saying stuff like "that's why they call it present" is neat, but, at least in my mind, it invalidates the whole thing you're trying to say when you realize that it's false.

[1] [https://www.etymonline.com/word/present#etymonline_v_19454](https://www.etymonline.com/word/present#etymonline_v_19454)

<comment><USER6> It's not meant to be read so literally. Going further on that route, "yesterday" is definitely not "history" and what comes tomorrow may be a mystery at some level but "tomorrow" itself is not a mystery. It's just the following day.

If you look at the spirit of the message instead, you'll see that it does have something valuable to say.

<comment><USER5> I agree that it's a valuable thing to say. It's just that particular piece on present, the time, being named after present, the gift, that doesn't resonate with me. I understand that it's neat that they coincidentally share the same word and I'm sure that it does resonate with other people. I'm just sharing my own perspective.

Yesterday is history in that it forms part of past events. My browser history includes stuff I visited yesterday, for example. Tomorrow can also very well be mystery. That's why, again from my perspective, I have no issue with those parts.

It's the reasoning, like saying "that's why there's no 'I' in 'team'". Like, ok that's neat, but it's not valid reasoning.

<comment><USER4> > ok that's neat, but it's not valid reasoning

Don't forget that more has been done in the history of men by the art of rhetoric than by a dialectic, that emotion moves people in force, not reason.

...

Also, that nature is not limited by human imagination.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marketcetera - Open Source Trading Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketcetera.com/site/ <comment><USER4> Some more

        http://tradelink.googlecode.com/
        http://code.google.com/p/tradelink/
        http://eclipsetrader.sourceforge.net/
        http://activequant.org/
        http://code.google.com/p/truetrade/

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a decent platform but it's an attempt to address a lot of different issues in one platform. If you're pure quant you're probably better off building something custom and plugging in QuickFIX (which marketcetera uses for FIX connectivity), particularly since last I checked its feed handlers (a right bastard to get right) aren't particularly sophisticated. If you're running a trading floor there's a plethora of issues you'll face that aren't currently solved by it. The use of ActiveMQ over AMQP also doesn't make much sense anymore, AMQP is built from the ground up for financial messaging - <USER2> orders and feeds - and has a very robust OSS implementation (RabbitMQ).

</comment><comment><USER6> to avoid having to create an account and log in just to view the docs, can anyone give details on how this is implemented (technologies, etc)?

<comment><USER7> Marketcetera platform consists of the following components:

Photon - a light-weight GUI for entering orders, monitoring them and running strategies. Built on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.

ORS - Server that includes an Order Routing System for accepting orders from Photon, StrategyAgent or Order Loader and routing them to an exchange, persistence layer backed by a database (MySQL is installed with the product) and authentication module.

Order Loader - for batch loading of large numbers of orders. Strategy Agent - standalone environment for running strategies.

Platform modules - CEP, Strategy, Market Data Adapters (such as the Marketcetera simulated market data feed) and more. Currently the Marketcetera platform is built on top of Spring Framework with an embedded ActiveMQ message queue middleware. Queues (i.e. point-to-point connections) and topics (i.e. publish/subscribe connections) are both used to communicate amongst the pieces of the Marketcetera platform. In general, queues are used to communicate messages going "toward" a broker or exchange, and topics are used for response messages going the other direction. This way we can guarantee that instructional messages - such as orders and cancels - are delivered once and only once, and informational messages - such as execution reports - <USER3> distributed to all authenticated clients. In addition, ORS publishes a set of Web Services interfaces used internally by the platform client components such as Strategy Agent, Photon, etc. We use Apache CXF technology as our web services framework.

ORS stores all of the trades, execution reports and positions information in a database accessed by the persistence layer. ORS is configured to use the MySQL database out of the box, but we are database agnostic and can be reconfigured to use any other database, such as Oracle or PostgreSQL.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Add editing capabilities to your website without using a CMS - <AUTHOR> https://teletext.io <comment><AUTHOR> Currently also trending on Product Hunt: [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/teletext- io](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/teletext-io)

</comment><comment><USER2> I couldn't edit the text in Firefox.

[edit] Personally, I already knew I had clicked a link on HN. All the popup banner did was distract me from the content...well ok, it annoyed me a bit too.

</comment><comment><USER3> This fulfills a need that I have had for a long long time. No more resource bundles which nobody wants to translate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool stuff! Would be cool to have that for native mobile as well

</comment><comment><USER5> But I still have to implement a ton of stuff in the backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it is a service, it will manage everything for you, just have to include the javascript.</comment></comment>


Testing Hawking radiation in laboratory black hole analogues - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-01-hawking-laboratory-black-hole-analogues.html <comment><USER2> >> _" I learned General Relativity in 1997 by lecturing a course, not by taking a course," Ulf Leonhardt, one of the researchers who carried out the recent study, told Phys.org. "This was a rather stressful experience where I was just a few weeks ahead of the students, but I really got to _

Must have been such an adventure :)

<comment><USER3> Your comment made me read the whole article. And it is truly amazing!

They've been able to replicate Hawking radiation in the laboratory!

From the article -

>> "Our most important finding, perhaps, is that black holes are not something out of the ordinary, but that they closely resemble what light pulses do to ordinary light in fibers,"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In their study, Leonhardt and his colleagues made light out of positive and > negative frequencies. Their positive-frequency light was infrared, while the > negative-frequency one was ultraviolet

What do they mean by negative frequency? That they're out of phase...?

<comment><USER5> Short answer: light moving backwards in time.

Long answer: Take a light detector (such as a CCD camera) and place it in front of a light source. The light source emits a "pulse" of light. What you detect on the detector is that initially there is no light falling on it, then some light, then maybe a bit more, a bit less, then eventually no light anymore once you switch off the source. A pulse of light in the time-domain is just some varying level of light that can be measured by a detector. the pulse is of finite temporal length in the real world i.e. it has a definite start and a definite end.

You don't have to do the math in the time-domain. You can take the function that describes the pulse in the time domain and take the Fourier transform of it to take it to the frequency domain. In the frequency domain, the pulse is described by a function that can extend from negative to positive infinity. Each point on this function can be interpreted to be a sinusoidal wave of that frequency, which when take to the time-domain extends from negative to positive infinity time. Obviously, its not possible for light from a source to start from negative infinity time, so this is just an nonphysical interpretation of the math. For positive frequencies, the corresponding time- domain sinusoidal wave is moving forward in time, and for negative frequencies, the sinusoidal wave is moving backwards in time.

In the real world, you can't create light pulses that are exclusively negative frequencies, but you can create pulses that have both positive and negative frequency components and then exploit those separately in clever ways.

<comment><USER6> What an excellent explanation! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how they distinguish it from synchrotron radiation

<comment><USER5> Synchrotron radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted by radially accelerating charged particles. In this experiment, there are no such particles. In a blackhole, there might be, but we are very far away from doing such precise measurements on blackholes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do people use for cheap, low-traffic WordPress hosting these days? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently hosting a low-traffic personal blog on Bluehost for $3.95/mo, but it's up for renewal.  They initially tried to make me pay $10.99/mo, but were easily talked down to $6.95/mo.  Given that a VPS is about $5/mo, this is still a ripoff.  What do people use these days for cheap Wordpress hosting?<p>Note: I would rather not switch away from Wordpress, since I don't want to break existing links. <comment><USER2> Sorry to be blunt but if you consider a difference of $1.95 to be "a ripoff" then that doesn't leave a lot of options. The only cheaper alternative I can think of is hosting directly on Wordpress.com for $2.99/month: [https://wordpress.com/pricing/](https://wordpress.com/pricing/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is $3.95/mo vs. $6.95/mo with a 3-year contract, i.e. $108 more than the previous hosting deal, or $70.20 more than a VPS. It's a ripoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The $2/mo BuyVM reseller plan offers 20GB storage, reasonably fast response times and a full cpanel. You can host a bunch of websites each with their own site, email, logins, etc. It is nice to create a new site for a friend if they need one, but leave the management to someone else if there is server trouble.

If you like to tinker and your website doesn't require massive uptime and you have a very small amount of traffic, you might look into LowEndCat[2]

[1] www.buyvm.com [2] www.lowendcat.com or search for low end Spirit, which are budget-focused tiny VPS servers for $3/year. I found one that is 16 cents a month. Great uptime and I don't need anything more than 64 MB. ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> You will find a lot of low end options here - [https://lowendbox.com/](https://lowendbox.com/). And then install cloudron.io (that helps keeping the server and the wordpress instances up to date). Alternately, go for something like serverpilot?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd recommend a DO instance, or one of their competitors. IIRC there's a VPS provider out there that does $3pm VPSes, but I'm not sure the $2pm difference is worth it over going for a provider you know.

Alternatively if you really want to minimise your costs right down, migrate from WP to Hugo. You can do so without breaking any links if you pay attention to your permalink structure. Then host on S3, where your bill will, for a low- traffic site, be more like $5 per year.

Additional upside to that since you mention having to deal with the hassle every couple of years: HTML isn't going to go out of date any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have to decide if it is worth your time to do a new server/migration for a difference of $1.95/month. If you anyway want to move, then consider DigitalOcean or vultr.com droplets.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to decide if it is worth dealing with this nonsense every few years to keep an ad-free personal site online. I'll look at your suggestions.

<comment><USER6> In that case, definitely DigitalOcean or vultr. I have WP sites on both and cannot complain. For $5, you get to control it all. The only downside is that there is not too much magic and you need to install things if needed on the server end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the best option is Digital Ocean. You can configure a Droplet (server) with a WP setup without any skill in linux or sysadmin. Their first price is €5/month. Their customer service is very good in any price, and their documentation too.

I really don't recomment GoDaddy, their hosting is very slow.

<comment><USER8> I was just about to mention Digital Ocean. Very simple and easy, but MySQL is eating all my available memory...

<comment><USER7> You can have different problems. \- Server requirements too low to handle your daily traffic \- WP custom development with slow querys \- Are you using any caching system and image optimization?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been building a startup to address this need in the cloud hosting space that I'm calling Pagefog[1]. I'm very close to release soon. Would you be interested in talking to me about your needs and seeing if it could be a good fit?

My goal is to make an easier service for managed WP hosting on your own cloud servers whether you use AWS, Digital Ocean, or a VM in your datacenter. Everything that is built out is setup for performance and tuned for WordPress. There are some unique feature like auto-setup of SSL certs with LetsEncrypt as well.

[1]: [http://pagefog.com](http://pagefog.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> My Namecheap hosting is incredibly cheap, their support is decent, and it's pretty sweet to have my domains and sites all on the same account.

</comment><comment><USER11> nearlyfreespeech.net

It's pay as you go. I've not found it any cheaper than that.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised to find a Wordpress site with average MySQL usage and 1gb of traffic per month is $1.34 a month, $15 a year.</comment></comment>


Goodbye – Findx is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://privacore.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm loving it how Fb makes a campaign about open data, yet blocks indie search engines like findx.

Very informative post mortem; also includes the obligatory "incredible" phrase.

Edit: didn't know Github, too, only allows Google and Bing. That's quite the show stopper for gh IMHO. I guess we need a reciprocal data agreement of sort such as "we don't link to sites which don't allow crawling"</comment>


The Running Conversation in Your Head - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/figuring-out-how-and-why-we-talk-to-ourselves/508487/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> One fun thing to do is to observe how after shifting to a new thought, the older ones start to fade and become increasingly more "distant".

At first when you are not too deep into the new thought, you could still grab on to the recent ones. But at some point they become so distant that you can't access them anymore. It's a strange feeling that something that was occupying your mind completely just moment ago is now so far gone you don't even know what it was.

Ideas fading out, slipping out of reach one by one, all day long.

<comment><USER3> This article starts with this quote:

> "We are all fragmented," Fernyhough writes. "There is no unitary self. We > are all in pieces, struggling to create the illusion of a coherent 'me' from > moment to moment."

I think brain is deceptive to us and it only bring the part of personality (fragment of experience and memories) which seems to helpful to achieve the short term goal.

Quite possibly choosing that fragment of us can be random because he haven't yet established that free will exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am interested in knowing why some people go insane in solitary confinement? Is self-talk that poisonous when it is such a useful cognition tool?

He did not talk much about how does a born deaf person self-talk(avoiding the word think as he say), but I am curious to know what other non-verbal forms of self-talk are out there and how fast are they?</comment>


Why Our Entire Team, Even Devs, Do Inside Sales - <AUTHOR> http://blog.slidefox.com/why-our-entire-team-even-devs-do-inside-sales/

<comment><USER2> As someone who receives cold calls, I'm compelled to ask: how do you sleep at night?

<comment><AUTHOR> (1) Our cold calls aren't completely cold. We dig/farm for people or businesses we honestly believe we can help! It's not too hard to find someone losing out on links or driving traffic away from their site who we can help.

(2) Each call is a learning experience (ref: lean startup?). We are not pressing for sales (as you may infer from our pipeline at the bottom of the article), but looking for their pain... setting up a demo (hopefully)... then selling if there is a GOLDEN fit.

(3) On a avg size bed with the A/C on 68F ;)

<comment><USER2> Ha ha ha, I was in sales for a while. I hated every second of it. I legitimately felt like a bad person.

All that doublespeak about "honestly believing you can help" and "finding the prospect's pains" is just so much trash.

At the end of the day, you're wasting other peoples' time by calling them up and trying to shove your products down their throats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How many people are doing this at once? Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list. Do you have 3+ people cranking on it? Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> How many people are doing this at once?

• We have a three person team.

Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list.

• Yep! We are working off an _extensive_ minimally qualified list.

Do you have 3+ people cranking on it?

• Correct again :)

Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.

• We haven't hit the hundred mark yet (as we just started this), but that looks like the number we are expecting. Maybe this is the "luck" part of startups? Over time, I see your point and it will make sense that the number evens out to a lower #

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a business person, what does "inside sales" mean, the "inside" part?

But I can say as someone with some decision-making input into purchases for an 'enterprise', I _love_ it when I get to talk to an actual dev/engineer. The less I have to talk to a non-engineer salesperson, and the more I get to talk to an engineer, in fact the more likely you are to make a sale to me (assuming your product is actually good).

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, (human) individuals who sell by phone and normally do not leave the office..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Early devs to a startup should always be ready and able to sell. It's not just enough to hire a dev expert in their discipline, but rather all early startup employees need to be well rounded enough to help in the sales process. All things being equal, dev that can sell > dev that can't sell. Startups fail most often from market risk vs technical risk. The early sales process is a key component to finding product-market fit.</comment>


Show HN: Office365 Admin Portal Down? - <AUTHOR> https://portal.office.com/servicestatus
Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at portal.office.com.

    The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
    If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
    If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
 <comment><USER2> The page displays "Everything is up and running." for me.

"Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread." [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


CloudSwipe - A whole new way to do WordPress e-commerce - <AUTHOR> http://cloudswipe.com

<comment><USER2> This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet</comment>


Show HN: Your personal Hacker News reader - Skim HN - <AUTHOR> http://www.skimhn.com/

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the categories, even if it wasn't personalized.

One idea for future development might be to add a point score based on Naive Bayes (which has been discussed previously). Not as a filter per say, but just as an indicator.

E.g. <http://joelgrus.com/2012/02/16/hacking-hacker-news/>

Sure, you can use a bookmarklet or write your own thing, but I've always thought it'd be an interesting idea to have a centralized like/hate server, where you could add different sources, say HN. That might be a different project, but adding a score based on the likelihood of "I'd read this" (not recommendation as I should note) would be a interesting in terms of skimming.

Let's say one of your users is in a hurry, he might want to skim the most (homogenous) likely news that'd interest him/her, whereas if it's late at night in leisure time, one might be more interested in new/abnormal stories.

Just a though. Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's an awesome feedback and great link! Thanks for your kind words! That's a pity there's no API access to user's saved stories (as far as I know). This would be great source for Bayes training. Maybe a chrome extension could train Bayes on HN visited links.

<comment><USER2> I agree that it's a difficult issue, as some might feel it's an intrusion of privacy if that data is used. Other might feel it's annoying to have to up/downvote stories both on HN and on your site. That's a trade-off. Perhabs both, or allow import of saved data, so users can make a dump from HN and import it in your site.

I think _the other_ HN api used to have that (if people trust them to pass their user/pw to HN safely), but seems to be disabled: <http://api.ihackernews.com/>.

 _So yeah, the easiest way to start it_ would be to have people up/down vote on your site, or use a heuristic measure such as: if you click a link, you "like" it, if you're shown a link, but don't click a link you "ignore" it (which should be less negative than hate, as there can be a number of reasons for not clicking a link).

As in:

I get a list of 10 items from each category, of those 10, which do I click, which don't I. So once an item is shown to me - save it as "bad" by default in the DB. If I click it, change it to a good result.

You'd might have to change the weight more than this, but it should be a good start, and requires the least amount of effort for the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that makes sense! Totally agree. I will try to implement this.

<comment><USER3> You also can build a simple recommender based on categorization of articles.

XPLR (<https://www.xplr.com>) for whom I work, has an API that among other things, allows to easily tag articles and build recommenders.

If you're interested we'd be happy to let you use the API. Contact us or pm me for an access to the beta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like it, but I wouldn't mind an option to customize the line spacing and font colors (alternating colors, maybe?) - it's pretty dense to skim through.

<comment><USER5> I used a chrome extension called StyleBot to do a little styling: <http://cl.ly/image/3w1y3G0p083J>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that looks gorgeous! Could I use it as a style guide? Could you share specific things you changed?

<comment><USER5> I'd love to, raimonds. You can download Stylebot here: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha?hl=en)

After installing the extension, just open Stylebot and copy the following design for skimhn.com: <http://pastebin.com/5Nupsm3B>. it's still rough, but it's a start :)

The design is using Lato as typeface. You can download it here: <http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/lato>

PS: I've been also working on a redesign for Instapaper and Hacker News:

Instapaper Articles: <http://cl.ly/image/1r1T420S042P> Instapaper Features: <http://cl.ly/image/172h0b3P2u3D> Hacker News: <http://cl.ly/image/3y3F1v060v1N>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> james-singh No login? That means I have to personalize it everytime I use it on a different laptop?

Btw, I wish there was a google chrome extension for this as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that! And thanks for your feedback! Good point. I will look into implementing logins.

<comment><USER6> Don't need to worry about logins. Nothing is stored here. Best thing to do is to create a custom URL that will always bring the same lists.

i.e. When I setup my personalized options, I have:

<http://www.skimhn.com/djWH3hS5>

That way you don't have to operate with logins and everyone's setup is share- able. (Then you can look in the future of letting the creator define the url.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really like this -- good job.

Do you have "not" syntax? I would love to have a skim feed that removes certain news items that overload the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! For "not" syntax prepend keyword with "-". E.g. -title:facebook. Unfortunately there's no syntax for front-page only posts.</comment></comment>


Boston bans use of facial recognition technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/06/23/boston-facial-recognition-ban <comment><USER2> So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up. Even if it was 100% accurate, it's a technology that makes mass surveillance too efficient. Prohibitions need to also extend to the private sector, with the exception of, say, facial recognition for personal use (eg FaceID.)

<comment><USER3> >So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up.

Because many people are ok with mass-survielince as long as long as it's used fairly. The problem they see with this tech isn't that it's going to create the kind of world we don't want to live in but that it unfairly targets minorities and/or the poors more than other people. They don't understand that it can never be fair because the institutions that run it can never be fair because there will always be out-groups because that's how human nature works and they will get disproportionately screwed unless we limit the ability of the majority to screw them.

<comment><USER4> Historically speaking, when the world was small towns and rural, "surveillance" was a fact of life. Everyone knew someone who knew someone else.

The big difference is that surveillance was localized and didn't follow the person.

If someone did a crime or did something against local mores and got ostracized they could skip town and settle somewhere else to begin anew. Now, of course being the new person in a new place you were under scrutiny, but as long as you followed local practices your old peccadilloes or even crimes didn't follow you.

<comment><USER5> > The big difference is that surveillance was localized and didn't follow the > person

That is _a_ big difference. But _the_ big difference is how one-sided the new surveillance is. In a small town, they knew everything about you, but you also knew everything about them.

Today, parking regulations in my town are enforced by cars that circle around scanning every license plate parked on every street. I could probably find out who has access to that data if it were a priority for me. But what's stopping a private entity from doing the same thing? I'd never know it happened. Cell carriers selling my location data? I could easily have never known about this. Ad tracking companies having a record of most sites I visit? I don't even know who they are other than a few major ones.

<comment><USER6> Great point. What if all the data were available for everyone to access? Would it feel ok then?

(Not sarcasm)

<comment><USER7> Even if "all the data" were accessible by all citizens, there would still be a massive asymmetry present in the government's ability to process that data into useful information.

<comment><USER8> Government and corporation. The FAANG companies clearly have enough processing power to churn an entire nation's big data streams.

Although, if one's goal were a town or even an individual city, I bet enough infrastructure to sift the data is buildable or rentable by individuals or small groups of individuals.

It becomes an interesting world when non-profits can afford big data resources.

<comment><USER6> I think that's our best option for avoiding oppression. Case in point, video of George Floyd. If we had widespread public (by the public) surveillance, I think people would feel safer. If someone is "disappeared," hopefully there'd be evidence that the ACLU could pursue.

<comment><USER8> The "extraordinary rendition" program the CIA was using to disappear terror suspects into places they could be tortured was discovered in part by airplane-spotting hobbyists. Because planes are extremely hard to hide, and there are people who watch airports to see what takes off and lands for fun.

When they pooled their data, they were the first group to notice the military had started running flights to and from locations they didn't normally fly, and it didn't take much investigative journalism after that to discover those planes were carrying people.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any sources for people who are interested in reading more on that?

<comment><USER6> Extraordinary rendition is a good search phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would really like to see one of those movies now where they identify the unknown guy by photo as a big time terrorist only this time it turns out he's a janitor in the local high school, then it can be one of those feel-good cop - unlikely partner action-comedy flicks, but only halfway through, the first part will be trying to catch the terrorist who keeps getting away from them by doing janitorial work at unexpected junctures.

<comment><USER11> Beverly Hills Mop 2

<comment><USER10> the janitor could be played by Ryan Reynolds, when they find out he is a janitor they don't believe it "you're too attractive" then he gets upset because being too attractive for being a janitor has kept him from getting promoted all these years.

Cop played by Samuel Jackson

the terrorist played by Ryan Gosling, "these guys don't even look alike"

response Samuel Jackson: they're both too good looking to be janitors.

Ryan Reynolds: why does everyone keep saying that!

later in the movie - Samuel Jackson - I have had it up to here with all these good looking white guys f _ing up the m_ f*ing facial recognition!

Idris Elba should be in this too. somehow.

on edit: maybe at the end Idris Elba is brought in as another person the facial recognition identified as the terrorist.

everyone is "how is this possible!"

Ryan Gosling: I don't know, he's pretty good looking, I'm kinda flattered.

Ryan Reynolds: yeah, the computer thinks I look like this guy, wow maybe I am too attractive to be a janitor!

The ask Idris Elba what he does for a living -

custodial technician.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "We really have a tendency (...) to let our technology go ahead of our common sense about how we want to live together"

Bravo!

<comment><USER13> Sounds a little Amish. I ended up in Amish country when traveling last century, and it was a little weird. But I went to a house museum, and it was interesting.

One of the things that stuck with me as different: They take a little time to look at a new technology a decide if they want to use it. I wonder if our embrace of tech as being "neutral" is correct sometimes.

"They're more cautious — more suspicious — wondering is this going to be helpful or is it going to be detrimental? Is it going to bolster our life together, as a community, or is it going to somehow tear it down?""

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/21...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287028/amish- community-not-anti-technology-just-more-thoughful)

Of course predicting where things end up when new tech disrupts is difficult.

<comment><USER14> Tangent here, but after visiting the Pennsylvania Dutch area a few years ago, I had this mini-epiphany of a vision of an alternate universe where most of society lived in small communities like the Amish do, that were mostly self- reliant and farm-based with cottage industries, BUT in which the communities embraced technology.

Basically, with 3D printers and solar power and local grids and machine shops to fabricate for local needs, and a loose mesh network to connect these decentralized nodes/communities together (like Mastodon, instead of the paper- and-print Amish newspapers that exist). A kind of techno-libertarian-Amish blend, to form a society that was more resilient and modular, rather than hyper-centralized, dense, and easily swayed by viral influence/behavior/trends or literal biological viruses.

EDIT: Of course it would never "scale" since such a system probably could not support higher population levels at all, but maybe that's okay in the ultra- long-run or some post-apocalyptic rebuilding future (also dangerously veering into population control and genocide-ish topics).

<comment><USER15> > Basically, with 3D printers and solar power and local grids and machine > shops to fabricate for local needs

None of those could exist without the significant science and R&D which is only possible as a product of people leaving their personal areas to congregate in cities and colleges where information is shared and built upon. Along with a lot of money coming from the government and big companies. And the issue with that is when people leave for that purpose, many of them tend to leave forever to stay there.

<comment><USER14> There's an activation threshold absolutely, which requires large-scale central investment to get there for the very first time. But like, if you had one Star Trek style replicator, and it was able to make more replicators, then once you've crossed that threshold, you don't necessarily need all that massive R&D infrastructure as much.

It's also kind of a difference in strategic approach, to pool resources and create cutting edge institutions, or to adopt a more decentralized approach where yes, you might not get as quick of a pace of innovation, but each community is more self-sufficient. So, you might not ever get a fancy cure for cancer or CRISPR technology in this alternate universe, but most communities might have their own local clinics and more local nurses and maybe better overall health outcomes by focusing on common treatable problems, rather than pushing for cutting edge innovation. Similarly, you might have fewer PhD's, but more high school graduates or bachelor's level of education.

Anyways, nothing about this is all that realistic or anything, just some idle world-building in my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is however a huge loophole

From the ban: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6956465/Boston- Ci...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6956465/Boston-City-Council- face-surveillance-ban.pdf)

"Nothing in (b)(1) shall prohibit Boston or any Boston official from:

a. using evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have been generated from a face surveillance system, so long as such evidence was not generated by or at the the request of Boston or any Boston official;"

So if a third-party, say the FBI or DEA, provides info from face surveilance systems to Boston with them specifically requesting it, they could use that.

<comment><USER17> Or a State agency.

<comment><USER18> Or a private firm that sets up to perform FR as a "public service" while collecting valuable person traffic marketing data.

Realize people, FR enables the physical world to be overlaid with web-site- like tracking ability. This is hugely valuable to business, and if they figure that out, they will push FR just like they pushed evasive tracking advertising all over the web.

<comment><USER19> Wouldn't that private firm fall under a 3rd party?

From the article: The city council unanimously voted on Wednesday to ban the use of the technology and prohibit any city official from obtaining facial surveillance by asking for it through third parties. The measure will now go to Mayor Marty Walsh with a veto-proof majority. Walsh's office said he would review the ban.

<comment><USER18> What if they "don't ask for it" but is made available?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not just about the percentage of false positives, it's about how much easier it is to generate false positives.

Human face-matching accuracy is worse than software in many scenarios ("is this the man that robbed you?") but it requires so much effort that the absolute number of false positives are low.

On the other hand, facial recognition hooked up to cctv can passively generate mountains of matches all day long for pennies.

<comment><USER21> This must just be a ban of the technology for government use, right? Can retailers still use facial recognition as part of their in-store analytics? Can Apple still sell FaceID products in Boston?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think I fall with the HN majority in my privacy views. Yesterday however I talked to someone who said that they prefer someone is always watching, so that they can feel safer.

Interestingly they also said they don't want to know the specifics of anyone watching.

I wonder if laws like this, that in actuality seem fairly toothless, will result in more of that. "Safety, and ignorance of where/who the watchers are."

<comment><USER23> Despite good intentions and my own discomfort, I can't help but feel like the anti-surveilance movement is mostly an extension of privilege politics and virtue signaling. Police brutality is a real problem, but a wildly common observation of life in the hood/ghetto/LI-housing is the prevalence of crime. You could make neighborhoods a lot safer with a lot fewer police by using modern methods like facial recognition cameras and unmanned aerial surveillance. Break-ins and robberies suddenly become wildly easy to punish afterwards and a lot of investigative work like tracking gang members to get a sense of their operations morphs into a trivial affair. We're rapidly approaching the point where basic physical crime is optional and while there should obviously be oversight and moral considerations at every step I can't help but feel it's a bit entitled of me to live in an okay neighborhood (some crime but its mostly kids drinking in parks and hobo drama) while telling people that the risks are too great to use this kind of tech in any circumstance.

<comment><USER24> Places like Baltimore's East/West sides and South Chicago already have arial surveillance, shot spotter, street corner camera, nearly limitless police power, and CommStat operations. These things have been in place for at least a decade and don't seem to be moving the needle.Sure, they could go full PRC, but I doubt anyone has the appetite for that level of draconian surveillance.

In my experience living in one of these places, police mostly don't investigate crime even when there's clear video.

<comment><USER25> Then the problem is with the police, not the tech, right? Safety is a really big privilege.

<comment><USER24> My point is that the tech is of questionable quality, the application is horrible, and people hate it all the same. Anything that actually "work" would be so oppressive as to be untenable in the American context. Also, no one who is already policed in the US trusts the institution of policing in America to not abuse their most basic rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If the basis of banning facial recognition technology is its poor accuracy, will facial recognition technology be unbanned if it is 99% accurate for everyone?

<comment><USER27> Evem 99.999% is not good enough be enough because you will have at least one person that is guaranteed a false arrest and prosecution (which 90%+ prosecuted take a plea deal). There is inaccuracy with other methods as well but you have humans being held accountable. When it comes to justice,mistakes are tolerable so long as adequate compensatiom exists but when the mistake is systemic it becomes intolerable due to the preexisting guarantee of a mistake as opposed to a specific human making an error as a matter of chance. This is all exacerbated by other systemic cruelties of the US justice system where even an arrest and release for no cause means days if not weeks of imprisonment and if charged most people accept a plea bargain deal regardless of actual guilt. It's better to let actual guilty criminals get away than explicitly and systemically accept even one innocent person being punished incorrectly, because among other reasons, the justice system has legitimacy because its goal is to administer justice, accepting any amount of injustice invalidates that legitimacy and authority.

A good analogy would be a chef tolerating fecal matter in their food. Yes, there is always some small chance of that happening, but no one accepts food from s chef that explicitly treats toilet water and claims 99% of the fecal matter is gone and only one in 100 people will get sick from it.

<comment><USER10> 99.999% is better than most fingerprints - maybe all of them really [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249890.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249890.pdf) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/)

<comment><USER28> I'm willing to come out against anyone developing a fingerprint gun that allows them to take fingerprints from everyone attending a mass gathering, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Presumably facial recognition technology is only banned for use by city officials, but the title and article are unclear. I would hope FaceID is fine.

<comment><USER30> it's in the second paragraph of the article:

        The city council unanimously voted on Wednesday to ban
        the use of the technology and prohibit any city
        official from obtaining facial surveillance
        by asking for it through third parties.

<comment><USER18> My my, the city council of Boston has a brain. When San Francisco banned FR they left the door open for private contractors, which the city just hired straight away.

<comment><USER5> It's possible that Boston learned from SF's mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Let me start off by saying that I think we need to be careful with this type of tech. Assuming it never makes mistakes can be deadly.

As someone who has done some work with building deep learning models what is it that makes this unfairly target minorities?

Is it that the people who trained the model did not present enough example images of minorities during training? Is it because darker (presumably black) skin does not show up as well on poor quality videos (presumably because the metering of the camera exposed for the surrounding background which was bright)? Or is it the law enforcement using it was poorly trained and assumed the computer was infallible combined with possible prejudice they already had against minorities?

The first problem I would think could be easily solved. The second problem I would think would be rather difficult. The last would require extensive training but I am sure we humans would screw that up also.

<comment><USER32> I think you're starting from the wrong place in your analysis. The first question we should be asking is why we would _want_ this technology at all. The potential for bias is a moot point if we as a society decide that we don't want this kind of government surveillance.

Even if the systems were perfectly fair and not the least bit biased and were operated by a perfect utopian police force I _still_ wouldn't want facial recognition. I've yet to hear a potential benefit of this sort of software that would justify the huge cost to citizen privacy.

Just because we _can_ train computers to recognize faces doesn't mean that we _should_.

<comment><USER33> >I've yet to hear a potential benefit of this sort of software that would justify the huge cost to citizen privacy. //

It makes it easy to find suspects and narrow down suspect lists. Meaning far fewer police are needed to catch a greater proportion of known criminals.

Most people consider that a huge benefit.

Let's say you have a db of all faces in country of 60M people. You have a photo/video of a person committing a crime, robbery. False positive rate is 1:100,000. Your search returns 600 people; address match finds 60 with connections to the locality; 5 of those have records, one for robbery. You'd at least sit a person down for an hour to review the matches, consider the records, list people for interview.

According to UK ONS stats, those adults released from prison, in Jan-Mar 2018, had a reoffending rate of 65%.

It seems just tracking known offenders would find the perpetrator in many cases if visual recognition is possible.

I mean, this is _the_ principle benefit.

<comment><USER32> I fully understand and appreciate that supposed benefit but I don't think that justifies the privacy cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those unfamiliar with Boston governance, "Boston" here means the "City of Boston", population 0.7 Mppl. A Seattle or El Paso. Rather than a "Greater Boston" aggregation of municipalities of 2 to 8 Mppl.

For a NYC analogy, imagine its historical consolidation was more limited, and many of its towns and cities remain independent, never having consolidated into boroughs, and the boroughs into one big city. Flushing, Brooklyn Heights, Kingsbridge, are still independent towns. Here, the city council of a city occupying only lower Manhattan, but confusingly named "City of New York", just voted on face recognition.

<comment><USER35> Somerville, Brookline, and Cambridge have similar bans in place as well. That covers about 250k more people, for what it's worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Surveillance should be banned instead.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. So the city's tying its own hands. I assume private companies can still use their own resources to do their own individual identification, though.

<comment><USER37> Yeah fingers crossed I can get our own private building to get facial recognition set up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The stated complaint against the article is accuracy. It also says Boston PD doesn't use it yet - this is preemptive. I wonder if they are aware that tests conducted by the ACLU and the like didn't use the recommended configurations for precision. Not to mention that false positives don't matter as long as there's a human in the loop to validate the match, because then it is no worse than the minor risk of a false match we accept even without facial recognition.

<comment><USER39> False positive matter. Being arrested for something you didn't do is horrific and life changing. The human in the loop is human. We unconsciouly tend to trust machines as objective and accurate. This is not as simple as you make it to be.

<comment><USER38> We already trust human police to make matches using their eyes to apprehend suspects. This is fundamentally necessary to enforce laws and ensure a safe society. Since a human match is required with or without facial recognition, a false positive from an algorithm doesn't make the problem any worse.

<comment><USER40> Yeah but here's the problem, you massively increased one of the humans capabilities but none of the others. Like judgement or even perception.

With their superhuman search capability one person with a bias can discriminate against everyone in the database instead of just whoever is standing in front of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Technology should improve so we can slide into a dystopia in harmony"

</comment><comment><USER42> Is the American justice system so broken and law enforcement so incompetent that a computer flagging someone is basically an automatic conviction and the technology has to be banned?

No evidence, by its self should be enough to get a conviction. Not your finger prints all over the scene of a crime, not a video of someone who looks like you, not even your DNA matching a rape kit.

The fact that someone was arrested because of match shows a failure in basic criminal investigation more than anything else.

<comment><USER43> It's because it can track the where abouts of everyone. It's a massive privacy issue. Do you want the gov't to know where you go, what you spend your money, and who you associate with? I sure as hell don't even if they wouldn't find problem with it.

It really doesn't matter what the legislation says - no doubt they have already been doing and been calling it something else. It's going to be one of the worst things to come out of the 21st century.

<comment><USER44> _It 's because it can track the whereabouts of everyone. It's a massive privacy issue. Do you want the gov't to know where you go, what you spend your money, and who you associate with?_

The government already knows that, via Google, Facebook, and the telcos.

<comment><USER45> Therefore those data collection activities should be prohibited completely for those companies or anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> >"Until this technology is 100%, I'm not interested in it," he said.

Umm... I'd like to see technology, which passes this test.

Relevant obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

<comment><USER39> Maybe that's his point? That he assumes this is unusuable unless he has extreme indication otherwise. Also, he said _this_ technology, not any technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Seems dumb, facial recognition has a lot of potential. I love entering UK with facial recognition and passport to go straight through the border, no lines no talking.

<comment><USER47> Giving up liberty for convenience sounds really dumb.

<comment><USER37> Give up liberty lol. Basically many places already have facial recognition, just humans doing it.</comment></comment></comment>


Dispelling the myth: a hangover has nothing to do with dehydration - <AUTHOR> https://alwaystoast.com/blogs/news/the-science-of-a-hangover-and-before-you-drink-gummies <comment><USER2> Title is clickbait BS.

Hydration plays a huge role in elimination of the toxins that cause a hangover.

Article even states that hydration is part of a hangover just not the primary contributor.</comment>